Wine cannot cure all ills

“So they took their departure, leaving me still staring, and we resigned ourselves to wait for their return.” -Robert Louis Stevenson (The Silverado Squatters)

It has been a week since we were coddled back in the arms of our home state. A week back in Texas and the realities that awaited us when we returned. Some weeks are good ones, some weeks are better forgotten.

Embracing the Muse in Napa Valley

One of the marks of a successful and fruitful trip is the reluctance to get on the plane and head back home. There is still work to do. And because of the work this past week, in Napa Valley, under the most amazing weather, we really didn’t want to come home. But the work goes with us, whether we do it in the present or we dream of the memories awaiting us in the future.

To be around writers and editors who are heads and shoulders above you is a great thing. Michael Jordan once said something about playing ball with better players to bring one’s game up. And while it can be a humbling experience, it is filled with unlimited opportunities for growth on a personal and a professional level.

A Magical Night in Napa Valley

Master Sommelier Gilles de Chambure  and Peter Mondavi Sr.

A chance meeting at lunch with Kelli White, who will be featured prominently in the future of the wine business, prompted an invitation to dinner last night at Press in St. Helena. While here, for the Symposium for Wine Writers at Meadowood, we had a free night and had wanted to go to the restaurant anyway. Kelli told us they were showcasing the new wine cellar, which exclusively features Napa wines, and opening up a few bottles of old wine. The wine gods were calling.

Look, over the years I get invited to all kinds of wine events. Bordeaux, New York, Chicago, California, Italy, many times over. What happened last night was simply unreal. It doesn’t happen. But it did. And this remedial expat and slave to the wine gods was rewarded for many years of effort. That would be if I were the center of the universe. But I’m not. We just happened to get real lucky.

The Master of Grignolino

“You need to go visit one of my student’s dad the next time you go to Napa. He makes a hell of a red wine. Heitz is his name. Joe Heitz.” So my college art teacher, Phil Welch recommended. It would take me 6 years before I took him up on it. I don’t know why I waited so long. Life, again, got in the way of a good time. But I made it up Hwy 29 eventually, the first of many treks up and down that not so lonesome old highway.

It was the summer of 1976 and we had taken the Falcon wagon and the kid(s) up to Northern California to escape the heat of Los Angeles. We were broke, slept in the back of the wagon in parking lots and trailer courts. California in those days was a simpler, safer place. Or so we believed in the mist of our infallible youth.