Francis Ford Coppola played a starring role in the recent destruction of one of Napa's ugliest buildings.

Coppola, perhaps channelling his epic Godfather films, climbed aboard a huge jackhammer and struck the first symbolic blow at a huge concrete barrel storage building that had blocked the view of the 19th century Inglenook Estate winery.

The building, erected in 1973 when Heublein owned the estate, had been considered a local eyesore. Coppola bought the adjoining Niebaum vineyards in 1975 and completed purchase of the Inglenook chateau in 1995. Heublein had stopped making wine there in 1966. Wine stored in the now-demolished barrel building had been made at other Heublein facilities. The Inglenook brand is not part of Coppola's Rubicon Estates group.

Coppola said the land where the barrel building had stood will be planted next spring with Clone 29 Cabernet Sauvignon, the heritage clone brought from France by Gustave Niebaum.