How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .

Ranndy: The editing capabilities of this site are limited, especially in the formatting department. Ross submitted this file to me in perfect outline form, but I am not able to duplicate that layout.  I am not about to complain about it (not too much, anyway), because Google generously provides this site for free.  For any of you that might want to view the original document, let me know and I'll email it to you. Now, on to Ross:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .


So wrote the Victorian poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, about her love of a man. The same question is posed here. But about a different object. This is about the love of wine. Let me count some of the ways. For there are so many ways we love wine.

1. We have loved wine for its health benefits. Historically, that sometimes has been because it was not water which was often polluted. The alcohol and acid in the wine kept it relatively free from harmful pathogens, so those who drank it reduced their exposure to water borne illness. Some think this accounts for much of the success of the Roman Legions in conquering, occupying and ruling a far flung empire. The conquered peoples were adapted to the bad stuff in their local waters as the Romans were not. But, by relying on their own wines, the invaders reduced their exposure to illnesses to which they were susceptible. Numerous modern health benefits of wine have been identified in recent decades. Although the alleged benefits are not scientifically proven, all my doctors, save one, drink wine regularly. The outlier plans to outlive me. And I him. We’ll see about that.

2. At a fundamental level, wine is just a tasteful beverage. Love of wine gets way more complicated than that, but one should not forget that the object of our affection is just grape juice, after all; grape juice that has been processed in a way that preserves it. We love it because it is handy, tastes good, comes in lots of different flavors, and makes us feel good. Not many other beverages can say all of that.

3. Like lots of beverages, wine gets consumed in various contexts. Often with food, but also often without it. By itself, we love to drink wine

o To warm us, as with mulled wine


o To cool us, as with wine that is chilled and sometimes mixed with fruit, think Strawberry Bowle in Germany or Clerico on the beach in Uruguay or, yes, wine coolers in America


o To celebrate births, holidays, anniversaries, the launching of ships and other important occasions when sparkling wine is irreplaceable


o To console us over the loss of a loved one at a wake


o To remind us of our faith in religious ceremonies


o To make us happy when we are together


o To cheer us up when we are alone


o The contexts in which we love wine by itself are myriad


I have a friend whose hard and fast rule is that he only drinks wine when he is alone, or when he is with someone. It’s not a bad rule.

4. When we get to the question of how we love wine with food, things get rather complicated. First, in which of the three logically possible modes are we?


A. Food Centered. Sometimes people see the wine as something that goes with the food.


B. Wine Centered. Other times we see the food as something that goes with the wine.


C. Balanced. Still other times we see the food and the wine as being in parallel, separate pleasures, simultaneous, but not necessarily inter-dependent.


Which mode you are in changes how you love the wine.


5. And what you think about the relationship of food and wine, and our love of both, changes in different circumstances. Like, for example


• Wine at a picnic


• Wine at a fine dinner in a restaurant


• Wine at home with leftovers on Tuesday night


• Wine with lunch


• Wine with a festive Sunday brunch


• Wine with salad


• Wine standing up with passed hors d’oeuvres


• Wine with hot dogs at a ball game


• Wine with dessert


• Wine at a tapas bar


• Wine with a lover -- before or after sex (bubbly wine recommended here)


• Wine with a large family meal, say, Thanksgiving Dinner


• Wine at a meal you would rather not be at, say, ditto

 

6. Talking about the love of wine with food, one unavoidably gets to the freighted question of “pairing” wine with assorted foods. We know this is something very special because we don’t “pair” other beverages with food very often. Maybe milk and cookies, tea and crumpets, beer and brats. I can’t think of anything to “pair” with bitter coffee. But with wine there are textbooks, lectures, careers, reputations, professions, friendships, and the ending of friendships, based on what foods to “pair” with what wines.


Maybe the threshold question is whether the decision about what wines we love with what foods is either 1.)Subjective, personal, idiosyncratic and nobody’s business but your own, or 2.) Objective, certain, universal, knowable and deeply involved with Right and Wrong.


If you believe #1, Subjective, then it gets easy. What wine goes with what food is what you like QED. End of game. Go forth and eat and drink together whatever you damned well please. If it tastes good, it is right! If it doesn’t taste good, spit it out! This is the system we all used as infants. There is much to be said for it.


But if you are more comfortable with clear-cut Rules, and believe there is Truth to guide us at the table, and that Experts know what is Right and Wrong, then you are probably going to vote for #2, Objective Truth. But recognize that this is a more hazardous road to travel because the Experts who would lead you do not always agree.


For example, we used to know that “red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat” was an immutable principle. But then it was revealed that Pinot Noir was sometimes OK with veal. And actually pretty good with salmon, which isn’t exactly white. Or red, for that matter, either. And what the hell is going on with Coq a’Vin? Isn’t that really chicken in red wine? Truthiness is not simple.


Turns out it is pretty hard to pin down a lot of the rules that the Experts will agree upon. There are just too many variables and too many Experts. We’ve got red wine, white wine, pink wine, sweet wine, dry wine, slightly sweet wine, high acid wine, low acid wine, high alcohol wine, low alcohol wine, young wine, old wine, fortified wine, oxidized wine, maderized wine, still wine, sparkling wine, sorta sparkling wine, etc., etc. And the variables on the food side are even more diverse!


Enter now the Experts. Some come from the food side of the equation; they cook food or do something with it. Other Experts come from the wine side, they open a lot of bottles, taste a lot of wines, sell it, study with other Experts, write about wine, or sometimes they even make wine. What you can say about them all with certainty is that they are all individual human beings with their own unique personal taste memory banks, food histories and likes and dislikes. Their mothers fed them different things growing up. So maybe it is not surprising that the Experts don’t all agree about what wine pairs best with what food. Here’s the Dirty Little Secret: the Experts are just like you and me, only more convinced they know what is Right and Wrong about what wine you should love with what food.


The acid test of the dissimilarity of Truths is the pairing of red wine with dark chocolate. For some people it is a match made in heaven. Winery tasting rooms sometimes offer chocolate to taste with their finest wines because they think it will mesmerize you and you will buy the wine. For other people, the combination is an abomination that induces gagging and makes both the wine and the chocolate taste worse than either would on their own. And there are Experts on both sides of this chasm. Remember the Dirty Little Secret!


7. One thing we love about wine is the endless variability it brings to our mouth. Every pulled cork or unscrewed cap is potentially a new taste adventure. Even if it is a wine with which we are familiar, the context or the company or the food or even the weather can make the wine taste different. Also the wine itself is changing over time. You may like it better next year, or regret you didn’t drink it last year, but it will probably be different. And again, there is no right answer. Just as some people like their eggs soft boiled and others hard boiled, some people like younger wines and others like older wines. How can we say one person is Right and the other is Wrong? Although you might find an Expert to tell you when the wine will be at its “peak”, your own opinion about when the wine tastes best to you is the best answer to optimum aging of a wine.


There are lots of ways we love the wine. You might even find some of them in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry, reprinted here for the sheer love of her skill with words. After all, Robert Louis Stevenson called wine “poetry in a bottle.”

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.



Grape juice can never match that. But it’s a hell of a beverage! Don’t we love it?


Cheers!


Ross Workman

Announcing Isa Ceja Montoya!

Isa Ceja Montoya

Congratulations to Griselda & Macario Montoya!

 (Macario is our Assistant Winemaker)

Macario sends the following message:

Isa was born Dec. 13th at 6:14am

She weights 7.14 pounds and is 19.5 inches tall.

Griselda and baby are doing great.

* * * * *

Babies, Babies Everywhere!

Tristan Moffit

1 year old on Thanksgiving day

Son to Gerry & Denise Moffit

(Denise is our sales Manager)

Ilaria Anna Monticelli

3 months old
Daughter to Anna & Mario Monticelli

(Anna is our Winemaker)

Reid Laidlaw

10 months old

Son to Kristen & Mike Laidlaw

(Mike is our Wine Educator)

And lastly:

Blake Barkas

5 months old

Son to Peter & Christin Barkas

(Blake is Grandson to Ranndy & Cindy)

Hey Waiter! There’s alcohol in my wine.

Hey Waiter! There’s alcohol in my wine.

By Ross Workman

It is getting increasingly easy to get an argument going about whether some wines have too much alcohol in them. This is largely the result of New World (read, California) wines being made from grapes picked at a higher degree of ripeness than was traditionally common in Old World (read, European) wines. The argument is usually that the more austere, less ripe style of, say, 11-12% alcohol wines is better to drink with food than is the fruit forward, fully ripened style of, say, 14-15% wines.


Probably the styles resulted from the climates where the grapes were grown, rather than some pre-determined optimal alcohol percentage. More northerly growing areas are generally cooler than growing areas in more southerly latitudes and therefore have a harder time achieving the same degree of ripeness. (Obviously we’re talking Northern Hemisphere here.) Some regions have more cloudy, rainy days during the growing season than other areas do.


It strains credulity, however, to suggest that predominant alcohol levels in a region are the result of testing or comparing various alcohol levels’ compatibility with food and selecting the level which was judged best. It is much more likely that, because the climate resulted in certain alcohol levels in the wines, people got used to how wines of those levels seemed to work with the foods. What was available became what people got used to.


The Old World established the standard wine styles and the New World initially copied them. So 20 or 30 years ago Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon had alcohol levels much closer to Bordeaux cabs than they do today. And they were more austere and came initially with harsher tannins than they do now. California winemakers were probably modeling their wines on the traditional standard setters from Bordeaux.


But, in the last decade or so, New World wines have moved to a riper style with more fully developed phenolic compounds and fruitier flavors that result from picking grapes later and at higher sugar content than was the practice in former times. This style also is capable of producing a more unctuous mouthfeel with polished, gentler tannins than the harder edged, less ripe wines. Since the riper wines are easier to drink closer to the vintage date than they used to be, they allow you to enjoy the fresh, vivid flavors of fully ripened fruit instead of the evolved, but more subdued, flavors of an aged wine.


Many winemakers will argue that this is the natural style for California wines. This is the way wines taste when made from fully mature grapes in the California climate. Full maturity, they will say, may be different another climate, but I’m not making wine there and this is what nature gives me here.


Wine writers and sommeliers that are critical of higher alcohol wines are usually people with highly trained palates who are familiar with a great many more wines than most consumers are. By their trade, they have experience with both New World and Old World styles. What some of them are telling us is that they prefer lower alcohol wines with food. That’s fair enough; we all have our own opinions. How I like my eggs or my steak cooked is purely my choice; there is no right or wrong about it. Same thing goes for wine preferences.


But sometimes the experts’ opinions are put in more categorical terms like “High alcohol wines don’t go well with food,” as if there was some objective standard of what tastes right and wrong to everybody. I don’t know where such a standard would come from and I don’t believe there is such a standard. The only standard of what tastes good to you is what you happen to like.


To see how completely reasonable people can differ about the tastes of wine with food, ask a selection of your wine drinking friends how well they like chocolate with cabernet sauvignon. I know very wine-knowledgeable people with diametrically opposed and adamant opinions on that pairing. And it is not possible to say either group is right or wrong.


I also know a few people who prefer lower alcohol wines, but mostly not for food compatibility reasons. They just feel that their own capacity for alcohol is so low that they feel the alcohol’s effects faster than they want to when they drink riper, high alcohol wines. I drink both high and low alcohol wines and personally don’t find that a 10% wine is any better with dinner than a 15% wine. For me, other factors than alcohol drive my preference for one wine over another.


There is a theory that we humans are hard-wired to prefer ripeness. We certainly do so with the fresh fruits we eat. Everybody prefers a ripe strawberry, melon, peach or grape to an unripe one. And if we prefer ripe grapes to under-ripe ones, it is not surprising that we prefer the wines made from fully ripe grapes instead of wines from not quite fully ripe grapes.


Being used to fully ripened wines, I am often disappointed by the thin flavors and textures of less ripe wines. I suppose if I had grown up on 11% wines I might feel a bit overwhelmed by the big wine style of a 14% cab or a 15% zin. But, fortunately, there is plenty of wine in all styles available, so nobody has to drink what he doesn’t like. We live in a globalized wine market where most of us have a greater selection of wines from all over the world than was ever available to any king, prince or czar of a century ago.


So I think it is pretty pointless to tell people that “High alcohol wines don’t go with food.” For many people they sure as hell do go nicely. And, if they don’t work for you, you don’t have to drink them.


Cheers!


Ross Workman

Visitors come for more than just the wine

People are attracted to the Napa valley for many reasons,

the premium wines, wonderful weather, beautiful views and fresh air to name a few. Recently a young visitor from the south bay area came to the Napa Valley to visit family in Yountville and take photos of this year’s magnificent fall colors in the vineyards. Sarah Bauer took photographs throughout the valley and one of her stops was Piña Vineyards were she could take advantage of the hillside views of the valley floor. She has sent along the following photos of her visit to Piña Vineyards.

 

Sarah is 21 years old and lives in San Jose. She received her AA in Liberal Arts last year from West Valley College and earlier this year transferred as a junior to San Jose State University to study Graphic Design. She recently began her first business venture ‘Bauer Art’. Besides photography, she also enjoys drawing and painting. You can view some her recent drawings and paintings on her blog at:

http://bauerart.blogspot.com/

I am Thankful

I have many things to be thankful for. Not the least of which is to live & work in such a beautiful environment. Many people think this is the most beautiful time of year in the Napa Valley... and I'm one of them.

Does vintage really matter?

You may recall an earlier post (actually a short auto-biography) written by Ross Workman. As a result of that post, I asked Ross if he would consider writing some future posts. Here is the first of what may become an ongoing feature to this blog. Ladies and Gentlemen, Ross Workman:

Ross Workman -- Thinking About Wine

Does vintage really matter?

Probably not in California. Wine critics’ practice of rating the quality of one vintage compared to another is an artifact of English wine writing. English importers of French wine were the first wine writers. And, because the summer weather varies considerably from one year to the next in European winegrowing areas, there was often considerable variation in the quality of different vintages. So, for some people, it was important to know whether a particular year was thought to produce better or worse wine. Hence the experts got in the habit of telling us what years were better than others. And drinkers got in the habit of believing them. The practice continues today.

But many winegrowing areas have weather that is not nearly as variable as Europe’s. California’s weather is almost boringly predictable. We have very little serious rain between May and sometime in October. The Napa Valley latitude is about the same as Sicily, while Bordeaux is about the same as Vancouver. Being father south, and largely rain-free in the growing season, it is much easier for us consistently to achieve the desired level of ripeness winemakers seek. Moreover, the ocean temperature from Santa Barbara north is quite cool -- mostly in the 50’s. That results in a significant diurnal (daily) temperature variation in coastal grape growing areas. The 30 – 40 degree swing from high to low and back again preserves the acidity allowing the extended hangtime now common to achieve full physiological maturity and full development of desirable fruit flavors.

Since this happens pretty much every year, we don’t have many years where the quality of the grapes is materially better or worse than other years. But, obviously, the weather is not quite exactly the same from year to year. Bud break, for example, when the vines come out of winter dormancy can occur in March or April. Heat spikes, when temperatures rise above 100 degrees for several days straight, can occur in June, July, August or September and the grapes are in different states of maturation in different months so the effect on the grapes can be different. Unseasonable rains do occur and are unwelcome, but they are rarely significant. The relatively minor year-to-year variations in the weather do result in differences in the grapes. But, for me the differences are pretty insignificant.

When I drink wine from the same winemaker and the same vineyard for successive years, I can tell them apart. And I might like one better than the other. But I have a hard time convincing myself that one vintage is significantly better or worse than the other. They more often strike me that while they may be a bit different; both are about the same level of overall quality. A little variation in the flavor year-to-year is welcome and interesting. But a marked jump up or down in quality just doesn’t happen for me. And, since the whole experience is subjective anyway, I find vintage a pretty useless concept for California wines.

Where the notion of rating vintages really gets hard to believe though, is when the critic opines on the quality of the year, not for a particular wine, but for a single varietal and for a broad region. I’m generally more amused than impressed by the 100 point scale of rating wines, but its application to whole vintages for large areas seems to me to have no credibility at all. Reading that a particular year of, say, California (or even Sonoma) Pinot Noir rates 88 – 90 points is just downright funny. How many growers, farming how many acres of Pinot Noir vineyards, making how many myriad farming choices, were there that year in California or Sonoma? Am I supposed to believe that that year’s weather affected them all the same and that none of them did anything different that year and that the thousands of winemakers who vinified their grapes slavishly failed to adjust for any differences in weather that did occur? Gimme a break! The critic tastes a lot of wines, but not all of them. And he’s delivering his own subjective judgments anyway.

So is the critic telling me that I will be wise to avoid buying Pinot Noir from that year because he rated the following year much better at 94 -96 points? Maybe I have a misplaced or exaggerated faith in my own ability to decide what I like and don’t like, but I’m not going to let somebody else tell me that a whole year in a whole region is better or worse -- and by how many points on a 100 point scale it is better or worse.

Besides. I don’t even like Pinot Noir very much. But that’s another story.

Cheers!

Ross Workman

More on John's Pumpkins

Some kids REALLY got into John's Pumpkins!

Others were a bit more hesitant

Pumpkin Time

Ranndy's Note: The pumpkins above and the post

below are both the work of my brother - John C. Piña

Why grow a pumpkin? I guess everyone has their own reason, but I think many do it for the same reason. To see how big a pumpkin they can grow. Personally, I have always enjoyed seeing the pictures and stories about those people that grow those Atlantic Giant Pumpkins that always win the contests. How is it possible that a plant that starts from a seed can grow a fruit that large in only seven or eight months? It doesn’t happen without a lot of hard work and some luck. The plant does its part by setting, expanding and ripening the fruit. The grower does everything possible to give the plant ideal growing conditions, including monitoring water requirements, fertilizer needs, aiding in pollination and even monitoring and mitigating sunlight. Have you ever seen a pampered pumpkin with its own parasol? I have.
Thought I began growing a pumpkin to compete in a local contest (I even won, 185#, small potatoes); I realized that first year, it was for the kids. Kids do enjoy carving pumpkins, but you should see them light up when you pull up with the truck and unload their own personalized pumpkin. So, for the past 10 years I have grown them for my Grandkids, other kids and myself.

Saying Goodbye to 2009

Piña Vineyard Management (PVM) had their end of year harvest party yesterday (Friday, Oct 30).  At this annual event, all the employees are given a shirt & a hat. My brother, John C. Piña, designed this year's shirt. He wanted to say Goodbye to 2009.. or maybe it would be more appropriate to say: Go Away 2009!   

  

Rosa models John's shirt

2009

Recession

Poor Wine Sales

No Grape Buyers 

Swine Flu

Rain

Come on 2010

Clair Palmer - Sewer Pipe Sailor

Clair Palmer

(That's Clair, front & center)

All of our wine educators are interesting people. For that reason, I've encouraged each of them to share their stories with us.

The (short) Autobiography of Clair Palmer

Born in Culver City, California, but lived all over the state in interesting towns like Turlock, Oakdale, Modesto, Tracy, Manteca, Alameda & Oakland – All in 10 years. I saw a lot of different grade schools. My father was a carpenter and went to where the work was during the depression. Finally Oakland, he drove to Richmond to build Victory/Liberty ships. He was a Joiner Supervisor. But we moved during WWII and it took us four weeks to drive to Seattle because of the wartime gasoline rationing - The coupon book.
Grew up in the Seattle area and fortunately the Korean conflict put me in the Navy, and I spent 10 years, most of the time in submarines - Sewer Pipe Sailor. I was stationed in Pearl Harbor on a submarine and I met my true love, Audrey on Kalua Beach. She was in the Islands going to the university of Hawaii for a Public Health Degree. We were married at Mare Island in the beautiful St. Peters Chapel, which was the second oldest chapel in the Navy. We had three daughters over time, and we are still married after 54 years.
When I got out of the Regular Navy, the GI Bill got me through the University of Washington with a forestry chemical degree.
I stayed in the Seattle area working for a chemical company for six years, but like my father, moved on. I got interested in Agricultural Chemicals and spent the next 35 years working in the industry. I was hired in New York city as the first American in BASF’s United States group – Myself and a German Ex-patriot. My job was placing experimental agricultural chemicals in all state universities that had an Ag-Chem program, and setting up an Ag-Chem research farm in Greenville Mississippi. From that job, I then moved into Product Management and Sales Management. I worked all the states either in R & D or sales except Alaska. But a clever head-hunter convinced me there was gold in them hills, and I moved on. This time my job was the World Ag Chem market. I had an office in Brussels, Tokyo, and Sao Paulo with people who could communicate with the business, because I do not speak any language besides English. Working rice in Asia was a challenge since not one word was close to anything I have heard before, so I smiled a lot. Bananas in Mindanao, Central America, the Caribbean and South America for protection from Nematodes, was probably the most interesting business. But this all came to an end with consolidation of the Ag Chem business. I ended up in Florida at an Ag-Chem research farm ten houses later (if you move enough, you don’t have to paint the house).
I retired from three companies. Finally the odyssey is over and I transferred myself to Napa, California, and now I will have to paint a house… besides play a lot of tennis.

Blue Skies

Blue skies shining on me,

Nothing but blue skies, do I see…

Things are looking better today for getting some grapes harvested.
The above picture was taken this morning. This afternoon the temperature is in the high 70’s throughout most of the valley.

Hung out to dry

That was quite a little storm we had and there are still lots of grapes hanging in the vineyards. The weather forecast that I had heard for yesterday was partly cloudy, but no rain. Well, we did have some precipitation in the morning, and only caught the sun peeking out a bit for brief periods in the afternoon. The humidity will foster rot in the grapes still out there.

But yesterday, I passed a vineyard in the Rutherford area where they were fighting back. They were removing leaves and canes in the vine fruit zone to promote better air circulation. Look at that picture above and you will see LOTS of vegetation on the ground. This is labor intensive work in an effort to save the crop.

The vineyard foreman said they would be picking on Sunday or Monday. Innocently I asked "You mean if we don't get any more rain you'll pick on Sunday or Monday? He looked at me with an expression that asked "What didn't you understand?". Then he restated that they would be picking on Sunday or Monday.

Buena Suerte, Mi Amigo!

... educated by nuns & soldiers ...

So what kind of person sports a license plate bracket like the one above?

I'll tell you.

This is Ross Workman. Ross works in our tasting room. On second thought, that statement is not very accurate. We don't really have a tasting room - We have a small tasting bar that we can roll around our cellar. We need to keep moving it around to make space for things like pumps & forklifts. And to say that Ross "works" in our tasting room may not be accurate either - You can decide after reading this post.

Ross is an interesting guy with an interesting past, so I decided to make him the subject of one of my posts. The problem was, I didn't know enough about Ross to tell his story, so I asked him to tell it. And he did. The only thing better than the story, is the way he tells it.

Ross Workman in his own words:

I grew up in Carlsbad, CA and was educated by nuns & soldiers. Nuns at a convent school next to Mission San Luis Rey. And soldiers at Army & Navy Academy. Continuing to avoid conventional education, I went to Claremont Men’s College, notorious for politically incorrect rowdiness. It was a format that could not survive, however, and it became co-educational and changed the name, leaving me a man without an alma mater.
Stanford Law School in 1960 was almost as totally masculine because the females were so blatantly discriminated against. As a result, the few who were admitted were so scarily intelligent they couldn’t be kept out. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was a few years ahead of me at Stanford.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. hired me in San Francisco to help raise utility rates and get nuclear power plants built. After 7 years, another (much smaller) utility company in SF hired me as Financial VP. That lasted until the President dropped dead at his desk and they foolishly made me CEO of a NYSE company at age 34. But the company was an anachronism selling gas, electric, water & telephone services in small towns in 5 states. Like my alma mater, the company was doomed by its format and I couldn’t agree with the Board of Directors on how to save it or dismember it.
So they fired me and I went off to Florida to be General Counsel of a natural gas pipeline company -- the first place I worked for Ken Lay. It was takeover time in America and the pipeline got bought by a can company which didn’t understand it. So, since I was not going to be building any new pipelines for the can-mentality owners, I went off to Houston & worked for Ken Lay again at another company as his Senior VP of Government Affairs -- actually his lobbyist. Commuting to Washington DC on the same schedule the Congressmen kept was exciting. Most of the stuff you have read about lobbyists is true, but largely toned down for public consumption. It was a lot like a Men’s College all over again.
Next Ken Lay got hired by another Houston gas pipeline company, which eventually became the kernel around which Enron was built, and I joined him there. Seven years at Enron was a wild and crazy ride during which I wore lots of different hats, spending the last few years mostly trying to get Peru to pay us for a $400 million offshore oil property they had expropriated at gunpoint. When that was nearly over, I agreed with Ken for him to fire me so he could give me a consulting contract and I could damn near retire. All the really juiciest Enron shenanigans happened after I left in 1990.
But nobody seems to retire and move to Houston (except George H.W. Bush), so I saw no reason to stay there, but didn’t know where else to live. We sold our home, stored our possessions and tried living in Germany (in my wife’s Black Forest home town) for 6 months, but it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. So we came back to Houston, bought a travel trailer and a bunch of books and maps and set out to find a new home. After most of a year on the road looking, we ended up in Napa, near my 2 Bay Area children.
I found that there were about 200 wineries to get acquainted with in Napa Valley, although there had only been 20 or so when I had left California in 1979. And they all seemed to have retired people working in their tasting rooms. So I started pouring wine in a number of wineries and have been doing that ever since 1996. Plus I have taken 6 or 8 wine related classes at Napa Valley College. Mainly what I have learned is there are dozens of mistakes you can make trying to make wine and, although I could make something drinkable, it would never be nearly as good as what I drink from the professionals.
I’ve spent over 10 years pouring Caymus wines for Chuck Wagner, who is a first cousin of the Pina brothers. And I started also pouring and talking about Pina wines last summer. This is a dream job because I deal with the public at its best. Millions of people come to Napa Valley each year to eat well and drink well. They love to taste, talk about and learn about wine and they are invariably having fun. Sometimes they even come with their own wives or husbands and it is heart-warming to see how many older men bring their daughters or nieces to the valley for a short visit.
So now I’ve lived in Napa longer than any other place and have been doing this job longer than any other job I have ever had. Had I known how much fun this is, I might not even have gone to Law School. But it is not bad to introduce yourself as a Recovered Lawyer who got into and out of Enron early enough to never even get investigated. It starts a conversation. I enjoy the Mediterranean climate here and the proximity to San Francisco which I visit about 30 times a year for music and plays. Skiing at Lake Tahoe is two and a half hours away & I go there mid-weeks in January thru mid April, but I’m always back in Napa Valley on weekends, pulling corks. What’s not to like?

Cheers!

Ross Workman

It's a cold Fall morning

In an earlier post, I talked about the frost warning lights we have in the vineyards. They allow us to monitor the temperatures from a distance. As I traveled to work this morning just before 5:00 AM, one of our lights on the Yountville Crossroad was green. The temperature was between 34 & 37 degrees. Traveling down the Silverado Trail, I could see the glow from at least 3 sets of lights where night harvesting was underway. Hand harvesting of grapes is hard work even when the temperature is not in the extremes. Earlier this harvest we had to deal with high temperatures, and now we're dealing with low temperatures.

And in the quiet of the morning, I could almost hear Willie Nelson singing:

"Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Farmers... "

Tasting Roomers visit Pina Napa Valley

Macario Montoya & Pam Bell

The Pina brothers have now been involved in 2 on-line videos related to the winery. The first was entirely scripted (by yours truly) from beginning to end. If you haven’t seen it, please check it out now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmbm178fgf8 (It’s only 1 minute long). My good friend Tom Shirmang was the moderator and did all the talking. Well, almost all the talking. I said one word.

The second video was unscripted and courtesy of the Tasting Roomers. If you are not familiar with Tasting Roomers, here’s a bit of information I copied from their web site:

They made arrangements to feature Pina Napa Valley on their site. They provided us with a short list of potential topics for us to think about prior to their arrival. When we got around to the actual filming, I found out that each of the brothers would be interviewed separately. I was relying on my brothers to do most of the talking. So when Pam said I was next, I felt like I was back in high school and the History teacher had popped a surprise quiz that I hadn’t prepared for. I stammered a bit, talked a bit and left soon after speaking “my piece”. I almost told Pam and Jim that I didn’t need to be/shouldn’t be included in the video. But they did a great editing job and really seemed to present the brothers as we are. In my opinion, the star of the video was our assistant winemaker, Macario Montoya. I was so impressed with his casual, yet informative style, that I told him that I would be doing future interviews “over the phone”, and that his commentary would be dubbed in to make me seem smarter than I am.

Not too long after Pam & Jim came, we received an email from Pam:

Greetings Larry, John, Ranndy, Davie, & MacarioI just wanted you to know that the Pina video is now the featured video on our website. We hope you like it! We think it came out great and very much represents what Pina Napa Valley represents - hard work, real life, serious wine!
…

I think she summed it up nicely and captured it on film.

Please check it out at: http://tastingroomers.com/025-Pina.html

Nice work Pam & Jim!

the daily sip - Wine of the Week

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“We’re here for a good time”

Gary & Martha Weeck

Martha raised her glass for a toast and said:
“We’re not here for a long time”
And the rest of the group chimed in and helped her finish the toast with:
“We’re here for a good time”

It was obviously a toast they had shared many times.

* * * * *

Gary & Martha Weeck were the high bidders for an auction lot we donated to the Taste of Howell Mountain event of two years ago. Gary & Martha were supposed to have coordinated an event date with us prior to 2009, but life got in the way. Martha was diagnosed with cancer last year. I emailed Martha asking about the toast and the illness. This was her reply:

Ranndy
…
You have my toast right. I have been saying it for years but now having fought through cancer it means so much more. I am in remission and I am okay talking about it. It is still with me and I can't taste all wines yet but it is getting better. We all had such a good time thank you all.

Best regards, Martha

Gary & Martha invited 12 of their friends to our dinner, wine tasting & games event. They were a fun group that works hard & plays hard. It was the second time they had the high bid on our auction lot.

Sippin & Chattin before dinner And these great eats were planned & prepared by Katherine (Pina) Capponi,
with some help from husband Dave & Dad (Larry)

Dinner in the cellar… And then the games began.

The game I am referring to is affectionately called

Bastard Cornhole (See earlier blog for details).

And when the last bag had been thrown, we returned to the cellar...

where Kyle Thomas was declared the Champion.

He won a signed magnum of PIÑA

that was immediately commandeered by his lovely wife Monica.

And a good time was had by all.