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:
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
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
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