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Music in isolation Life in the time of virus Accidental artist Meet our local historian Past pandemics Readings on race Treasures beneath your feet The joys of fostering Embracing the sweet Recovering your taste A home-grown pioneer Roots Run Deep Living the life Crossword puzzle The mountains around us The finest table wine A taste for cabanas
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A return to Inside Napa Valley D AV I S TAY LO R President and Di re ctor of L ocal Ad ve r ti s i ng As we all know now, the coronavirus caught everyone off-guard and scrambled almost all of what we had planned for 2020. That holds true here at Napa Valley Publishing. After we published our February edition, we were deep in planning for our spring edition, scheduled for May. Then the virus hit. The shutdown made it difficult for us to report and DAVIS TAYLOR write stories, to sell advertising and even produce a magazine at all. So we decided to skip our May edition. It’s too much to say that things are getting back to normal. But at least in the last few months, we’ve all learned how to live and work under the new conditions. We decided the time is right to bring back Inside Napa Valley. Because of the circumstances, we were not able to complete some of our normal features, such as Getting to Know You and Food SUMMER/FALL 2020
Trucks of Napa Valley, but we’ll still bring you the same interesting mix of features, profiles, places and people that have made INV such a hit. This issue, we’ll bring you a look at the historical treasures that lie beneath our feet. We’ll talk to winemakers about making the perfect blend and learn to appreciate sweet wines. We’ll hear from wine industry pros about regaining your sense of smell and taste while recovering from cancer. We’ll meet an area woman who was a pioneer in gender reassignment surgery and has never looked back. We’ll meet a Napa man who turned a woodworking hobby into eye-catching art. We’ll talk to a foster family to see what makes it so rewarding—and so challenging. Our book columnist, Elayna Trucker, will chronicle her life-changing summer of reading about issues of race, and she’ll introduce us to Alexandria Brown, a home-grown historian who’s uncovering hidden corners of Napa County’s past. And, of course, we couldn’t ignore the
pandemic that has made life so different today. We’ll talk to wine industry veterans about what their world looks like now. We’ll look back at a mysterious series of historical epidemics that attacked Napa County’s native population two centuries ago. We’ll look at how the area’s musicians are staying in practice and learning new ways to perform and teach. So grab a glass of Napa County’s finest and raise a toast (from a proper social distance, of course) and join us for the latest edition of Inside Napa Valley magazine. On the Cover: Sunrise over American Canyon, courtesy of Bob McClenahan, bobmcclenahan.com. Editor’s note: Many of you will be receiving this edition by mail, the third time we have distributed our free quarterly magazine to postal customers in and around Napa. If you like what you see and want to be part of supporting local journalism, please consider becoming a member at napavalleyregister. com/members. INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 3
Masumi Per Rostad performs via Zoom for Music in the Vineyards. Music in the Vineyards
Performing in a time of pandemic JESSICA ZIMMER
Napa musicians and music teachers play on, at home and online
A
cross the Napa Valley, musicians have been hit hard by mandated closures for bars, churches, and indoor dining. Gigs have been cancelled, concerts rescheduled, and lessons postponed. Everyone from beginners to orchestra leaders is rethinking how to teach and collaborate. Steve Trovao, a professional Napa drummer who regularly played with the house band at the Blue Note, said he has been requested for gigs in late summer. “It all depends on how the situation works out. There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Trovao. Trovao returned to teaching in his studio in mid-June. “I teach one student at a time. We’re physically distanced, with masks, on 4 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Music in the Vineyards
Flutist Viviana Guzmán appears to play in many places at once for a digital performance for Music in the Vineyards.
separate drum sets. I clean before and after every lesson,” said Trovao. Trovao is also currently teaching over Skype. Anahid Nazarian is an amateur musician who plays with the St. Helena Community Band and an 8-piece jazz
band associated with the community band. Nazarian said all of the community band’s rehearsals and concerts have been canceled. She is continuing to practice and take virtual lessons. Please see Performing, Page 6 SUMMER/FALL 2020
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Bel Canto members rehearse over Microsoft Teams.
Bel Canto
Raja Orr
Raja Orr, piano and voice teacher at the Napa School of Music, demonstrates how keys are highlighted with online teaching tools.
PERFORMING From page 4
It has helped her to focus on a single instrument. “I play alto and tenor sax, flute, bass guitar, and drums. Since the pandemic started, I’ve mainly played the drums,” said Nazarian. Nazarian said her challenge is finding the motivation to practice. “In a way, playing music is like playing sports. You can practice by yourself, but the enjoyment comes from playing on a team. I’m trying to keep motivated to play and learn music on my own,” said Nazarian. CHANGES IN MUSIC EDUCATION When schools stopped in-person 6 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
instruction in mid-March, music teachers developed a variety of ways to finish the semester. Harry Cadelago, music director for Napa Valley College and the conductor for the Napa Valley College Orchestra, required students to submit recordings of the music they would have performed in concert. “I provided them with a critique and told them to continue practicing through the summer. Everyone is frustrated. But playing music helps. It allows you to improve and relieves stress,” said Cadelago. Cadelago, formerly Napa High School’s instrumental music director, sent letters to high school teachers and community band leaders. The idea is to develop a workable approach for the 2020-2021 academic year. “I don’t think all rehearsals and performances, particularly marching band, can be done online,” said Cadelago. Christina Howell, music coordinator
and director of vocal studies at Napa Valley College, continued teaching a variety of classes online, including music appreciation, chorale and ear training. “The class I was most worried about was ear training. It involves a process called audiation, hearing music in your head. It’s hard to teach this in a Zoom meeting because the software can lag. That limits my ability to respond to a student,” said Howell. She said she has also used Skype and Facetime to teach students. She also reached out to colleagues, including a friend who is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, for tips on teaching online. “I’m currently working on putting together a group of vocalists who can sing on their own, to organize their performances into a virtual choir. This is complicated because it involves a lot of sound engineering on the back end,” said Howell. Nina Pedersen, Calistoga school district band director, said the Calistoga Joint Unified School District allowed students to take home instruments for the spring and summer. “I taught my students using SmartMusic, a software program that allows students to practice with instrumental background music,” said Pedersen. “I also assigned solos for all the junior and high school students for spring. They liked it because they got to help me pick out the music.” Pedersen said the district’s spring music project involved combining the solos with pictures and words. “Then we watched the video we made online together. It was pretty cool,” said Pedersen. Pedersen said she is continuing to practice her primary instrument, trombone, over the summer, as well as play trumpet with her two sons, Christian Pedersen and Andrew Pedersen. Raja Orr, a professional pianist and singer and a piano and voice teacher at the Napa School of Music, said he is teaching in person and over Zoom. “In person, the Napa School of Music places two pianos in a room six feet apart,” Orr said. “The teacher is seated at one of the pianos with a mask on. There’s also a camera displaying my hands on a laptop next to the student in case I need to teach through demonstration.” Orr said teaching on Zoom offers different advantages. Not wearing masks allows a teacher to read students’ facial cues and body language. That way, the teacher knows whether the student is struggling with the material. “Over Zoom, I am able to share my SUMMER/FALL 2020
screen and display my real piano and a digital piano on my computer. When I play a chord, those keys are highlighted for the student to see. I can see the student’s hands on my computer instead of squinting from six feet away,” said Orr. THOUGHTS ON PERFORMANCES Setting goals far ahead has encouraged the members of Bel Canto, a Napa vocal chamber ensemble. “We’re tentatively planning on performing next May. In the meantime, we’re practicing individually, with the hope of recording and releasing a CD in the spring,” said Ted von Pohle, director of Bel Canto. Von Pohle said the choir is currently practicing together with Microsoft Teams. Having more than 25 people in a meeting taxes the software. “The sound quality is very poor. Leading the choir online also requires that I remain observant of differences in tone. Still, it’s important to do what we can. I want to help people feel that they’re singing together again,” said von Pohle. Holly Rogers, who usually plays flute in the St. Helena Community Band, said she is currently practicing and composing music for the organ. “I’ve put some pieces together, and done some singing as I play the organ. One of the band’s trumpet players played ‘Taps’ for a small group on Memorial Day and shared that with Facebook,” said Rogers. Some St. Helena Community Band musicians have also played tunes during “8 p.m. howls” to thank and honor essential workers, he said. Evie Ayers, executive director of Music in the Vineyards (MITV), an annual summer event featuring live chamber music concerts at Napa wineries, said all of this year’s concerts will be online. This year’s concert series was titled “Music in the Vineyards @ Home” and runs through Aug. 23. “We will have three and a half weeks of free concerts put together from exclusive videos filmed for MITV by individual musicians. Our plan is to send out concert videos on the dates the concerts would have been held. Michael Adams and Daria Tedeschi Adams, our artistic directors from Minneapolis, are coming out to Napa to film introductions at the different wineries,” said Ayers this spring as she was planning the event. Ayers said audience members would have opportunities to talk to the musicians. “We are hoping to include some interactive online sessions with musicians during the festival either on Facebook Live or Zoom, or another platform,” said Ayers. “In SUMMER/FALL 2020
addition, participating wineries are supplying us with a discount code for our patrons to purchase. (This) means digital concertgoers can enjoy a glass at home as they listen.” Ayers said the musicians have been allowed to choose which music they will play. “We’re giving them guidance on this,” said Ayers. “That way, we will not have hundreds of solo Bach violin pieces.” Ayers added Music in the Vineyards’ outreach group, a string quartet called the
Solideo Quartet, has made special videos to send to retirement homes and the Boys and Girls’ Clubs. “With a lot of work by our three-member team, as well as contributions from donors and a Paycheck Protection Program loan, we’ve kept our staff employed, been able to pay all of the musicians, and put together this free virtual festival. We’re very grateful to the community,” said Ayers.
Raja Orr
Raja Orr, piano and voice teacher at the Napa School of Music, teaches student Alessandro Izzi online with Zoom.
Raja Orr
Raja Orr, piano and voice teacher at the Napa School of Music, at home with his piano.
The Thalea String Quartet performs via Zoom for Music in the Vineyards.
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Life in the time of
pandemic TO N Y P O E R
Recently, during baseball’s first Sunday night broadcast of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the archrival Giants and Dodgers took to the field in Los Angeles. From separate studios, a pair of veteran announcers lamented the “fanless experience” of the sport this season. “We know that fans have been missing players since the shutdown,” ESPN’s Buster Olney observed to his colleague, Matt Vasgersian. “Well, you know what? The players are so much missing the fans, playing these empty ballparks.” Entertaining summer crowds, and being entertained, are something baseball and wineries have in common—nowhere more for the latter than here in the Napa Valley. To winery hospitality teams, the summer-to-fall tourist season is like opening day, the All-Star game, and the playoffs rolled into one. The fan experiences of wine tasting and wine country hospitality are as Californian as hot dogs, apple
pie, and the nation’s favorite pastime are American. With the state’s tasting rooms having closed back in March, and now cautiously reopened in recent weeks, the situation parallels how baseball has looked over the same period. The delayed season has finally begun, and the players and coaches are doing their jobs on the field. Meanwhile, winery staffs are doing theirs in vineyards, cellars, labs, and tasting rooms. It’s all happening under the dark veil of COVID-19 and the global pandemic: a new normal for these two industries that often seem to transcend the category of mere businesses. Fortunately for wineries, the “fans” are allowed back in, albeit with precautions in place. With this in mind, Inside Napa Valley talked to a few vintners who share wine as both a profession and passion. Each has been affected by shelter-in-place in distinct ways that are snapshots of life during a global pandemic.
Jeremy Ball
Elizabeth Vianna, General Manager and Winemaker, Chimney Rock Winery
ELIZABETH VIANNA, GENERAL MANAGER AND WINEMAKER, CHIMNEY ROCK WINERY It famously once featured a small golf course running through the property, but if Chimney Rock Winery was a baseball park, it would have an ESPN camera-ready backdrop. The viticultural estate just off of Silverado Trail boasts one of the valley’s more ideal locations, framed by the Vaca Mountains near the base of the Stags Leap Palisades. At a larger winery, it would be the stuff of PR department dreams. Chimney Rock, however, is more of an artisanal operation. They like to point out that just six pairs of hands are responsible for crafting the wines. The small team is helmed by a woman who’s a one-person PR machine. Please see Winemakers, Page 10
Winemaker Remi Barrett with her band Vice Reine. Submitted photo
SUMMER/FALL 2020
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 9
WINEMAKERS From page 9
“The assistant winemaker here decided in 2002 she was kind of bored with wine, and she now delivers babies in Chicago,” Elizabeth Vianna said with a laugh. “I took her job and became winemaker in 2005, and then became the GM-winemaker in 2011.” The thoughtful, engaging vintner was reached on the phone at the winery in July. While her day-to-day responsibilities for turning grapes into wine at the 105-acre estate haven’t changed, that’s about as close as it gets to life as she knew it less than six months ago. “You know, traffic’s definitely down, needless to say,” Vianna said about the drop in tourism. “But we’ve had a regular trickling in of people, and we’ve been complimented by our guests on our safety measures.” A 10-minute phone call with the winemaker turns out to be a clinic in coronavirus protocols. When it comes to the pandemic-related challenges to her staff, she describes herself as “a glass-half-full kind of gal.” She’s also a safety-first kind of boss. Like other California wineries, Chimney Rock’s production never shut down after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of tasting rooms in March. “We immediately addressed how to work safely,” she said. “I’m very lucky because we’re just a team of six here, so it’s pretty easy for us to maintain the social distancing.” She added that now more than ever, she feels a responsibility for the people working under her. “We’re trying to help them be conscientious about safety measures when they’re not at work, as well, and to protect their families. So that’s been a whole other learning curve.” As one of the Chimney Rock brand’s lead ambassadors, Vianna would have already taken multiple out-of-state trips this year to visit the winery’s distributors and customers across the U.S. But the Terlato family and senior management “made the decision that nobody would travel anywhere. So everybody is homebound,” the winemaker said. While she’s still able to welcome visitors to the Stags Leap property, that ambassadorial aspect of her job has ground to a halt. It’s perhaps the biggest adjustment for a winemaker who is also a general manager. But Vianna is upbeat. The experience of substituting video conferences and Facebook Live tastings for travel has been part of her own learning curve—what she calls “the sweet spot in discovery for the business.” 10 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Steve Lagier
Courtesy Steve Lagier
“It’s been a great way both for the public to have a respite, I think, in their daily pandemic life, and for us to connect with them.” STEVE LAGIER, CO-OWNER AND WINEMAKER, LAGIER MEREDITH VINEYARD Golf is part of the colorful past at Chimney Rock. If you bring up the sport to Steve Lagier, prepare for him to segue to one of his favorite movies. “Everything I know about golf, I pretty much got from ‘Caddyshack,’” he said over the phone recently, breaking into laughter. Lagier is the grower and winemaker for Lagier Meredith, the eponymous label he owns with his wife, Carole Meredith, a former professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis. They run an operation that makes Chimney Rock seem like a multinational corporation by comparison. The couple grow and produce minuscule quantities of four red wine varieties—none of which is Cabernet Sauvignon—high on Mount Veeder above Dry Creek Road. Their Mount Veeder AVA Syrah is known up and down California as one of the state’s finest examples of the spicy, complex Rhône grape. Lagier is quick to laugh about Rodney Dangerfield and slapstick comedies, but he switched to a more serious mode when asked about the current state of the wine industry under the pandemic, and his wife’s and his situation, in particular. “You know, no one is an island. But it is odd that the way this thing has played out, we’re somewhat immune to a lot of the worst attributes,” he explained. “Carole and I are the only employees of Lagier Meredith. We don’t have a payroll that we’re burning through. And when leaner times come, you know, it’s not really a big deal. We’re just not leveraged at all, so that gives us another avenue of resistance to this thing.” They purchased and moved onto the remote property in 1986. Leaving most of it in its natural, forested state, they started to grow
grapes eight years later. Since their inaugural commercial vintage of 2000, they’ve created an enviable wine business model: they sell approximately 75% of their production direct to mailing list and other customers. At a time when retail wine sales and home shipping are perhaps unsurprisingly strong, it borders on pandemic-proof: a stark difference between Lagier Meredith and most other wineries. Lagier is pragmatic about coronavirus, even as he joked again about his treasured golf movie. “If you’re going to go to a rave, or if you’re doing the ballroom scene in ‘Caddyshack,’ then, you know, you’re going to risk getting this disease. But if people are careful and keep a distance and stay within their social pods— you know, don’t get nutty—they can avoid getting the virus.” He’s also fairly sanguine about the future or, at least, the ’20 harvest and crush around the corner. “I don’t anticipate that there’s going to be any issue really making the wine because people can easily socially distance at the winery” where they rent space. “We’re able to do socially distanced winemaking, basically.” For the immediate future, he’ll continue to work on crop-thinning their Syrah and other vines in preparation for the harvest, doing judicious watering, “and then hopefully come in for a nice soft landing during the ‘pandemic crush,’” as he calls it. “I don’t think that it’s really affected our viticulture, because we don’t have any employees. So, we don’t have to comply with a bunch of social distancing and stuff like that. We are kind of de facto socially distanced.” R E M I B A R R E T T, S A L E S A N D MARKETING, LA SIRENA AND BARRETT & BARRETT (AND SYNTHPOP SINGER-SONGWRITER) When Remi Barrett says, “I always wear a lot of hats,” it’s a bit of an understatement. On paper, the Calistoga native and San Francisco resident runs the sales and marketing, along with her mother, for a pair of sought-after wine labels, La Sirena and Barrett & Barrett. The latter of these is the project that carries “both” of her well-known parents’ names. Heidi Barrett and her husband, Bo, have been Napa Valley’s power couple for decades, respectively via Screaming Eagle and Chateau Montelena. To this day, Bo is the venerable Calistoga estate’s winemaker, while Heidi is one of California’s pre-eminent consulting vintners. Please see Winemakers, Page 91 SUMMER/FALL 2020
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MOSQUITOES MUST HAVE WATER in order to complete their lifecycle. Buckets, barrels, cans, bottles, wheelbarrows, tires, tubs, fish ponds, roof gutters, sumps and anything that will hold water is a potential mosquito breeding source. Eliminate mosquito breeding by emptying and turning over any containers that can hold water. Chlorinate and run the filter on spas and swimming pools. Pick up free mosquito fish from your mosquito abatement district for your fish pond or water garden. We are asking all residents to please check their property for any standing water. If you need assistance contact Napa County Mosquito Abatement District. IF YOU PREVENT MOSQUITOES BY REMOVING STANDING WATER AND ELIMINATING THEIR BREEDING PLACES YOU WILL: • Minimize the use of pesticides • Minimize the risk of West Nile Virus and other mosquito-borne diseases
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An accidental
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ARTIST SUMMER/FALL 2020
T R AC Y S K E LTO N When Rep. Mike Thompson arrived at John Sensenbaugh’s west Napa home for a mutual friend’s going-away party, he noticed that the garage door was open. Inside was a scroll saw and dozens of wooden shapes littering a work bench, like oversized jigsaw pieces. Thompson’s interest was piqued; “I’ve always had an interest in people’s hobbies – what they do and how they do it.” Thompson exchanged salutations with Sensenbaugh and asked what he was working on. Sensenbaugh didn’t have a name for his hobby – he isn’t aware of anyone creating art like what has evolved in his garage over the past few years. “Wood art,” Sensenbaugh said. Thompson had “never heard of wood art,” prompting Please see Artist, Page 14
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 13
ARTIST From page 13
Sensenbaugh to lead his congressman inside. Lining a stairwell and living room walls were unframed, quarter-inch plywood rectangles, mostly 18-by-24 inches in size, serving as backdrops for intricately cut wooden shapes set tightly together and glued. They are relief puzzles, made from scratch. The results include replica movie posters (noir is a theme), album covers (Rolling Stones and Dylan), a wine bottle label (Il Bastardo), or anything that strikes Sensenbaugh’s interest. Sometimes he riffs – throwing a couple ideas together – but the ideas are secondary. “The skill is in the cutting and fitting of pieces,” Sensenbaugh said. Even the wood is chosen carefully, factoring in a wood’s species for color and noting grain direction when deciding on cuts and placement. He finds that using the scroll saw is relaxing and rewarding. “I can really get into it. It’s a great way to spend hours,” he said. What started as a fun woodworking hobby making chairs, a picnic table, and children’s toys – fairy tale castles, train cars, and rocking horses, to name a few – eventually stalled as Sensenbaugh became increasingly frustrated trying to make more intricate cuts. A friend recommended a scroll saw and Sensenbaugh was hooked. His work evolved to become more and more intricate until settling, for now, on the 18-by-24 wall hangings that caught Thompson’s eye. “It was absolutely amazing – absolutely beautiful work” Thompson recalls. “It takes some special skills and talent to be able to do that.” Sensenbaugh recalls Thompson looking at all the pieces he had on display but was “looking and looking” at a rendering of Uncle Sam – muscles bulging and sleeves rolled – with the words “Who’s Next?” in relief across the top. Thompson told Sensenbaugh about the district art he keeps in his office; maybe Sensenbaugh would be interested in loaning his art? Sensenbaugh followed up with Thompson’s staff. In August 2019, Sensenbaugh flew to Washington, D.C., carefully bringing Uncle Sam with him. A ceremony was held in Thompson’s office – described by Thompson as a “little gathering” – and Sensenbaugh’s art was given its place on Thompson’s outer-office wall, visible to everyone who enters. “I would not have been considered an ‘artist’ three years ago,” Sensenbaugh marvels, considering how much his hobby has evolved. For Thompson, art should be celebrated and shown off; “I love art and I think it’s such an important part of life. And if it’s not, it should be.” 14 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Submitted photos
SUMMER/FALL 2020
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Napa’s new
historian Alexandria Brown brings alive forgotten swaths of local history
Alexandria Brown, then Napa County Historical Society Research librarian, documents repairs on the Goodman Library building in 2015. The building was heavily damaged in the 2014 earthquake. Register file photo
16 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
E L AY N A T RU C K E R When I was a kid, I devoured books about world histor y. Roman emperors, Greek mythology, and Egyptian mummies all filled my bookshelves. I couldn’t get enough. I became even more enthralled with the study of history in high school, and went on to major in history at the University of Puget Sound, with a focus on the medieval European period. Alexandria Brown and I have that childhood obsession in common, though she took hers even further than I. After a childhood in Napa, Alexandria went to library school and focused on the archives track, writing her master’s thesis on Black history in Napa Valley. This led her to a job as a research librarian at the Napa County Historical Society (NCHS), where she uncovered documents proving that Napa history was not what [she] thought it was. As a Black woman growing up in Napa, Alexandria didn’t think the African-American community had a history here, but her work at NCHS and in the rich newspaper archives at the Napa County Library showed her a different side of our local history, one that is “really interesting and really weird.” For the first time, she felt like Napa was her home. SUMMER/FALL 2020
Alexandria’s work has reopened chapters of Napa history long forgotten, and already resulted in two books published by The History Press. “Hidden History of Napa Valley,” published a year ago to interest from locals with long personal histories in Napa, as well as to visitors who have never been here before. The book highlights the many minority communities that were an integral part of Napa Valley, but whose histories have largely been ignored. The documents, newspaper articles, and property records Alexandria found allow her to see some interesting common threads between Napa’s history and its current cultural make up, like the constant presence of immigration and its effect on the diversity of the county. Alexandria’s second book, “The Lost Restaurants of Napa Valley and Their Recipes,” is in many ways a “part 2” to her work. When The History Press asked her to write another book about Napa history and mentioned that the topic of restaurants is always a good bet, Alexandria started thinking about the history of who makes our food, how it’s been prepared, and how it changed Napa. Researching old Chinese restaurants of Napa gave her a chance to look at the bigger issue of Chinese immigration, and her chapter on Mexican food taught her that many of the foods we think of as “Mexican” today were actually indigenous foods first. She hopes this book will get people thinking about “who’s back in the kitchens preparing [the food] and who’s in the fields picking it.” Perhaps learning the answers to these questions in our past can better equip us to understand our community now, and help us move forward as the diversity of our area continues to grow. Perhaps all this makes you want to do your own research into the fascinating history of our valley. Whether you’re new to Napa or your family goes back generations, there’s tons of information right at our fingertips. Alexandria recommends the Napa County Historical Society as a good starting point for most research projects, and the Napa County’s Library’s newspaper archives are a treasure trove. If you’re researching a property or house, the Napa County Assessor’s Office has historical maps and other data that are open to the public. There’s so much history here waiting to be discovered, and Alexandria brought it to light.
Alexandria Brown
Henrik-Meng
Elayna Trucker is lead buyer and operations manager at Napa Bookmine and writes a monthly reading column for the Napa Valley Register. SUMMER/FALL 2020
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 17
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SILENT MENACE Two centuries ago, a series of mysterious epidemics killed many Native Americans M A RT Y O RG E L Author’s note: This story evolved during the spread of the coronavirus. Interviews were conducted by phone and email as people sheltered in place. Confusion and misinformation reigned 200 years ago – just like today – when what was thought to be an outbreak of measles hit Sonoma and Napa regions. Twice. From 1828 through 1829 and again from 1838 through 1839. What may well be the first mention of the 1800s outbreaks is found in a 1953 UC Berkeley research paper edited by Professor Robert Heizer called, “The Archaeology of the Napa Region.” He described what he called a smallpox outbreak that began at Fort Ross in Sonoma County and spread across the region. Heizer’s paper stated, “In the year 1828 California’s long regional immunity to devastating epidemics seems to have come to an end. This year and the next, 1829, were marked, not only by the first serious incursion of smallpox, but also by the first attempt at vaccination of the population. Smallpox struck again in the years 1838 and 1839…” However, whether it was the measles or smallpox remains unclear. Kent Lightfoot, professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley wrote in an email, “There is a good chance that there was confusion about what caused the two pandemics in the 1800s.” Lightfoot wrote two books on the 1800s outbreaks as a contributor and editor of “The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Fort Ross, California.” “I do not know of a smallpox epidemic in northern California in the 1820s,” he said, “but there was a measles epidemic in 1828 that killed Native American workers at Fort Ross.” Retired Senior State 22 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Coronavirus put San Anselmo artist Kevin Lozaw in an apocalyptic mood. Image courtesy KevinLozawPhotography.com
Archaeologist with the California Department of Parks and Recreation, Glenn Farris, said by email, “There is a comment in the San Rafael Mission registers that in 1830 a group of about 32 Indians from the mission died after being taken to Fort Ross to work. Although it is not certain what disease killed them.” While some scholars said the 1830s outbreak was misidentified as being the measles, Charlie Toledo, executive director of the community-based organization Soscal Intertribal Council in Napa said by telephone that she, “never heard anything about the virus being measles. I have always heard of it being smallpox.” Regardless of whether the outbreaks in the 1820s and 1830s were from measles or smallpox, the toll was devastating. The cause was believed to be from a virus spread by Russian soldiers who at
the time controlled Fort Ross in Sonoma County. Disease quickly spread across the region and into Napa County. Native Americans back then were not immune to European viruses and faced fatal consequences, similar to what people globally are living through right now with the coronavirus. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Native Americans died from whatever the virus was. The deadly Spanish flu from 1918 through 1919 killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people around the world. According to records the first reported case locally was on Sept. 24, 1918 when a man fell ill after returning to San Francisco from Chicago. San Francisco’s top health official at the time told the San Francisco Examiner there was no cause for public worry, even as the ill man was quarantined and others were
Kevin Lozaw
dying. As the documenting and reporting of epidemics and pandemics became more accurate over the centuries, we learned much more about the swine flu pandemic that hit 10 years ago. It was first detected in the United States in 2009 and ran through 2010. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated swine flu hit 60.8 million people across the country with 274,304 people hospitalized and 12,469 deaths. Just like epidemics and pandemics from our past, retired archaeologist Farris reflected on how the current pandemic will pass, saying the world could eventually find new hope out of it. He said there are “lessons to be learned for everyone living in fear of the coronavirus today. What we did or did not learn from the past could help us all better understand today’s pandemic.” SUMMER/FALL 2020
WINTER SPRING 2020
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 23
E L AY N A T RU C K E R
A
fter the murder of George Floyd sparked the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests, I, like many other white Americans, sought ways to do better by our Black American neighbors and friends. I participated in a Black Lives Matter protest here in Napa; I donated money to organizations like author (of Just Mercy) and activist Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative and the Minnesota Bail Fund; I bought T-shirts and lipstick and art from companies donating 100% of their proceeds to organizations promoting the Black Lives Matter message. Aside from these concrete actions, I wanted to enrich and educate my inner, reading life as well. I made a promise to myself that I would read only authors of color for at least the month of June, and possibly for longer. As a bookseller privileged by whiteness, I believe it is my duty to seek out historically silenced voices and uplift their words. There are so many stories out there, and the Western Canon contains only a very small portion of them. There are other experiences than those that look like mine, and indeed, isn’t that what reading is all about? Who wants to read a story that looks like their own? I want windows
A month of READING that changed my
LIFE
and doors, not mirrors and reflections. The reading I did in June, and that I have continued since then, has been the best solid period of reading I’ve had in a very long time. The voices I read are not new to the world, but they are new to me, and I feel like a more complete human for having listened to them. For this article, I’ll tell you about a few of these books that have changed my life. I started my month with a classic, one I had never read: “Things Fall Apart,” by Chinua Achebe. This is a story of family, one through which we can observe and learn the customs of a tribe living just before colonial interference in what is now known as Nigeria. The strength of this novel is
in its simplicity. It is understood that as we read, we will become a part of this family, and take part in its customs. We recognize our own families in this one: love, respect, fear, failure. The book starts with the killing of a boy by his father figure, but it isn’t until that final chapter, indeed just the last page or two, that the true power of this novel reveals itself. I won’t ruin the ending if you haven’t read it yet, but suffice to say, you will be haunted. As luck would have it, soon after finishing “Things Fall Apart,” I read the Ugandan modern classic “Kintu,” by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumi, a book that in some respects is in answer to, or perhaps in conversation with, “Things Fall Apart.” We begin at the beginning,
1750, and Kintu Kidda, Ppookino of Buddu Province, is making the long journey across the dreaded o Lwera wasteland to pay homage to the new king. Another boy, another father figure, another death—this one prompting a curse. The rest of the novel drops in on various descendants of this first Kintu, men and women who have passed down and taken on the mythology of their cursed foundation, a curse that reveals itself in a propensity for mental illness. Fans of generational sagas and familial tales such as “Pachinko,” by Min Jin Lee, will love this novel as well. Each character, even the incidental ones, are so well drawn that you can practically hear them breathing next to you. Though the legacy of colonialism is there, this is a Ugandan book through and through. I read two books that take place in Brooklyn, both different from each other but each giving voice to a Black experience that white Americans rarely pay attention to. Jacqueline Woodson is renowned mostly as a poet, but also writes novels for children and adults. I read “Another Brooklyn” in less than two hours, not just because it is tiny, but because it is so very compelling. As novels written by poets often are, the language is lyrical and moving,
sparse in a way that hits you deep in your breastbone. The narrator, August, is a grown woman, looking back on her adolescence in Brooklyn and her relationships with her three closest friends. All are Black but experience their Blackness in different ways. August is from the South and missing her deceased mother; her father has embraced the Nation of Islam and its message of Black pride. One of her friends’ family is from the Caribbean, her accent lilted by the French she speaks at home, her parents incredibly strict and disapproving of her other Black friends. Another is vibrant and talented but hides a terrifying, disastrous home life, even from her closest friends. What unites them is the sense that society values them only as female bodies, useful for pleasure and not much else, despite their parents’ best efforts. James McBride’s “Deacon King Kong” takes place in the projects of Brooklyn and is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time, and also one of the most poignant. Sportcoat, old and drunk and maybe a little bit crazy, walks up to 19-year-old Deems, whom he used to coach in baseball but who is now the projects’ most popular drug dealer, and shoots his ear off (he was aiming for his head, but Deems ducked). It’s
1969, and heroin has started to tighten its grip on the Black and Puerto Rican population of New York. The days that follow this shocking and unprecedented attack wind us around and through the extremely tight-knit community that is the Cause Houses projects. As the denizens try to figure out just why old Sportcoat did it, as rival drug gangs seek to use the attack to reposition themselves on top, as an old white cop tries to do right by his beat and make it to retirement, we get to know this complicated neighborhood and the ways all the people in it are connected, Black, Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican. Oh, and there’s a bit of an art heist thrown in just for fun, because, well, why not? Just before reading “Deacon King Kong,” which is McBride’s latest novel, I read his memoir from 25 years ago, “The Color of Water.” The book is, and has remained, significant not just as the story of growing up poor and Black in America, but also as a biography of McBride’s mother, who only later in life acknowledged that she had been born an Orthodox Jew in Poland in the early 1900s. Ruth led a hard life, growing up Jewish in the South with an abusive father who was also a strict rabbi, eventually making
her own life in New York and falling in love with Andrew McBride, a Black man who would later become her husband and father to eight of her children, converting to Christianity and starting a church with Andrew, who died young. She married a man who was half Black, half Native American and bore another four children, supporting and raising all 12 to later become, to her great pride, college graduates all. The narrative alternates between Ruth telling the story of her young life and McBride telling the story of his own very different upbringing. What comes through is the incredible devotion to family and education McBride’s mother instilled in all her children, and McBride’s own reckoning with having a white, Jewish mother, and sculpting his own identity after many years of research and reflection. I’ve saved the best for last: “Real American,” by Julie Lythcott-Haimes, another memoir of being the child of a Black father and a white mother, and it is without a doubt the single most powerful piece of writing I have ever read. In very short segments, Lythcott-Haimes documents her deep existential confusion with just who she was and how she should identify, let alone how she should act. Her father was the assistant
surgeon general at one point in her early childhood, and she spent much of her adolescence in a suburb of a Midwestern college town, one of only three Black children in her high school. She went on to Stanford undergrad and Harvard Law School, academic success for which she felt proud but also frustrated by others’ assumption that it was due more to affirmative action than her own excellence. She felt more white than Black, but from the outside looked more Black than white, and people treated her as such. It wasn’t until after she had married (a white Jewish man) and had two children of her own that she forced herself to dig deep and work through all her complicated feelings about race. The result is a truly stunning work that will leave you breathless. In writing this incredibly naked memoir, Lythcott-Haimes took a knife to her own skin and bled her heart out onto the page. I finished the book and sat in shocked silence for several minutes, then cried for several minutes more. “Real American” should be required reading for every single American. Elayna Trucker is lead buyer and operations manager at Napa Bookmine and writes a monthly reading column for the Napa Valley Register.
| 25
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A mysterious find. A possible fossil found in Alston Park. Marty Orgel photo
Underfoot IN NAPA Finding fossils, Indian artifacts and a petrified snake’s head
M A RT Y O RG E L Author’s note: This story evolved during the spread of the coronavirus. Interviews were conducted in person and then moved to phone, email, and snail mail as people started to shelter in place. This article is offered up as hopefully a calming, health-conscious distraction when walking alone, or with a dog, during these uncertain times. It was lying there on the ground in Alston Park, just waiting to be picked up. A small, black rock that looked like a piece of slate. Possibly obsidian, but rather dull instead of shiny. Close up, there appeared to be a fossil of some type running across one side. It was thought to be a fossil in a stone. But as one retired St. Helena geologist would explain, that may not be the case.
28 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Experts say finding fossils and Indian artifacts across Napa and Sonoma counties is not that common, yet specimens can be found and are waiting to be discovered. Matt Wills, a friend living in Napa and a professional colleague, is certain that two stones he found during hikes around the county are indeed Indian artifacts. Both items he said are ancient Indian choppers; Indian made tools used to skin animals. One was found in Alston Park and the other in Kennedy Park. “I was on top of the hill at Alston Park and saw an object on the ground. I picked it up and thought, ‘My God, it’s a chopper.’” A chopper is an Indian tool made out of obsidian by Indians who used to live in the Valley.
“I have always glanced around the ground when I’m out and about,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to find an arrow head.” He went on explaining rocks by nature do not have a razor-sharp edge. “These had to be chipped away at. I keep my eyes out for this type of stuff.” Jill Tager, a neighbor in the hills above Sonoma Square, found what she thinks is a Wappo Indian artifact, a small piece of shinny stone – also most likely obsidian—that looks as if it was honed to be a cutting or scraping tool. She found it while digging in her garden in the back of her house. “I now beginning to think that it might not be a scraper but a piece of a saw or projectile point,” she said in
SUMMER/FALL 2020
email and text exchanges. Napa and Sonoma were home to six or seven native tribes, depending what sources you check. They were the Wappo, whose traditional homelands were in Napa Valley, the south shore of Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and Russian River valley. And the Soscal, Ulcus, Napa, Kymus, Callajomans, and Mayacomos, living in the south end of the valley through the north. Little evidence remains of their existence other than city and street names scattered across the valley. And artifacts like arrowheads and choppers, treasures discoverable while walking. Notable sources of stone for
natives in what is now wine country were Annadel near Santa Rosa, Borax Lake near Clear Lake, and Napa Glass Mountain along the Silverado Trail. Glass Mountain is the narrowest point of the Napa River’s floodplain. And here, you find a large outcropping of obsidian. Back to the dull, not shiny, specimen found at Alston Park. John Livingston is a retired geologist in St. Helena. With the COVID-19 virus starting to impact everywhere and everything, Inside Napa Valley sent the piece via snail mail to Livingston using the postal service. “ It i s r a t h e r u n i q u e ,” h e explained. When people think of
Photos courtesy Matt Wills
Matt Wills of Napa found what he believes is an Indian artifact, a chopper found in Kennedy Park.
SUMMER/FALL 2020
fossils they usually mean some type of volcanic rock. In this case, he said, “It appears to be a piece of a branch or circular stick. Maybe a piece of bark, with an impression of a round stick running through it. “It appears to be bio,” Livingston said. “It appears to be organic. I have no idea how old it is,” he said. Bio? Organic? It is an enigma. A mystery. We’ll try to solve this riddle in an upcoming issue of Inside Napa Valley magazine. And for good measure we’ll visit nearby Petrified Forest and throw in the discovery of what might be a petrified head of a snake also found in Napa.
Photos courtesy Jill Tager
Jill Tager holding what she believes is a Wappo Indian artifact.
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 29
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FOSTERING IN NAPA Providing a safe and secure home for children in need M A RT Y O RG E L Author’s note: This story evolved during the spread of the coronavirus. Some interviews were conducted in person and then moved to phone and email as people started to shelter in place. There are times if you are a mother and a father that you open your heart and spread your arms wide and decide to bring a newborn child into your home — especially when you are not the biological parents. You just give and give and give all the love you can. This is what Susan and James did as they welcomed a foster child into their Napa Valley home. At the request of Napa County Children’s Services to protect their identities their names have been changed, their city is not disclosed, and the family picture was altered and digitized. “We have been trying to have a baby and have not been successful,” said Susan. The couple thought about adoption but decided against it because it seemed too commercialized. “So we decided to foster a child … our primary goal is to provide a warm and nurturing environment and then be able to reunite the baby to the biological mother.” “Receiving a foster baby can happen in just minutes or hours,” James added. When a person or family decides to become a resource family, the process could take months for them to become licensed. But because of the court’s quick actions; the actual notification and arrival of a child could be just hours apart. “It’s not like getting pregnant and having nine months to prepare,” James said. “You don’t know if you are getting a boy or a girl. You don’t know if the child is two or three years old. You don’t know if the child is drug dependent.” SUMMER/FALL 2020
Photo illustration by Marty Orgel
A Napa resource family. At the request of Napa County Children’s Services this picture was altered to protect the child’s and parents’ identities.
Without missing a beat, Susan picks up the conversation, “We haven’t gotten to that part yet,” she added, cradling the baby in her arms, and meaning while they have the child, they do not yet know its complete medical history. “You go into this partnership ‘eyes wide open,’” Susan said. If the biological mother – or other biological family members – are deemed not able to care for the child, the resource family could legally adopt the child. On the flip side, Susan added, “the child may leave the home quickly.” “There’s always a chance you could be told you have to give the child back,” said James. The couple’s main goal, James emphasized, is that “you want to give the child all the love you can.” “We are trying to change the name from ‘foster homes’ to ‘resource families,” said Aaron Salas, Assistant Deputy Director County of Napa Health and Human Services – Child Welfare Service. Salas said the term ‘foster home’ has become stigmatized so HHS has created the new term, ‘resource families’. “Resource
family” and “foster family” are used interchangeably here, as the new name catches on. Resource families get additional and more intricate training than foster families as they care for babies, young children and children in their teens. “We follow welfare institutional codes, which are mandated timelines from the courts to return children to their biological families,” said Nancy Lefler-Panela, Resource Family Supervisor for Napa County, “We are usually looking at six to 12 months for reunification.” The need for more resource families in Napa is great. According to Lefler-Panela, there are 55 resource homes across Napa County, and 14 foster homes that are being converted into resource homes. More are needed to fill the demand, officials said. The greatest needs in wine country are not just resource families in general, but families who are willing to keep siblings together. Families who are willing to work with kids who have behavioral needs, especially for children who have gone through family trauma,
been exposed to drugs, or have been neglected. And, Salas added, the growing number of teenagers who need resource parents. “More and more we’re seeing children from five years old and up,” he said. Because of the trauma the children have experienced, “teenagers have always been difficult place.” And as resource family mother, Susan stressed, the major goal is to return the child to the biological mother or other biological family members. This raises emotional realities — having to return a child. “The whole process is controlled by the courts,” Susan said. “Courts have a timeline. They are not going to drag something on.” Parents have to accept a fact that is always front and center: They may have to give the child back to its biological family. James and Susan know this remains the ultimate goal. This family may be able to adopt the child as their own if the biological mother or other biological family members just cannot care for the child. But the first goal is always an attempt to reunite mother and child, officials say. How does a resource family deal with the idea that they may have to give up the child? How do they deal with the emotional roller coaster of knowing a child who came into their lives in moments may eventually have to leave? “If the child goes back to the biological family,” Susan said, “it’s a win. These are a bunch of kids who need support. The kids are innocent.” James jumps, finishing her thought, “These are normal, innocent kids in extraordinary circumstances.” Anyone interested in becoming a Resource Family is asked to call Child Welfare Services at (707) 253-4744. INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 31
Ken Nerlove of Napa collects, repairs and sells or trades vintage slot machines. He’s been collecting the “one-arm bandits” for 45 years. His business is called Napa Slot Machines. Jennifer Huffman, Register
Winner,
winner? Napan collects, restores vintage ‘one-arm bandits’ JENNIFER HUFFMAN j huf f man@nap ane w s . com Ken Nerlove has so many slot machines at his Napa ranch he could start his own casino. But Nerlove isn’t looking to get into gambling. Instead, this Napa grape grower and businessman likes to buy vintage one-arm bandits, fix ‘em up and resell, trade or keep them for his own collection. He runs a side business called Napa Slot Machines. 32 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
“Slot machines always intrigued me,” Nerlove said. Collecting and repairing the machines “is just a lot of fun.” Besides the mechanics involved, the reason people play slot machines is just as fascinating to him, said Nerlove. Most people play slots with the hope of winning, he said. And yet they keep playing, even after they lose. “It’s an intriguing philosophy,” he said.
Nerlove said he got his first slot machine about 45 years ago. “I started tinkering with it and learning about it and picked up a few more. And then several years ago I got back into it pretty much full time. My whole idea was when I retire I’ll have something to do. But the reality is I’m never going to retire,” he admitted. Nerlove has so many slot machines – more than 100 – he had to build a “game room” to SUMMER/FALL 2020
display his favorites. That’s the downside of collecting the machines, he said. “It’s not like collecting pocket watches. It takes a good-size room” to put more than handful of slot machines on display. Displaying is important to Nerlove. “Half the fun is looking at them and appreciating them and playing with them.” And they certainly are something to look at. Nerlove’s machines are mostly from the 1920s to the early 1960s. These gambling machines aren’t plastic and computerized like today’s slot machines. These vintage pieces are covered in chrome, glass, Bakelite, wood and other metals. They’re intricately designed, with scrolls and swirls and colorfully-painted scenes. Many have decorative accents that evoke the automobiles of the era such as Art Deco details, hood ornaments and lighted panels. “The early machines, they had character, personality and they were very well constructed,” said Nerlove. “They used good materials and made things to last. These machines are still going strong after 80 years. Today’s computerized slot machines “have no personality, no character,” he said. “You walk by a modern slot machine — you don’t even give it a second look.” According to Nerlove, the thrill of the hunt for old machines is just as much fun as restoring or selling them. “One of the most exciting things is to find one of these old machines and bring them back to life.” Where does he find them? “All over the place,” said Nerlove. He runs ads and has a website (napaslotmachines.com). He also searches on Craigslist and at garage or other sales. “A lot of slot machines have a way of finding me” through word of mouth, he admitted. “I know everybody in the slot industry.” Many people assume that old slot machines come from Nevada. Not true, said Nerlove. SUMMER/FALL 2020
Jennifer Huffman, Register
Ken Nerlove of Napa collects, repairs and sells or trades vintage slot machines. He built a special game room to display his favorites.
Jennifer Huffman, Register
These are a few of the vintage slot machines Ken Nerlove of Napa has collected.
Jennifer Huffman, Register
Ken Nerlove of Napa shows off the insides of one of the vintage slot machines he has collected.
Before slot machines were relegated to Nevada in the 1950s, they were in Elks Clubs, lodges and all over the place, he said. Each machine also has a name, for example the Golden Falls, the Golden Nugget, the
Black Cherry, the Roman Head, the Standard Chief, the Club Chief, the Sun Chief and the Sphinx. Over the years, he’s also acquired a lot of parts. “I’m all self-taught. I can fix and repair
them.” In a workroom were dozens of machines in all stages of repair. Nerlove pulled out a little box of “hub shims and bugs” — pieces of metal that cheaters would install in machines to try and increase the house odds or prevent jackpots. Nerlove said things are changing when it comes to slot machine collecting. “The younger generation — they don’t appreciate them or understand” slot machines – or most antiques for that matter, he said. “Younger people aren’t buying antiques, they’re going to IKEA,” he said. Price might be a factor as well. Nerlove’s machines start at about $1,000 and go up. “To get a nice collectible machine you are going spend $1,500 to $2,500. They’re not cheap but they also hold their value,” he said. Some of the more unusual slot machines in Nerlove’s collections are the large-sized console machines like Universal’s Feature Belle and Keeney’s Three Way Bonus Super Bell. They weren’t as popular with casinos because they take up too much room, he said. He also has a rare coin operated roulette wheel called the AMCE Roulette and automatic dice machine called the Seven Eleven. There are some collectors who want rare machines that sell for big bucks. “I’m not really that type of collector,” said Nerlove. “I like things that interest me. I have some that are valuable and some that are just standard run-of-themill machines,” yet very much appeal to him. Does Nerlove ever hit the casinos himself? “No,” he said. “I know better.” There’s only one way to win on a slot machine, Nerlove said. “Don’t play.” You can reach reporter Jennifer Huffman at 256-2218 or jhuffman@napanews.com INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 33
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TIM CARL PHOTOGRAPHY
In 2018, the St. Helena Star/Napa Valley Vintners Tasting Panel tasted, judged and ranked Napa Valley’s sparkling and sweet wines for in 2018.
Napa’s
Wines that invite experimentation
SWEET SIDE JESSICA ZIMMER Sweet enhances savory, and also complements dessert. That’s why Napa wines from ports to Late Harvest Chardonnays are excellent for pairing. A sweet wine may be what’s needed to make a certain mushroom or cut of meat shine, said Daniel Kedan, lecturing instructor of culinary arts at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) at Greystone. “Sweet wines can make carrots taste floral,” said Kedan. “They can bring out different nuances in chocolate and even cool down moles and peppers. The only way to know for sure is to taste.” Kedan said Napa Valley producers excel at making wines with balance. “In sweet wines, that often means reducing richness and 36 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
viscosity to create a lighter wine with good acidity, “ said Kedan. “Winemakers here know how to eliminate a strong alcohol flavor too.” Kedan said diners should consider “getting a driver and enjoying an extra glass” to learn more. “Sweet wines offer relief to the palate, but tend to have a high alcohol level,” said Kedan. REFINEMENT EQUALS FINESSE Creating a wine that has a lot of sugar and maintains acidity is not easy, said Michael Scholz, winemaker and vice president of winemaking and vineyards of St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery in Rutherford. “You’re trying to get a balance
between the alcohol and the sugar. Since we don’t make a late harvest product, we’re not looking for extreme ripeness. We want to create a sweet wine with finesse that can be enjoyed on its own or with your meal,” said Scholz. The winery makes St. Supéry’s Napa Valley Estate Moscato from white muscat grapes grown on Dollarhide Estate Ranch. Scholz said the fruit is rich and aromatic, with notes of peach, apricot, and mango. “We recommend chilling the wine so it is bright and fresh. It pairs well with Asian dishes, light desserts, sorbets, and fruits,” said Scholz. Scholz said the trick to getting visitors interested in a sweeter wine is to offer a sample taste.
“It’s a different wine to present to people, not one of the foundation stones you’d expect in Napa Valley. Once visitors try it, they are always pleasantly surprised and intrigued by its versatility,” said Scholz. Pauline Lhote, winemaker for Chandon in Yountville, said there is potential for a sweet wine to become a stand-out offering. “Chandon offers three sweet wines,” said Lhote. “We like to have diversity in our portfolio. The first one we launched, Chandon Sweet Star, in 2015, has become very popular. The second, Reserve Demi-Sec, has won multiple awards, including a double gold medal at the Women’s Wine & Spirit Awards 2019. We also offer Sparkling Red, which is quite different and SUMMER/FALL 2020
unique.” Lhote said her job involves creating structure. “I want the wine to be opulent, but hold the sugar,” said Lhote. She recommends pairing sweet wines with rich, smooth foods like lobster, or spicy foods, like Thai dishes. “Cocktails are another great way to introduce these wines. They let you accentuate the sweetness,” said Lhote. Lhote said a taster should be aware that sparkling sweet wines are made differently from still sweet wines. They are not typically harvested later, but blended differently. Sparkling wines require a secondary fermentation process that involves adding a mixture of yeast and a touch of fresh sugar. “That’s why when I make a sparkling sweet wine, I look for a wine (to start with) that has a bright expression and an intense flavor,” said Lhote. “RIDICULOUSLY HIGH SUGAR” Some of Napa’s sweet beverages are known for their distinguishing characteristics. These include the Vintage-Style Port, Tawny Port, and White Port offered by Prager Winery & Portworks in St. Helena. Peter Prager, winemaker for Prager Winery & Portworks, said ports have a higher alcohol content than regular wine. “They’re fortified with 169proof unaged brandy. Yet they’re also unique,” said Prager. Prager said the reason the beverages are called ports is because the company got the labels federally approved prior to the 2006 U.S.-E.U. Agreement on Trade in Wine. “We were lucky to get grandfathered in on our labels,” said Prager. Each of Prager’s ports has a distinct flavor. The three different styles are made by using different grapes. The big difference between the styles in the time spent in the barrel. SUMMER/FALL 2020
Eric Risberg, AP
Winemaker Greg Allen samples a glass of Dolce wine, a classic blend of late harvest Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, inside the Dolce cellar in Oakville in December of 2009.
“Our Aria White Port is made with Chardonnay grapes and pairs well with seafood bisques, oysters, and crab. It has a butterscotch note with a hazelnut finish. That style spends three and a half years in the barrel,” said Prager. The Tawny Port, which is made from a blend of red grapes that changes from year to year, is nutty, with a hint of caramel. The bulk of the blend is aged for 10 years in the barrel, with some of the blend aged between 11 and 12 years. “Our Vintage-Style Port is made from a blend of Petite Sirah and Tinta Roriz (also called Tempranillo) grapes,” said Prager. “It has balanced sweetness. It goes well with pepper steak or pepperoni pizza. This port spends two and a half years in the barrel.” Prager said the easy part of making port is once it’s in the barrel, the winemaker doesn’t have to top it or add sulfites. “The hard part is having enough acid to back up the sweetness. Buyers should know port continues to oxidize after it’s opened,” said Prager. Todd Graff, winemaker for Frank Family Vineyards in Calistoga, said he is happy to make dessert wines that are extremely rich. Frank Family’s two sweet
wines are its Late Harvest Chardonnay and Zinfandel Port. “We make the Late Harvest Chardonnay from rows near the reservoir in our Carneros Vineyard. We wait until around Thanksgiving until the brix is over 40. It gets picked after all the other wines have been put to bed,” said Graff. Graff said this wine reminds him of Sauternes. This is a French sweet wine made from Sémillion, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle grapes that have been affected by noble rot. “Our wine tastes of dried apricot, dried pear, and honey. We age it for three years in the barrel. I recommend pairing it with foie gras and stone fruit desserts, especially because it has a hint of peach,” said Graff. The Zinfandel Port is a Zinfandel wine blended with Petite Sirah. This wine is aged for six years in the barrel. “It tastes like dark chocolate, berries, and nuts. It pairs best with chocolate and nut desserts,” said Graff. Graff said Frank Family’s two sweet wines have a smaller niche in the marketplace than their drier counterparts. “Yet we use them for all our winery dinners. They have a place in the tasting room and when we showcase wine on the road,” said Graff.
POURING WHAT’S AROUND US As visitors and residents explore Napa’s different sweet wines, they can know no question will be inappropriate. There are few local rules for sweet wines. Lars Kronmark, professor of culinary arts at CIA, said many wine lovers already have a surplus of sweet wines. “An open dessert wine will last for two to four weeks if properly cooled. In addition, sweet wines (are a) perfect (match) for your favorite salty charcuterie, pate, and salumi,” said Kronmark. Keith Rada, lecturing instructor of hospitality and service management at CIA at Greystone, said the Napa Valley does not have “overarching traditions for sweet wines” like Europe. “We’re pouring what’s around us, like Robert Mondavi Winery’s Moscato D’Oro Napa Valley. It’s sweet and bright, yet tart. It’s a good pairing for a dessert like it, such as a lemon tart with kumquat and pomegranate seeds,” said Rada. Rada said tips to remember include knowing the size of a standard pour. “You’ll want a two- to threeounce pour, not a standard fiveounce pour. Sweet wines can be pretty strong. If you’re not used to them, take it slow at first,” said Rada. Rada also recommended a rule of thumb for desserts. “Make sure the sweet wine is sweeter than the dessert. Otherwise the wine will seem tart,” said Rada. Rada said becoming familiar with Napa’s sweet wines can help even experienced tasters choose the right bottle, “a light, effervescent wine with notes of candied fruit, a rich, barrel-aged port for special occasions, or a refreshing citrus-flavored Moscato.” “I think people should embrace the different types of sweet wines. These wines have the potential to create the best pairings of all,” said Rada. INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 37
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on the rebound JESSICA ZIMMER
Napa wine professionals advise how to recover your senses of taste and smell after cancer Recovering taste and smell after cancer: tips from wine industry professionals Patience is the key to recovering the senses of taste and smell after chemotherapy, along with learning personal limitations and communicating with a doctor. Teri Kuhn, former co-owner of Pillar Rock Vineyard in Yountville, also advises drawing on your memory bank of favorite flavors and 40 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
qualities. “Over time, you get your taste back again, but your mouth has done double duty during treatment. Gradually you are able to sit and savor fine wines,” said Kuhn. Kuhn helped produce a Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon made on the grounds of Rombauer Vineyards between 1995 and 2011. Kuhn said she always knew when to stop drinking, particularly when she experienced pain in her mouth associated with chemotherapy treatment. “(After treatment), I tried to steer clear of higher alcohol content wines that were herbaceous and too heavily oaked. It was then I truly appreciated Pillar Rock as a soft and
supple wine that burst with fruit, black cherry, and currant,” said Kuhn. UNDERSTANDING WHAT ALTERS THE SENSES Cancer and treatments for it, including drugs and chemotherapy, can harm sensory cells in the nose, mouth, and gastrointestinal tract. Such changes may eliminate, reduce, or modify the senses of taste and smell. Chemicals in cancer drugs as well as the effects of radiation can make it seem as if foods and liquids have no taste, a metallic taste, or a bad taste that makes it hard to swallow. Doctors advise against drinking wine during chemotherapy because alcohol SUMMER/FALL 2020
interferes with the liver’s ability to metabolize the toxins in chemotherapy drugs. After a cancer survivor completes treatment, their senses of smell and taste return gradually, usually within three weeks to two months. It can take up to a year for the sense of taste to be fully restored. The process can take longer or there can be permanent changes if cancer or treatments damage the salivary glands. Lauren Ackerman, co-founder of Ackerman Family Vineyards in Napa, said going to a comprehensive medical appointment at the beginning of her treatment let her know what to expect. “I learned all the aspects of how my life during treatment would be affected. Having close communication with my doctor became essential as each chemo session brought on new side effects. The doctors were more focused on getting me as close to a ‘cure’ as possible versus worrying too much about the various side effects afterwards,” said Ackerman. Ackerman, who first started making wine with her husband Bob Ackerman in 1995, said her recovery from breast cancer took about a year. “I think my senses of smell and taste changed a little bit, but I didn’t pay much attention to that. I was so focused on trying to make a full recovery that I had no choice but to stay positive,” said Ackerman. Elaine Jones, co-owner of Jones Family Vineyards in Calistoga, said chemotherapy caused her to lose her sense of taste. “Interestingly, my sense of smell was enhanced. I think it took over for my loss for taste. Although I did not drink at all during and after treatment, I could derive tremendous pleasure from just smelling wine. It really helped to be able to differentiate elements of the bouquet,” said Jones. TAKING TIME OFF During treatment, it’s helpful to give other professionals on a winery team a chance to make decisions about taste and smell. Reducing stress can improve a patient’s mental and physical health. Suzanne Pride Bryan, co-owner of Pride Mountain Vineyards in St. Helena, said when she was in treatment, Pride Mountain’s production team, including its winemaker, associate winemaker, and Pride Bryan’s brother, worked together to develop the flavor profiles for its wines. “Suffice it to say there is never any shortage of willing and able team members to weigh in on sampling delicious wines!” said Pride Bryan. Pride Bryan added during chemotherapy, her doctors asked her to drink as much water as possible to flush the drugs through her SUMMER/FALL 2020
Jones Family Vineyards
Elaine Jones (left) and Rick Jones (right), co-owners of Jones Family Vineyards in Calistoga, in the vineyards with their wine.
Teri Kuhn
Ron Kuhn (left) and Teri Kuhn (right), former owners of Pillar Rock Vineyards, with their wine.
system. “However, even water is unpalatable (and) metallic tasting. A trick recommended by my medical team was to put a splash of ginger ale into the water. Ginger is calming to the digestive track and helped to mask the metallic taste,” said Pride Bryan. Pride Bryan said fortunately, the changes did not last and she fully recovered. “Once the chemo ended, the metallic flat taste dissipated, (my) mouth sores healed, and food and drinks again were palatable. Yay!” said Pride Bryan. FINDING NEW FAVORITES Wine industry professionals and wine lovers who want to begin drinking again should do so when their doctor advises it is safe and their body feels ready. Pride Bryan said during
treatment, the body is under assault. “Specifically with chemotherapy, your body tells you what it needs or wants. Imagine yourself with a severe bout of the flu. The last thing that sounds appealing ... is a big glass of wine,” said Pride Bryan. Yet many individuals in the wine industry who are accustomed to tasting or drinking wine miss it a great deal during treatment. Enjoying wine, especially with loved ones and colleagues, is such a part of everyday life that not having it feels abnormal. Jones found the courage to try wine again a little over a year from the month that she started chemotherapy. “The first wine I drank was Gargiulo Vineyards’ G Major 7,” a red blend of five different varietals, said Jones. “It had very little tannin in it and was so delicious. I remember looking at my husband and being shocked. I said, “Wow! I can actually taste this!” To this day, that wine is one of my all-time favorites,” said Jones. Pride Bryan said her advice to cancer survivors is to seek psychological counseling, if it helps. “When you return (to the winery from a medical leave of absence), you will be grateful. The sun shines brighter and the wine tastes even better. Keep the faith,” said Pride Bryan. Ackerman said finding a support group, particularly of local mentors, is also uplifting. “We (cancer survivors) become part of a community, in which we’re all there for each other. Look for an angel network that will help you understand you are not “a cancer patient.” You’re a person who happens to have had cancer. Together, we can look forward, be positive, and manage what is possible on a day to day basis,” said Ackerman. INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 41
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Telling
her story New book will describe local woman’s experience as pioneering transgender activist
A
s one of the first and youngest people in the United States to undergo sex reassignment surgery, “Miss” Terri Pohrman said she thinks her life has been better since the surgery. Pohrman, 67, a Vallejo resident who has lived and worked in Napa County, narrowly lost a bid for mayor of Yountville once, and works as an advocate for mobile home park residents statewide, said she thinks many people mistake a psychological issue for the physical one with which she was born. She is working on getting the story of her life into a book. Pohrman’s mother was prescribed a strong female hormone to prevent miscarriage at the time she became pregnant with her son Terry, and Pohrman said she thinks this influenced her biologically in utero. She said she believes it’s possible that this is the main thing that sets her apart from some transgender people, some of whom may mistake transvestism for actual transgender-ism, and wind up making a life-altering mistake. “Suicide rates are very high among transgenders,” she said. “After the surgery, they (often) realize they are not any happier than they were before.” It’s one of the reasons Pohrman said she thinks her book will be important. “I’ve wanted to tell my story since before I had the change,” she said. “My
44 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
R AC H E L R A S K I N - Z R I H E N
Howard Yune, Register
Terri Pohrman of the Vallejo Mobilehome Coalition at a 2019 Napa summit organized to advise owners of mobile homes about their rights under California law.
life before and after, and how it’s been better after. It’s usually much harder after.” While, according to the Center of Suicide Prevention, as with sexual orientation, gender identity is not recorded on death certificates, making it hard to determine the exact number of transgender people who die by suicide, studies (Haas et al., 2011; McNeill et al., 2017; Irwin et al., 2014) show that they are twice as likely to consider and attempt suicide than LGBTQ people. Those studies find that transgender
people “face unique stressors, including the stress some trans people experience when their gender identity is not affirmed. Trans people also experience higher rates of discrimination and harassment than their cisgender counterparts and, as a result, experience poorer mental health outcomes.” Miss Terri is having none of that. And she said it’s because there was never any question about what her real gender was. “My decision was made before kindergarten,” she said.
SUMMER/FALL 2020
Having grown up in a politically conservative American city in the 1950s and ‘60s, Pohrman knew from an early age that something was wrong, and it soon became clear that what was wrong was that she was, technically at least, a he. The struggle that ensued, fought on various fronts, lead to Pohrman becoming a pioneer in transgenderism in the United States, and among the youngest in this country at that time to have gender reassignment surgery. She was 22. Now, Pohrman says she’s compelled to tell her story publicly. It’s a tale that takes her from being a badly bullied young boy in Portland, Oregon, to being a well-known, well-respected woman and community activist in her adopted American Canyon/ Napa/Vallejo-area home. It is perhaps Pohrman’s long and winding road, and the sojourns along the way, that most grabs the imagination. These include encounters with a slew of celebrities of various types, and a wide range of interesting career choices, like drag queen dancer and model, among others. The working title of Pohrman’s book is “Hey World, Here I am.” Born to a Jewish father and Christian mother in a mostly white, working-class Portland neighborhood in 1952, Pohrman said that at birth, she already had a couple of strikes against the probability of her having a “normal” life. “It was a prejudiced town,” she said. “There were distinct, segregated ethnic neighborhoods, and not in a good way (as some might describe such neighborhoods in New York, or elsewhere). I felt like a freak.” But, Pohrman was blessed with parents who allowed her to be who she was. “I wanted to play with vacuum cleaners and ovens, and my parents got me those,” she said. “I wore a turquoise jacket. I took tap dancing lessons. My mother had to pick me up from school every day, or they’d beat me up.” As accepting as her parents were, Pohrman said the issues she was experiencing as a young boy simply were
SUMMER/FALL 2020
Terri Pohrman
not ones discussed in that place and time. These issues persisted during eight years in a Catholic parochial school, and only worsened at her public high school, where her friends consisted of the school’s five bussed-in African-American students and a handful of other “misfits.” “I wore white eye shadow and mascara at school,” she said. “I wore big, angora sweaters. I probably brought a lot of it on myself.” Though her entire school career was plagued by bullying, it was in high school that the most frightening incident – which could arguably have led to arrests for attempted murder, but didn’t – occurred and left lifelong emotional scars. It was also around this time that Pohrman read about Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989), who was born George William
Rachel Raskin-Zrihen
Jorgensen in the Bronx, and became the first person to become widely known in the United State for having sex reassignment surgery. Though she later had the opportunity to meet Jorgensen and found her unfriendly, Pohrman’s discovery of Jorgensen’s story helped her put a name to her condition. On the day he graduated from high school, Terry Pohrman threw away his “boy clothes,” and determined not only to live from that day forward as a woman, but to become one. Pohrman continues to work as a hairdresser, mostly these days, for elderly women in an assisted living home. She also volunteers with the Veterans Home of California at Yountville, the local food banks, Meals on Wheels, and with AIDS organizations, along with publishing a mobile home-related magazine.
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46 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
WINTER SPRING 2020
Napa’s Best
S E N I O R- L I V I NG EX P E R I E NC E F O R OV E R 2 0 Y E A RS For over 20 years, The Meadows of Napa Valley has been the retirement destination in Napa Valley. That’s because we offer more of what older adults are looking for to enjoy the best years of their lives, including delectable dining options, a world-class fitness and aquatic center, services to free yourself from life’s little hassles, and a host of amenities that put your health and well-being first. Choosing a Life Plan Community is perhaps the most important choice you’ll make—by choosing The Meadows, you can rest assured that you’ll be joining a community full of thriving residents who love every adventure life brings. These are just a few of the many things you’ll only find here, at Napa’s premier not-for-profit community!
Call 707-320-2185 today to schedule your personalized video tour and learn more about what sets The Meadows apart from the rest! 1800 Atrium Parkway, Napa, CA 94559 • meadowsnapa.com An IOOF Community. A not-for-profit, resident-centered community. Equal housing opportunity. RCFE#: 286801070 • COA#: 334 • SNF#: 110000292.
SUMMER/FALL 2020
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 47
A Little Compassion Goes A Long Way. September 4 - October 19, 2020
If you want to help the ones who are struggling but you’re not sure how, here’s something you can do right now that will surely be appreciated. Give $50 or more to charity, and we’ll give you hundreds off most Stressless® recliners, sofas and office chairs. Stressless® Magic shown in Paloma Sparrow Blue
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3620 Beard Road #5, Napa INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 49
The new home of Roots Run Deep, 1607 First St., in downtown Napa. Jennifer Huffman, Register
The
perfect pair Napa couple combines wine and design to craft a unique experience
VA L E R I E OW E N S Nestled in the heart of Downtown Napa located at 1607 First St. is the newly acquired home of the Roots Run Deep Winery. Purchased in 2019, the century-old property identifies with historic Napa while lending itself to the modern wine metropolis. Founders Mark Albrecht and his wife Lindsey Albrecht set out to provide a one-of-kind experience, blending fine wine with exquisite interior design. Dating to 1903, the historic property boasts five bedrooms with two and a half baths and 3,076 square feet with a 1,500-square-foot basement. Restored in 2018, the property sits
50 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
at the corner of First and Seminary streets. “I see the property as the perfect solution for our winery with offices upstairs and a gorgeous tasting room salon experience downstairs,” said Mark Albrecht. “I love that as a beautiful free-standing home on the main thoroughfare of downtown it offers a unique tasting experience for our guests. The continuing development downtown will surround us with more great shopping, hotels, and world-class restaurants.” Providing connoisseurs with an opportunity to taste through the Roots Run Deep wine portfolio,
including their flagship brand Educated Guess, Bound and Determined, Hypothesis and Higher Education, the space called to the meticulous nature of interior designer Lindsey Albrecht. “While Mark has several brands under the Roots Run Deep Winery umbrella, his signature label ‘Educated Guess’ was my primary source of inspiration for the tasting room and offices,” she said. “I was inspired by the colors in the labels but also the science and chemistry behind it all. I pulled anything that I could find in both textiles and wallpaper that were geometric, formulaic, or color and
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Raphael Kluzniok/Register
Lindsey Albrecht works on a portrait in her home in Napa in 2014.
KIM SERVEAU
texture worthy.” Establishing his brand in 2005, Mark Albrecht set out to produce premium wines at an affordable price. Selling his home and furnishings to fund his dream, Mark’s dedication and tenacity paid off. World-renowned wine critic Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate called Educated Guess, “Simply must be one of the best buys… in all of the
Napa Valley,” Working with head Winemaker Macario Montoya, the Roots Run Deep Winery is focused on the experience, quality and authenticity of each brand. Tying it all together fell into the hands of Lindsey Albrecht, founder of Lindsey Albrecht Designs, LLC. After falling in love with the property and its historical significance to downtown Napa, Lindsey set out to design a space paying homage to the brand that launched Roots Run Deep Winery. Working side-by-side with her client
and husband, Lindsey created a custom design filling each room with purpose and artistry. “This was the perfect opportunity to step out on our own and really showcase the brand in the light that it deserves,” she said. “From vintage chemical formula models found at High Point Market, art that I sourced and commissioned both locally and from artists that I found across the country, to accessories found on a shopping trip in NYC. There isn’t a textile, piece of furniture, or art piece that doesn’t have some sort of significance or meaning to us
KIM SERVEAU
and the Educated Guess brand.” Together, Mark and Lindsey fused their passions and opened the newly designed, Roots Run Deep Winery Tasting Room. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., the salon offers two tasting flights with three experiences providing guests with an opportunity to explore the dream and vision that started 15 years ago through wine and interior design.
1326 Main Street • Napa 707-224-8485
Monday - Friday 10-6 Saturday and Sunday 10-4 Serving the Napa Valley For over 27 years! SUMMER/FALL 2020
Louis Salem (Owner)
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 51
This engagement ring is designed with fine details that can’t be missed! With a beautiful Rose gold undercarriage that compliments the graduating diamonds seamlessly. This ring is designed to make your dreams come true.
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SUMMER/FALL 2020
Banking so easy, my person has more time to give me belly rubs. Which I like. A lot! Community First is your local leader in tech conveniences. We were the first locally based bank or credit union with: Smart ATMs (with more free ATMs nationally than any bank) Mobile app to make deposits via your smartphone
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INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 53
LIVING THE LIFE
We’re Jammin,’
Sing it… C O L I N M AC P H A I L One of the things we have all observed during these trying times is that we’ve become more aware of the value of things we make and grow. Digital media is awash with pictures of people celebrating the sourdough starter that they scored from some hush-hush source. Wholesome images of crusty baked bread are a salve for these times. We are being hemmed, almost helplessly, into corners by things we can’t see. The staff of life supports us in a time where consistency of anything has become more tenuous. It used to be that tending your garden bordered on being an expensive hobby. Now we are aware that those zucchinis have a value beyond the pleasure of just seeing them elongate. When our world frays at the edges, our eyes move from empty shelves of toilet paper to the backyard vegetable bed, or the herb box on the windowsill. Scarcity gives us a more profound sense of not wanting to be so dependent on the systems that we see failing us. The barter economy has creaked into life around us. Sarah is swapping eggplants for eggs with Ashley. Peppers for tomatoes with Kate. Our local market, CalMart, is in no danger of losing our business. Still, we need to feel that modicum of self-reliance. The blind spot is we don’t have the stomach for the same food base every night. People once ate meals of corn, potatoes, or rice, every single day of their lives. We luxuriate in the expectation of variety and that has become our weak spot. Try giving 54 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
away zucchini in Calistoga, and the point is perfectly illustrated. An average family can’t keep up with what the average garden produces. We’ve never been desperate enough to eat zucchini seven nights in a row. The generation before mine canned like fiends. Not because it made them feel good but because that is what you did to feed your family. I grew up on the remote West Coast of Scotland. I have fond memories of the Women’s Rural Institute (WRI) gatherings in our local village hall. Every form of cake, muffin, cookie, jam, jelly, chutney, pickle, relish, and other containers of delight were for sale or trade on table after table. Once home, it was always exciting to open a jar and hear the pop of air before you dove in to explore the treasure inside. These moments also helped dispel the myth that ‘homemade’ meant delicious. We opened some horrors, but we survived. That random collection of kitchen-prepared food we ate had no sell-by date and no list of ingredients. Usually, just a penciled scrawl that said, “Sausage Rolls” or “Peach Chutney.” About a decade ago, these childhood memories prompted me to start making jam each summer. Blackberry jam is my favorite as the burst of summer it brings back is rich and potent. On a brisk morning or warm evening, there is something incredibly peaceful and wholesome about walking down the road with Campbell and Alice to pick blackberries together. This year was good. The weather was cooler at the peak of ripening, and we
avoided the hard fruit bullets of some previous ‘vintages.’ You get a bit scratched up stretching for the perfect cluster, but I wear my jamming scars with pride. The kids are old enough now that they’re useful and not just eating their weight in berries. I make only a few batches and have settled on about 50 jars as our annual supply. Making blackberry jam gives you a keen sense of the tons and tons of berries out there that never get picked. These times make us feel acutely aware of shortages, and yet we are surrounded by so much unused abundance. I like to give the jam away as gifts. People who have made their own are always effusive in their appreciation. Those who haven’t aren’t as they can’t know the effort behind that jar of ‘Dunaweal Drizzle 2020.’ That unbranded glass jar raises more doubts than excitement in their minds. Having no label removes the security blanket that has been cast around our shoulders by the food industry. The brand name implies regulatory oversight, corporate responsibility, and someone you can sue. When you eat something unmarked and homemade, you are participating in the act of community trust. Somewhere in there is the analogy about how we get through all this. Not as isolated individuals but as inter-dependent barterers of ideas within a community of jams, jellies, and even zucchinis. Colin MacPhail is a wine consultant and writer who lives in Calistoga. SUMMER/FALL 2020
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ACROSS 1 Speak off the cuff 6 File that may be read-only 9 Takes ten 14 Tranquility 15 Organ with a drum 16 State ID? 17 Clear wrap brand 18 “Live Free or ___” 19 One of many on a Shasta daisy 20 Netflix series in which Taylor Schilling played Piper Chapman 23 Soda brand whose name is a soda can part 24 Sir, to Beyonce and Jay-Z 25 Itinerary word 58 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
10 “East of ___”
© 2020 Andrews McMeel Universal www.upuzzles.com
Black Box by Robert Wemischner
28 Classic TV show set on an island 31 Monotony 36 Ultimately profits 39 “No man is an island” poet 40 Boorish 41 Tales that are spun 43 No longer working: Abbr. 44 Prickly plant 46 Dessert with a dense lower layer of chocolate custard 48 Picked up without touching, say? 50 Relatives of hisses 51 Drink often served with scones 52 Heavy weight 54 Fiscal org. based in D.C. 56 Treat with two kinds of icing 64 Frighten 65 ___ pal (rhyming friend) 66 Group of rooms in a hotel
67 Like “It” 68 Many mins. 69 Thin chip maker 70 “Tales From the ___” 71 Lower digit 72 Mushroom parts DOWN 1 Lhasa ___ 2 Cherished 3 Heroine in “Doctor Zhivago” 4 Words from one who’s unable 5 East Indian, say 6 Foot treatment, informally 7 Candidate’s platform 8 Stews (over) 9 Matured 10 “East of ___” 11 Fill with food 12 Warming of relations 13 Note that becomes a musical
piece when “o” is added 21 Ivory’s partner 22 Sexy 25 Action words 26 Accustom 27 Introduce to the mix 29 Spear with a fork 30 Pulsate 32 Brown building? 33 Far from competent 34 Loosen, like laces 35 Jason’s mythical wife 37 Watery expanses 38 Prefix meaning “inside” 42 Unlikely to explode? 45 Signal boost, in a way 47 Assimilation of ideas
49 Headslapping comment 53 Time for a fireworks show 55 Rich source, as of knowledge 56 Taiwanese tech giant 57 ___ a soul (no one) 58 Leak sound 59 Root in purple boba 60 Otherwise 61 Certain bird or toy 62 Twosome in Variety 63 Wriggly swimmers 64 NYSE overseer Answers on page 84 SUMMER/FALL 2020
THE PEAKS AROUND US
Mount Veeder Extreme mountain grape growing L AY N E R A N D O L P H Perhaps we can blame the moniker “Napa Valley” for the misconception that all its wines come from the valley floor. On the contrary, some of the most coveted Napa Valley wines are sourced from the mountains surrounding the valley – the Mayacamas Mountains to the west, which separate it from Sonoma County, and the Vaca Range to the east, which separates it from the warmer Central Valley. Shallow topsoil and reduced water retention are classic features of mountain growing, and the erosion from both causes the vines to dig deep in the soil for nutrients, producing low yields but highly concentrated fruit – the signature characteristic of mountain wine. One of the most notable mountains and American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in Napa Valley is Mount Veeder in the southwest corner of the region. Mt. Veeder features the most extreme growing conditions in Napa Valley. With vineyards at elevations up to 2,400 feet, the rugged terrain and thin soils make grape-growing extremely treacherous and hand-harvesting imperative. And although Mt. Veeder is the largest sub-appellation fully within Napa Valley AVA’s borders, its fruit is rare. With only 1,000 acres planted to vine, this AVA makes up only 1.3 percent of Napa Valley’s wine production. The extreme conditions make this mountain unique to the valley, but its soils add another element of intrigue because they’re not like the soils in the rest of the valley, soils containing volcanic ash from almost 1 million years ago. An eruption near Mount SUMMER/FALL 2020
Courtesy of Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District
The view from a Girl Scouts camp called The Cove that includes the top of Mount Veeder.
Register file photo
Water gently flowed down a hillside along Mount Veeder Road following heavy rain in 2017.
St. Helena, in the northernmost part of the area, spewed volcanic ash through the valley. Because Mount Veeder is in the southernmost part of the region, it was only lightly affected. Instead, the mountain is mainly made of an ancient seabed that was pushed up during a tectonic shift.
Its location near Carneros and proximity to San Francisco Bay gives the region a more prolonged, cooler, and more temperate growing season than other appellations, usually making it the last to harvest in Napa Valley. The Bay breezes minimize heat at the peak of the day and warm the cold nights,
making for smaller temperature swings throughout the day, so the berries have a long period of ripening and extra hang time on the vine. Thanks to Mt. Veeder’s unique conditions, it produces powerful wines with assertive but fine tannins and smooth textures, and herbal, floral aromatics, and complexity. Mount Veeder, named for Peter Veeder, a Dutch Presbyterian pastor who lived in Napa during the Civil War Era, is known for its history and its wine. The first vintage from the mountain was presented at the Napa County Fair in 1864. Taste of Mt. Veeder, held each fall at The Hess Collection Estate on Mount Veeder, showcases the top wines from the appellation and provides a rare opportunity to sample spectacular wines from this historic Napa Valley mountain. INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 59
NA PA VA LL EY ’S #1 R E A L E S TAT E CO M PA N Y Luxury Estates | Vineyards | Wineries
2 3 4 4 S I LVE R A D O T R A I L , NA PA Main House - 3 Guest Cottages - Vineyard - Winery
1 3 7 3 S O D A C A N YO N R OA D, N A PA
This amazing property epitomizes the Napa Valley tradition of family owned wineries & vineyards. 10 Acres in prime Silverado Trail location with panoramic views of the valley. Nearly 5,000 sq.ft. main house is beautifully updated with 4 bedrooms, with huge master suite with his & her bathrooms. Chefs kitchen, formal and informal living and dining, plus office, a garden, pool & hot tub. 10K Gallon Winery permit, 2 winery buildings. Tasting room with wraparound balcony. 4 Acres of premium Cabernet Sauvignon. Wine barn & open entertainment lawn area & patio. 3 Adorable guest houses set amidst magnificent oaks.
Tucked away in the Eastern foothills lies an enchanting gated estate of over 18 acres. The elegant home gazes out over the amazing views of mountains, vineyards, and romantic sunsets. Wide patios & sweeping lawns lead down to the sparkling pool and patio. The updated island kitchen is open to the family room and the sunny breakfast room that in turn, opens to the patio. Formal and informal living areas with fireplaces, and a luxurious master suite with French doors that open to the patio. The grounds also have a detached garage and multiple entertaining areas whether seeking the sun or the shade, and so much room to roam & 11 possible plantable acres.
Offered at $13,900,000
4 Bedroom, 2.5 Bath | Offered at $3,499,500
1021 ROSS CIRCLE, NAPA
154 SILVERADO SPRINGS DRIVE, NAPA
Enjoy magical sunsets and views over a sea of vineyards relaxing in your outdoor spaces. Over half an acre of amazing gardens, outdoor kitchen and bocce ball court The single level home has so much to offer. The kitchen is a chef’s delight flooded with natural light. Granite counters, gas range, bar seating open to the living room with views from every window. Open living room with fireplace that moves easily to the outside patios and the views beyond. Exceptionally designed master suite with versatile spaces. The unique details throughout this delightful home will capture your heart.
2 Bedroom, 2 Bath | Offered at $1,699,500
Nestled in the park like community of Silverado Springs, this single level home is the perfect staycation home. Just seconds from all the amenities of Silverado Country Club and Resort. Soaring ceilings and natural light greet you. Gorgeous wood floors, formal living room with fireplace, & formal dining area that opens to the back deck. Family room with fireplace & full bar is open to the kitchen with beautiful granite counters, kitchen dining area that also opens to the back deck. Indoor/outdoor entertaining is amazing with the expansive decking. Solar power makes it affordable. You will also appreciate all the recent upgrades to this beautiful home.
4 Bedroom, 2 Bath | Silverado Country Club | $1,395,000
CAROLYN ROBERTS Broker/Owner | 707.953.1798 CarolynRoberts.com Lic. #00628461
COLDWELLBANKERLUXURY.COM 60 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
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WHERE EXCELLENCE LIVES
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CBNAPAVALLEY.COM SUMMER/FALL 2020
NA PA VA LL EY ’S #1 R E A L E S TAT E CO M PA N Y Luxury Estates | Vineyards | Wineries
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1161 CASTLE OAKS DRIVE - $2,450,000
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1720 Vineyard Avenue - $2,200,000
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1125 CASTLE OAKS Drive - $1,895,000
Gorgeous Estate home with incredible views in desirable, Hidden Hills development.Attention to detail, gorgeous finishes. Backs to open space.
Immaculate and pristine, Silverado Country Club home. Single level home on 1.2 acres with a guest house/studio. Club membership available.
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1258 CAYETANO DRIVE - $1,295,000
Enjoy the lovely pool and the view looking out to adjacent meadow from this amazing 4 bedroom home! Immaculate in every way.
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Custom built estate with Architectural features on quiet cul-de-sac, hardwood floors, 2 fireplace, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, 3 balconies.
Delightful Napa Yacht Club gated development on the water. Well maintained home. corner lot, bright and cheerful, low maintenance yard.
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One story condo in gated Silverado County Club. Serene setting overlooking creek, greenbelt, and trees.
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25 GREENBRIAR CIRCLE - $750,000
Silverado Highlands lot on almost 1 acre with beautiful center location. Plans for a single level home available.
SUZY ANDERSON 707.494.0333 | Lic. #00827232 SuzyAnderson.com COLDWELLBANKERLUXURY.COM SUMMER/FALL 2020
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WHERE EXCELLENCE LIVES
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CBNAPAVALLEY.COM INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 61
Wine &dine IN THE NAPA VALLEY
62 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
WINTER SPRING 2020
Napa Valley Adult Education
adulted.nvusd.org
(707)253-3594
JOIN US FOR PATIO DINING
Take Out Available Open Daily 11:00 am to 9:30 pm Your Support for Small, Local Business means a lot.....Thank you!
1106 First Street, Downtown Napa • 707-252-4707 SUMMER/FALL 2020
INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 63
0% Financing on approved credit.
(For purchases over $1,000) See store for details.
64 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
SUMMER/FALL 2020
Momo
House A taste of Nepal in Napa S A S H A PAU L S E N s p auls e n@nap ane w s . com Sasha Paulsen, Register
Vegetable momos are one of the choices at Momo House.
Sasha Paulsen/Register
Pasang Sherpa, left, and KC Sherpa have opened Momo House in Napa.
Receive UP TO
When my children and I recall trips we’ve made together, it’s interesting how often it’s the meals we remember. Like momos. My son and I first tried momos in Nepal, when a driver took us through a tangle of narrow streets in Kathmandu to an out-of-the-way restaurant, hidden behind a courtyard, reached by an old wooden staircase. We sat on the floor with Nepalese diners and a couple of mountaineers. We drank local beer and ate momos, the popular steamed dumplings found throughout Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and northern India. With travel on hold for the indefinite
future, it’s nice to know you don’t have to go quite so far to try them. One place to find them is at the new Momo House in downtown Napa. KC Sherpa and Pasang Sherpa recently opened the restaurant on Clay Street -Like our find in Kathmandu, the restaurant is a bit off the beaten path, but worth seeking out. KC Sherpa, who came to California from Nepal 13 years ago and worked in a variety of restaurants — French, Italian and others. “Finally, we decided we wanted to do our own food,” he said. Please see Momo, Page 68
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NAPA VALLEY WINERIES
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Prisoner Wine Company
Wines
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MOMO
Each serving includes 10 dumplings, served in a house-made sauce. The chicken-and-vegetable momos come in a dish of light curry sauce, while the chicken momos are served in a spicier, tomato-based sauce with peppers and onions. Vegetable momos are $14 for 10; chicken are $15, and beef are $16. “We just want people to try momos,” KC said. While momos are the star at the new Napa restaurant, KC said they have added other choices for diners, some with more of a “Napa” flair, while others are popular items in Nepalese cuisine. Starters include a garden salad ($9), garlic prawns with sauteed vegetables ($12), organic tofu chili ($10) and artichoke heart pakoras ($9). The latter are deep-fried garbanzo bean flour fritters made of spinach, onions, cabbage as well as artichoke hearts and are served with a yogurt mint sauce. One main dish that was a hit when we dined there was Bhindi Tarkari ($14), a dish of okra, onions and potatoes, served with basmati rice and daal, a house-made lentil soup.
From page 65
“You find momos everywhere in Nepal,” he said. “Everyone eats them, from children to old people. Sherpa, he noted, is the surname of a tribe that lives in the Himalayas, and are most famous for their mountaineering skills. But they also make momos. Growing up in the Himalayan village of Khadbari, KC learned to make momos at home. “Everyone worked together to make them. We filled them with what we had — maybe meat, chicken, vegetables.” He worked as a tour guide before he came to California. Landing in Los Angeles, he traveled north to San Francisco and then settled in Sonoma. He moved to Napa, however, when they decided to launch Momo House here. They started by serving three kinds of momos — filled with ground beef, free-range chicken or vegetable, but he said plans are to expand the offerings, adding fish and seafood momos as well.
AN FFERAMERIC! E C WE O I R S O CLAS, AND M BBQ
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It is also possible to order Daal Bhat Saag, the soup served with sauteed spinach with garlic and basmati rice. Free-range chicken and spinach are combined in a light curry cream and served over rice for the chicken curry ($16). A vegan offering serves assorted vegetables in a coconut curry sauce over rice ($15). They also serve pan-seared salmon ($22) and a rack of lamb ($24). These dishes are both marinated in garlic and ginger and served over sauteed vegetables. Lamb pharsi ($18) is a curry of slow-cooked lamb and butternut squash, served with rice. KC Sherpa said that local vintners, who have become fans of momos, helped them create a wine list that includes sparkling wines (Zardetto Proscecco, $9 by the glass, and Francois Montard Blanc de Blancs from the Jura, $30 for a bottle). Long Meadow Ranch Sauviginon Blanc is $11 for a glass, offered with other whites from Starmont ($45 a bottle), Edna Valley, Australia, Germany, France and Italy.
Two rosé wines are Bargemone from Provence ($11 per glass) and Toad Hollow in Sonoma ($30 per bottle). Red wines by the glass include a Hahn Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands ($12), and a Titus Zinfandel ($12), a Beaujolais ($13), Smith and Hook cab from the Central Coast ($12) and an Argentinian Malbec ($12). Textbook Cab from Napa is $45 a bottle, and Black Stallion Carneros Pinot Noir is $35. Lipstick on a Pig’s Red Blend from Mendocino is $40. For beers, you can have a Nepalese Mustang Lager for $6, along with Peron, Lagunitas,all $6. Non-alcoholic Heineken and Pellegrino are $6 and other beverages (water, lemonade, soda and tea) are $3. Momo House, at 1408 Clay Street, Napa, is open for lunch and dinner on Wednesday through Monday and closed on Tuesday. Lunch hours are 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner is served from 5 to 9 p.m. (from 5 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesdays.) Take-out is available. Call 707637-4476 for reservations and more information. Order take-out online at momohousenapa.com.
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In any city, restaurants come and go as their owners often struggle with high rent, employee turnover, the cost of special ingredients, and the whims of diners. And it’s sad when a local favorite decides to close its doors. Such is the case with All Seasons Bistro, a Calistoga institution that closed at the beginning of the shelter-in-place in March, never to open again. Founded by Alex and Gayle Dierkhising in 1983, at a time when there were few high-end restaurants in Napa Valley, All Seasons became known for its pleasant atmosphere, focus on French-inspired, seasonal California cuisine, and extensive wine list. The Dierkhising family owns three restaurants in Calistoga: All Seasons, Hydro Grill, and Café Sarafornia, which was opened by Alex’s younger brother, Drake. In the 1980s, All Seasons was one of the first few restaurants in the U.S. to receive Wine Spectator’s prestigious “Grand Award.” Originally, the Dierkhisings established an exclusive wine bar inside the restaurant, and they created an environment that encouraged and supported local winemakers and wine professionals. While the menu was tweaked over the years, solid basics like seared chicken breast with spinach and garlic mashed potatoes, flat iron steak, and grilled salmon pleased diners for years, and the bistro also catered many meals for wedding receptions to local birthday and anniversary celebrations. At one point, All Seasons had a full bar, but when the restaurant became known for its wine, the Dierkhisings sold their full liquor license and offered a more generous wine selection. When the COVID-19 pandemic closed all of Calistoga’s
Tim Carl Photography
Owners of Calistoga’s All Seasons Bistro, Gayle and Alex Dierkhising, have owned and operated restaurants in the Napa Valley since 1976.
restaurants in mid-March, only a few reopened with take-out and curbside delivery options. One of them was Hydro Grill. And according to Gayle Dierkhising, it wasn’t financially feasible to keep both All Seasons and Hydro afloat. “It was a little like ‘Sophie’s Choice’,” she said. “We had to figure out which place had a fighting chance of making it, and Hydro, with its lower price point, just made more sense. It was not an easy decision, but we couldn’t focus on both.” Gayle said there will be some small changes to Hydro, including a slightly elevated menu to encourage guests to think of the spot as more of a restaurant and less of a bar. Right now, the Dierkhisings have their hands full just managing social distancing inside Hydro because, as she said, “We’ve been counseled to have a place for diners to eat outside, but we just don’t have any outdoor space.” In letter posted on All Season’s closed door, the Dierkhisings thanked the Calistoga community for its support over the years. “She succumbed to complications from the coronavirus,” it reads. “All Seasons was a member of the community from 1983 to present. She had a joyous, purposeful life and was so proud to be a part of Calistoga.” SUMMER/FALL 2020
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FIREBELLES AND RESEARCH VINEYARDS JESS LANDER
125 years of history at Larkmead Vineyards For a Napa Valley winery, making it to 125 years is no small feat. And yet, despite predating many of the region’s most iconic estates, Larkmead Vineyards in Calistoga has managed to fly somewhat under-the-radar for over a century. In anticipation of this momentous milestone, proprietors Kate Solari Baker and Cam Baker, working alongside winemaker-turned-historian Dan Petroski, have spent the past few years digging deep into their past. What they discovered was a colorful cast of characters that each had a significant influence not only on Larkmead but also on the evolution of Napa Valley and the wine industry that we know today. Inspired by the marks that each person left, Larkmead has woven their spirits into the winery’s present and future. FIREBELLE LIL’ One of the most fascinating players in Larkmead’s history was a firecracker named Lillie Hitchcock-Coit (San Francisco’s Coit tower was named in her honor, but that’s another story). She was only around Larkmead for 20 years in
Larkmead Vineyards, circa 1930-40.
the late 1800s but made a lasting impression. “She packed a gun, she rode a horse, and apparently took herself to the Bohemian Grove dressed as a man and got in. In those days, she was out there big time,” said Solari Baker. Her family owned 1,000 acres that stretched from the Mayacamas Mountains to the Silverado Trail and from Sterling Vineyards to Larkmead Lane. Sent to Napa Valley to quiet down from her oft-controversial, free-spirited ways, Hitchcock-Coit lived in a house set on what’s famously known today as Duckhorn’s Three Palms Vineyard. She was the one who planted that famous trio of palm trees and she also had a train stop built on
Submitted photo
Larkmead Lane (which she named after the local meadowlarks), enabling her artist and intellectual friends to come in from the city for lively salons that she would host. “Early on, [her story] was very important to our identity,” said Solari-Baker. “She named Larkmead Larkmead and I think we are very fortunate to have that name. I think it’s very special and it just sings to people. Calling it the Baker Winery just doesn’t have the same thing going that Larkmead does and it has all this history.” Larkmead has named three of their wines after her and they’ve recently started hosting salons again. There have been book events, art exhibits—often featuring Solari
Baker’s own creations—and open conversations about the future of Cabernet Sauvignon in the face of climate change, hosted by Petroski. “When I started here in 2006, Napa Valley was a world-class wine region, but it was still a very rural town. During that period of 2006 and moving into the ‘10s, it was more of just getting together with people and talking about a lot of what was going on and why it was happening and exchanging ideas,” said Petroski. “We wanted to kick off with some kind of communal event that felt like we would exchange ideas and talk about the future or the current. We played off the term The Salon at Larkmead because that’s what was happening in France, the salon-style lifestyle, and it had a reference to Lily and our history, so it was really nice to tie it back.” THE SALMINAS AND DR. OLMO Hitchcock-Coit fled to France at the turn of the century, and Larkmead’s wine-making history truly began when the Salmina family, who had arrived from Switzerland and had been making wine at Conn Creek, settled at Larkmead in 1895. By 1915, their wine won gold at the Please see Firebelles, Page 74
This is Larkmead Vineyards. JIMMY HAYES / JBH Photo
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FIREBELLES From page 73
Panama–Pacific International Exposition, a world’s fair held in San Francisco. The Salminas struggled through Prohibition (and the Great Depression) but managed to stay afloat by selling fruit and making sacramental wine. When Prohibition was lifted, they got right back to making wine, and today at Larkmead, visitors will see a frame showcasing more than 50 faded ribbons from the California State Fair, awarded between 1936 and 1941. A 1943 article in the St. Helena Star read, “The story of Larkmead follows closely the development of the great dry wine industry here, in which Larkmead products played their prominent part in bringing to this district a fame not surpassed by French wines in their heyday.” Just a year later, founder Felix Salmina became a founding member of the Napa Valley Vintners alongside wine greats like Robert Mondavi, Louis M. Martini, and Mrs. George de Latour. But perhaps the most significant figure at Larkmead during this era wasn’t part of the Salmina family. It was Dr. Harold Olmo, one of the most distinguished viticulturalists in history who developed the Oakville clones that helped put Napa Valley on the map. In 1939, the Salminas invited Dr. Olmo to plant a research vineyard at Larkmead. He planted Cabernet grape varieties — decades before Cabernet became king in Napa — and also several Italian varieties for the Salminas. One of these was Sangiovese, which wasn’t commercially-planted in Napa Valley until 1982. From this vineyard, he selected the Cabernet clones he eventually brought to the Oakville Station. In honor of their 125th anniversary, the Bakers gave $200,000 to the UC Davis 74 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Lillie Hitchcock Coit_Larkmead Vineyards
Lillie Hitchcock Coit is one of the more colorful characters in Larkmead Vineyards rich 125-year history.
Research Library to help digitize and preserve Olmo’s work. They have about 80 boxes of files to sift through and Olmo certainly didn’t make it easy for them. “Olmo was a very private man in his research, so he did a lot of weird coding,” said Petroski. “When you look at some of his documents, the way he wrote his notes on Larkmead, there’s like four numbers. There are no clones with four numbers in Cabernet, so it’s pretty mysterious. We have to crack the code.” Olmo’s work at Larkmead has come full circle with Petroski’s planting of a new research vineyard — coincidentally, exactly 80 years later — this one to test different grape varieties that may be able to withstand climate change. “It’s been quite shocking and fascinating how the tide has turned, to see how things have been moving and starting to question why Cabernet acts and reacts the way it does on our property,” he said. “If it continues to get warmer, and we are in a very warm, stressful site, will
Cabernet continue to play an important role in our property?” THE SOLARIS A few years after World War II ended, Solari Baker’s parents, Larry and Polly Solari purchased Larkmead in 1948. It’s been in the family ever since. An Italian immigrant, Larry Solari was a lesser-known pioneer of California’s wine industry. He leased and then bought the property through the Italian Swiss Colony, where he was working as a sales manager. His job: convince Americans to drink wine with dinner. Later, he became the president and CEO of United Vintners. “He was kind of a big deal in the wine industry during those days, but the wine industry wasn’t anything like what it is today,” said Solari-Baker, reminiscing about her father and a time when vermouth was what everyone was drinking. “People didn’t drink wine. They saved it for when the boss came to dinner and that was about it. It was a whole different scene.”
In the early years, Solari Baker said her parents opened up their old and “decrepit” facility to several wineries to crush their grapes because many others had shuttered during the war. But a couple of years after acquiring the property, Larry Solari, just shy of 40 years of age, was given devastating news: he had cancer and it was terminal. The Solaris decided to sell the winery building, which was located across the road where Frank Family Vineyards is now and keep the land. In 1960, they entered a 20-year exclusive contract with Inglenook for their fruit. Larry Solari commuted to the city every day, which left Solari Baker’s mother running most of the day-to-day business operations, a rarity for women back then. “She tried to join the Vintners and they said no. Men only. But she pretty much held the fort,” said Solari Baker, who has since repurposed her mother’s handwritten ledger papers into a series of artistic Napa Valley maps titled “Keeping Accounts.” Her father eventually got a second opinion and learned he didn’t have cancer after all. He went on to live more than three decades past that initial diagnosis, but his dream of running a winery was never realized, at least not during his lifetime. “I think he sort of lost heart after he sold the winery. When he retired in the ‘70s, it was his plan to actually build a winery, but then he really did get cancer,” said Kate Solari-Baker. “I think he just lost his mojo to keep going.” T H E P R E S E N T ... A N D FUTURE When her mother passed away in 1992, the family’s assets were divided up between the three children. “We ended up with Larkmead, my brother ended up with Bennett Lane and my sister ended up with money,” said Solari Baker. She and her husband Cam dove right into the vineyard in 1993, but it wasn’t exactly an immediate SUMMER/FALL 2020
success. “We had a pretty steep learning curve. We had a couple of people advise us who weren’t terribly knowledgeable, or maybe they didn’t really understand this property as opposed to other properties in the valley,” she said. “So we did some planting and we got something called Black Goo that infected a lot of the vines. We had a pretty rocky start. We had to replant a couple of times and it was very expensive.” Over time, they pulled out several white varieties, including Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Vert, replacing them with red grape varieties. They even began to make a small amount of their own wine, which they custom crushed, and hired their first winemaking consultant, Paul Hobbs, in 1997. Andy Smith, Hobbs’ former assistant, took over Larkmead winemaking in 2000. “That’s when things really started to turn around,” said Solari Baker, insisting that they had planned to keep things low key. “We were living in Marin, my husband was a practicing attorney, I had three little kids and was starting my art career. We had our hands full.” But as they reinforced their commitment to the wine quality, they realized the next logical step was to produce it in-house. And so began the process of honoring her father’s lifetime dream of building a winery. The first phase was finished in 2005, just in time for harvest, and in 2006, they completed their hospitality center and tasting room. Both were later expanded and renovated, finishing in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Naturally, this commitment to excellence extended to the vineyard, too. “It wasn’t really until the mid-2000s that we started to look at the vineyard from the ground up. Once we did that, it really opened their eyes to the greatness of the site,” said Petroski, adding they’ve since divided their 110 planted acres into 56 distinct parcels. Come harvest, each is usually SUMMER/FALL 2020
combed through several times. to talk about a succession plan. it in the family,” she said. “But “We can continue to dig deeper “That’s the thing that’s really it’s our goal and we’re working and I think that is our goal. hard in family wineries is to keep very hard to do that.” There comes a point where it’s a little too much, but I personally haven’t reached that tipping point and I’m super excited every time harvest comes around.” The Solari Bakers have spent the last two decades growing, improving, and evolving Larkmead, and now, it’s time to take a moment to reflect and celebrate. Initially scheduled for April, their 125th anniversary party had to be postponed. But when the winery is able to reopen, they’ll have a new, by-appointment gallery set up, displaying roughly 50 photographs, letters, ribbons, news articles, and other relics of the past that have been collected over the years. They will also host a special 125th-anniversary virtual tasting for wine club members in May. In the meantime, Larkmead is already looking ahead. Just shy of Solari Baker’s 80th birthday in March, the family sat down with Submitted photo the third and fourth generations The historical photo of the Solari and Baker families.
Larkmead’s proprietors Kate Solari and Cam Baker.
JIMMY HAYES / JBH Photo
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Jess Lander
Courtesy Clos Du Val
Courtesy Clos Du Val
SELLING IT OLD SCHOOL
Clos Du Val brings affordable to-go wine -- in a refillable jug JESS LANDER You might frown at the idea of table wine, but one of Napa Valley’s most celebrated wineries is bringing back the Old World tradition of selling wine in jugs. The main difference between then and now? This wine actually tastes good. The Clos Du Val Community Growler Program is the brainchild of Shannon Muracchioli, director of marketing and direct-to-consumer sales, who was inspired by a Sonoma winery a few years back that was offering growlers of wine. She proposed it to the Clos Du Val team last year, and when the pandemic hit, got the green light to initiate it. “The whole idea for me was supporting the community and supporting quite literally the people that work in our tasting room or the vineyards and can’t afford the average Napa Valley price point,” she said. “It seemed to me that this was an opportunity to thank those people with what was literally leftover wine for us. We got it
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launched during the pandemic and it was more important than ever as people were financially impacted.” Containing one liter of wine that’s meant to be consumed the very week you get it, the growlers are available for pick-up from the winery, and delivery may launch soon. The cost of the glass growler and first fill is $28; after that, refills are $18. The link to order can be found on the program’s Instagram page, @cdvgrowler. It’s been an exciting new project for winemaker Ted Henry, too, who gets to play around with blends that would normally raise a few eyebrows among winemakers and oenophiles. He takes bits and pieces of leftover wine from blending, plus wine that didn’t quite make the final cut to create a red table wine that’s of much higher quality than the jug wines of our ancestors. The wine is made from Clos Du Val’s premium grapes and even spends time in the barrel before initial blending trials. Each lot of growler wine is a unique
blend. While Henry will never reveal what’s in it, Muracchioli confirmed that it’s made up of mostly Bordeaux varieties. Lot 2, she teased, contained an especially creative combination. “He’s putting varieties together that you just don’t typically put together, and that’s so much of the fun of it,” she said. “It definitely is playing the part of that everyday table wine, which is exactly what we wanted it to be.” The program has grown by word of mouth with many locals returning for regular refills, like Napa native Danielle Schmitz, who said, “I love being able to enjoy a glass or two and seal it back up for the next evening.” For Ryan Stiefvater, also of Napa, it’s been a welcome bright spot during the pandemic. “You get fantastic drink-any-day wine, at a price that is below what it could be bottled and sold for,” he said. “It turned into a fun weekly ritual for our family through the otherwise monotonous COVID shelter-in-place order.”
SUMMER/FALL 2020
Wine in the
great outdoors Cabana tastings are perfect for the times JESS LANDER If you’ve been dreaming of sipping a fruity drink from a poolside cabana in a faraway place, a handful of wineries have the next best thing: private and socially-distanced wine tastings — some with food pairings — inside luxe, outdoor cabanas. No swimsuit required. Charles Krug Winery You could say the timing of Charles Krug Winery debuting five new, WiFi-enabled cabanas that allow for socially distant, outdoor tastings, was serendipitous. The cabanas were an idea from Krug staff members during a Shark Tank-type competition in which employees pitched ideas for improving the business.
Flowers Winery Courtesy of Flowers Vineyards & Winery
80 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
“One group came up with the idea to create cabanas and other improvements to our back lawn behind the historic Redwood Cellar, which serves as our tasting room,” said Jim Morris, VP of Estate Management and Guest Relations at Charles Krug. “Our DTC (direct-to-consumer) staff and that group worked with contractors to make it a reality in the spring of 2020, just in time for the shelter-in-place orders.” These private cabana experiences are fully customizable and guests can choose from a selection of wine flights, bottles, and culinary fare for pairing. Twohour bookings start at a buyout of $400 ($300 club members) for up to six people, which isn’t so costly once you divide it up among your group. For details, visit charleskrug.com. Louis M. Martini Winery As part of their renovation completed in 2019, Louis M. Martini Winery debuted R & R - re a d y c a b a n a s i n their tranquil Martini Park. Curated like an elevated picnic experience, a flight of five wines are paired with a basket full of delights prepared by the on-site culinary team, from cheese and salami to duck rillette, truffle popcorn, charred bell peppers, and a wild mushroom and truffle pizza. You can also expect something sweet for dessert: butterscotch cookies and cabernet-infused chocolates.
Available Thursday-Sunday, cabanas can hold up to six guests and are priced at $100 a person for a two-hour experience. For details, visit louismartini.com. Domaine Chandon Cozy up in a summer-chic cabana made for Instagram at Domaine Chandon. For $95 per person, up to six people can spend the afternoon lounging al-fresco on cushy couches, sharing bottles of Chandon’s Etoile Brut and Rose and noshing on a seasonal lunch of salads, cheeses, skewers, and dessert. For details, visit chandon.com. Alpha Omega Winery Visitors to Alpha Omega can look out at their legendary fountains from one of four cabanas on the Vineyard Terrace, which also overlooks estate Sauvignon Blanc vines. Draped in billowy, beige fabric, the cabanas can seat up to six at a farm table for a private and in-depth tasting, available daily and ranging from $75-$150 per person, depending on the wine selection. “The cabanas were designed to bring our exclusive, indoor private tasting experiences to the fresh outdoors where guests can enjoy our signature and limited production wines with the same high-level of hospitality,” said Alpha Omega vintner Michelle Baggett, who explained that until now, guests were often torn
Charles Krug Winery Courtesy of Charles Krug Winery
between the private experience and sitting out on the terrace. “Now, they can receive both simultaneously from the cabanas on the Vineyard Terrace, where they are literally steps from the vines. We are excited to now offer the best of both worlds to wine lovers.” For details, visit aowinery.com. Flowers Vineyards & Winery If you’re up for a little drive or day trip, the House of Flowers in Healdsburg by the venerable Sonoma Coast brand Flowers Vineyards & Winery has cabanas set within their lush and colorful gardens. The new Bottle & Provisions tasting ($75 per person, available Fridays and Saturdays) is a contact-less experience consisting of a bottle of either Pinot Noir or Chardonnay paired with picnic provisions by local Sonoma restaurants, including Healdsburg’s three Michelin-starred SingleThread. There’s also the option for a guided tasting flight in a cabana for $45 per person, offered Friday-Sunday. For details, visit flowerswinery. com. SUMMER/FALL 2020
We Are Here for Our Napa Community
As OLE Health continues to offer telehealth services, we are opening our doors again at our many locations throughout Napa and Solano counties. Our number one priority remains the safety of our patients, our staff and our community. We have implemented: • • • • •
Splash shields at all points of contact Mandatory masking of all staff and patients entering our facilities Temperature checks for everyone Clear social distancing and safety signage Increased testing availability for symptomatic and high-risk patients
Visit www.olehealth.org or call 707-254-1770 to make an appointment today. ¡SALUD! olehealth.org 707.254.1775 300 Hartle Ct, Napa SUMMER/FALL 2020
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Bar Lucia NOW OPEN AT OXBOW ELIZABETH SMITH In late February, Kara Haspel Lind, founder of Kara’s Cupcakes, was poised to launch her new wine bar and restaurant, Bar Lucia, when COVID-19 halted her plans. “I closed all of my businesses and laid myself off along with 90 other staff. It was heartbreaking for everyone,” she said. Lind and her family decided to shelter in place at their home in Calistoga.
Was ever a doubt that Bar Lucia would come to fruition? “No, never. Bar Lucia was meant to be born,” she said. “I kept moving forward with plans, finishing the build out, looking for staff and creating marketing opportunities that brought the wine experience alive.” Instead of immediately opening when restaurants were given the green light in late May, Lind opted instead for a “controlled opening” on June 18, offering her
The new Bar Lucia at Oxbow Public Market features an extensive list of rosé wines. 82 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
full wine list, but a limited food menu. Despite what she called the “COVID Challenge,” her objective was to create the best possible wine and food experience while simultaneously implementing the required coronavirus protocols such as frequent cleaning and sanitizing, wearing face coverings and gloves, maintaining social distance, and implementing Please see Lucia, Page 84
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spread convincingly 38 Ran together, 9 Sneer to be 4 Protective as colors 42 Group of wiped off cover 39 Like small whales 10 Nickname 8 Sacred Halloween 43 Take in takefor an honest songs candy out, say man? 40 Prides’ 14 Actress 44 Bug repellent 11 Creepy look LUCIA Buehler White Zinfandel, the rosé of a gen- offers gluten-free cupcakes such as flourless companions Mendes or ingredient 12 Puzzle eration gone by, for those seeking a sweeter with chocolate and sweet vanilla. From page 82 wine. She fromends Also in the 42 worksJaguar is Lind’s “Bar Lucia’s Longoria 45 Part of aalso makes a fun frosé dead Washington State’s highly rated Vino Rosé Rosé Party and Pamper Pak,” which will competitor 15 Cracked window in 13 Part of a contact-less payment options. of Sangiovese, organic strawberry purée, and include cans of Hogwash Rosé, branded 45 Ladder level Archie’s dandelion Lind saidopen? one of the greatest challenges baby simple syrup. glasses, pink gummy bears, pink nail polish, has been difficulty ofahaving A tasting of five dry rosés because, “This is the 46stoneFeeling 16the“What longmeaningful nursery? 19– Hogwash, Put into and a rose quartz conversations with customers while wearing Head High, Aesop, Lioco, and Ehlers Estate stone of universal love—and we all could use friendless day!” 48 Voices an pigeonholes face masks and keeping a safe distance. It – followed by the Carboniste Sparkling some love,” she said. 47 Whiz 17 Cry that objection 21 Souvenir has been a delicate balancing act of caution, Albariño, the frosé, and the Buehler White Lind explained why she chose rosé and safety, hospitality and service. Zinfandel – demonstrates Lind’sfrom commit-thethe pervasiveness the color pink in the 49of Impressionist rhymes with 50 Scepter Bar Lucia, named after Lind’s great-grand- ment to offering a variety of wines. While branding and mosaic tile design of Bar Edouard “squeak” topper beach? mother, Angela Luci, and daughter, Lucia, is serious about rosé and the other choices on Lucia – as well as Kara’s Cupcakes. She has 51 Pull along 18 Tight grip 51 NBA great 25 Title for a natural extension of her Italian roots and her list, Lind added, “Rosés are fun, great always been visual and drawn to the color the significance food, and wine. with food, and approachable.” a lifetime affinity for sweet Broccoli ___ onofafamily, mare’s Erving’s Julie pink. She has 52 Her wine list focuses primarily on rosés Lind designed her food menu with the pink treats, despite being a dentist’s daughter. Abandon at – along withhair? a few sparkling wines, white, nickname assistance of a consulting chef. ItAndrews features Foror Lind, pink 53 is a color that signifies energy 20– from Before altarher rosés – 54 Lead-in to as well as appetizers, Judi Dench and reds smaller Uncle Napa and Sonoma Kara’s Cupcakes, sandand happiness. Whenthe she tastes County producers, pluscut a few others from “serif” wiches and salads made using ingredi-Wars” and nibbles her55 cupcakes – she finds herself Barbershop Sam’s 26local“Star Mendocino County, Washington state, and ents from purveyors like Point Reyes Farm- in a happy place, immediately transported sound Heisman 55 Stuck-up saga France22 (a Champagne). stead Cheese Company and Model Bakery,sage back to sweet and delicious memories of her Peter the 58 Growing Lind andTrophy her husband, Michael, chose as well as fruits, greens, and27 herbsAdvanced from her childhood and56 family. Through Bar Lucia, selections for their inaugural wine list sugar? Calistoga garden. customers with e.g.similar winner degs. she hopes to provide Great, through recommendations from peers in the A special menu feature is Lind’s uncon- taste moments that “aim to nourish our souls 57 Sasquatch Flutie 61 “What’s the 28 Drew wine industry, word-of-mouth, and tastings. ventional flight of three cupcakes and threein and connect us.” relative? Dream (“Why The23 extensive list ofsleep rosés – currently ___?” wines, with a choice of flavors carrot,table 29 like Pool 12 bottles, two on tap, and two in cans – bother?”) coconut, red velvet, and sweet vanilla paired Elizabeth Smith is a Caught freelance contribut59 a acronym cover includes wines from made from a variety with selections of rosé, sparkling, white, or ing writer to the Napa Valley Register and glimpse 24such Girl or mule 62 Burning 31caramel, In this of grapes as Carignan, Cabernet Saured wines. Her banana, banana fleur area Napa Valley Life Magazine. Reachof her at vignon, Grenache, Pinot Noir, Sangiovese, intensely de sel, Meyer lemon, and passion fruit cup- angel elizabeth@elizabethsmithconsulting.com 60 Some toy of song 32 Fallen Syrah,25 and even cakes – as as well as vegan – will available or visit her website atbatteries elizabethsmithconIn White a Zinfandel. 63 Call, a cab 35beNothing, Lind intentionally chose the slightly sweet soon as part of the menu rollout. Lind also sulting.com. desperate 64 Bit of ink slangily manner 65 Take the CROSSWORD ANSWERS KARA’S CHEESE DIP WITH POINT 27 PIMIENTO “A Boeing plunge? PREVIOUS PUZZLE ANSWER 747AND contains 66 Annual REYES TOMA MODEL BAKERY CROSTINI about athletic award Suggested Bar Lucia Wine Pairings Aesop, Ehlers Estate, or Scribe (Dry Rosé) 6 million 67 ___ Lanka Buehler White Zinfandel (Sweet Rosé) parts,” e.g.? DOWN Carboniste Albariño (Sparkling/White) 30 Fireworks 1 U.S. Army Chappellet Mountain Cuvée Cabernet Blend (Red) reactions vehicle Pimiento Cheese Dip • 4 oz grated cheddar cheese 33sharp“___, two, 2 Affirm • 2 oz grated Point Reyes Tomafour!” three, confidently • 1/4 cup jarred pimentos, chopped (marching 3 Rakes in the • 2 oz cream cheese shout) big dough • 1 tsp Frank’s Red Hot Sauce • 1 tbsp 34 mayonnaise Rescue 4 One may be Mix all ingredients, cover, and refrigerate for one hour. squad Place desired amount of pimentoVIP in ramekin or serving dish. steamed in a 35 “We don’t corn husk Model Bakery Crostini have 5 “Stronger than Preheat oven to 350 degrees.an Slice crostini in 1/4 slices. agreement” dirt” cleanser Place on a sheet pan and toast with olive oil and sea salt. 37 Bounce a 6 Scampered Cool to room temperature. basketball away Serve with pimento cheese dip above. 8/15 © 2020 Andrews McMeel Universal Enjoy! 40 Indonesia’s 7 Emulate a www.upuzzles.com capital psychic 84 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
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TIM CARL
Wines on a
Steve Matthiasson, his wife Jill Klein Matthiasson and their two sons — Kai and Harry — have turned the common perception of the typical Napa Valley winemaking family on its head. Like many other local vintners, the Matthiassons’ wines are exceptional. However, their wines are often dramatically lower in alcohol than typical wines from the area, and their entire ethos is antithetical to the sometimes chichi exclusivity exuded by many local vintners. Both are also unapologetic environmentalists who seem on a mission to prove that growing grapes and making fine wine can be a positive force in the battle against climate change. Since launching their brand in 2003, the result of their unorthodox approach has been widely viewed as successful: Their wines are highly regarded by both customers and critics. Matthiasson has been named Winemaker of the Year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Food and Wine Magazine, and the winery is a six-time nominee for the prestigious James Beard Award. The couple share in running the business. Jill, an orchardist, runs the business and Steve focuses on winemaking and vineyard operations. Beyond Matthiasson wines, Steve also has Steve and Jill Klein Matthiasson at their home farm in the Napa Valley. provided vineyard consulting services to some of the region’s top wineries, including such icons as Spottswoode, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Araujo Estates and Dalla Valle Vineyards. We met twice, once in late winter and then again in June. The first time Steve and I sat in his winery overlooking their vineyard on a chilly, foggy March morning. At that time he’d just returned from a trip to Europe, making it back just before the shelter-in-place orders went into effect. He was mostly concerned about how they might continue to pay their employees because Tim Carl nearly 50% of their wine sales Steve Matthiasson at the Matthiasson Winery tasting room located on historically went to restaurants, the outskirts of Napa in the Oak Knoll AVA.
mission The unorthodox approach of ‘extreme environmentalists’ yields exceptional wines from Napa
86 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
all of which had been abruptly closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. “If this shutdown is for a few weeks then we’ll be OK,” he said at that time. “But if it’s a month or two I just don’t know how we’re going to survive.” A CANADIAN WHO GREW UP IN THE DESERT Steve was born in Canada, where his father and mother were both anthropology professors, but he dreamed of another profession: farming. When he was 7, his parents divorced, and eventually his mother moved him and his sister to Tucson, Arizona. But before she did, Steve had an experience that would direct the future course of his life. “When my parents were splitting up, I got sent to my cousin’s wheat farm in Manitoba for the summer,” he said. “It was there that I first fell in love with farming — the peaceful pace, the cycles, the smells, the connection with the earth, the tractors.” In Arizona, Steve nurtured his desire to become a farmer and became interested in environmental causes. “I had a bad case of ADD and got sent to this hippie school that had goats, chickens and horses,” he said. “Every kid could have a row in the garden — I loved it.” When Greenpeace came to the school in 1980 to give a presentation, he also knew that he was “destined to become an environmentalist.” “I was born in Canada, but it’s the desert frontier that’s ingrained in me,” Steve said. “It was a self-sufficient, DIY ethos set in an artists’ town full of Arizona liberals who had a strong emphasis on personal freedom. It was like, ‘leave me alone,’ but be kind to people and don’t [mess] up the environment — an Edward Abbey philosophy all the way.” Please see Mission, Page 88 SUMMER/FALL 2020
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MISSION From page 86
Abbey was an American environmentalist and self-titled anarchist who lived most of his life in Arizona. His best-known works are “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and “Desert Solitaire.” In another of his popular books, “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness,” he wrote “How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin…” a sentiment that captured much of what would become Steve’s future. Driven by his desire to farm and inspired by his upbringing and a growing taste for punk rock, at 18 years old Steve headed west to California. There he intended to study philosophy (he had an interest in existentialists such as Camus and Kierkegaard) at Whittier College in Southern California and to eventually open his own organic farm. “I didn’t really know how to just start a farm, so for a few years after college I became a bike messenger in San Francisco — which, by the way, is more dangerous than people imagine,” he said. He also began to brew homemade beer and tended a plot of land at a small urban farm. But after three years of dodging speeding cars and avoiding angry pedestrians — one of whom hit him in the head with a metal pipe, another who chased him with a hammer and another who threatened him with a gun — Steve left the city and headed to UC Davis to study international agricultural development. “When I got to Davis it was like ‘Bingo!’” he said, “because if you didn’t inherit a farm how do you become a farmer? But with this degree I thought I could learn how to farm, travel around and help people, advance organic agriculture and save money to buy some land someday.” 88 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
Tim Carl
Aerial photo of Matthiassons’ home vineyard in the Oak Knoll AVA on the south-west edge of the city of Napa.
PLANTING THE SEEDS OF CHANGE Jill Matthiasson had grown up in Pittsburgh and dreamed of someday having her own orchards. After attending the University of Pennsylvania, she spent two years working in Israel on a variety of environmental projects, including helping to renovate ancient water canals. Afterward, she moved to Arizona to work with Gary Paul Nabhan, an agricultural ecologist, ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother and author whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in local food and the heirloom seed-saving movement. Eventually, Jill moved to California to study sustainable farming at UC Davis, and in 1994 she was on a team that had received an EPA grant to work on reducing pesticide use on crops. The intern for the project was a firstyear UC Davis graduate student named Steve Matthiasson. By 1996, the couple had married and Steve had joined the Lodi Wine Commission in 1999 to co-author the precursor to “Lodi Rules,” one of the industry’s first serious sustainability farming guidelines. In 2002, the couple moved to the Napa Valley to help launch Premiere Viticultural Services in collaboration with vineyardists
Jim Verhey and Al Buckland, REDUCING THE CARBON and in 2003 the couple launched FOOTPRINT OF THE Matthiasson Wines. WINE INDUSTRY “It might be a cliche, but it’s A PHILOSOPHICAL true: Think globally, act locally,” SEA CHANGE Steve said. “The question we Since their arrival, the Mat- ask ourselves is how can we thiassons have been at the fore- reduce our carbon footprint? front of a wave of like-minded The answers are many, but some enthusiasts who are no longer include using less energy, packagwilling to toe the line of making ing with lighter glass, using recyhigh-alcohol wines with sweet, clable shipping containers, using over-ripe flavor profiles. They more solar power and conserving also insisted on using organically all resources. If we all forgo a litsourced grapes and working with tle off our bottom lines it will go operations that put the health of a long way to improving overall the land and the well-being of outcomes.” their employees as prime considAll the vineyards farmed for erations. the Matthiassons’ wines are either “Jill and I are extreme envi- certified organic or currently ronmentalists,” Steve said. “We’re going through the years-long always thinking about how we certification process. can improve the environment, “For all our vineyards we are reduce our impact on the land constantly expanding our plantbut also create an equitable place ing of beneficial insect, pollinato work. It’s a constant effort.” tor and wildlife habitats, pushing Many wineries will talk pri- more vineyards to no-till protomarily about the prestige of their cols to help sequester carbon and wines and the fame of their wine- working to create healthy, living maker, but those are not the first soils.” topics the Matthiassons want to Whereas most vineyard owntalk about. ers who replant their vines do so “The health of the land is by ripping out the old grapevines critical, but our team is just as and pushing them into a large important,” Steve said. “We pile where they are burned — a believe in fair wages, flexibility practice that sends smoke and with schedules, help with pro- carbon into the atmosphere — fessional development and tui- the Matthiassons keep their piles tion assistance with nearly every of twisted wood along the edge employee engaged in expanding of the vineyards to provide shelter their education through classes at local colleges.” Please see Mission, Page 90 SUMMER/FALL 2020
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MISSION From page 88
microbes and roots and allow water to percolate down and be stored,” he said. “Without such structure, the soils become nutrient-depleted and compacted so that the water just runs off the surface, taking with it valuable nutrients that are washed into the streams and rivers where they can cause harm. So we’re not just looking at organic farming but regenerative farming as our goal.”
for the birds that help keep “pest” insect populations naturally in check. “I get tired of people asking if we will be able to make the same great wine when the temperatures get hotter,” he said. “It’s not about that; it’s about standing your ground and working to reduce the causes of it getting hotter.” THE WINE The New York Times wine REGENERATIVE FARMING reviewer, Eric Asimov, wrote that, Steve sees regenerative vine- “…their [Matthiasson] wines bear yard farming techniques as a an agricultural stamp, as fresh, potential model to share with lively and alive as the best proother agricultural industries. He duce from a farmers market…” says soil is a mixture of sand, Part of the freshness of the silt, clay and organic matter, and Matthiassons’ wines is due to a healthy soil might be 4% or their low alcohol. Many of the 5% organic matter, by weight, Napa Valley’s most famous wines whereas an unhealthy, depleted prior to the 1990s — such as soil might have only 1% to 2% those that won in the Judgment organic matter. of Paris tasting in 1976 — were “If we can improve soils by all around 12% alcohol. Through drawing in more living matter critics such as Robert Parker Jr.’s (sequestering carbon) by even influence and broad consumer a couple percent, this can have trends, super-ripe wines with an enormous positive impact on alcohols as high as 16% became the global climate when spread commonplace, with lower-alcohol across the world’s vast agricultural wines becoming rare in the Napa lands.” Valley over the last few decades. Steve explains that because “My Cabernet is very differplants convert carbon from the ent to your average Napa Cab. air into woody material (stems, It’s more like the Cabs that were branches and roots), such things made before the Parker era as the as cover crops (grasses between alcohol is never more than about the vines), the grapevines and 13%,” he said. trees are efficient natural mechEach of the wide diversity of anisms to remove carbon from wines Matthiasson makes come the atmosphere. However, he from grapes grown in Napa and warns, “If you end up just burn- Sonoma, including chardonnay, ing the plant material when you red blends, a mind-bending white are through with it then the car- wine blend of Ribolla Gialla, and bon just goes right back into the even a delicate sweet Vermouth atmosphere. Or if you till ground that is made from 80% Flora, that’s full of roots the introduced a cross between Semillon and oxygen triggers the microbes to go Gewurztraminer. crazy eating and they just respire I tasted three wines: the 2018 that carbon back into the air.” Ribolla Gialla ($49; 293 cases), The benefits of healthy soil go the 2018 Linda Vista Chardonbeyond sequestration of carbon. nay ($32; 3,000 cases) and the “You want soil to be more like 2017 Napa Valley Cabernet Saua chocolate cake than chocolate vignon ($65; 1,700 cases made). pudding. All of those holes and The Ribolla Gialla is one of structures are held together by the hallmark wines of Matthiorganic matter in the soil and asson. Only seven rows of these provide a pathway for healthy vines were planted in their home 90 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
vineyard in the Western Oak Knoll area of Napa Valley. Steve and Jill fell in love with the variety while working with it for clients and immediately grafted the variety into their own vineyard when they purchased it in 2006. This wine is vibrant and exudes aromas of roasted hazelnuts, ripe pear and ocean breeze. On the palate this is a tantalizing wine, with complex, twisting flavors of nuts, fruit and earth. Part of the liveliness of this 12% alcohol wine was that it was fermented whole cluster in an open-top tank with the must pressed after two weeks and then aged for 18 months in neutral oak barrels. The wine was aged sur lees and never racked, with no sulfur dioxide used until bottling — making this a good example of a “natural wine” style. The Linda Vista Chardonnay comes from a small vineyard in West Oak Knoll that the couple leases and farms themselves. Daily winds that originate from the nearby San Pablo Bay, deepclay soils and an early harvest contribute to a zesty wine that is a straw-gold color in the glass and has aromas of tangerine, lemon, yellow apple and acacia flower. With an alcohol content of 12.2% this is a perfect summer wine that screams to accompany grilled halibut with a sauce of caper, butter and mint. The Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is a blend of three different grapes — Cabernet, Merlot and Petite Verdot — from six different Napa Valley vineyards that cover three distinct AVAs — Coombsville, Rutherford and Oak Knoll. This 13.0% alcohol wine is wonderful with vivid redfruit flavors and aromas of ripe cherries, hot stones, sandalwood and a hint of herb-roasted lamb. Unlike some Cabs from 2017, the grapes for this wine were harvested prior to the devastating fires. This is another benefit of making low-alcohol wines — picking earlier in the season lessens the risk of being affected by the debilitating impact of smoke, power outages and labor disruptions.
VISIONARIES — STEVE AND JILL KLEIN MATTHIASSON When I met with the Matthiassons again in June, they had survived the three months’ shutdown — retaining all of their employees by shifting their sales from restaurants to a direct-to-customer focus. “We’re seeing light at the end of a very dark tunnel,” Steve said. “Our ‘Tasting Packs’ and Zoom tastings have been a hit. We are doing them seven days a week. Also Napa folks have been taking advantage of our free local delivery, and we just reopened our tasting room.” Beyond trying to save their business during the pandemic, the Matthiassons donated to various efforts to help those in need, including $53,000 to the Independent Restaurant Coalition that seeks to help save restaurants from economic collapse. As we spoke a quote from Anne Frank came to mind: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” We all stood and gazed eastward toward the town of Napa as evening descended. The sound of crickets and an occasional crow were distinct over the din of the nearby subdivision and farther on from traffic on Highway 29. In the vineyards the untilled earth was covered with a yellowing net of drying summer grasses with a swath of chicory flowers that remained soft sky blue against the frame of verdant greenleaved vines with their beebee-sized clusters of tiny grapes just taking shape. “I am not an ethical relativist — I believe that there is better and worse in this world,” Steve said. “That’s why it’s important for us to create an ethically based business. It’s a way to find meaning through doing good work, lifting people up and repairing the environment by making honest wine.” SUMMER/FALL 2020
WINEMAKERS From page 10
Their daughter, meanwhile, is a multi-tasking force of nature. “My job is pretty broad. So that’s kind of a good thing in these times, especially,” Barrett said over the phone from her home in the city, where she’s been camped out for many weeks. “I’m kind of focusing more on certain parts of the business, while other parts are really not happening” because of coronavirus. She laughed when describing her busy “previous life,” echoing Elizabeth Vianna at Chimney Rock about a work schedule that
Courtesy Remi Barrett
Remi Barrett, Sales and Marketing, La Sirena and Barrett & Barrett
just a few months ago included regular out-of-state trips to see customers and distributors. Barrett’s frequent visits to her family’s home in Calistoga have also been curtailed, as have those with her two young nieces and her sister, Chelsea, the head winemaker at Materra Vineyards in Napa’s Oak Knoll District. Still, she said, “I call on accounts in Northern California. I do the website. I do our email list and the social media. I kind of do a lot of random stuff.” While emphasizing that she and the small La Sirena team “all do a lot of different things to keep the ship running,” the most random part of Barrett’s job description actually has nothing to with SUMMER/FALL 2020
the wine business. In 2013, she and her husband, Erich Uher, started performing as a synthpop duo in clubs around San Francisco. The subgenre of electronic music was something the couple approached slowly at first and have built into side careers over the last several years. “We had been writing songs just very casually for a year or two before,” she said. “Erich was in grad school in a different state at the time. So we were limping along, making very slow progress, kind of like learning how to do music together.” They named their band Vice Reine and, in 2016, added a third member, CJ DeMarx. “We got into doing it because we wanted to play shows. So that has really been our focus up until now.” With the pandemic as a shared backdrop, she compared the new normal version of her wine career to working as a musician. “The music industry is also in a lot of trouble and had a lot of issues before COVID. And like the wine industry, it was sort of a sinking ship that now is on fire, as well!” she added with a nervous laugh. But for Barrett and her bandmate husband, the fire might be part of the fun. She runs a live music industry party—presently in webcast format—called Star Crash at DNA Lounge in San Francisco’s SoMa district. At 35 years old, the popular venue predates many Napa Valley wineries and brands, including Heidi Barrett’s La Sirena. “We’ve been around for 25 years. So, we have a really nice following. We’re small, but people really care about La Sirena, which is a blessing I am seriously grateful for every single day. People have a strong, personal connection to our brand, and my mom, you know, she’s the center of that. She’s the reason people care and paid attention to the brand for so long. So, that has been our saving grace.” Maybe someday in DNA Lounge’s future, its owner will say the same thing about Remi Barrett.
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E N J OY T A S T I N G S AT N A PA’ S O L D E S T W I N E RY I N A W H O L E N EW W AY !
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Melinda Kearney and her daughter Michèle Lorenza Ouellet are owners of the Lorenza Rosé wine brand, which is based out of St. Helena in the Napa Valley and sources grapes from some of the oldest vineyards in Lodi, California.
LORENZA WINE Mother-daughter team makes exceptional rosé TIM CARL
B
ased out of the Napa Valley, Melinda Kearney and her daughter, Michèle Lorenza Ouellet, have created a popular Provençal-style rosé wine called Lorenza. They also make a sparkling rosé in aluminum cans that is tantalizing and stylish, but since launching in 2008 the duo has maintained a laser focus on crafting a single type of wine — rosé. Their discipline and focus have consistently paid off, making their limited wines highly coveted by customers, wine retailers and top restaurant sommeliers. A MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUO Melinda grew up in Boulder, Colorado, before moving to Northern California in 1988 to work in the restaurant business. Eventually, she moved from restaurants to the wine business, working with wineries that included Frog’s Leap Winery and Star Hill. Today, with nearly 30 years of wine industry experience, she runs the day-to-day 94 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY
operations at Lorenza and also continues to consult for some of Napa’s most luxurious wine brands, often helping them launch their wines into a highly competitive marketplace. “We’re based in the Napa Valley, and so there’s a seriousness and precision that comes with that,” Melinda said. “We were never going to make a wine that was an afterthought. We wanted to find an oldvine vineyard and create a distinct, traditional blend, but we also intended to create something that was fun and accessible — a wine that people could drink out at a fancy restaurant or in their backyards with friends.” Beyond making a serious, yet fun, wine, the idea was also to provide the mother and daughter a way to stay connected, not only with each other but also with their friends, family and the region. Michèle grew up in the Napa Valley surrounded by vineyards, food and wine. Her
father ran Mustards Grill, a popular restaurant north of Yountville along Highway 29, and she attended St. Helena High School. “Our house was right next to Mustards, and I spent a lot of time there just hanging out and loving the energy and buzz,” she said. “When I was about 8, I remember they had a coloring book that was really for adults. It showed the stages of winemaking, and I’d sit there coloring and learning about MOG.” Material other than grapes (MOG) is a fairly common term used in winemaking for leaves, stems and anything else in the harvested grape bins and gondolas that isn’t a source of grape juice. For years, rumors of MOG in some larger operations have included everything from large insects, snakes and even car tires being found when sorting through the grapes prior to their being pressed. At 15 years old — through a series of odd encounters and recommendations from SUMMER/FALL 2020
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Join us for a virtual Gala & Auction
BENEFITTING COLLABRIA CARE – COLLABRIA HOSPICE
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Founding CEO, Domaine Carneros
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friends in the business — Michèle was recruited as a fashion model, and she began traveling the world during the summers on photo shoots, spending time in Europe and New York. It was in France that she started her love affair with rosé. “When I was in France, I told my mom about drinking rosé and loving it. She was like, ‘Cool, I’m glad you are having a ball in Europe, but I thought you were working,’ and I told her, ‘When in Rome,’” Michèle said. “But I found out that she [Melinda] loved rosé, too, and so when I turned 21 we launched our own brand.” Since then, Michèle has continued her career as a model, splitting her time between New York and St. Helena, from where she helps her mother blend, design and sell Lorenza Rosé. INTENTIONAL ROSÉ Their idea was to create an “intentional” California rosé that was not made as an “afterthought” like some rosé wines but instead picked, crafted and sold — from start to finish — as a rosé. Rosé is a type of wine typically made from red-wine grapes produced in a similar manner to red wine but with vastly reduced time fermented with grape skins. This reduced skin contact gives rosé its pink hue and results in a lighter flavor than that of red wine. Rosé can also be made from saignée (the “bleeding off ” of liquid from the must during winemaking to concentrate a red wine) or by making a white wine and then adding in a dash of color at the end from red wine. Although there are excellent rosés made through these other methods, many purists believe they are more of an afterthought or a way to increase cash flow. (Saignée often is just poured down the drain, and because rosé wines do not age in oak barrels they are less expensive to produce and can go to market quickly.) Rosé is produced around the world and can be made from any wine grape cultivated in any wine grapegrowing region. Provence, France, however, is widely considered the epicenter. That’s where they make what’s known as Provençal rosé, which blends Grenache with other grape varieties such as Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvedre, Tibouren, Carignan and Cabernet Sauvignon. Next time you purchase a non-Provençal rosé, have a look at what grapes are included and you might be surprised to find anything from Sauvignon Blanc to Malbec playing the leading role. Because of the vision and specific needs the two had regarding Lorenza wines, they SUMMER/FALL 2020
knew they needed to source grapes from a vineyard outside the Napa Valley. Grapes from Napa County are often prohibitively expensive for making a relatively inexpensive rosé, and the grapes needed for the blending are often exceptionally rare or not even grown in the area. What they found were some of the oldest remaining vineyards in California, including sources from the Bechthold Vineyard (planted in the mid 1800s) and Spenker Ranch (planted in the early 1900s). The Lodi region is known for its sandy soils and hot weather that often result in dense, vivid wines, historically producing higher-alcohol wines than cooler regions. That’s changing, with many vintners picking earlier and finding the diversity and longevity of many vineyards in Lodi lending themselves to a shifting consumer preference for different varieties and flavor profiles. However, picking red grapes in early summer in Lodi from vineyards that are more than 100 years old with grapes that might otherwise go into some dark, brooding red wine, can come as a surprise to many. “When we pick the grapes in early August we used to get some pretty strange looks,” Melinda said. “The guys picking would look at us like, ‘Do these two women know what they are doing?’” Today, those strange looks have likely been transformed into looks of admiration as Lorenza Rosé has grown in popularity and stature. THE WINE The wine brand’s name — Lorenza — is Michèle’s middle name. It is also the name of her grandfather, who she says was a “bon vivant” who would have enjoyed the brand’s sophisticated yet fun ethos. The 2019 Lorenza Rosé ($22 per bottle) is made in the Provençal style with a blend of 34% Grenache, 29% Mourvedre, 26% Carignan and 11% Cinsault. This 11% alcohol wine was picked on Aug. 22 at a sugar level of 18 Brix. (Named after Adolf Brix, a German scientist, Brix — or more accurately degrees Brix — is the concentration of sugar in an aqueous solution. For context, 18 Brix is typical for low-alcohol white wines whereas red wines such as some popular Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons might be picked at 28 Brix or higher.) The 2019 Lorenza Rosé was made by pressing whole clusters, and the juice immediately transferred to cold stainless-steel tanks for settling, racking and fermentation. A few months later, the wine was bottled and ready for sale in early 2020.
The color of this wine is a shimmering pale salmon or what Michele calls “ballet-slipper pink.” The aromatics are of white peach, sumac, chalk and jasmine flower. On the palate, this wine is full of zesty Meyer lemon, apricot and seashell with a hint of hyssop in the finish. When I drank it on a warm summer afternoon, I longed for fresh oysters and clams accompanied by ramekins full of mignonette and chimichurri sauce. The Lorenza Spritz ($22 for four cans, which is equal to 1 liter of wine or slightly more than a typical bottle of wine) is non-vintage. An injection of “effervescence” and a dash of sweetness make this blend of 80% Carignan and 20% Grenache both fun and refreshing. Unlike the rosé, this wine’s blends lean to a fruitier bent, with aromas of watermelon rind, strawberry, cranberry, kiwi, white pepper and rose petal. The packaging is slick and modern with a blend of 1960s-fashion sense meets an Airstream-travel-trailer sensibility. Stick a couple of cans in your backpack and surprise your partner on your next hike to a mountaintop. THE FUTURE IS ROSY Lorenza Rosé was launched at a time when low-alcohol wines coming out of California were rare. Today the acceptance of such wines is growing as people find them a welcome alternative to some of the heavier and hard-hitting wines of the last couple of decades. The growing popularity of rosé has led to a wave of new brands hitting the market recent years. Most of these originate from large corporate wineries that often use blending or saignée as their means to an end. Most of those wines are simple, slightly sweet and are of questionable quality. Lorenza on the other hand, is a decidedly rare California rosé — a blending of classically used wine grapes, picked early, created from start to finish as a rosé and designed, made and sold by a team of two. Will this brand ever become one you see on the grocery-chain store shelves? Perhaps not, but it’s certainly one that you should seek out and support. “Our approach is intentional and disciplined but also fun — a true mother-daughter story,” Melinda said. “Our focus provides an opportunity to explore another side of the excellent vineyards we source from, and our hope is that our wines help people remember what matters, especially during these challenging times. What matters is to love and enjoy one another and to find creative, safe ways to come together.” INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 97
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ART C Y N T H I A A R ATA
In the last few months, as Californians have been told to stay home, Napa resident Shane Willow Mittman has been in her kitchen spearheading a bakery operation that has launched into an artisanal brand called Cookies Too. The process of mixing ingredients, rolling dough, cutting each shape, and decorating fresh baked cookies by hand is a process that Mittman calls the expression of an art. An author and illustrator, Mittman said her cottage industry is not just about baking or business but about having a new artistic medium. Mittman was born in Japan and moved around as a kid while her father served in the U.S. Air Force. She spent years living in Syracuse, New York as a young adult where a company called Corso’s Cookies is headquartered. When Mittman was in her 20s, she brought her art portfolio to Corso’s and got a job decorating cookies. Today, Mittman runs her own cookie factory at her home near Westwood Hills Park in Napa, and working from home has been enjoyable. “The smell — oh the smell of the cookies, the smell of the dough, of the cookies in the oven, of the icing — it’s so wonderful. It’s delicious.” Mittman described having artistic sensibilities and an engineering mind explaining that her cookie creations are custom designs inspired by nature. “My inspiration for just about everything is nature — I’m fascinated by the engineering and geometry of the natural world and our connection to these systems. This informs everything I do.” Three years ago, Mittman and her husband moved to Napa from Emeryville looking for a home with a yard suitable for outdoor living. “We found this house that is built into a hillside. We leave the doors and windows open, and we have all kinds of visitors — wild peacocks, fawns, hummingbirds — and these creatures are part of my designs.” SUMMER/FALL 2020
Baking day and n i g h t , Mi t t m a n added, “Since I started decorating cookies I haven’t stopped.” Mittman uses royal icing on her cookies in the way that a painter layers acrylics on a canvas. “I consider my work to be an art form,” she said. “It takes technique to get the colors and textures right, to create consistencies and visual effects with the icing.” Determining how long just one of these cookies takes to make is complicated because Mittman decorates them methodically. “There are so many details, and I don’t want the icing to run together. When making a bee, for example, I might do the wings first, let that dry, and then add stripes and polka dots later on.” The assemblage of various colors, sizes, and shapes is intended to evoke a narrative in the same way a collage does, she said. “When I’m decorating cookies, I like to convey a story on the platter.” With Cookies Too, Mittman channels her creativity into a product meant to bring about joy, a satisfaction that she said cultivates her soul. “Anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t be able to do anything— for any length of time, or at all—that isn’t soul expression.” The baker discusses this philosophy in-depth in her first book, “Tend Your Own Garden,” which she published last year. She affirms her cookie start-up has been exactly that— a conscious cultivation of her soul with the purpose expressing and sharing joy. “With Cookies Too, we are part of people’s gift-giving. We have customers who come for their personal stash of cookies. Others give the cookies as gifts to their loved ones, neighbors, or themselves — spreading love with the cookies I’ve made.”
Napa author and cookie baker Shane Willow Mittman has launched a new business, Cookies Too. Shane Willow Mittman uses royal icing on her cookies in the same way that a painter layers acrylics on a canvas to create her edible works of art. “I consider my work to be an art form,” Shane Willow Mittman said of her cookies. Submitted photo
Cookies Too has been warmly welcomed at the St. Helena Farmers’ Market. Selling cookies at the market has given Mittman and her husband a chance to converse with local residents. “It’s been social — we’ve made friends. People are coming by every week to say ‘hi’ and buy cookies. I think we can all use a bit of fun and beauty right now, and that’s what the cookies do.” Find Cookies Too at the Napa Farmers Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays(napafarmersmarket.org) and the St. Helena Farmers Market (sthelenafarmersmkt.org) on Fridays. Cookie orders can be placed online. Locals can arrange times to pick up orders from the Mittman home. Orders are also delivered in Napa or packaged and shipped in the U.S. For more information, visit cookiestoonapa.com, search “Cookies Too Napa” on Facebook or @cookiestoonapa on Instagram. INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 99
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