Remembering Charles Roy - Strong, Decent & Ethical

I'm going to turn 60 later this year. I think most people my age have thought about how they might be remembered when they are gone.

In today's Napa Valley Register, Pierce Carson wrote a column about Charles Roy. 

Charles Roy passed away on January 30th, 2010.  Charles was a client of Piña Vineyard Management. But he was more than just a client.

His obituary didn't tell the whole story:
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/news/local/obituaries/article_a7a05a38-13b8-11df-81d0-001cc4c03286.html

So it was nice to see Pierce's column go beyond the obituary:
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/wine/columnists/pierce-carson/article_7e846abc-1797-11df-988a-001cc4c03286.html

I was not as close to Charles as many folks here, including my brother John, who remembered him this way in the comment section of Pierce's column:

Charles was an amazing man. His enthusiasm was always present, even in difficult times. I will always remember him as a strong, decent, ethical man; a joy to work with and to call a friend.

John C. Piña

Winery Dog Yogi, Part 2 - The Orvis Catalog

 

Yogi Bear

For a mixed-breed mutt from the pound,

isn’t he a handsome devil?

I thought so, so when Orvis announced the “Orvis Dog Book Cover Contest - 2009”, I decided to send in the following picture. There was a small cash prize for the winner, but that wasn’t my reason to send it in.

The Orvis entry instructions were: Please include your full name, mailing address, daytime phone number, e-mail contact information and the name of your dog with your submission.

I submitted the picture giving credit to the photographer, Joe Bauer. To let the Orvis folks know that Joe was “okay” with my submitting “his” photo, I cc’d him with that email, as well as my wife, Cindy.

Cindy had been diagnosed with a serious illness the previous month. So when Joe got the email he replied:

“...and remember, if we win the $, it goes toward medical expenses. :-)”

I pretended to interpret his statement incorrectly and typed in the following reply:

“That’s good, cuz Yogi wants his nuts back!”

So I’m thinking that I’m pretty funny. As I transmitted, I thought that Joe & Cindy would get a chuckle out of that.

It was about .25 seconds after I hit the transmit key that I realized my “Reply to All” also went to the folks at Orvis.

OOPS!

Removing Orvis from the next email that I sent to Joe & Cindy:

“Oh S#*&! Didn’t realize that Orvis was on that last cc list.

To which my Cindy replied:

“Well, we can kiss that money good bye. I will explain to Yogi that it was his Dad’s and Uncle Joe’s fault his modeling career went down the tubes!”

 

================================

 

Expecting that the Orvis folks would delete that entry from the competition, I decided to submit another Joe Bauer photo of Yogi:

 

This photo was taken at Lawson’s Landing (Dillon Beach). Yogi loves to watch the campers, dogs and cattle pass by our 5th wheel trailer that is parked there, so I cut a hole in the fence for him. Everybody gets a kick out of seeing Yogi with his head out the hole. It’s not uncommon for small children to call his name when he’s not at his post looking out. Yogi is better known and has a much larger “presence” there than Cindy & I do, and we’re okay with that.

Not too long after that, the Orvis folks contacted Joe for authorization to use a picture of Yogi. We thought that was a good sign, but time passed and we didn’t hear anything else from them.

Eventually, I found out that Orvis posted a video on YouTube:

Funny and Cute Dog Photo Contest Entries for Orvis Cover Dog Contest 2009

I started watching it and thought to myself, Dang, these are some great looking dogs! No wonder Yogi didn’t make it in there.

And then, 2 minutes and 15 seconds into the video, the following image popped up!

 

There are some great pictures in that video, check it out!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn45W7S-dXI

 

Answers to an earlier post

In an earlier post, I challenged my readers to identify the 12 locations in the above picture (Click on it to enlarge).  The answers are next to the small images at the bottom.  Only one person got them all correct: Johnnie White Jr.  Johnnie is a fellow employee of Piña Vineyard Management, but he did it without any help from me.

More information on some of the locations

The Keig barn is now part of the Round Pond Estate.


Rubicon was the former Inglenook Winery. From our mom’s side of the family, we have a historical tie to Inglenook. The following excerpt is from our winery website:

“The family has been making its home in the Napa Valley since 1856 when their progenitor Bluford Stice led a wagon train into the valley from Missouri. The Piñas’ great-great-grandfather Bluford Stice’s son Lafayette was a farmer and winemaker, owning vineyards where Stice Lane is today, just south of St. Helena; he was a leader in the wine industry of Napa Valley at the turn of the twentieth century as the winemaker at Inglenook Winery.”

We also have a tie to Caymus Winery. Chuck Wagner is a 1st cousin. Chuck’s mother & our mother were sisters.


Many years ago, the Beckstoffer property was home to our great uncle, Jim Pavon, who managed the vineyard.  I mentioned in an earlier post that he had trained Rock Hudson to bud for a scene in the movie, This Earth is Mine.


The author was Arthur Hailey (April 5, 1920 – November 24, 2004). Originally from England, Arthur lived in the Napa Valley in the late 1960’s, before moving to the Bahamas.

His Bibliography includes:

• Runway Zero-Eight (1958)
• The Final Diagnosis (1959)
• In High Places (1960)
• Hotel (1965)
• Airport (1968)
• Wheels (1971)
• The Moneychangers (1975)
• Overload (1979)
• Strong Medicine (1984)
• The Evening News (1990)
• Detective (1997)

Pruning Contest

Francisco Alfaro of Piña Vineyard Management

Piña Vineyard Management sends 2 employees to participate in the above event each year.

The contestants are judged on pruning technique and speed of pruning. Each contestant will prune 6 vines (timed for speed) and then a panel of judges scores the contestants on their technique. The scoring is weighted heavier on technique than speed. The 8 highest scoring contestants then compete in the finals where the contestant with the highest combined score is declared the winner.


To determine which of our pruners would participate, Piña Vineyard Management held their own pruning contest on Friday, Feb 5th.

Prior to the start of the contest, the rules were explained and the contestants were told what the judges would be looking for.  And then, 2 sets of 3 pruners gave it their best effort.

When everybody had finished pruning, the scores were tabulated the judges

Alfonso Mora, Michael Lewis and John Derr.

Francisco Alfaro was the top scorer for the day.

Worth noting is that Francisco placed 4th in the Napa Valley

Grapegrower pruning contest 2 years ago.

Click on the following to see him in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bg9a1GLx3o

Finishing a close second was Olvin Garcia.

Olvin and Francisco

will represent Piña Vineyard Management at the Napa Valley

Grapegrower pruning contest this coming Thursday.

An Apple, a Rusty Truck & the Bump ...

An Apple, a Rusty Truck & the Bump
in the bottom of your Wine Bottle

By Ross Workman

It’s all about oxygen, really. When you cut an apple in half it will pretty quickly start to turn brown. Or, if you leave the old pick-up truck behind the barn long enough, it will rust. And if you leave half a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter for a few days it won’t taste very good. These are all the result of oxidation. Lots of stuff changes for the worse when exposed to oxygen long enough. Oxygen is the enemy of wine.


When people started making wine thousands of years ago they didn’t have a good way to keep it from oxidizing. So, unless it was fresh from the fermentation, the wine they drank was oxidized. But, since that was the way it always tasted, that was the accepted style until people figured out a way to store the wine keeping it from exposure to oxygen. Bowls evolved into pots and then into jugs that you could put a stopper in. Big clay containers called amphorae were used to transporting wine, the kind of things that are dragged up from the bottom of the Mediterranean now and then. None of these containers sealed very well.


Then the art of glass making was developed, and, in particular, glass blowing. By blowing molten glass into a mold, the artisan could make a bottle which could be stoppered with something, eventually a cork. But, when he disconnected his blow pipe from the new bottle, there was a little dab of glass left on the bottom, so it was tippy and wouldn’t stand up right. The fix was to push the pipe up into the bottom of the still molten bottle before disconnecting it. Then the troublesome dab would not be on the surface of the bottle that rested on the table. Instead it was up in the depression in the bottom of the bottle that we now call the “punt.”


Obviously we don’t use hand blown bottles anymore, so the punt isn’t really necessary. But, since it is there, some waiters will stick their thumb in it and use it to pour the wine in a way they think looks cool. And some wineries will order bottles with a deep punt to give the impression that the bottle is bigger. Bigger, heavier bottles somehow are thought to imply more valuable wine.


Actually, the bottle is not as critical as the closure. Corks do not provide a perfect air-tight seal. A few molecules of oxygen get past the cork and into the wine and do a tiny amount of oxidizing. That is part of the process by which the wine evolves as it ages in your cellar. Or, if you just age your wine in the back seat on the way home from the store, not much evolution occurs and the wine tastes fresher.


Enter the screw cap. It provides an air-tight seal, if properly installed. Hence, you don’t get the same kind of micro-oxygenated evolution as a cork provides. Now if somebody knew how many molecules of oxygen per month the cork allowed to pass, the screw cap engineers could probably match that with a screw cap. But I don’t think anybody has figured that out yet. So mostly we find screw caps on bottles of wine not meant for evolving in the bottle. Often they are on wines that the winemaker expressly does not want to change with time in the bottle.


Gradually, the wine-drinking public’s impression that screw caps were a sure sign of a crummy wine has died down as more good wines are coming into the house under screw caps. But the sommeliers haven’t yet figured out how to appear to be as useful and expert as they used to seem when pulling a cork. Unless some better technology comes along, we will be twisting off more bottle tops every year, though there will still be some corks around forever, probably.


But just imagine how the closure question would have developed if the screw cap had been invented before the cork. If we had been drinking out of screw capped bottles for a few centuries, we would be used to and favor fresher, less evolved wines. Then, say somebody invented the cork closure and tried to introduce it to replace screw caps. He’d have to persuade people that a little in-the-bottle oxidation was a good thing. And that corks were preferable, even though some irreducible minimum percentage of them wrecked the wine through the cork taint defect called TCA. And he would have created a need for all manner of tools to pull the corks out of the bottles instead of just twisting off the tops. Now that would have been a really hard innovation to sell!


So mind the oxygen and be thankful for the punt.



Cheers!


Ross Workman

Winery Dog Yogi, Part 1 - Finding Yogi

Chances are, those of you that have visited our winery during an event have met Yogi.

Yogi is our lovable Mutt. He appears to be at least half Black Lab, but his heritage was not available from the pound.


After our purebred Vizslas, Sam & Tia, passed on, Cindy & I agreed that we would not have another dog in our lives. But that if we did, it would be a Yellow Lab.


But after about a year, Cindy started telling me about different dogs she had seen on the Napa County Animal Shelter website. I would remind her of our agreement and she wouldn't mention it again for a few days. I was concerned about what type of dog she might see pictured, feel sorry for, and bring home. I had always wanted a dog that would retrieve sticks & balls. I tried to train our Vizslas to retrieve, but after about the third throw, they would just look at me with the expression: “What’s the point of this?”


So, I too started checking out the pictures on the website. If you want to take a peek at the dogs, here’s the website:


http://www.co.napa.ca.us/petadoption/petlisting.asp?species=dog

Cindy was told that black dogs are harder to place so it seemed a minor concession to consider Black Labs over Yellow Labs.


It didn’t take long for me to stumble on the following pup waiting for adoption.

I sent the link to Cindy at work and the phone rang about 30 seconds later: “I want to go see him”.


We went to the Shelter and filled out the Adoption Application. We were initially told that Bronx was a stray that went unclaimed. We were interviewed and then we went to a small room where an attendant brought in “Bronx”. Bronx was friendly, but in continual motion appearing anxious. Once the attendant felt we were all safe, she left the room. We visited with Bronx for about 15 minutes and decided we wanted to adopt him. Cindy is much more observant than I am and she noticed 2 significant things about Bronx. First, he was very “connected” to the attendant. When she left the room, he kept trying to see her and seemed to get even more anxious. Second, Cindy had detected a very slight, but noticeable limp. At the desk, they said that all pets are thoroughly checked out by a vet and that Bronx seemed to be in perfect health. Thinking that he had been a stray with a temporary shelter name of Bronx, we decided that if we got him, we’d rename him. We were going to name him Bear since he has a big, wide ole' black head like a black bear. But we go camping and didn’t think fellow campers would like to hear us yelling “Bear”. So Cindy suggested “Yogi (bear)” and I thought that was perfect. Think it's just a coincidence that Yogi Bear's girlfriend's name was Cindy Bear???

Later, we would find out that Bronx was not a stray, that he had been dropped off at the shelter. That made more sense considering the information provided on the website about him. Even so, we decided to call him Yogi.

We didn’t find out for a few days if we would be able to adopt Yogi, but when we did, Cindy bought him a new bed and toys. Over the next few days, we learned that Yogi did not handle being away from us very well, that he had separation anxiety. Cindy had noticed that he seemed anxious when the attendant left him alone with us. Then after being checked out by our vet, and a few more diagnostic appointments, we were told that Yogi needed an operation on his shoulder… an operation costing several thousand dollars. So in less than 2 weeks time, we found out that Yogi had separation anxiety and needed an expensive operation. I would have considered taking him back to the shelter and waiting for another dog without these problems, but Cindy wouldn’t. She already felt a bond with him, even though he didn’t seem to completely accept us for several months. So we got his shoulder operated on, nursed him back to good health and started working on his separation anxiety. After working with him for the last year and a half, we can now go out to dinner leaving him at home. But we advise that you not visit during that time - He guards HIS home.


I have a hunch that Yogi's first family gave him up because they found out he needed an expensive operation. They might have even suspected that at the shelter.


Had they warned us of his separation anxiety and shoulder problem, we would not have adopted him. And it would have been our loss.


One night, less than a month after we got Yogi, he was laying next to Cindy on the sofa. She was softly stroking his fur, looking down at him and smiling. She caught me watching and quickly said: “You’re not number 2!” I replied: “Oh S#%&, so now I’m number 3?”

Stay tuned for Winery Dog Yogi, Part 2 - The Orvis catalog