Inside Napa Valley, May 2021

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‌ he Peaks Around Us T Living the Life Life in the air Playing possum Getting to Know You Great Estates Dancing Through the Pandemic Supporting seniors Young at art Food Trucks of Napa Valley Rallying on the back roads Happy Trails of Napa County Love Letter to the Napa Valley Secret life of crows Crossword Napa Newcomers Making of a cookbook Lobster feeds endure Plant-based cooking: Gnocchi A sparking friendship

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To advertise in Inside Napa Valley, please call us at 707-256-2228 | A publication of the Napa Valley Publishing Company

A personal view of the Napa Valley D AV I S TAY LO R President and Di re ctor of L ocal Ad ve r ti s i ng‌

‌W

e don’t normally set a theme for Inside Napa Valley magazine.

Typically we let our writers tell us what’s going on or what’s on their minds.

Sometimes two or three separate writers will come up with similar ideas, creating a serendipitous mini-theme.

We enjoy when stories come together to complement one another.

But in preparing this edition, a funny thing happened: a theme developed across a wide range of DAVIS the stories: A first person TAYLOR perspective. The authors of about a third of our pieces chose to make themselves, in some way, part of the story. We were only expecting two: columnist Colin MacPhail’s “Living the Life” always revolves around his quirky and charming memories, and we had asked writer Jess Lander to tell us what it was like to have to create a cookbook from scratch.

Then writer Tim Carl told personal 6 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

stories in two pieces: the second of his series on plant-based cooking, and a “love letter to the Napa Valley.” Author Elyana Trucker talked about her own experiences as a way of leading us down some of Napa County’s best hiking trails. And Jess Lander took us on a road rally with classic and high-end sports cars along the county’s scenic back roads.

So we’re calling this the “Napa Valley in the First Person” edition.

But that’s not all we have for you this issue. We’ll take a look at how a local dance school survived the pandemic in style. We’ll meet the operator of a chicken-based food truck. We’ll soar over the Valley in an experimental chopper, learn about the inner lives of the crows and ravens that live along side us, and see how lobster feeds are making a comeback after our year of isolation. We’ll meet a local artist and learn about two friends collaborating on their sparkling wine dreams come true.

We’ll revive our Great Estates series, looking at the biggest and best homes on the market in Napa County, and we’ll start a

new series: “Napa Newcomers, meeting people who have fallen for our community and chosen to make it their home. We’ll spend time with Napa City Council member Liz Alessio in our Getting to Know You series.

And as always, we’ll bring you some of our favorite articles of the last few months from the Napa Valley Publishing family of newspapers.

So take a moment to consider your own first-person Napa Valley story and join us for this edition of Inside Napa Valley.

On the Cover: Summer is upon us in the Napa Valley, courtesy of Bob McClenahan, bobmcclenahan.com.

Editor’s note: Many of you will be receiving this edition by mail, the fifth 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.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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THE PEAKS AROUND US

TIM CARL PHOTOGRAPHY‌

Kisha and Jason Itkin of Theorem Vineyards in the Diamond Mountain AVA in 2019.

The secret gem of the Napa Valley L AY N E R A N D O L P H

Diamond Mountain produces inimitable wines ‌There’s so much history in the hills and valleys of the illustrious Napa Valley region.

A large part of that history involves the earliest pioneers, those who came for the Gold Rush, and those who relocated themselves from other countries to pursue their craft, namely, growing wine grapes.

Imagine seeing what we now know as Diamond Mountain for the first time, sparkling in the sunshine, full of promise and allure.

While the sparkles were not actual diamonds, the eventual product would be almost as valuable and rare. Diamond Mountain is known for being home to some of the most exquisite wines in the world, and it is itself considered a secret gem.

The “diamonds” on Diamond Mountain were pieces of reflective volcanic glass from the ancient volcanic soils of the area. These soils are well-drained, porous, and infertile — the 8 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

perfect combination to produce small, concentrated berries with thick skins. As a result, Diamond Mountain District’s inky, complex wines are known for their distinctively earthy, almost-chocolate flavors and rich, opulent tannins.

The area, now known as Diamond Mountain District, has been home to vineyards and wineries for over a century. In the 1860s, German immigrant Jacob Schram planted his first vines, eventually totaling 100 acres of vineyards by 1892. Schram founded Schramsberg Vineyard before Phylloxera and Prohibition forced him, like so many others, to shut his doors in the early 1900s. The Schramsberg property was essentially a ghost winery for the next 50 years until the Davies family purchased it and brought the parcel back to life in 1965 with Davies Vineyards.

Decades later, in 2001, what we now know as The Diamond Mountain District received official sub-appellation status. Rudy von Strasser of Von Strasser Winery and 15 other Diamond Mountain winegrowers formed

Tim Carl photo‌

Jen and Francis Ranin are the owners of the Rainin Vineyard in the Diamond Mountain appellation in the hills west of Calistoga.

the Diamond Mountain Appellation Committee. They formally petitioned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to designate the zone a sub-appellation of the Napa Valley AVA. The committee argued that the microclimate of the mountain was so distinct from surrounding areas that it warranted its own geographical boundary and appellation designation.

The Diamond Mountain District AVA (American Viticultural Area) sits at elevations up to 1,700 feet in the Mayacamas Mountain range west of Napa Valley near Calistoga. It encompasses around 5,000 acres, of which less than 500 are planted to vines, making this the smallest AVA in the Napa Valley.

Diamond Mountain District is slightly warmer than Spring Mountain District to the south, but both areas experience the cooling influence of marine breezes from the Pacific Ocean. The climate is significantly cooler than the Napa Valley floor and the adjacent area to the west, Sonoma County.

The volcanic soils, topography, and more temperate climate combine to provide an ideal setting for growing Cabernet Sauvignon.

Diamond Mountain District wines tend to be tannic, structured, and lush with mountain fruit intensity and great age-worthiness.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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LIVING THE LIFE

HOW MUCH IS

TOO MUCH?

Colin MacPhail

C O L I N M AC P H A I L I was in Costco for the first time. It was more than two decades ago, but I remember it as clear as $19.99. I was standing in awe of all the stuff you could get in America under one roof. You even needed a little card to get in. I was to be part of a special club—families who could purchase the plenty that came with the American dream, for less.

I heard a couple bickering in the next aisle about something he wanted to buy.

She was a bit irritated and was telling him, “Honey, we already got one of those last summer. Remember, the blue one.” He did not want to give up on his desires and uttered what became a favorite mantra for my adopted country. “Honey, we’ll just have two.”

Fast forward to today, and Sarah is heading over the hill to Dick’s Sporting Goods. A much smaller company, but it looks like a Costco for more active people with lower cholesterol. Campbell requires white baseball pants for his little league team. Of course, you don’t strangle the opportunities for your child to participate, so he’ll get all the things he needs. Pants, socks, helmet, glove, cup, sliding shorts (who knew?), practice balls, bat. All new because he grew out of everything from his last season.

It’s not the money; I’d pay double for the gear if it comes with the pleasure of sitting in the bleachers at the Tedeschi Park in Calistoga. The early evening light softens and calms you at the edges. Mount St. 10 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Helena looms majestically over the scene as you hear the sound of ball on bat and watch kids scampering the circle, dust, to verdant green, to dust. All under the cries of encouragement from coaches and parents around the park. It’s small-town Americana at its finest. No, it’s not the money.

It’s just everything my kids do seems to require so much “stuff.”

If you don’t want to be a crushing old bore, one should never start any sentence with “But when I was a lad.” But, when I was a lad, we exclusively played soccer.

Ball, soccer shoes, shorts. Everything Campbell does requires gear. I told him he does not need a rear-view mirror on his cycling helmet and cycling gloves. Then came very reasonable arguments about road safety. The “What-ifs” to follow were hard to dismiss. Also, when he and Alice last got a bike upgrade, they decided their previous bikes were still “good for jumps and things around the house.”

Now when I get home, we have four bikes lying around our house’s back door instead of two.

I’ve thought about laying down the “too much” law, but you want your kids to be happy. The homecoming clenching of teeth is my issue to get Buddha with, not theirs. I told them at dinner how my three brothers and I got a ladies bicycle each because they were deliberately purchased five years ahead of our abilities. Ladies’ bikes had no crossbar, so we could stand

on the pedals and bob around on these old warhorses until we grew to reach the seat.

Getting this off my chest was therapy, but things remain as they are.

Two decades ago, son No. 1, Colbyn, set up a stall outside our house on Cedar Street in Calistoga. He wanted to make some extra pocket money for something he didn’t need. He had grand plans on what to sell. I was made of sterner stuff back then and told him it had to be simple, and he should do it all himself.

He decided to paint rocks from the garden and put them on a small table with a tablecloth and a sign saying “$2.00 each.”

After many hours sitting at the edge of the street, he sold nothing. I felt guilty I hadn’t done enough. Maybe the watercolors, decorated muffins, or fresh lemonade would have been better.

When he was having a late afternoon snack, I dashed out and put down $20 and threw all 10 rocks into Jim Flamson’s garden. Colbyn returned to his wares but immediately rushed back in. He was excited to have made a big sale and proclaimed, “I’m going to paint 20 now.”

That quickly got to be expensive. I had to confess to him who had a monopoly on his art.

It’s been over 20 years of child-rearing, I’m still wavering on how much is too much.

Colin MacPhail is a wine consultant and writer who lives in Calistoga.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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“IT’S ABOUT FLIGHT ITSELF” Napa winery owner reaches new heights in an unconventional aircraft K AT Y H AU T E It’s a bird, it’s a plane…

Wait, what is that flying overhead?

That’s exactly what St. Helena residents Amy Ellingson and Mark Blaustone wondered last spring when they stepped out of their front door on Adams Street. They heard a faint buzzing sound overhead and looked skyward.

As they searched the sky for a flying machine she began to feel like she was witnessing something magical. “It was like the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ when the Wicked Witch is on her broom or ‘ET,’ when the bike is flying,” said Ellingson. “It was a little bit of fun and intrigue.”

“We could hear it before we could see it,” she explained.

There was a sense of wonder, “what is that? What is he doing?”

Although they couldn’t immediately identify the flying object, they recalled that a friend had recently flown in a 12 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Henry Boger

Bart O’Brien in his flying machine. TOP OF PAGE: Half Dome from the air. Submitted photo.

gyrocopter. In fact, it was the very same gyrocopter, piloted

by Napa winery owner Bart O’Brien.

“It was very thrilling to watch. We had just moved into the house and it was so cool—things happen here. It was a good omen.”

“I wanted him to land, but

of course he couldn’t.”

O’Brien usually takes off and lands at Napa County Airport, about five miles south of Napa. But as his wife Barb recalls, he did make one unexpected landing about three years ago. “ T h e Na p a R e g i s t e r ran a photo of Bart in his

single-seater off of 29 north of Imola,” she said.

According to Bart, the gyrocopter’s reserve fuel tank wouldn’t open so he had to make an emergency landing, which drew the attention of local law enforcement officers and the press.

O’Brien started with a one-person gyrocopter and explored the Napa Valley.

He was eager to fly under the Golden Gate Bridge; once he accomplished that milestone he decided he wanted to share the experience with other brave souls and bought a two person gyrocopter.

With the help of a GoPro, he started documenting his trips.

In order to explore more diverse geological and geographical locations he recently purchased a trailer large enough to set up camp in other locations.

What does it take to pilot a gyrocopter? Gumption?

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Fearlessness?

Colton Ludwig, a self-admitted thrill seeker, enjoys rollercoasters, has parasailed in Thailand and zip-lined in San Francisco and other spots. He joined O’Brien because it was such a unique opportunity.

“It was a chance to do something that most people don’t have the opportunity to do,” Ludwig explained.

“It was amazing being able to see the city from a different perspective.” said Ludwig, who grew up in Pacifica and has lived in San Francisco for many years.

Highlights of their roughly one our excursion included flying over Salesforce Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and getting to see the Bay, he said.

With two people in the gyrocopter, O’Brien isn’t going to beat any speed records, but he has reached a top speed of about 86.3 mph and a height of 14,500 feet (almost three miles) over Mammoth Mountain.

Spas in Stock!

The world speed record in a gyrocopter is held by Ken Wallis, who at age 89 piloted his craft at 129.1 mph, which also made him the oldest pilot to set a world record according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale or World Air Sports Federation.

O’Brien first started flying the gyrocopter when he turned 60 but his first experience flying a small aircraft was when he was 28 and bought a used ultralight aircraft in Florida Fresh out of graduate school, O’Brien had just three possessions when he moved west to be a sales person for a high-tech start-up — one of which was the ultralight.

A 2013 article in the Register tells the story of how O’Brien literally “sold it all” and left the tech world to pursue the dream of starting O’Brien Estate more than 20 years ago.

It was actually the dream that Barb O’brien shared on

her third date with her future husband. “She said I dream of owning land in Napa someday, Bart recalls.

Initially, he chose a large 100-acre lot on east side of Napa. But Barb’s dream was more specific, she meant that she was hoping to own a winery not just a vineyard.

So, in 2000 they bought the land where they are today, in the Oak Knoll District.

“It took 10 years to get the business running at a profit,” O’Brien says.

Wine country residents and visitors are familiar with the poetic nature of wines, Robert Louis Stevenson, an accomplished novelist coined the phrase “wine is bottled poetry” over 100 years ago. Poetry is intertwined with the ever expanding portfolio of wines at O’Brien Estate.

His entrepreneurial spirit takes a backseat when he waxes poetic about the wines they

create and market with a romantic niche. Many of their bottles contain a poem on the back label written by Bart and Barb to tell the story of a deepening relationship between two lovers.

One of their wines, a Cabernet Sauvignon called “Passion of the Soul” describes a deep connection that is mirrored in the depth of the wine. “You are the one I want to become one with, to intermingle our footsteps on the sands of time Will you join with me?”

In addition to his role at the winery, O’Brien passionate about his role on the board of BioIncept, a biotech company pursuing an innovative approach to treating immunity disorders, transplant rejection and other inflammatory diseases.

“Life should be about exploration and trying to do all of the things that you could possibly do while you can do them,” he explains.

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INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 13

Safety in an autogyro Autogyros are similar to helicopters in some ways but different in others: Autogyros usually need a runway to take off.

Autogyros are capable of landing with a very short or zero ground roll.

Passengers do not need a parachute but are required to have a life vest when traveling over water.

Each autogyro has a specific height-velocity diagram for safest operation, although the dangerous area is usually smaller than for helicopters, according to a 2013 study by Greg Gremminger.

A certificated autogyro must meet mandated stability and control criteria; in the USA set forth in FAA regulations Part 27: Airworthiness Standards: Normal Category Rotorcraft. The U.S. FAA issues a Standard Airworthiness Certificate to qualified autogyros.

While some people dream of climbing Mt. Everest, O’Brien has had other goals.

“I have always thought that flying would be a wonderful dream to accomplish … to me it’s a universal dream that mankind has had for thousands of years; since man looked up at a bird and said I wonder what that is like,” he said.

He recalled reading a Popular Mechanics article when he was 11 years old and learned about gyrocopters that planted a seed in his mind. “They are a unique way to achieve a certain type of flying, it’s called low and slow flying.”

Flying slowly, close to the ground transforms the experience he says; “It isn’t about transportation it’s about flight itself.”

Of course there are challenges related to flying experimental aircraft. Bart realized early on that the obvious challenge is staying in the air; some aviation experts call helicopters “rocks with rotating wings.”

“If you’re going to do something dangerous, try to do it safely,” says O’Brien paraphrasing another aviation witticism, “There are no old bold pilots.”

O’Brien believes the problem with ultralights are 14 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Register file photo‌

Napa County winery owner Bart O’Brien was forced to make an emergency landing in a field along northbound Highway 29 near The Meadows on Aug. 27 2018. He said the secondary fuel tank on his gyrocopter failed to open. He was not injured.

Submitted photo‌

two-fold. “One you don’t have to have training to fly them and the second is the design rules are based on weight, not safety: they can only weigh 252 pounds (so they are fairly flimsy, in his opinion).”

“I thought safety should be the design goal not weight.”

O’Brien was mostly frustrated with his experience owning an ultralight. The ultralight had pontoons, which enabled him to fly it off of water. After one very minimal training session, he was towed behind a boat with no communication with the boat driver.

“Suddenly I am off the water and I realize I don’t know how to get back down,” he recalled.

He started experimenting with the controls and entered into a cycle called pilot induced oscillations; “this is how people get killed,” O’Brien said.

“I went through about three or four of those gyrations until I finally figured out how to land it on the water. This was all in four or five minutes,” he

explained.

After landing, his friend asked why he landed with the wind.

“I was so happy to just be on the water alive that I thought landing in the wind was a minor issue, I wasn’t concerned with the wind,” O’Brien recalled.

He realized that he had to make a decision. “I had to decide if I was ever going to fly it again.”

So he forced himself to take off and fly again, even though his leg was shaking.

After moving with his ultralight to the Bay Area, O’Brien got associated with a group who all had strange flying machines.

His took about an hour to put together and had nearly a 28-foot wingspan.

“It had so many little parts to it, I had a feeling that if any of these little parts failed, I would fall to the ground and die.

He realized people did die regularly doing the very same thing.

Eventually, his luck did

change. But fortunately for O’Brien the aircraft was on the ground when it self-destructed in wind. He had left it tied down at the beach at San Pablo because he didn’t know about the powerful winds in the East Bay. During late summer afternoons “30-40 mph winds get sucked up toward the Napa Valley through the Golden Gate Bridge” says O’Brien. “Which makes it a great sailing area.”

“When I got the call that may plane was wrecked, I wasn’t sad. I knew I was doing something stupid but I wasn’t smart enough to stop it,” he explained.

“After I wrecked my first one I said to myself I will fly again when I have the time and money to get trained and buy a safer aircraft; something you need a license to fly.”

Thirty years later O’Brien finally had the time to pursue his passion for flying.

He did 20 hours of training to receive his sport pilot license and logged 100 hours on his Monarch one-seater gyrocopter.

Since buying the larger twoseater, he has logged 160 more hours.

After learning that O’Brien had a two-seater, Calistogan Scotti Stark was eager to go up in the gyrocopter. He’s seen a lot of the valley through the lens of his drone, but with his feet still firmly planted on the ground.

“We did a loop over the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge which was the highlight.

It doesn’t seem legal,” exclaimed Stark.

“It was the coolest thing I’ve done in a year,” he said.

It seems that the opportunity to do something so unique offsets the theoretical risks. Ellingson says her gut reaction is that it looks fun and she’d happily go up in a gyrocopter.

To view some of O’Brien’s gyrocopter footage, shot with a go pro camera mounted on his helmet, follow Bart O’Brien on youtube.

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Ophelia, the educational ambassador opossum for Napa Wildlife Rescue. Ophelia was injured in a cat attack so severely that she cannot be returned to the wild, so the rescue enlisted her to help educate the public on the sweet and helpful nature of the fearsome-looking opossum.

Submitted photo

PLAYING POSSUM Despite their fearsome appearance, opossums are gentle and help the environment

‌W

atching an opossum shuffle through your yard can send a shudder down your spine. With their long hairless tails, sharp teeth, and beady eyes, opossums are just, well, creepy.

But they don’t deserve the reputation we’ve given them, according to Janice Taylor, a longtime volunteer with Napa Wildlife Rescue. Taylor has been donating her time and expertise for over a decade to help save and defend these misunderstood marsupials.

Yes, that’s right. Opossums are marsupials—not related in any way to rats, although that’s often the comparison 16 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

I S A B E L L E S C H M A LT Z people make.

While their cute Australian cousins, like the kangaroo and koala, get all the love, opossums have been quietly benefiting the environment as nature’s “clean-up crew,” as Taylor likes to say.

Opossums eat a lot of creatures most people don’t want to come across, like cockroaches, rattlesnakes, ticks, and almost any type of roadkill (opossums are immune to most snake venom, and they do not develop Lyme disease).

Humans needn’t be afraid of opossums, she said. They’ll hiss, growl, and lunge (if threatened), but Taylor said most opossums are big fakers.

“ They’re not violent,” she said.

“They’re not going to chase you down.”

NAPA WILDLIFE RESCUE Opossums are just one of a multitude of wild species served by Napa Wildlife Rescue.

In 2020, the rescue organization helped more than 15,000 injured or orphaned animals, according to Napa Wildlife Rescue President John Comisky.

Normally, the rescue center helps about 12,000 animals per year, Comisky said.

The dramatic increase last year was due to helping another rescue organization that received an influx after a wildfire.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Napa Wildlife Rescue is the only organization in Napa County permitted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to care for wildlife. It is illegal in California to keep any wildlife as a pet.

Taylor, who’s lived in Napa since 1984, started volunteering at Napa Wildlife about 22 years ago after reading an article in the Napa Valley Register about the work happening at the songbird clinic.

“Since I had experience hand-rearing baby parrots as a hobby, I felt I was well-suited to help out. The clinic was in a small travel trailer and had a pop-up tent where cages were placed during the days for older birds,” Taylor said.

“I quickly fell in love with the work and the mission to help injured, sick, and orphaned birds in order to get them back into the wild.”

Since its inception nearly 30 years ago, Napa Wildlife’s work has mostly been conducted in backyards, garages, an RV—anywhere that was “free and available,” Comisky said.

During the past 10 years, the organization was able to operate on space leased (at no cost) from Napa County.

Last year, the rescue organization finally purchased a permanent home near Cuttings Wharf thanks to a generous donor (who wishes to remain anonymous).

Many of the animals taken i n by Na p a Wi l d l i f e a re injured due to direct or indirect human activity.

Taylor said most of these animals and birds are hit by cars, caught by dogs or cats (cats kill 1.4 to 3.4 billion birds each year in the U.S.), caught in rat traps or ingest rat poison, or captured in sticky traps.

During the spring and s u m m e r, b a by b i rd s a n d squirrels are often orphaned or injured by tree trimming, she said.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Napa Wildlife Rescue For questions about wildlife, or to report an injured or orphaned wild animal, contact Napa Wildlife Rescue at (707) 224-4295. The organization’s HAWK line can be reached every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

To learn more about volunteering, contact the wildlife manager at wildlifeadmin@napawildliferescue.org.

Submitted photo‌

Janice Taylor and educational ambassador opossum Ophelia.

Sometimes, well-meaning citizens bring in a baby animal or bird who isn’t actually in need.

“Fledgling birds are often on the ground, still being fed and encouraged by their parents while learning to fly and mistaken for orphaned or injured,” Taylor said.

Napa Wildlife treats animals that have sustained fractures, lacerations, puncture wounds, neurologic injuries, head trauma, dehydration, and shock. They also treat wildlife suffering from parasites, infections and starvation.

The majority of sick or injured wildlife is rehabbed at the Wildlife rescue clinic by volunteers and a few staff.

Some species require specialized care or frequent feedings and are cared for in trained vo l u n t e e r s’ h o m e s . Na p a Wildlife has volunteers who specialize in treating hummingbirds, quail, squirrels, rabbits, baby raccoons, baby skunks, fawns, and, of couse, opossums.

Taylor said helping a bird or animal get released back into the wild is an “incredibly rewarding experience.”

“Wildlife keeps nature in balance and has a vital role

To request an education event for a community group or school, email Napa Wildlife Rescue at education@napawildliferescue.org.

in our world,” Taylor said. “I want my grandchildren and the children for generations to come to experience the same wonder of wildlife as I am able to do.”

“EXTREMELY REWARDING,” DESPITE LOSING SLEEP Taylor is part of the team who takes care of the opossums. She has been rehabbing baby opossums for about 11 years.

“I have always been fascinated with marsupials, and when the opportunity to rehab them became available, I jumped at the chance,” she said.

She received specialized training through WildCare in San Rafael. That first year, she helped 15 baby opossums.

By 2018, Taylor helped 107 baby opossums survive and get released back into the wild.

Baby opossums need very specialized care. They are born after only 18 days gestation and crawl as near-embryos into the mothers’ pouch, Taylor explained. The babies then attach to a teat that swells to fill their mouth. They are

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INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 17

receives from students are: How many teeth do opossums have?

Answer: 50. Opossums have more teeth than any land mammal to help them bite through the bones of dead animals they scavenge and eat.

Where do they sleep?

Answer: Some use their tails and opposable thumbs to climb and sleep in trees. Some will sleep under a porch.

Opossums are nocturnal.

Janice Taylor and Ophelia discuss opossums with some visitors.

stuck on and receive slow continuous milk, she said.

Baby opossums do not suckle like other mammals and can’t be bottle fed, Taylor said. When they are orphaned, they require a species-specific formula through a soft tube passed from their mouth into their stomach, Taylor said.

Depending on how underdeveloped they are, feedings are typically every three to four hours until they are old enough to lap out of a dish.

Most baby opossums who become orphans are found in their mother’s pouch, Taylor said. Oftentimes, the mother was hit by a car, and as many as 12 babies can be in the pouch at one time.

The babies have to be kept in an environment similar to the mom’s pouch, which requires an incubator with specific settings, Taylor said.

Most baby opossums spend about two months rehabbing at Taylor’s home before they can be released into the wild.

“Despite the sleep deprivation, I find it to be extremely rewarding to be able to save these tiny babies,” Taylor said.

While opossums have become her specialty, Taylor likes to help Napa Wildlife Rescue wherever she is needed. Sometimes, that means helping restrain a bird of prey or assisting with rabies-vector animals (she stays up-to-date on her rabies vaccinations).

“Ever since I was a small child, I have loved wildlife,” Taylor said. “I remember 18 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Submitted photo‌

having great fun attempting to spot wildlife on family vacations and trying to help injured birds that were found in our yard.”

OPHELIA Napa Wildlife Rescue typically has two active ambassador animals that make appearances at schools and public events: a red tail hawk named Maddie and Ophelia, a female Virginia opossum.

“I am Ophelia’s caregiver and love this part of my volunteer work,” Taylor said.

Ophelia was brought to Napa Wildlife Rescue after suffering a severe neck injury from a cat attack. The attack left her with permanent nerve damage, and she can no longer climb or use her paws properly.

Because of the extent of her injuries, the only options were euthanasia or to get Ophelia permitted as an animal education ambassador.

Through Napa Wildlife Rescue’s education program, Taylor and Ophelia help teach schoolchildren and inform the public about their wild neighbors, as well as what to do if they find an injured or orphaned bird or animal.

“We have wild neighbors, and we need to find ways to peacefully coexist with them,” Taylor said.

While education events were postponed during the pandemic, Taylor hopes they will be able to resume classroom visits sometime soon.

The most frequent questions Taylor

Why do they “play dead?”

Answer: This is a defense mechanism that they have no conscious control over.

It’s an involuntary neurologic response like when a human faints. An opossum will appear dead and smell dead (thanks to a smelly fluid secreted from a gland at the base of their tail). The predator is not interested in an already dead animal and gives up and leaves. The opossum then wakes up 30 minutes or up to four hours later.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED Napa Wildlife Rescue is staffed almost entirely by volunteers, and extra volunteers are always welcome, Taylor said.

Many volunteers work a four-hour shift once per week, especially during the busy songbird season from April to September. Volunteers also work with mammals and raptors.

“We need volunteers for field rescue, transport, reuniting, clerical work, home rehab, and fundraising,” Taylor said.

People who don’t have time to volunteer can still do plenty on their own to help local wildlife.

Taylor advises people to keep cats indoors, put stickers on windows to prevent bird strikes, trim trees in the fall and winter, and avoid using poisons, sticky traps, and unenclosed snap traps.

It’s also wise to not feed pets outside, and to keep trash cans tightly sealed, she said. Pet food or any discarded/rotten food can attract opossums and other wildlife.

To help save orphaned opossums, Taylor said to check the pouch of mother opossums hit by cars.

“If it is safe to do so, stop and see if the opossum is still alive or if there are living babies in the pouch,” Taylor said.

“If there are, pick up the mom and babies and call Napa Wildlife Rescue, so we have a chance at saving them.”

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Napa City Council member Liz Alessio Favorite hike? Skyline Wilderness Park Camping or skiing? I grew up camping as a kid and have wonderful memories, but now I prefer a nice hotel with a comfortable bed, shower and bathroom.

Favorite cookie to eat? You can’t beat chocolate chip, but I’m also a fan of peanut butter cookies.

Favorite cookie to bake? Again, you can’t beat chocolate chip cookie! I started baking as a kid using up the sugar, butter and flour in the house to perfect the oversized chocolatey gooey chocolate chip cookie. I passed this down to my three kids, who each claim their cookie best!

Why politics? This is a great question. It was never my original plan, but overtime starting with volunteering at my kids schools and sports then into the community for the American Cancer Society, for our deployed troops and veterans, feeding the hungry at The Table, advocating for improved homeless solutions and working with public health, I saw our community become more disenfranchised, more vulnerable, even with our dedicated non-profits, hardworking elected officials and the generosity of many residents. I wanted someone to bridge the gap between population health and city policy and planning. As I was looking for someone I could support to run for Napa City Council but unexpectedly the question was turned on me to run. Once that seed was planted and the support was there from our former Mayor Ed Henderson and then current Mayor Jill Techel, along with others I deeply respected, I took the leap of faith and followed my heart.

Why history? My parents were very influential here. They both served on the board and volunteered for the Napa County Historical Society since the early 1980s. My dad was a local historian and loved to share the history of George C. Yount in the first person. I was immersed in the love and fascination for Napa Valley history though I admit it has only been the last few years I’ve really started to study it for myself. The more I learn, the more I want to know. It is a treasure trove.

Guilty pleasure? Watching movies, which includes buttered popcorn, peanut M&Ms and licorice (black preferred).

How did you start on veteran/military issues? Life can take you down some unexpected paths that really tug at your heart strings. This is one of them. In 2008, I started a new position at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Community Outreach as their Community Benefit Coordinator. I was approached by two Queen employees who had a quick and very successful donation drive the winter before for one of their sons, who was then deployed to Iraq during the war. This was the first time I met someone who had a son at war, he was 19 years old, and the first time I heard our deployed men and women needed basic items and often felt alone and forgotten. I immediately jumped in to help and expanded the program into the community from local businesses to local schools. It’s been my honor to be involved ever since. I didn’t know when I started that my older son, Steven, would enlist a few years later in the Marine Corps, be deployed three times and be a recipient of our care packages. This program developed into a 501 C 3 non-profit and is appropriately named “Operation: With LOVE from HOME.” We are currently preparing for a donation drive to support 500 summer care packages.

20 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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hen it comes to the property at 600 Alta Mesa Place in Napa, the word “rare” is the one most often repeated.

Known as the Hanwell Hill Estate, the private, gated property sits on several hundred acres – 239 to be precise — and features some six hiking trails, said listing agent Jill Levy of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty.

“It’s really a spectacular property,” she said.

Offered at about $9.5 million, this estate offers views of San Francisco Bay and Mt. Tamalpais.

“It’s on over a couple hundred acres, and it’s like five minutes to town, but it feels like you’re a hundred miles from everything, and that’s extremely rare,” Levy said. “I think it’s a perfect synergy of old world European architecture and modern American décor/lifestyle and that’s also rare. It looks like something you’d see in Western Europe but the inside is modern American and that combination is rare and desirable.”

The house, built in 2009, features six bedrooms, seven full and two partial bathrooms sprawling over more than 8,600 square feet. It has an outdoor pool, four fireplaces and a fourcar garage. It features a gourmet kitchen, oversized closets, two family rooms, a wine cellar and movie theater The property also comes with an extensive history, according to information obtained from the Napa County Historical Society by way of the seller, Levy said.

“The property was originally part of the Rancho Yajome (or Llajome), which was originally granted to Damaso Antonio Rodriguez in 1841,” according to the historical society and provided by the seller. “By 1846 Rodriguez had died and by 1853, Salvador Vallejo and taken over the land grant and built one of the three adobes on this land grant, where the Longwood Ranch is today.”

By 1869 (or as early as 1865, according to some sources), General John F. Miller began buying parcels of land in Napa on Rancho Yajome, the material says.

“The grand house is thought to have been constructed by 1870,” it says. According to the 1876 map of Napa County, the land is in the name of Mary C. Miller — Miller’s wife — and

Submitted photo‌s

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 23

she has more than 700 acres in her name in addition to the just over 175 acres in her husband’s name.

John Miller died in March of 1886, at age 55, and by 1895, all the land is in Mary Miller’s name, as it was left to her and their daughter Eudora Miller Clover, according to the historical documents.

“By 1915, all the land is owned by Eudora, who sold it to Mrs. Vesta Peak Maswell in 1932,” according to the material. “She owned the property until 1953, after which point, the land where the country club is today was bought by the Silverado Land Company.”

What happened to the Alta Mesa Place property after that is not immediately known, it says.

What is known is that the property now displays that “rare” fusion of the best modern conveniences with old world charm and style, Levy said.

“The master suite feels very resort-like; comfortable, with its own fireplace and lovely bath, and courtyard, with stunning views,” she said. “There’s a really cool iron gate when you enter, with a tunnel-like area and the courtyard has a fireplace before you enter the house, which is very rare. It also has its own movie theater and attached casita, which is also really cool.”

24 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

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Keep on dancing Academy of Danse improvises to meet pandemic challenges

Submitted photo‌s

I S A B E L L E S C H M A LT Z ‌Napa’s Academy of Danse entered uncharted territory last year when it was forced to shut down for three months and cancel the annual recital.

Never in its 27-year existence had the school missed a recital or closed for more than two weeks. The previous two-week shutdown occurred when the dance school, located on Jordan Lane, flooded in 2005.

Now, the Academy of Danse — along with many other fortunate businesses in Napa — is emerging from the other side of the pandemic, relatively unscathed, thanks to creative thinking and the support of local families.

“The biggest challenge was being completely shut down for 12 weeks and needing to figure out how to continue with classes through videos and Zoom,” owner/director DeeAnn Valine said.

Staying connected to students was 26 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

crucial, she said.

“The kids need something positive in their world and something to look forward to besides sitting at home in front of a screen,” Valine said.

The Academy of Danse was forced to close on March 13. By early April, the school was conducting classes online.

“We discounted our tuition for April, May and June by 25 percent and were very flexible with payments from those families who lost their jobs or were furloughed,” Valine said.

Good news came in June, when the dance school was allowed to reopen on the 10th with several safety protocols in place.

The chance for a June recital, however, was off the table.

But Valine held out hope, and the recital was eventually rescheduled as an outdoor event in August.

“When we were not able to hold it, I never gave up,” Valine said. “I’m very proud of the fact that we held a summer showcase outdoors on Aug. 29.”

Students and parents were thrilled to still have a recital, even with modifications, she said.

“The dancers and their families were so excited to be able to perform,” Valine said.

“Seeing the joy on their faces made it all worth it!”

Lisa Ernst’s daughter, Alyssa, is a senior in high school, and this is her last year at the Academy of Danse. Alyssa is enrolled in nearly every type of dance the studio offers: jazz, tap, hip-hop, and ballet. She’s also been a member of the competition team for about five years.

Ernst said her daughter will perform in at least 20 or so dances out of the 50 scheduled for the recital.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

“We look forward to the recital all year long,” Ernst said.

Ernst, who is a kindergarten teacher, said school closures and the shutdown of extra-curricular activities created a spike in anxiety among children, particularly older kids and teens.

“It was a huge deficit for them — to not have that to latch onto even in quarantine,” she said.

When the Academy of Danse reopened in June, Ernst did not hesitate to have her daughter return to the school.

“I knew it was something she absolutely needed,” Ernst said.

Valine said she noticed an improvement in students’ moods once dance classes resumed in-person. The kids were “very happy” to be around their dance friends again, she said.

“I noticed that our middle school and high school students had the hardest time with the pandemic,” Valine said. “I feel that dance brought them more joy than ever and more appreciation for being able to do it.”

To keep students safe, the Academy of Danse has closed its lobby to all parents and siblings, closed the dressing room, administers temperature checks before entry, and

requires masks at all times. Hand sanitizer is used before and after class, and surfaces throughout the space are sanitized several times per day.

Valine said the studios keep central air flow on constantly, and windows and doors remain open with fans on.

Studio floors are clearly marked to keep everyone six feet apart, she said. All of these safety measures have helped keep the Academy of Danse open since last June. “It worked out really well,” Ernst said.

The current dance school year began on Sept. 8, 2020. Enrollment started off low, but has slowly picked up since October/

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INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 27

November, Valine said.

From April through August last year, the Academy of Danse suffered about a 40 percent decline in students, Valine said.

In December, the school faced another setback when Napa, like most counties throughout the state, entered the state’s more restrictive Purple Tier of pandemic limitations. But, instead of closing, the Academy of Danse was able to move classes outdoors.

“We are fortunate enough to have a large parking lot where we coned off a section, set up lights and sound, and persevered,” Valine said.

Thankfully, the weather cooperated (most of the time), she said, and rainy days were rare.

“The kids were just thrilled to be dancing and didn’t seem to mind being outside in the cold most days,” Valine said.

In January and February, enrollment numbers continued to climb — just in time to prepare all the students for the 2021 recital scheduled for June 26-27.

At the time of this writing, the Academy of Danse was still waiting to confirm the location of this year’s recital. It may be held in the District Auditorium or outdoors at a private property.

Ernst is hopeful she can invite extended family to the recital, or that the show will be live-streamed if attendance is capped.

No matter what restrictions may be in place, Ernst said she was grateful for Alyssa to have a performance to look forward to in 2021.

“I’m just glad the kids have been given the opportunity to keep on dancing.”

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SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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SUPPORTING OLDER ADULTS Experts offer advice for helping seniors get past the pandemic JESSICA ZIMMER ‌Being present for older adults in 2021 requires forethought and an understanding of how the pandemic has changed many aspects of daily life. Many older adults are emerging from a long period of isolation.

Yet they remain concerned about their safety, as well as the safety of loved ones.

When all parties are vaccinated, a hug goes a long way.

“When possible, physical touch is very much appreciated. Messages of love, that you, a family member, or grandchildren are all right, especially because of the way you were raised, are helpful,” said Dr. Doug Wilson, medical director for the palliative

Megan Dozler, counselor, music therapist, and founder of Core3 Harmony & Wellness Services, LLC in Napa, in 2021 Melissa Novotny‌

Submitted photo‌

Kalaya Jones (right), a Mentis Teen Council participant in The Meadows program, “Music for Memory,” visits with an older adult in the memory care unit at The Meadows of Napa Valley in January 2020.

30 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

care service at Queen of the Valley Medical Center and a family physician at OLE Health.

Wilson suggested limiting the amount of time spent on “COVID talk.”

“Older adults especially may have lost friends and family members to the illness. Talking about the pandemic may cause them anxiety. It could also bring up other stressful topics, like politics. If older adults bring up COVID or another topic that you find difficult, it’s OK to distract and move the conversation to another topic,” said Wilson.

Wilson said many people have loved ones who express ideas their children and grandchildren may find challenging.

“Just like some of our elders had to deal with ancestors who would express support for slavery or other violence, we have an opportunity to find ways to express love and affection for elders who may share perspectives we find deeply problematic,” said Wilson.

Wilson said visitors to an older adult’s home or care facility should focus on positive things that “touch their emotions or souls.”

“Talking about the arts or anything they did in their lives that will live on as a legacy is great. These things are reassuring. Remember that as the body ages, people are no longer able to do the things they once did.

They want to connect to the part of themselves that is youthful,” said Wilson.

Naomi Dreskin-Anderson, a Napa-based attorney who focuses on elder law issues, said it is a good time to try to minimize family disputes, like arguments over inheritance.

“Older adults have been more isolated during the pandemic. Adult children haven’t been as able to visit. I am seeing adult children expressing more anxiety about people taking advantage of their parents.

They’re looking for ways to take more control over their parents’ lives. This results in stress for SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Dr. Doug Wilson‌

Dr. Doug Wilson, a specialist in hospice and palliative care, and medical director of Queen of the Valley Medical Center, in December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

everyone,” said Dreskin-Anderson.

Dreskin-Anderson advises gradually lengthening visits after all parties have been vaccinated.

“Family counseling and mediation can be helpful too,” said Dreskin-Anderson.

Dreskin-Anderson is a Napa Board of Supervisors’ appointee to the Napa County Commission on Aging and co-chair of the Healthy Aging Population Initiative (HAPI). HAPI represents the concerns of elders with Live Healthy Napa County, a public-private partnership to improve the health of all Napa County residents.

Dreskin-Anderson said the Napa County Commission on Aging has advocated for funding activities for older adults through the pandemic. The Commission has focused on meeting needs regarding meal programs, community outreach programs, virtual events, and “telephone reassurance,” calls to increase interaction and fight isolation.

“One of the issues we’re

still addressing is the digital divide, the concerns the older population has with accessing technology. We’re also working to increase the amount of supportive housing in Napa County. Our goal is to help people remain where they live.

This allows them to age comfortably in place,” said Dreskin-Anderson.

Megan Dozler, a Napa-based music therapist and founder of Core3 Harmony & Wellness Services, LLC, advocates encouraging older adults to engage in communal interactions like tai chi, exercise, and live drumming. She said these activities relieve stress related to the pandemic.

Dozler acknowledged adults in their 70s and beyond come from a generation in which events and socialization were held in groups.

“Think about how dances were organized, often around live music. People also enjoyed listening to music together around a record player or through a radio program.

Establishing a sense of connection helps older people thrive,” said Dozler.

Dozler said she is easing concern about group activities by offering short classes with fewer people “This helps everyone feel safe and get back into normal routines and activities. Having a real person there is important, as many older adults dislike watching videos. I ask for signups to see who’s interested,” said Dozler.

Dozler said it takes an effort even for professionals to draw older adults out of their rooms.

“Before vaccines were available, staff required residents of assisted living facilities to stay in their own rooms or within a limited area. Even if teachers were allowed to come, residents lacked motivation to engage.

Residents are hesitant to go back to what they were doing before the pandemic. During this slow transition back to group interaction, many facilities require self-screening healthcare checks prior to conducting groups.

We’re looking at new activities to re-energize them,” said Dozler.

Rob Weiss, executive director of Mentis, Napa’s oldest non-profit and a provider of mental health services throughout Napa Valley, is drawing on the lessons learned through Healthy Minds, Healthy Aging.

This comprehensive program, which has been in existence for over 10 years, supports adults over 60.

“Our approach is to intervene early. That reduces the need for more intensive intervention later on. Right now we’re providing short-term therapy and mental health case management over Zoom and by telephone,” said Weiss.

Weiss said Healthy Minds, Healthy Aging, like all of Mentis Napa’s programs, offers bilingual services in English and Spanish. Weiss said the pandemic posed significant challenges for outreach.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 31

Briana Marie Photography‌

Thelma Taylor (back left), Rob Weiss, executive director of Mentis (back right) and Teen Council members Samira Flores (front left) and Kalaya Jones (front left) talk in February 2021.

“When lockdown happened last spring, a lot of people backed off from phone appointments. More have come back, gradually. Another thing that’s helped is offering services to caregivers of older adults. They can get burned out. We offer programs to support them too,” said Weiss.

Young adults can be part of a larger solution. In April 2021, Mentis Napa launched a new pilot program called Bridging the Years. The program connects older adults at Rohlff ’s Manor in Napa with teens from Napa Valley College and five Napa County high schools, American Canyon High, Napa High, Vintage High, New Tech High, and Justin Siena High.

The teens, who are between the ages of 15 and 19, call their older adult conversational partner once a week for six weeks.

Both the teens and older adults have relationship coaches supporting their interactions.

“Our program invigorates and energizes older adults while grounding and centering teenagers. Long-term plans include county-wide expansion and in-person multigenerational activities, when it’s safe again to do so,” said Jeni Olsen, prevention director of Mentis Napa.

The teens participating in Bridging the Years are all members of the Mentis Teen Council, a diverse youth leadership group that empowers teens to care for themselves, others and the community.

Samira Flores, 18 and a senior at Vintage High School, said her advice for interacting with older adults is being patient and having a positive attitude.

“They can sense if you don’t give a conversation your full energy. I recommend communicating through music, smiles, and body language,” said Flores.

Flores said the pandemic has made 32 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Briana Marie Photography‌

Thelma Taylor (left), Araceli Cantera (center) and Ximena Alvarez Parra (right) talk in February 2021. Taylor, Cantera, and Alvarez Parra are participants in the intergenerational Mentis program, Bridging the Years.

Melissa Novotny‌

Samira Flores (left) and Kalaya Jones (second from right), Mentis Teen Council participants in The Meadows program, “Music for Memory,” visit with older adults at The Meadows of Napa Valley in January 2020.

everyone extremely lonely.

“In my first call, both me and the older adult I called started rambling. We were so excited. One thing I learned is the pandemic has helped us understand each other.

My conversation partner talked to me about school and staying home, what I was going through. They had empathy for me,” said Flores.

Kalaya Jones, 18 and a senior at Napa High School, is also the vice president of Teens Connect, a Mentis youth wellness and prevention program. Teen Connect that supports mental health and wellness among teens in Napa County. Jones said she suggests accepting each individual as their own person.

“You want to go at a pace that is comfortable for them. My thought is to approach this in a gentle and kind manner.

I will reassure them that I’m there for them.

I’ll explain that I might not fully understand what they’re going through but I’m willing to listen,” said Jones.

Jones added she has learned more about encouraging self expression by working with Teens Connect to hold “virtual wellness cafés” for local middle school and high school students during school hours.

“Doing a little bit for mental wellness every day ends up benefiting everyone so much. I look forward to having conversations where we both say, “OK. We will get through this,” ” said Jones.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

53

“You have the right to have your vehicle repaired at the facility of your choice.”

California Dept. of Insurance Bill of Rights 2695.85

Art where it matters Two of Kristina Young’s projects to beautify Napa JESSICA ZIMMER Napa artist Kristina Young is using our natural environment and familiar landmarks to bring art to the community.

“All of these art projects are meant to bring unexpected joy to the audience.

These are pieces that allow the viewer to say, “That’s my home. This art connects me and makes me feel a part of Napa,”” said Young.

Her current projects include a mosaic of classic cars for the south side of Hanlees Chrysler at 473 Soscol Avenue; an interactive sculpture for the Soscol Square 34 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

development at 333 Soscol Avenue, to be built by 2022; the Napa Quake Mosaic, a community-built project commemorating the 2014 Napa earthquake, which will be sited in downtown Napa; and a group of nature-themed artwork and wayfinding pieces for Heritage House and Valle Verde.

Young said the Hanlees mosaic will feature a female driver in a 1950s Chrysler, motoring by a parade of Chrysler models dating between the 1920s and 1970s. The background will showcase several black and

white Belted Holstein cows in green pastures. Far beyond will be blue peaks similar to the Mayacamas Mountains.

The Heritage House-Valle Verde complexes will contain a variety of natural landscapes from the valley floor, featuring native Napa flora and fauna such as oak trees and local wildflowers. Large pieces may encompass murals in common spaces such as lobbies and hallways. Small pieces will include markers to denote different floors of the complexes as well as a unique tile featuring SPRING/SUMMER 2021

an animal or plant by each resident’s door.

“Those signifiers will let residents know which is their unit,” said Young.

The Heritage House-Valle Verde complexes, which will be built at 3700 Valle Verde Drive, will become a connected development that will offer affordable housing for families on one side. There will be permanent supportive housing for individuals who formerly experienced homelessness on the other.

Young, who served as the executive director for Arts Council Napa Valley from 2011 to 2016, said the Heritage HouseValle Verde complexes will be on the 2.9 acre site that is formerly housed Sunrise Assisted Living. That facility closed in 2004.

Burbank Housing, the developer for the Heritage House-Valle Verde complexes, will also manage these complexes after construction.

Young said a local production crew will be hired to assist with the creation of pieces for Heritage House and Valle Verde. She is excited that the Peter A. & Vernice H. Gasser Foundation, the developer with which she is working, is doing things “the optimal way.”

“The Gasser Foundation has made art an integral part of these projects from the beginning. They understand art should not be a random sculpture “plopped” down anywhere. Cass Walker and Joe Peatman are working with me to make sure the artwork fits with the buildings and tells a story for local residents,” said Young.

Young said the COVID-19 pandemic has caused multiple types of delays for both projects. It has taken time to get permits from the city as well as figure out what materials will be needed.

“Right now we’re picking up where we left off in spring 2020. We are moving forward as permits are approved,” said Young.

How developers work with artists Joe Peatman, trustee of the Peter A. and Vernice H. Gasser Foundation, said the members of the Foundation care about these local projects.

“We want the artwork to reflect what is going on with the buildings today. Everyone at the Gasser Foundation is into art.

We like seeing art on the projects we build, especially pieces that are attractive, lasting, and colorful,” said Peatman.

The Gasser Foundation, the developer behind the South Napa Marketplace and South Napa Century Center, is required SPRING/SUMMER 2021

by Napa’s Public Art Ordinance to either install public art on the site of its developments or pay the same amount as an in-lieu fee into the city of Napa’s Art Fund. The art constructed must be equal in value to 1 percent of the construction costs of the development project.

“You have the option of paying a fee to accomplish this or working with an artist to install the art yourself. We always want to work with the artist to create art that’s pleasing to the eye and lifts spirits,” said Peatman.

Cass Walker, housing consultant for the Gasser Foundation, said Young was a top pick from the beginning.

“We knew Kristina from her prior art

projects. She really brings an understanding of the community. Kristina also knows how to work within a budget. We started talking with her in 2018 about the design process and concepts for the art pieces,” said Walker.

Walker said the Gasser Foundation will begin to renovate the Heritage House-Valle Verde complex by January 2022. The artwork will be installed at a later point, after the buildings are completed.

The Chrysler mural will likely be installed starting in fall 2021. Young said the city of Napa approved the final mosaic design in mid April 2021.

Architects and robots are involved The Chrysler mosaic can move forward first because the dealership has been completed and is now open.

Young said robots will assist with creating the artwork for the 960 square foot wall space.

“I am partnering with a mosaic LEFT: A mockup of the mosaic Napa artist plans to install on the side of the Chrysler dealership Soscol Avenue.

Kristina Young‌

Israel Valencia‌

Napa artist Kristina Young stands in front of the wall of the Chrysler dealership on Soscol Avenue. This wall will be the location of a mosaic celebrating classic cars made between 1920 and 1980.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 35

A rendering of a lobby that artist Kristina Young is designing for the Heritage House complex in Napa.

Israel Valencia‌

Details of trees, which Napa artist Kristina Young plans to include in the welcome mural for the Valle Verde housing complex.

Kristina Young and Gunkel Architecture‌

company in Boston called Artaic. They will be fabricating it there using robotic technology they invented and then shipping it here for installation,” said Young.

Young said she created the design for the mosaic after doing a great deal of historical research.

“I love old cars. They’re beautiful to look at. I picked cars from all different eras and looked at photos of them from all angles,” said Young.

Young also spent time with her friend’s classic pink 1950s Plymouth.

“I went to go see it at her house and took pictures of it from behind the car. That’s how I perfected the dashboard and the perspective of the woman sitting in the driver’s seat,” said Young.

The Heritage House and Valle Verde artwork required a move away from machinery.

“Since the site is close to Salvador Creek, a tributary of the Napa River, I went to the area and looked at the terrain, the plants, and the animals,” said Young.

Young then used her sketches to create more detailed drawings for murals and tiles.

“I decided to place imagery on the first floor that will relate to the ground and the animals and plants that live there. The middle floor will relate to larger mammals, and the top floor will relate to birds and flying insects, like butterflies,” said Young.

In addition, Young talked about designs and colors to Jenna Bolyarde, who is a housing program manager at Abode Services as well as advocate for individuals experiencing homelessness. Abode Services is a nonprofit that operates the South Napa Shelter and the South Napa Day Center.

Bolyande recommended that blues and greens be used, which have a calming effect.

Bright or bold colors, such as red and black should be avoided. In addition, Bolyarde suggested the artwork contains representational imagery, which is more realistic, 36 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Israel Valencia‌

Napa artist Kristina Young photographs a leaf-covered stream to help her create murals and wayfinding pieces for the Heritage House-Valle Verde housing complexes.

rather than abstract images.

Brianne Steinhauser, principal at Gunkel Architecture in Emeryville, is the architect for the Heritage House and Valle Verde complexes. Steinhauser said she is still talking with Young about how the art can unify components of the site.

“We are working to avoid having different kinds of art juxtaposing each other. It won’t be the best to have starkly modern art in one area and very traditional art in another,” said Steinhauser.

Steinhauser said she and Young are also working on creating art that lasts.

“This art won’t be temporary until the next renovation. We mean for it to be there for years,” said Steinhauser.

Steinhauser said this is why it is unlikely that there will be a large mosaic in the complexes.

“A large mosaic needs a frame, backing, and waterproofing. Whatever art we create, we want to bring it inside. We’re considering direct paint on a canvas or a wall.

We are thinking about smaller mosaics to help people find their way around the complexes,” said Steinhauser.

Jocelyn Lin, senior project manager at Burbank Housing, said the smaller signs and tiles will help to tie different elements of the buildings together.

Israel Valencia‌

Napa artist Kristina Young’s sketch of the south end of the Napa River, which she may recreate in a mural or wayfinding piece for the Heritage House complex.

“The environment Kristina plans to create is thoughtful and soothing. We see it as one that will resonate with the themes of recovery and hope,” said Lin. Young, who also keeps a working studio and makes her own art, said in the early stages of the pandemic, it was frustrating to put two large projects on hold.

“Yet over the course of the year, I have developed patience. I have come up with new solutions to move both pieces forward,” said Young.

Steinhauser said she is not surprised that Young is taking creative steps with the projects. She added working with Young has taught her more about Napa and communities in the city.

“What she’s done with the Heritage House-Valle Verde site in particular is brainstorm with me, allowing the ideas we come up with to grow and fully develop. We can see there’s excitement from the city and Napa residents. I hope to collaborate with her reignite interest when we are done,” said Steinhauser.

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FOOD TRUCKS OF NAPA VALLEY

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Kevin Simonson has kept his Crossroad Chicken mobile and catering events business going for 10 years.

Crossroad Chicken

just wants to do it right A N D Y W I LC OX awil c ox@na pa news . com‌ ‌Kevin Simonson, when asked why he ran a-fowl of food truck trends with his Crossroad Chicken mobile catering and events business, said he’s just trying to give people what they want.

“Most people eat chicken,” he said, “and there’s a lot to play with word-wise.

That’s why I went with the name Crossroad Chicken.”

He calls his $1 coupons “coop-ons, because you get a buck off,” he said, repeating it with “off” in falsetto like a chicken.

Simonson doesn’t get cute with food from his 10-year-old business, though.

What you’re eating: According to the 38 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

truck’s website, crossroadchix.com, fare includes a chicken mozzarella sandwich and lemon-basil aioli and organic baby arugula, wood-smoked chicken pizza with pickled red onion and jack cheese, a spicy BLT pizza with spicy jalapeno bacon and oven-dried tomatoes, and a beet salad.

The sandwiches are $10.

“I want to make delicious food that’s not pretentious, and I try to stick to as much local stuff as I can,” he said. “I’ve been using all compostable everything from Day 1, too.”

When and where: After shutting down for four months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Simonson was set to open back up

April 29 and 30 on Soscol Avenue at Pearl Street.

“I like that spot,” he said. “It’s visible and there’s lots of parking. I’ll be doing a couple of pizzas, a sandwich and a salad. I’ll keep it uncomplicated for whoever comes up, not a bunch of reduction sauces and all that. People don’t want that off a truck. But my aioli is unctuous.”

How business is going: Simonson stuck to catering over the winter.

“With the restrictions being lifted and everybody being more comfortable going out in public and the weather getting nicer, I’m going to get back out there,” he said. “I’m getting some catering requests now, too, because if you think about it, having a food truck come and feed your people, that’s about the safest thing going.

Everything is all boxed up and we hand it out to you. It’s a pared down menu because, with the array I do, it’s a lot of work, on the truck. It’s a lot more than I really should. I make my own bread and all the sauces, and it takes a lot of time.”

Who is making your food: Simonson did the interview for this story while on the road, of course, driving up to the mountains to both attend his brother’s wedding and forage for morel mushrooms, a hobby.

“People are really weird about mushrooms, so they’re for my personal use,” he said.

Simonson’s friendly, relaxed personality probably wins him repeat customers, too, even if he’s generous to a fault.

“I’m getting better about not giving away the farm,” he said, “but I like people to be happy and satisfied. When I do my catering, people don’t go away hungry. I’m probably under-pricing, but $10 is tough to go above for a sandwich — even in Napa Valley, even though do all the compostable stuff and go to farmer’s markets to get produce. It costs more, but I feel good about it. I’ve always used Mary’s Chicken from Sanger, even though it’s three times as much.”

What drives him: Simonson always falls back on why he got into food in the first place.

“If you go to any small town in France or Italy, you’re gonna have this tiny place with a guy in the back who’s passionate about what he does. He’s not doing it to be a three-Michelin-star place and all of that. He’s doing it because he wants to do it right. In this country, food is not part of our culture. In Europe, food is part of your life, not just sustenance and survival.”

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THE ROADS LESS TRAVELED Wine Country Road Rally takes drivers deep into the heart of Northern California JESS LANDER ‌When I arrived at the 8:15 AM driver’s meeting for Day 2 of the second-annual Napa Valley 750, the first Wine Country Road Rally hosted by St. Helena’s Harvest Inn, hotel principal owner and rally founder Rick Kaufman was already smoking his first cigar of the day.

I bee-lined for the coffee station, dressed in multiple layers in anticipation of an April day where temperatures were set to rise into the mid-70s and was relieved to see a group of women taking Dramamine ahead of the day’s drive. We were set to cover roughly 180 miles through Napa, Yolo, and Lake counties. Knowing that there were some particularly windy roads on this route, I had made a point to pick up the anti-nausea meds the day before. I was glad to know that even those who do these types of events every year still needed a little help.

While directional and safety guidance was given at the driver’s meeting, it was mostly lighthearted and full of wisecracks. For example, Kaufman reiterated that the drivers should 40 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Author Jess Lander on the road.

Jess Lander‌ Allan Rosenberg‌

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

make sure they have gas, as filling stations would be few and far between.

“I had a burrito last night.

We’re g o o d ! ” o n e d r i ve r quipped, rewarded with laughter from the group.

Then to conclude the meeting, safety chief Fred Vietch reminded the drivers to “be nice to your nag-igator,” referring to the wives riding in the passenger seat. I was pleased to see that at least a few of them took their turn at the wheel for part of the day.

Kaufman had offered me a ridealong and gave me a choice between his yellow 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 or a 2016 Morgan 3-Wheeler. I chose the Morgan and while this might not have been the most popular choice, I’m a sucker for an open-top having grown up riding in, and eventually driving, my mother’s Mustang convertible. I’d also never ridden in a three-wheeled car before and wasn’t sure when

­

Alan Rosenberg‌

else I’d get the chance.

So the Morgan it was.

BEAUTY AND PAIN We took off south down Highway 29 headed toward Atlas Peak, our line of roughly 20 classic and new cars (all perfectly buffed), creating quite the cacophony of roaring engines in St. Helena. After taking a

right on the Silverado Trail from Skellenger — Kaufman’s favorite piece of road in all of Napa Valley — my hat suddenly flew right off. Slightly embarrassed that I didn’t secure it better, I was ready to leave it, but Kaufman pulled over, spun the car around, and rescued my cap without even getting out of the car. That’s how low to the

ground a Morgan is; you can literally touch the pavement from where you’re sitting.

Once on CA-128, I began to brace myself for the oncoming fire devastation that I knew lay ahead on the drive out to Winters. Having just lost my house in October to the Glass Fire, I found it oddly comforting to be with Kaufman, who, unfortunately, joined the same club in 2017. We bonded over our sad, shared experience and the sickly smell that hangs around a burn zone for months, a smell that’s now permanently imprinted to our olfactory memories and now acts as a trigger to our past trauma.

As expected, the still-blackened hills from last fall’s LNU Complex Fire were both shocking and painful to pass through, but several drivers told me later that it was “impactful” and that they were grateful to have seen it, the beauty and the pain sidling up next to each other.

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INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 41

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I couldn’t help but agree. Too many tourists come to Napa Valley and beyond the “Thank you first responder” signs, never see with their eyes what this special place has managed to survive over the last several years.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED It wasn’t long before we crossed into Yolo County, the landscape changing from vineyards and rolling hills to rural farmland dotted by cows, sheep, and American flags; the stench of manure traceable on occasion, but never overpowering. It’s an utterly bucolic part of Northern California, untouched by strip malls and big wineries, that few visitors venture to. I can tell that Kaufman loves getting to expose his fellow rallyers to these parts, like a tour guide that knows the best off-the-beaten-path haunts or hidden gems.

Well out of cell service range, the drivers pulled off CA-16 into the Cowboy Camp parking lot for a rest stop and pastries.

Among the group of ralliers was David Donner and his wife Meredith Donner.

A race car driver (his father raced at Daytona), Donner is also a seven-time winner of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado, a race that climbs 4,720 feet over 12 miles.

Donner said he’s been doing road rallies since 1989, a hobby he started with his dad. At last year’s Napa Valley 750, he was plagued with quite a few mechanical problems, but the memory is still a fond one because several other drivers stayed up to help him, working through the night.

“Ninety percent of why we do this is for the camaraderie,” he said.

Driving another Morgan was Aaron Hagar — yes, the son of Sammy Hagar — and a longtime friend of Kaufman’s, 42 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Alan Rosenberg‌

who had his 19-year-old son in the passenger seat. Solo driver Steve Rogers had the fastest car of the group, a 2018 Ferrari 488. “A Ferrari is like being chained to the back of the ‘Game of Thrones’ dragon,” he told me.

Rogers doesn’t consider himself as “serious of a car guy” as many of the other participants, labeling his fascination a midlife crisis. He’s also a third-generation San Franciscan who’s been to Napa over a hundred times, but he likes that the road rally offers a new perspective. “The roads we’re driving, I’m seeing sides of the valley that I’ve never seen,” he said.

Listening to each driver’s story of how they got into collecting cars and driving in rallies across the country — Kaufman’s father was a race track doctor — reminded me a lot of the stories I often come across writing about the wine industry. They’re all vastly different and often unexpected, just like how I arrived in Napa on a whim from Boston a decade ago to cover high school sports for the local paper.

The Finish Line After a half-hour or so — and now several layers of jackets removed — the cars piled back out on the road to make their way towards Lake County. It was on this final stretch that our speed and my adrenaline peaked as we hovered around 95 mph.

Kaufman puffed on cigars our whole ride, but the smell is actually a nostalgic one for me, taking me back to beach walks with my dad growing up, wind in my hair, just like when riding in the Morgan. I finally decided I’d join in as we re-entered Napa County in Pope Valley. It seemed like the missing piece to experiencing the rally in earnest.

Of course lighting a cigar while driving top-down at high speeds is a challenge, but Kaufman had a trick, taking it from me and simply dragging it along the pavement to get it smoking.

I like Kaufman’s candidness and honesty and as the miles left on my ridealong were winding down, I asked him why he started the road rally in the first place.

He admitted that the rally seemed like a great way to book some rooms at the hotel during an off-peak month and that it’s a great excuse to drive cars with some of friends, but his biggest motivator is that it’s a fun way to raise some serious funds for a good cause. The event benefits the St. Helena Hospital Foundation; last year, they raised over $10,000, but this year, that number jumped to $90,000 as they added in nightly auctions at dinner.

Back on the Silverado Trail, we pulled into Tench Vineyards in Oakville for lunch (elevated barbecue and cabernet), which would conclude my ridealong. I wasn’t even the one driving, and yet I returned home positively exhausted, unable to imagine how these drivers could manage this for four straight days, covering 750 miles of Northern California terrain and communing at gourmet lunches and dinners alongside primo wines each day in between.

They say road rallying isn’t a sport, but I think it deserves consideration for its emphasis on endurance.

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Elayna Trucker

Buchli Station Road

E L AY N A T RU C K E R

Some of the area’s most beautiful spots are just steps away The height to which my parents’ eyebrows raised when I told them my next article for Inside Napa Valley would feature several hikes in the area should tell you something about my history with hiking. I love nature, but I’m more likely to sit and stare at it for a while than to go out of my way to walk around in it. My parents gave up on forcing me to hike long, long ago.

But finding ourselves over a year into a deadly international pandemic has inspired some of us to try new things, anything, to pass the hours we cannot spend at museums, or restaurants, or concerts.

Napa is undeniably one of the most beautiful locales in the world, yet perhaps we who live here find ourselves jaded to its leafy charms. You’ve seen one vineyard, 44 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Napa River Ecological Reserve

you’ve seen them all. Even in our little county, though, there is so much more natural diversity and beauty, and so much you

Elayna Trucker

can learn, just by stepping a bit outside your comfort zone. So that’s what I did. Over the last couple of months I walked several SPRING/SUMMER 2021

trails in very different parts of Napa, and feel that my eyes have been opened to more of what this charming bit of planet Earth has to offer.

Starting at my northernmost hike, the newly – mostly – reopened Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve, usually a loop, now offers two very different hikes. Hugging the southeastern edge of Lake Berryessa, very close to the county line, this area suffered massive damage from the LNU Lightning Complex fire and just reopened in mid-February. Though open to the public, the canyon is also a research area for UC Davis, and one can still see some plant identification plaques on parts of the trail, though the plants are often rather crispy. After walking through a cement spillway (I highly recommend the echoes), you can head left for a gentle creekside walk, or right for a more vigorous climb with significant elevation.

This less-experienced hiker opted for the creek, about a two and a half mile round trip.

This is a fascinating traipse through the burn scar, and I found myself heartened by the signs of growth all around me. Grasses, wildflowers, and vines have popped up, and the hillsides opposite the trail feature

Newell Open Space Preserve

Elayna Trucker‌

growing patches of bright orange flowers.

The creek, dry at the start, eventually begins to bubble cheerfully down to the left. The trail is clear, but there are dead trees and bushes lining it and all around. It’s a rocky walk with some steep uphill portions, though they don’t last long. I only wish I had seen it before the fire so I could compare its current landscape to what it looked like before.

Continuing south, the Rector Reservoir Wildlife Area Trail is the most difficult trail I hiked, but also the most stunning.

You park at the edge of the Silverado Trail opposite Paraduxx winery and immediately embark on a vertiginous uphill climb through meadow dotted with dainty wildflowers. Unless you’re quite fit, you’ll probably need to stop several times along the way up, as I did. Luckily, any shame at ones’ lack of cardiovascular endurance is quickly mitigated by the expansion of views west, north, and south across the valley as the geography unravels before ones’ eyes.

Once I made my way up to the ridgeline, I traveled north along it. The breeze is strong and the trail is quite rocky, so it’s a bit of a shame you can’t take your eyes off the trail for too long to enjoy the incredible views. It took about an hour and a half to reach the rocky pinnacle, from which one might see San Francisco on a clear day and marvel at the breathtaking view of nearly all of Napa Valley. Walking this trail in February and March means you’re treated to a delightful checkerboard of mustard yellow and verdant green grass. One could certainly continue north, though the trail at this point seems to be less of a path and more of a suggestion of a way forward.

Heading back down, one has Rector Reservoir, which is itself not accessible to

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Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve Elayna Trucker‌

Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve

hikers, on the right, and some lovely high meadows with pillowy waves of grass and wildflowers. That uphill climb at the beginning becomes a test of ones’ knees and ankles at the end; the dustiness of the trail makes for careful, slow going. This is definitely a jaunt for experienced hikers and should not be attempted on very hot days. Be sure to bring plenty of water.

On the opposite end of the difficulty spectrum is the Napa River Ecological Reserve at Trancas Crossing. At less than a mile in total length, fully paved and completely flat (especially if one utilizes the handicap parking spaces just across the little entrance bridge), this is a wonderful option for walkers with less mobility or parents teaching their kids to ride a bike. One can also learn much about the riparian ecology that is being restored in the area, and about the early history of Napa.

Tranca means “beam” or “crossing bar” in Spanish, and the park is now at what was once a popular crossing point for Salvador Creek, hence “Trancas” Street. The path meanders through lush meadow greenery with raptors soaring overhead and small paths down to the river that shoot off from the main trail.

To extend your walk, cross Trancas and Old Soscol to join the River Walk for an extra mile of creekside walking.

Heading south into Carneros, the best bird watching I found was on the Buchli Station Road Trail, a nearly five mile loop through marshland one reaches from Cuttings Wharf and Los Amigas. Bird watchers will want to stay on the paved straightaway: I was treated to an entrancing arial show of small birds, grey on their backs and silver on 46 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Rector Reservoir

Elayna Trucker‌

their undersides, swooping with great delicacy and the subtle sound of whispering wings like a sudden shower of rain on a still pond.

Hikers seeking more of a work out can choose to walk the entire loop, though I found it hard to pay much attention to the beautiful scenery on one leg of the trail because I had to dodge an awful lot of bird droppings.

Swans, graceful and boat-like, paddle about the marsh, and sandpipers scurry along the shallow shorelines. Another leg of the hike is mostly overgrown with a very narrow pathway; passing oncoming bikers proved a bit difficult, but doable. The slightly saline scent of the march pervades the air on a persistent breeze, and the water laps at the shore pleasantly. Mt. Tamalpais to the west and Mt. Diablo to the east are both clearly visible.

My final hike introduced me to the Newell Open Space Preserve in American Canyon,

Elyana Trucker‌

at the crux of Newell Drive and Donaldson Way. Donated by the Newell Family in 1999, the Preserve’s loop trail links up with the Lynch Canyon trails in Solano County, or you can stick to the loop and are rewarded with a unique view of Mt. Tam west across Richardson Bay. The loop itself is about three miles long; hikers looking for more of a challenge should head right at the fork onto the South Loop, a longer uphill trail than the North Loop to the left. Much of the area is pastureland for some very handsome dark brown cows, and I also came across a few turkeys. This is rattlesnake country though, so keep a watchful eye out. I didn’t see any on my hike, but did see three other kinds of snake who quickly slithered off the path when they felt me bearing down on them.

The trail is wide and mostly flat with not many rocks, making this a good trail for beginner mountain bikers and kids, or hikers with sensitive knees. There are two cement picnic tables where the North and South Loop break off, though no restrooms as the sign says there are. The North Loop takes you through a strand of eucalyptus, and you’re suddenly surrounded by birdsong. Stop walking for a moment; just listen, and notice the smile start to grow on your face.

These are just a few of the many trails and wildlife areas our small county has to offer.

There are several more I intend to explore in the coming months before the heat of summer, and I encourage you to do so as well. I highly recommend the Napa County Regional Park & Open Space District website (napaoutdoors.org) for a very helpful interactive map with more information about these trails and so many more. Happy hiking, Napans.

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LOVEtoLETTER the Napa Valley TIM CARL ‌T he phrase “the Napa Valley” holds a kind of magic. I first learned this when I moved to Italy in 1985 at age 19. I had been hired to work on a small farm near Parma as ditch-digger /stall-mucker in the mornings and kitchen help in the afternoons. When I mentioned where I came from to my new boss — a grizzled farmer with leathery hands and curious, twinkling eyes — broke out into a friendly grin that appeared full of interest, intrigue and familiarity.

Later I would come to understand that he wasn’t the only one who had a visceral reaction to those three small words. They often conjure up a romanticized appreciation for country living, a reverence for good food and wine, and a belief that a tiny rural enclave can represent some of the best America has to offer.

I grew up in the valley and always found comfort in being nestled between two nearly pristine mountain ranges, surrounded by gnarled old vineyards

and mesmerized by the recurring patterns of living in an agricultural community — the distinct light, sights, sounds and aromas of spring, summer, fall and winter.

Later in life, as I studied, moved, traveled, worked and explored the world, I came to rely on my origins as a sort of shorthand to help signify a collection of shifting ideals to nearly anyone I’d meet. Sometimes my intentions at such moments were to signal my love of wine, food and the beauty of agriculture. However, as I aged and grew more entrenched in the world of business my use of the magic phrase shifted, and I often used it as a stand-in for petty competition, sussing out who might have come from the “better” place.

I had unconsciously started to use the Napa Valley as a means to “equal” those whom I thought might be smarter, wealthier or “higher class,” or provide me leverage with those whom I deemed coming from a lesser place.

It was an awful transition. Not only had I forsaken the place where I’d grown up as a means of separation and superficial smugness, I’d also started to lose my memory of why I had loved the valley in the first place. My memories of peaceful vineyard strolls in the evenings or the sweet sound of a lone goose honking mournfully on frosty spring mornings faded.

In contrast, my wife had also grown up in the Napa Valley, but I’d never heard her use where she came from as leverage. She rarely mentioned growing up on a vineyard in the tiny village of Rutherford, only sharing such information with those she’d come to know deeply, perhaps months or years after their first meeting.

At first I didn’t recognize this difference between us, but as time went on I grew increasingly aware. Eventually I came to realize that I had transformed the one thing I had loved longer and more deeply than nearly anything else in my life — the Napa Valley — into

Tim Carl LLC‌photos

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 49

Tim Carl LLC‌photos

a trivial and often transparent way to shield my insecurities. It had become inseparable from my ever-changing definition of the meaning of my life.

When I was a child I believed my meaning came from being “good.” I would thrill when my parents praised me or anyone older than 50 called me a “good boy.” Their praise seemed heaven-sent, and the Napa Valley symbolized that idealized place.

By the time I was a teenager my meaning became linked to whether I was accepted by my peers and I spent a lot of time and effort — sometimes at great harm to my future self — achieving that goal. The Napa Valley, with all its wealth and pockets of growing opulence, provided an entity against which to rally, solidifying the connection with my peers. We sensed that unfairness and racial injustice were the very scaffolding that had produced and maintained the valley, and we came to mistrust and see as corrupt any who accepted or benefited from the status quo.

In my 20s my view of meaning shifted to whether I was respected, and I’d lash out when I felt even a modest or unintentional slight. At that time I used the Napa Valley as both my punching bag and my security blanket.

By my 30s meaning had shifted into whether I was being appreciated for all the work and sacrifices I’d done for others.

I often imagined myself a sort of martyr, 50 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

forgoing my own desires for the greater good of my family and friends — albeit a little grudgingly — and always keeping a kind of score card or tally sheet in my mind.

During this time I began to feel the first twinges of defensiveness about the Napa Valley. The area was being under-appreciated and exploited by selfish individuals who had come to see it as the goose that laid golden eggs. They thought that if they just squeezed a bit harder or force-fed the animal a bit more they could get more and more, even if the process killed the fowl for anyone else in the future.

In my 40s meaning shifted again and centered around whether I was being heard.

A growing helplessness haunted me and was echoed by what I saw as a growing disregard for the valley’s natural resources, an oversupply of mono-agriculture businesses, the growing plight of working people and a deliberate deafness and active opposition to any voice that might dare to provide another perspective.

Now in my 50s meaning seems to have shifted again, and it seems to me for the better. No longer does my purpose seem tightly linked to something from the outside — being good, accepted, respected, appreciated or heard. Instead, I now see meaning being merged with my own ability to listen deeply — to hear and see what is going on, both inside and outside. This

change is altering how I interact with the world as well as how I view the valley and even myself.

When I listen and observe closely I often come away with a host of questions, a curiosity coupled with an unfamiliar sense of peace. In this experience, the Napa Valley has taken on another role in my life. I no longer want much from this beautiful spot on the planet, unless you count my pleasure at documenting through photos and words what I am witnessing.

Or, as Kahlil Gibran wrote in one stanza of his wonderful poem, “On Love”: But if in your fear you would seek only/ love’s peace and love’s pleasure,/Then it is better for you that you cover/your nakedness and pass out of love’s/threshing-floor,/Into the seasonless/ world where you/shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,/and weep, but not all of your tears.

I’ve come to believe that such knowledge was the origin of the sparkle in my Italian boss’s eyes and also a factor in my wife’s reluctance to immediately share where she comes from with strangers. Maybe her pause is because she treasures and reveres this small valley in a manner I am only just now coming to understand. It’s not a grasping, wringing and selfish love but instead a quiet, gentle and patient love, open to observation as an honest witness yet not seeking much in return.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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Birds of

mystery Tim Carl LLC

C

TIM CARL

rows and their larger cousins, ravens, have played an important role in nearly every culture’s mythology and religions and often with odd and sinister twists.

What is it about these birds that has made them so central a character to so many cultural stories throughout history? Is it because of their singular shiny, purple-black color? Perhaps it’s their less-than-songlike caws and croaks. Or maybe it’s because of their watchfulness that seems full of curiosity yet somehow remains detached and unsympathetic.

Whatever the reason, humans have had a complex fascination with crows and ravens since written records began.

In the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” written centuries before the Bible and one of the oldest texts on record, there is a story in which the world is devastated by a flood sent by the gods. A man named Utnapishtim is given instructions 52 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

to build a ship and fill it with animals so as to survive. When the deluge stops Utnapishtim sends out a crow in search of land, but the bird never returns to the vessel, implying it had found dry land.

In the Bible itself a raven is the first animal mentioned by name (Genesis 8:7) when Noah sends one from the ark, also in search of land. This one, too, never returns. Ravens are also listed as an “unclean” animal (like pigs) in Leviticus (11:15). In the Quran a raven teaches Cain how to bury Abel, the brother he has murdered.

Dozens of Native American tribes have creation stories that include a prominent role for crows and ravens — often depicting them as both bringers of light but also portraying them as troublemakers: selfish, conniving and perpetually famished. Hinduism views crows as bringing omens, and the practice of offering them food (little balls of grain called pinda) during the Śrāddha holiday remains common.

ravens because of the widely held belief that if the birds depart the Yatagarasu is a raven from British crown will fall.

Japanese mythology that was sent to earth as a heavenly guide for A FEW WORDS ABOUT kings. In China, hearing the crow THE BIRD’S BIOLOGY caw during negotiations is considThe American crow (Corvus ered a bad omen. brachyrhynchos) and the comThe Greeks saw ravens as mon raven (Corvus corax) are linked to Apollo — the god of both members of Corvidae, or light, healing, disease and proph- the family of birds that includes ecy. Vikings believed crows were crows, ravens, jays and tropical synonymous with bloodshed and birds of paradise. Corvus is Latin battle. In Norse mythology two for raven. ravens, Huginn (thought) and Both crows and ravens are Muninn (memory), flew over the large birds, although ravens are earth each day and then shared larger — about the size of a redtheir findings every evening with tailed hawk, nearly twice the size Odin, the ancient king of the of crows. Both are considered Vikings and their gods. extremely intelligent. One study The reverence for crows and conducted by Oxford University ravens is not just found in history. scientists in 2018 reported that Even today in England there is a crows are able to construct comravenmaster at the Tower of Lon- plex tools from up to four difdon who cares for the resident ferent components so that they SPRING/SUMMER 2021

can obtain food otherwise out of reach. Such a feat has previously only been witnessed in humans and great apes.

The normal life span for crows and ravens is 10 to 15 years, although captive animals have lived to be more than 50 years old. Captive-raised ravens can imitate people’s voices as well as parrots and can often be heard in nature imitating other wildlife.

Ravens and crows are omnivores, eating carrion, small animals, birds, insects, maggots, grain, nuts and dung. Ravens occasionally hide food in caches, sometimes burying it by using tools such as sticks. They might even construct empty caches to fool other ravens. Walk down any quiet street in the fall and you might witness large black birds dropping walnuts from the sky onto the hard asphalt.

The “crack” of the nut allows access to the tender meat inside, but it often also seems a way for them to make passersby jump in surprise.

Beyond the size difference, crows have pointy beaks and fanlike tails, whereas the beaks of the ravens are thicker and slightly curved, and the middle feathers of the ravens’ tails are longer, giving them a distinct “V” shape in flight. Crows caw but ravens croak. Crows fly in groups, and ravens are mostly solo or in pairs. Crows flap their wings to fly whereas ravens soar on thermal upswells.

A NOTE ABOUT ANTHROPOMORPHISM Anthropomorphism attributes human traits, emotions or intentions to non-human entities. We often talk about animals in human terms, as in “My dog is happy” or “That kitten looks lonely.”

When I was training to become a biologist, it was drilled into us from undergraduate classes to advanced-graduate seminars that to remain SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Tim Carl LLC‌photos

Card #32 from “Urania’s Mirror; or, a View of the Heavens” is a set of 32 astronomical star chart cards, first published in November 1824, that depicts various constellations, including the Raven (Corvus).

depressed, bored and the like — to our nonhuman brethren.

objective it was important to avoid any trace of anthropomorphism. The rationale is that there is no scientific method to find out exactly how a non-human organism feels or thinks. We only know how it is constructed or how it reacts to stimuli.

Although I still believe it’s a challenge to determine how a nonhuman animal feels and thinks, I am now convinced that that’s more to do with our scientific limitations rather than a hard line between the reality of humans and nonhumans.

This change in thinking is not limited to me. Much of the scientific community has softened its stand on attributing human characteristics — happy, sad,

LOOKING SKYWARD Anything that has consumed as much human interest and intrigue as have crows and ravens must also have a prominent place in the night sky.

The constellation Corvus is located primarily in the Southern Hemisphere but is visible in our Northern Hemisphere from January until May. It is a small constellation, ranking 70th in size among the 88 constellations, and it is one of nine that depict birds. The four brightest stars in this constellation form a square known as Spica’s Spanker because two of the stars point the way to Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo.

Corvus is one of the 48 constellations identified by the astronomer Ptolemy in the second century, but it was known by the Babylonians 2,000 years earlier. They saw it as a raven,

too, and it was sacred to Adad, their god of rain and storms.

According to the book “Catasterismi” (a prose retelling of the mythic origins of stars and constellations from the third century BCE), the ancient Greeks believed the Corvus constellation was created by Apollo, who had sent a crow to fetch water.

Instead, the bird wasted time eating figs and returned late and full of excuses. Apollo punished the crow by throwing it into the heavens and condemning it to eternal thirst — hence the bird’s hoarse call.

Small though it is, the Corvus constellation offers more than just ancient stories. It also contains interesting deep-sky objects that include the Antennae and Ringtail galaxies. Each the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, these two have collided with one another, and the violence of their impact has contorted their shapes, throwing off plumes of gas that appear to some like insect antennae when INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 53

A captive Hawaiian crow carries a stick tool to a wooden log where food is hidden in drilled holes.

The crows have been observed to modify their tools by shortening, and even to manufacture tools from raw plant materials.

Ken Bohn San Diego Zoo Global

viewed by the world’s most powerful telescopes. To me they look more like two birds entwined in a dance.

THE POETRY OF CROW Attributing anthropomorphic characteristics to crows and ravens has deep roots in the human story. Storytellers and poets have long attributed these mysterious birds with a cleverness and cunning that often includes mischief, malice or a mordacious slant.

The poet Anne Sexton used the crow to represent the power and ominous fear of death in her poem “Flee on Your Donkey,” written in 1966 about the trials and tribulations of drug addiction and mental illness: “…

Today crows play black-jack on the stethoscope,” she wrote.

Centuries earlier Ovid, in his “Metamorphoses Book II,” told the story of how crow tried to warn raven on the folly and risks of unveiling someone else’s secrets in “The Raven and the Crow.” Alas, raven did not heed crow’s warnings in the Roman poet’s allegory and was eventually shot with an arrow by the very god most associated with the bird — Apollo.

The English poet Ted Hughes referenced the crow so frequently that he titled one collection 54 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

“Crow,” and he is often remembered as the “crow poet.” To help explain the loss and grief over his wife, Sylvia Plath, an American writer and poet who committed suicide in 1963, he referenced the crow as a metaphor for their intense, occasionally violent and abusive six-year relationship.

In Hughes’ poem, “Crow’s First Lesson,” God tries unsuccessfully to teach crow to say love, but every time the crow tries to speak some new pestilence or violence is released instead. At the end of the poem God tries to separate a man and woman who’ve merged into a violent embrace as the crow flies “guiltily off.”

Probably the most famous poem referencing the black bird is “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. Published in 1945, this poem tells the story of a man who has lost his beloved. He begins speaking with a raven whose only response is, “nevermore.” At first the man seems fine with this, but by the end of the poem he has been driven to despair by his grief and the seemingly heartlessness of the bird’s repetitive taunts.

“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting/ On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;/And his eyes have all the seeming

of a demon’s that is dreaming,/ And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;/And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor/Shall be lifted — nevermore!”

The Greek goddess Athena is often said to be the Pallas in Poe’s poem, mainly because Homer referred to the goddess frequently as “Pallas Athena.”

Interpreters have imagined Poe’s Pallas references to conjure up Athena’s propensity for wisdom.

That may be true; however, Pallas is also the Greek name of a mythological goat-skinned giant who fought Athena and her father, Zeus, in the Gigantomachy war. In that battle Pallas the giant was defeated, and his hide was used by Zeus to make the Aegis shield. To make matters more complex with this part of Poe’s poem, another name associated with Pallas is Minerva, a goddess who was killed by Athena in a “friendly” battle because she’d been distracted by Zeus’s Aegis shield.

To my mind, the “…pallid bust of Pallas” referred to in Poe’s poem is not just a beautiful-sounding collection of words but instead an echo of the repetitive raven. A reminder that each moment is a wonderful, fleeting gift as it is experienced, but if we

insist each instance cough up its secret meaning we are left with only frustration and madness.

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS Hundreds — if not thousands — of writers over the millennia have used crows and ravens to try and help explain everything from the origins of life to our helplessness against death. I promise you that if you increase your awareness of these birds during your walks and outings you’ll begin to understand why. Crows and ravens are smart, expressive, aloof and sometimes humorous, and these gorgeous silken black fowl are captivating to watch and ponder.

Perhaps it’s exactly as the English writer Max Porter envisions these birds in his fabulous book published in 2016, “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,” when the crow in his story admits, “What good is a crow to a pack of grieving humans? A huddle. A throb. /A sore. /A plug. /A gape. /A load. /A gap. So, yes. I do eat baby rabbits, plunder nests, swallow filth, cheat death, mock the starving homeless, misdirect, misinform. Oi, stab it! A bloody load of time wasted. But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief.”

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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© 2021 Andrews McMeel Universal www.upuzzles.com

Universal Crossword

Edited by David Steinberg May 28, 2021 Tri-State Area by Orrin Konheim and Brad Wilber

ACROSS 53 Fail to keep 1 Pedometer confidential count 54 Curved 6 Adds to trajectory one’s blog 55 What liniment 11 Vowelless eases order at a deli 58 Far-fetched, 14 In the loop as a tale 15 Label-making 61 Title above giant viscount 16 Close to 65 Vancouver’s the ground province 17 Seoul’s (letters 2-3, landmass 8-9 and (see letters 14-15) 2-3, 10-11 69 Affectedly shy and 14-15 in 70 Sloughs off this answer) 71 Brewer that 20 Athletic award owns Olympia 21 Rowboat 72 Aromasteerers therapist’s 22 Electric ___ workplace (shocking 73 For this swimmers) reason 23 Choose 74 Python 25 Praise may or viper inflate them DOWN 28 Washington 1 Drink served archipelago with sushi with a 2 Deuces Spanish 3 Wyatt of name (letters Dodge City 3-4, 10-11 4 Hunt, in and 12-13) the Whatwild liniment eases 28 Washington archipelago 55 ACROSS 35 UV-shielding Aquatic with a Spanish name 5 58 1 Pedometer count Far-fetched, as a tale expanse 6 Adds to one’s blog initials (letters 3-4, 10-11 and 61 Title above viscount 12-13) 11 Vowelless order at a deli 65 Vancouver’s province 36 Wildlife 6 Bear with 35 UV-shielding initials (letters 2-3, 8-9 and 14 In the loop rescue agcy. a 14-15) hard bed 36 Wildlife rescue agcy.

15 Label-making giant 37 Think37highly 7 69Concluded Think highlyof of Affectedly shy 16 Close to 38 Substitution 8 Karate 38 Substitution for forgotten 70 Sloughs off the ground lyrics for forgotten instructor 71 Brewer that owns 17 Seoul’s landmass (see Olympia lyrics40 Clawfoot ___ 9 Arm muscle, letters 2-3, 10-11 and 42 Way off?

72 Aromatherapist’s 14-15 in this40 answer)Clawfoot ___ informally workplace 43 Kenyaneighbor 20 Athletic award 42 Way 46 off?

10 73Thesaurus For this reason Speak hoarsely 21 Rowboat steerers 43 Kenya suggestion: 74 Python or viper 49 Covert ___ 22 Electric ___ (shocking neighbor Abbr.

50 Denverbackdrop (letters DOWN swimmers) 23 Choose 46 Speak4-5, 6-7 and 12-13) 11 1Sapphire’s Drink served with sushi 53 Fail to keep confidential hoarsely color, often 25 Praise may inflate them 2 Deuces 54 Curved 49 Covert ___trajectory 12 3Dangle Wyatt of Dodgelazily City 50 Denver 13 Start of “Jab56 | INSIDE NAPAbackdrop VALLEY berwocky” (letters 4-5, 18 Still asleep

24 Slumber party attire 26 Fed. management org.

27 Former 28 Wolfgang Puck restaurant 29 Insurer with quack-filled commercials 30 Stop hesitating 31 Tiny Pacific nation 32 Cynthia with a pair of Emmys 33 Faucet troubles 34 Tennis match divisions 35 Disparaging remark 39 Diminutive sock 41 Refuse to allow 44 Easter egg treatment

45 Org. for physicians 47 Bazaar unit 48 Predicted golf score 51 “Yeah, in that case ...”

52 Frosty Marvel mutant 55 Kindergartners learn them 56 Field yield 57 “Howdy!”

59 “Thunderstruck” band 60 Go down in defeat 62 Palindromic disco-era band 63 Game of world domination 64 Not prompt 66 “More or less” 67 Pronoun for a hen 68 Delivery co. with brown vans

Insurer with quack-filled 55 Kindergartners learn PREVIOUS29PUZZLE ANSWER them commercials

4 Hunt, in the wild 5 Aquatic expanse 6 Bear with a hard bed 7 Concluded 8 Karate instructor 9 Arm muscle, informally 10 Thesaurus suggestion: Abbr.

11 Sapphire’s color, often 12 Dangle lazily 13 Start of “Jabberwocky” 18 Still asleep 19 Seedy bagel type 24 Slumber party attire 26 Fed. management org.

27 Former 28 Wolfgang Puck restaurant

30 Stop hesitating 31 Tiny Pacific nation 32 Cynthia with a pair of Emmys 33 Faucet troubles 34 Tennis match divisions 35 Disparaging remark 39 Diminutive sock 41 Refuse to allow 44 Easter egg treatment 45 Org. for physicians 47 Bazaar unit 48 Predicted golf score 51 “Yeah, in that case ...”

52 Frosty Marvel mutant

56 Field yield 57 “Howdy!”

59 “Thunderstruck” band 60 Go down in defeat 62 Palindromic disco-era band 63 Game of world domination 64 Not prompt 66 “More or less” 67 Pronoun for a hen 68 Delivery co. with brown vans

Answers on page 86 SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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Working at home means a big move J I L L WA L L AC E - C O O PE R ‌A Silicon Valley transplant— Bonnie Bows ultimately decided to move from Menlo Park to Napa permanently last July. Once her employer announced no return to the office, she saw no point in remaining in Silicon Valley’s astronomical rental housing market.

Before the pandemic closed offices, making it possible to work remotely from anywhere, Bonnie daydreamed of one day retiring to Napa. The revelation that she could now live in wine country before retirement was life-changing, and she immediately pounced on the opportunity.

Last summer, during the strict shelter in place order in Menlo Park, Bonnie looked forward to joining her friends virtually every Friday for a happy hour DJ set streamed live from their home in Napa.

“The Friday happy hour virtual parties from Napa kept me sane during shelter in place,” she said.

“I was living by myself, separated from my friends and family. ‘Lok Dwn—Get Dwn,’ gave me something to look forward to, a time for friends to be together and break up the monotony of isolation by playing our favorite music.”

The need to be close to her friends evolved from thoughts of renting a home for the summer to buying a home and permanently moving to Napa.

“I drove up to look at a rental on a Saturday, and thought ‘why should I make someone else rich by paying rent?’ Nearly on a whim I contacted a local realtor and saw six properties the same day, and made an offer on Sunday. We closed three weeks later, and here I am.”

Originally from Kansas City, Bonnie moved to San Francisco in 2004 from Washington D.C. to pursue a career in the arts after working as an archivist at The National Gallery of Art Library.

The move to the Bay Area 58 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Submitted photos‌

Bonnie Bows, left, with Kirill Elistratov (aka DJ Kirill) and his daughter Maya Elistratov, 8, during the “Lok Dwn—Get Dwn,” a weekly live DJ stream hosted by DJ Kirill and Devildoll.

coincided with the 2008 recession.

Bonnie opted to use the time of challenging employment opportunities to invest in a graduate degree. She decided to augment her archival work experience with an MA in Library and Information Science from SJSU. Bonnie’s interest in tech, combined with data science, led to studies that expanded her career opportunities.

Bonnie’s specialty area of taxonomy led to positions beyond the traditional archival world into technology companies. Today, she works as a Senior Taxonomist (not “taxidermist,” she clarified) at a social media company.

“I build data classification models, or taxonomies, to

support content understanding for machine learning algorithms,” she explained. “Taxonomies enable classifier models to understand or recognize what content is about, such as an advertisement for shoes, and infer relationships to other concepts, such as content about boots.”

Bonnie is now happily living in East Napa with her three cats; her tabby Juno, and Tybalt and Leo, two Maine Coons adopted from a Napa pet adoption fair.

“I went into the store to buy cat food for Juno and came home with two more cats. They were bonded brothers and I did not have the heart to separate. I am a softie.”

Bonnie enjoys playing her

violin as a creative outlet and taking strolls through the neighborhood.

“I love walking to Oxbow Market, past Tulocay Cemetery, and across the train tracks, catching the evening light. I visit the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings to buy fresh produce for the week.

“I also like having a glass of wine downtown and people watching,” she says. “People in Napa are so glamorous. I love the Napa-style and how everyone dresses up.”

She did not have any doubts about moving to wine country.

“My friend warned me before moving here that living in Napa was not like being a tourist – ‘when you live here, you will not be wine tasting every day,’ he warned me. I said, ‘you wanna bet?’”

Her neighbors have welcomed her with everything from cookies and paintings to homemade tamales.

“I was not used to this level of friendliness. People are so very welcoming and supportive,” she said.

“Every week, I fall in love with Napa more. I will make a discovery or find a new bit of magic.”

Bonnie was thrilled to discover an independent Napa Radio Project KCMU, 103.3 FM, that plays “eclectic and underground music.

I told my friends, ‘did you know about this, that we have an independent, local radio station?’ I sense there are many unique things happening right under the surface here; you only have to look to find them.”

Now that she is an official Napa resident, Bonnie is looking forward to becoming politically active and finding ways to contribute to give back to the community. “Special places like Napa aren’t manufactured,” she said. “They are a reflection of the people who live here. I am very fortunate to have made Napa my home. I cannot imagine living anywhere else in the country.”

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

NAPA NEWCOMERS

“I just kept driving south” J I L L WA L L AC E - C O O PE R ‌Lorri Hart left the Pacific Northwest in search of sun and a fresh start.

Her decision to live in the Bay Area started with a visit to San Francisco at age 18.

Through subsequent moves to Eugene, Portland, Seattle and then Bainbridge Island, Lorri kept her sights set on California. Newly single and an empty-nester, Lorri dropped her youngest off at college in Portland in 20XX, “and just kept driving south.”

Staying with a friend in Benicia while deciding where to settle, Lorri was drawn to Napa.

“One day, I just stopped the car and walked into a vineyard,” she said. “The rolling hills and smell of the earth, the beautiful light and quality of the air. It did something to me. I knew I had to be here.”

A landscape designer since 1993, Lorri moved in the 60 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

direction “as if it’s already happened,” and began to seek out area groups and activities to connect with people. She became certified by ReScape California in local principles, and updated her business name, Clear the Way Landscape Design, to reflect her expanded training by adding the tagline, “a holistic and regenerative approach to your outdoor spaces.”

Never a fan of computer-aided design (CAD), Lorri’s creative process “needs to involve a pencil in my hand” at her drafting table.

Through word-of-mouth her business grew quickly, and today, Lorri’s clients include both homeowners and wineries, including fire rebuilds near Silverado Trail.

“One project usually leads to another,” she says.

Lorri is not only an advocate for her clients, but is passionate about preserving and planting as many trees as possible.

“Mature trees are the most valuable component of most landscapes, particularly our native oaks,” she said. “Hundreds of species of native insects rely on oaks, which support many native bird populations.”

Lorri has plans to find a partner and then build her own “eco-sustainable, modern, pre-fab” family compound in Napa.

“What I love most about the area – everyone has been so warm and welcoming. I love all the great wineries and restaurants. People are happy when they’re here. I’ve definitely found home.”

Jill Wallace-Cooper‌

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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The making of a Napa Valley cookbook Effort to help restaurant workers led to an epic journey JESS LANDER ‌I don’t think I’m alone in that for much of the past year, I felt utterly helpless. It seemed like everyone was struggling to some degree; struggling with work and finances, their health, their mental health, family and childcare, the list goes on.

While my family wasn’t unaffected, I generally felt like we were some of the luckier ones and I desperately wanted to do something, to help some people in some way. But what? Signing petitions, attending protests, making donations, and ordering takeout as often as possible just didn’t feel like enough.

Finally, an idea came last November when I saw a friend post about a cookbook published in Boulder, CO in support of the local restaurant community. We could do something like that in Napa Valley, I thought, and after some Googling, couldn’t find another collection of recipes from Napa Valley restaurants in existence (a friend 62 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Submitted photo‌

BistroDon Giovani’s seared salmon.

Alexander Rubin Photography‌

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

The Essential Napa Valley Cookbook Featuring 35+ recipes from Napa Valley restaurants and top chefs, The Essential Napa Valley Cookbook is available for pre-order at napavalleycookbook.com.

of mine did later send me a copy she had of one, but it was from 1986). Sure, many of our local chefs have their own cookbooks, but they don’t have their recipes published alongside dishes from their Napa neighbors.

Shortly after, I discovered another cookbook project out of New York City called “Serving New York,” which went on to raise over $200,000 for New York restaurant workers. And while Napa Valley isn’t The Big Apple, it is one of the most iconic culinary destinations in the world. Surely, people would want this book at home on their shelves — right? That’s how “The Essential Napa Valley Cookbook” was born.

FINDING A CHARITY PARTNER Before I did anything, I needed to find a legitimate charity that could legally and efficiently handle and distribute the money we planned to raise.

This was a bigger challenge than I expected, for there wasn’t an existing Napa Valley restaurant relief fund and I wasn’t about to start a non-profit on top of publishing the book.

After many emails and phone calls, a friend pointed me in the direction of Chuck Meyer, the owner of Napa Palisades Saloon and First & Franklin Marketplace. Meyer had started a group in the early days of the pandemic called Feed Napa Now. Their goal was to feed families in need during tough times, like COVID and the fires, and in turn, the restaurants also got some muchneeded business by providing these meals. Chuck loved the SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Goose & Gander’s hamburger

Alexander Rubin Photography‌

Alexander Rubin Photography‌

Author Jess Lander with Bounty Hunter’s beer-can chicken.

cookbook idea and agreed to join forces. Feed Napa Now isn’t an official non-profit either, but they have a silent partner in the Girls & Boys Club Napa Valley, who agreed to help with this project too.

Seventy-five percent of the

proceeds of “The Essential Napa Valley Cookbook” go directly to the restaurant workers of participating restaurants and 25 percent goes to further supporting the efforts of Feed Napa Now.

BUILDING A TEAM While I was never big on group projects (sorry, I’m a Taurus), I knew I couldn’t do this myself and that I’d need to build a creative team that could fill the gaps around my own skill set. The two most essential pieces of this was finding a photographer and a design team.

The only problem? I was asking them to volunteer their time, since I was set on donating 100 percent of the proceeds.

I immediately knew that I wanted to work with my amazing friend and mentor Kim Shaeffer, the proprietor of designthis!, a Napa-based branding and design studio that’s been around for 30 years.

They do incredible work, which is now on full display in the cookbook and our website.

There are a lot of incredible photographers in Napa Valley that I know, respect, and consider friends, so this decision wasn’t as much of a no-brainer.

My main goal was to find someone that was extremely passionate about our restaurant community — they had to be in order to do this out of the goodness of their own heart — and when I found out that Alexander Rubin was already partnering with restaurants to help drum up business during the pandemic, I sent him a very long email pleading my case.

In no less than three minutes I received the enthusiastic reply I was hoping for: “Yes I am so in! Keep me posted. I am all about it! Fantastic idea.”

One of my most pivotal teammates came by way of introduction from Shaeffer.

Deirdre Bourdet specializes in culinary consulting and writing and helped me edit, scale, and perfect each recipe. I didn’t know it until I started it, but I was way in over my head with these recipes. I’ve learned that recipe editing is a very niche skill and if you don’t have some sort of professional culinary experience (which I don’t), there’s a lot of things that will INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 63

Jess Lander‌

Photographer Alexander Rubin shoots Southside Cafe’s cauliflower tacos.

literally never occur to you; I’d give examples, but I don’t want to embarrass myself. With no exaggeration whatsoever, Deirdre was a life saver.

To complete my team, I wanted a sommelier to help me select wine pairings for the book, as I didn’t think a Napa Valley cookbook would be complete without them. Desmond Echavarrie, local Master Somm and founder of Scale Wine Group, volunteered to help put together this complicated puzzle of matching a great wine with each dish.

I also called upon a few friends and marketing pros to help me promote the book to the media and recruited roughly two dozen people to assist with recipe testing (we tested every single dish, even the cocktails!).

Looking back, I can’t believe that many people volunteered their valuable time and rock star skills to make this project a reality. As they say, it takes a vineyard (and it did; I drank a lot of wine throughout).

GETTING THE RECIPES I was pre-warned about the challenges of getting recipes from chefs. I was told that they’re incredibly difficult to get in touch with, that I’d receive recipes in a myriad of formats — even hand written — that I’d often have to scale them down 64 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Jess Lander‌

Photographer Alexander Rubin shooting Farmstead’s lamb shanks.

to just a few servings, and that there may be any number of missing ingredients and instructions. I love chefs, but all of this was true to some degree.

Making things even more challenging was that I had some of the worst timing ever. This idea really took off during the holiday season, which is not an ideal time of year for getting in touch with people and at the same time, we were in the midst of a second shutdown that had restaurants in a frenzy, fighting for their lives. Then a few weeks after that, restrictions started to lift and they were all scrambling to reopen and restaff.

That’s all to say that this took time and we didn’t have much of it. I wanted to launch the cookbook as quickly as possible so that we could get money to workers sooner than later, and so that we got it out there before people really moved on from the pandemic. Did I end up getting a recipe from every restaurant I reached out to? Far from it. But I did end up with 31 fantastic and iconic Napa Valley eateries that provided a total of 37 delicious recipes, so I’m calling it a success.

THE PHOTOSHOOT I wanted a photo of every single recipe. It’s a pet peeve of

mine when I land on a recipe I want to make in a cookbook and there’s no photo. I’m a very visual person.

But I knew rounding up 30 chefs wasn’t going to be easy and I didn’t want my poor volunteer photographer running from one restaurant to the next, up and down the whole valley. So, we chose two days for photoshoots and scheduled as many restaurants as we could. One day was the Napa day and Katie Hamilton Shaffer of Feast it Forward generously donated her studio for it. The next day was the Upvalley day and Chef Nash Cognetti (Pizzeria Tra Vigne) donated his St. Helena catering and event space, Tre Posti.

This was probably the most fun I had during the whole process and it went surprisingly smoothly. It was great to finally (and safely) meet everyone in person, see the dishes in real life, and yes, we got to sample a lot of them, too. I had leftovers for the whole week. Bounty Hunter even generously sent us each home with a whole beer can chicken.

There were just a handful of dishes that we shot separately in the following weeks and I’m pleased to say that every single recipe has a photo.

EVERYTHING ELSE I joked a lot during this process that I felt like I was planning another wedding. There were so many emails to send every day, so many logistics to plan, and so, so many spreadsheets. I was also still working full time for my own business.

These are just a few of the other things I was doing during these months: reaching out to wineries to confirm wine pairings, writing the front, back, and section pages, writing the website, finding someone to write the forward (thanks Janet Trefethen), working with designthis! on book and website design, finding a printer, finding a fulfillment partner for shipping, creating a press kit, and perhaps the most difficult task, attempting to fundraise during a pandemic.

In order to donate 100 percent of the proceeds and print 5,000 copies, I had to raise a lot of money. I wanted the donations we made to be significant and actually impactful to workers, but understandably, it was very difficult receiving donations when every business out there has been hit in the last year and is working with slashed budgets. That said, we did manage to cover our costs in the end and if we sell a lot of books, we stand to donate over $100,000.

After four long months of hard work, we launched the book as a pre-release on April 21. It’s a relief to have made it to this point, but the work is not over. Now we have to actually sell this thing (that’s where you come in, reader). I’m also busy working with local retailers (holler if you’d like to carry it in your store), planning some launch parties and events for when the cookbook arrives in June, and managing all the logistics of orders and shipping.

Hopefully, things will calm down soon enough and I can actually get into my kitchen and cook up all of these fabulous recipes.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Kelly Bracewell, By Design

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How to throw a lobster feed in a pandemic

N ‌

othing screams summer like Maine lobster dipped in melted butter and as pandemic restrictions lift and vaccinations reach the masses, you’re likely itching for an extra-special get-together with the family and friends you’ve only seen via a screen for far too long. Enter: a lobster feed.

“It’s a great way for people to get back in the swing of things. It’s sort of upscale and unique, but at the same time, it’s very disarming and communal, which I think are the experiences people have really been missing over the last year,” said Ben Koenig, co-owner of Napa Valley Lobster Co. “We’re hearing from people that ‘This is our everybody is vaccinated party!’ It’s a very big coming out for those folks. They’re finally feeling like they can congregate and they want to do something special to mark the occasion.”

To help you throw a successful and pandemic-friendly lobster feed this summer, we asked the local lobster feed experts, Napa Valley Lobster Co. and Menegon Catering, for their tips and tricks.

1. FIND AN OUTDOOR LOCATION Lobster feeds may sound a bit high-brow, but they’re definitely not the most refined either. You’re probably not going to break out the good china and it can actually be extremely messy. That’s why outdoors, in a backyard, on a deck, or at a park, is the best place to host one — plus, it’s a safer pandemic environment anyway.

“Any place you don’t care about the carpet,” joked Charles Whittaker, Koenig’s partner in Napa Valley Lobster Co. “It’s a classy event, but I wouldn’t wear satin or sequins because it is a hands-on event. You can try your hardest to be clean, but it’s not as much fun that way.”

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

JESS LANDER

Menegon Catering‌

Traditionally, lobster feeds are held at one long communal table topped with butcher paper and old newspaper for easy clean-up. “It spurs on conversation, being elbowto-elbow with family and friends as you’re eating and cracking lobster off the table and squeezing lemons,” said Whittaker. “It’s a really good tactile and experiential experience that really works best in a communal fashion.”

That said, smaller tables spread out might be the more pandemic-friendly option.

2. GATHER SUPPLIES AND INGREDIENTS At the most basic, to pull off a lobster feed you’ll need a large pot, propane, and a larger burner. But the butcher paper and newspaper, bibs, crackers, mallets, and picks, and wet naps will make everything go a lot smoother for both you and your guests.

Plan for one 1 1/4 -pound Maine

lobster per person — try Osprey Seafood in Napa — and then you’ll want seasoning and accoutrements, like prawns, red potatoes, sausage, roasted garlic heads (one per person), baguettes, and veggies (corn, onion, artichoke, etc.). The final touches are melted butter, lemon wedges, and Tobasco sauce for the table.

Both Napa Valley Lobster Co. and Menegon Catering provide all of this with their lobster feeds, but if you plan to DIY it, you can pick up bibs, cracking tools, butter warmers, and more at Steve’s Hardware in St. Helena.

3. WATCH YOUR COOKING TIME The most difficult part of pulling off a successful lobster feed is making sure everything is cooked right. “All of the components are going to cook and finish at a different time period,” said Koenig. “We don’t throw everything in at once. We know which

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 67

Darren Brazil photos, Napa Valley Lobster Company‌

components will take longer and which will take shorter.”

Napa Valley Lobster Co. actually has the option to do your own boil. They provide all of the equipment, raw ingredients, and very clear instructions detailing their “progressive cooking method” so that you can’t mess it up.

4. FIND THE RIGHT WINE TO PAIR When pairing wine with your lobster feed, think white. Both Whittaker and Menegon recommended Honig’s Sauvignon Blanc as an excellent lobster feed pairing.

Other suggestions were the Ultra Brut sparkling from Domaine Carneros, Jessup Cellars’ Sauvignon Blanc, and Somnium Sauvignon Blanc.

“Definitely think about the beverage component because lobster and this experience is a great pairing with great wine,” said Koenig. “Being in Napa Valley, it’s only fitting that you would be intentional about your wine of choice as you indulge.”

5. SET THE MOOD Whittaker suggests having fun with it by adding music and decorations. Napa Valley Lobster Co. even created their own Chef Ben’s Bayou Ballads Spotify playlist. They give out to all of their lobster feeders.

6. POUR IT OR PLATE IT? One of the most exciting moments of a lobster feed is when, like a piñata being popped at a birthday party, the big pots are emptied out on the table and in a total 68 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

frenzy, ever yone starts grabbing at lobster and other fixin’s.

But, after more than a year spent in a pandemic and thinking way too much about germs, this might not be as appealing as it once was. So a safer, more sanitary option is instead to plate it, dividing the feed’s contents among each guest.

“The traditional lobster feed is very intimate. Everything is poured on the tables and people are able to pick up their own food with their hands. It’s definitely not a COVID-friendly process, so we suggest people plate their own lobster and food so that when they go to sit they have everything in front of them and they’re not sharing things,” said Courtney Menegon, co-owner of Menegon Catering, which does offer a plated option with their feeds.

7. DIG IN It’s finally time to eat, but there’s still more work to be done. You’ve got to crack open your lobster and don’t be embarrassed if you don’t really know how. Koenig suggests watching a Youtube video or simply asking the friend next to you for help. Napa Valley Lobster Co. also provides diagrams and video links with their feeds.

“There’s a little bit of a learning curve on the West Coast that we’ve found on how to crack a lobster. There’s certainly a little bit

of an intimidation factor — it’s a prehistoric-looking animal that you know tastes delicious, but there’s the head and the tail and the claws,” he said. “People ultimately come up to speed very quickly, but there’s a little dose of unfamiliarity that some people are just confronted with at the beginning of a feed.”

8. CLEAN UP If you put butcher paper and newspaper down, clean-up should be fairly easy. “You can make your own lobster boil burrito to easily get it into the trash,” said Koenig.

But at the end of the day, if you’re celebrating an occasion or want to enjoy and be present for your event, you may prefer to hire someone to do it all for you, which is where Menegon Catering and Napa Valley Lobster Co. come in.

“From start to finish, there’s no work the individual and party needs to do. All they need to do is come to the table and eat,” said Menegon. “We clean everything up, we take everything with us. You won’t even know we were there once we leave. Personally, I’d rather have someone cook for me than worry about it while I’m trying to be with my friends and family that I haven’t seen in a year.”

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Bob McClenahan

photography

________________________

bobmcclenahan.com

Sheep, like these at Rombauer Vineyards, mow down the cover crop and add natural fertilizer.

Cynthia Sweeney photos, Weekly Calistogan‌

Rombauer Vineyards Viticulturist Patrick Tokar says adding sheep help diversify the ecosystem within the vineyard.

ADDING SHEEP

TO THE MIX CYNTHIA SWEENEY editor@weekl yc ali s tog an. com‌

Rombauer Vineyards diversifies with eco-friendly methods ‌Rombauer Vineyards launched a pilot program earlier this year, hiring a team of “workers” to bring more ecological ba-aa-alance to the land.

With sheep, that is.

Rombauer owns approximately 650 acres in various counties, including a newly planted 5-acre vineyard on Silverado Trail in St. Helena, which seemed like a good place to test-run the sheep. Patrick Tokar, Rombauer Vineyards viticulturist, said he is working towards diversifying the natural elements within the vineyards, and this year Rombauer wanted to try something different.

“We’re trying to diversity the ecosystem a little more, trying to 70 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Rombauer Vineyards rented about 100 sheep to “work” their vineyard in St. Helena on Silverado Trail.

Here, they are taking a break create a sustainable balance. If we vineyard to eliminate at least one can get away from applying fertil- tractor pass, which also saves on from the afternoon sun.

izers and doing this naturally, it fits with our goal,” Tokar said. “The sheep help by bringing a different mix of compost and green manure into the vineyard that we ordinarily wouldn’t have, and it gives the grapes more nutrients.”

Between the vines of the new Sauvignon Blanc plot, Tokar planted a cover crop mix of triticale and beans. When the crop got to be about three feet tall, the sheep were brought in.

Typically, the cover crop would be mowed down and tilled.

“The sheep are like little compost machines, eating and creating compost in different places, which helps to break down the cover crop further,” Tokar said, plus, “With a tractor we can’t get between the smaller spaces.”

The sheep’s work will allow the

fuel and labor.

“We’ve got free labor with these guys and don’t have to pay overtime,” Tokar said.

The rented sheep are trucked in, and also come with a dog to look over and protect the herd.

They are kept within the confines of the vineyard by an electric fence.

These are Suffolk sheep primarily raised for this kind of “work.”

It took 100 of them about four weeks to mow through the rows, with the sheep favoring the beans, Tokar said.

“Sheep are grazers, they’ll stay and eat what’s around them,” he said. “Once the triticale started to bud, I don’t know if they’re going to eat much more of it. They don’t like the burrs on the top.”

Sustainable and also cost saving, setting sheep to work grazing

between the vines has been popular in Mendocino and Sonoma counties for a number of years, and is gaining in popularity in the Napa Valley.

“More and more, people are beginning to realize the benefits of using sheep,” Tokar said.

Next, Rombauer is looking at bringing in more sheep for their 170-acre vineyard in the Carneros region, Davitto Ranch, and keep them there from November until about budbreak. Once budbreak starts, the sheep will start nibbling on the tasty green shoots. And that would be a ba-aa-ad thing for the vineyard.

You can reach Cynthia Sweeney at 942-4035 or csweeney@ weeklycalistogan.com.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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Little pillows of love TIM CARL

‌My family and I love gnocchi so much that we named our cat after them. These dainty pastas about the size of a small cotton ball are typically made with only four ingredients — potato, flour, eggs and salt — but I have developed a gluten-free, vegan-friendly version that is tough to distinguish from the classic. Crafted correctly, gnocchi are slightly toothsome on the outside and have a melt-in-your mouth pillowy texture on the inside. Made poorly, they turn dense, gummy or grainy.

My first memory of gnocchi was eating them tossed in a bright sauce bursting with vineripe tomatoes and garnished simply with a few basil leaves torn into pieces, a drizzle of fruity olive oil and a few heaping spoonfuls of finely grated Parmesan cheese. The experience was transformative. I was 19 and had been hired sight-unseen by a family in Northern Italy.

I’d learned about the job from their daughter, who had been studying English in Edinburgh, Scotland, where I’d been barely surviving for nearly a year, often living in the streets, eating sparely, sometimes having little more than a single bread roll and tea to last an entire day.

MOVING TO ITALY When I learned a position had opened up for a farmhand on my friend’s family farm outside of Parma, I jumped at the chance. Hauling my backpack on my shoulders, I hitchhiked 72 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

my way to Italy. Arriving at the remote farm, I was instantly relieved by the sights and smells. The sky was vibrant blue, packed with puffy white clouds, and the air was full of the aromas of an agricultural community — earth, plants and animals. The soul-healing fragrance of freshly baked bread seeped from the house to greet me. The experience almost brought me to my knees. Gone were the heavy gray skies and acrid urban odors of the world I’d lived in for the past year, and back were the invigorating, familiar natural aspects of my Napa Valley childhood home.

I settled in and enthusiastically embraced my new life.

Each day I woke at 5 a.m. and headed straight to the kitchen.

There Marina, my friend’s mother, showed me how to brew espresso that we’d pour into bowls and then add milk.

Toasting thick slices of crusty bread, we’d slather them with hearty slabs of sweet butter and a drizzle of a local honey that had a bouquet of apple blossoms.

After eating breakfast I’d depart to begin the day’s work — mucking cattle stalls, plowing wheat fields, digging ditches or occasionally staying to help in the kitchen. By the end of the first week my hands were blistered and my back ached, but I’d never been happier in my life. My joy stemmed not only from the satisfaction of a hard day’s work and a place to sleep,

Tim Carl LLC‌

Gluten-Free, Plant-Based Gnocchi Start to finish: 1 1/2 hours • Servings: 4 to 6 • 2 pounds russet potatoes (about 4 medium), scrubbed Add unpeeled potatoes to a large pot.

Cover with at least 2 inches of cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce to medium heat and simmer until tender and easily pierced with a fork, 45-50 minutes. Drain, cool, peel and pass potatoes through a ricer (or mash with a fork) and place on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Let mashed potatoes cool.

Sift the flour and salt together over the potatoes. Mix with your hands until the flour is moistened and the dough starts to clump. Transfer to a lightly floured work surface. Knead gently until the flour is incorporated and the dough is soft and smooth but remains a little sticky (30 seconds to 1 minute — overmixing will result in tough gnocchi). Roll dough into a large cylinder shape and set aside, covered with a clean kitchen towel to rest for 10 minutes.

Clean your hands and the work surface.

Reflour work surface. Using a bench knife, portion the dough cylinder into 2-inch sections and cover with the towel to keep it from drying out. Using the palm of both hands, roll out a long rope of dough about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and cut into small rectangle logs, roughly 1 inch long. Arrange in rows on parchment-lined baking sheets and keep covered with another clean kitchen towel. Reflour

• 1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour, more for kneading and rolling (I use Bob’s Red Mill) • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt surface and repeat until all dough has been used.

At this point the gnocchi are ready to be cooked. However, if you like the classic textured shape, each “pillow of love” can be rolled, using your thumb to draw each gnocchi against the tines of a fork to create the traditional ridges. Sometimes I take this added step and sometimes I don’t.

When I have a sauce that might benefit from extra surface area, I like the tines technique, but I also love the clean, smooth surface without them.

Your gnocchi are ready to cook or go into the freezer for later use. Gnocchi can be refrigerated for only about 2-3 hours before they become soggy. To freeze, I put the whole sheet pan into the freezer; then once hard I transfer the gnocchi to a large zip-top bag and keep for up to 3 months. Cooking frozen gnocchi is similar to fresh in that small batches are placed in boiling water that has been salted. Once they rise to the surface, cook for another minute, remove with a strainer and serve immediately.

Note: Putting too many frozen gnocchi in at once cools the water, extends the cooking time and runs the risk of the “pillows” disintegrating.

Plant-Based Creamy Carbonara Sauce with Shiitake Mushrooms Start to finish: 30 minutes • 1 tablespoon olive oil • Servings: 4 to 6 • 6 strips of vegan bacon (I use Sweet • 1 cup raw cashews, soaked in 2 cups Earth) boiling vegetable stock for 15 minutes • 1 clove minced garlic • 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast • Salt to taste • Salt to taste • 1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley • 6-8 medium-sized shiitake mushroom caps, stems removed Add cashews and liquid into a blender. Add nutritional yeast and blend until smooth.

Taste for salt. Set aside.

Slice mushrooms and sauté with olive oil on medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Cut bacon into 1-inch squares and add to the pan along with minced garlic. Bring up the heat to medium-high and cook until the bacon is slightly crispy on its edges. Add in cashew sauce and allow to reduce and thicken, stirring often. Taste for salt. Mix with cooked gnocchi.

Garnish with chopped parsley and serve.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

but also because every day at noon the entire family — and a few of the lucky crew — gathered around a large wooden table in the center of the kitchen to partake in the daily meal. These were not the lunches I’d grown up with. Instead, each seemed to rival feast days in my own family, such as when we celebrated Thanksgiving or Christmas.

EVERY DAY A HOLIDAY There every day seemed like a holiday — the table replete with bottles of wine, pitchers of sparkling water and bowls of fresh bread.

Each meal began with a different pasta dish, followed next by a protein — grilled beef, braised pork or sautéed seafood. Then there was a salad course, most often just simple greens tossed with homemade vinegar, local olive oil and a pinch of salt. Eventually lunch concluded — often two hours after it began — with a simple dessert of fresh fruit or a sorbet.

During these meals I felt as if I were dreaming. Not only was my hunger satisfied, but I came to understand the immense pleasure of simple food made with wholesome

ingredients shared around a table with people talking and laughing.

Never before then had I believed such “simple” food might favorably compare with some of the wonderful dishes I’d learned to cook at a French restaurant.

Growing up in a working-class family, I had started my first job when I was 13 years old. Initially I worked “pulling” French fries at Taylor’s Refresher (now Gott’s Roadside) in St. Helena. Eventually I left that eatery for a job at the newly opened Auberge du Soleil in Rutherford. There I was in awe of the chefs — their crisp white uniforms, their skilled knife work and their use of the French language as a means to describe and occasionally lambast the world around them.

I began by washing dishes but eventually moved to making salads, pate plates and cold desserts as a garde-manger. I was taught that to prepare “the best” food a highly prescribed, complicated and technical process must ensue. Under such training the actual source of produce and products was important, but equally critical — and sometimes even more so — was that each item

was prepared in a distinct manner.

Deviating from the script was akin to a dancer ad-libbing the “Swan Lake” ballet.

However, what I came to understand living on the Italian farm was that although craft, technique and skill are all important, the final dish can only be as good as the ingredients used to make it. Never could a tomato grown in lifeless earth and injected with chemical fertilizers taste as satisfying as one grown in living soils and fed with clean water and air, no matter the technique.

Three months passed and I fell into a happy hypnosis of pleasant days. Until then only flour-based pastas had graced the table, but one day a big bowl of something new showed up.

“Cos’è questo — what are they?,” I asked in stuttering, broken Italian.

“Gnocchi,” Marina said. “Piccoli cuscini d’amore.”

“Che cosa? What?” I asked.

“Little pillows of love,” she translated, and then laughed.

Their combination of a fluffy, al dente texture seemed a perfect accompaniment to the simple

tomato sauce. I ate slowly — believing that these delicious nuggets must be a rare delicacy, their infrequency at the table a signal of importance.

Marina noticed my hesitancy and her expression shifted to concern.

“Non ti piacciono?” she asked.

“No, no, I love them,” I said.

“Speciale. Must be difficile to make?”

She laughed, lifting her hands to the air.

“No, semplice,” she said. “I will teach you.”

We spent the next few days making gnocchi until she was satisfied with my results. Later, after returning to California, I cooked at various restaurants, where I invariably made gnocchi, experimenting, tweaking and exploring dozens of accompanying sauces. Even now I continue experimenting, although today I lean toward plant-based gluten-free versions. Regardless, each time I make gnocchi I am brought back to that first experience, the voice of Marina in my ears, encouraging me on as I learned the joy of making and eating these little pillows of love.

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The rugged path of a lion Lion’s Head releases its first Pinot Noir

S A S H A PAU L S E N ‌A lion’s head suggests a certain redoubtable strength, but Hess Collection chose the name Lions Head for a new portfolio of wines, they didn’t quite know how useful a degree of leonine resolve would be as the project evolved.

Donald Hess officially retired in 2017, four decades after he bought land on Mt. Veeder and three decades after he opened his Hess Collection Winery. The leadership of the family-owned winery passed to Sabrina, his daughter, and her husband, Tim Persson, but Lion’s Head was already in the works.

“Donald Hess looked forward,” Tim Persson said in a recent conversation as they released the first Lion’s Head Pinot Noir. “He’s a very contemporary person, and he gave us the liberty to do that. This portfolio allows us to spread our wings and to do things we didn’t feel as comfortable doing within the Hess Collection. That was very exciting and we really wanted to use it to push boundaries.

“The name is Lions Head is a reference back to the family crest,” he added. “Hess wines, the lion, and Donald Hess’s credo was always ‘Live each day 74 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Hess Collection‌

Sabrina and Tim Persson, the daughter and son-in-law of Donald Hess, have taken over leadership of the Hess Collection Winery.

with the courage of a lion.’ Mine is more of a domestic house cat but I do try.”

“We took the idea of that emblem, conscious that our names are not Hess, and we wanted to have a nod to that.

There is also the idea that the head (is) the direction you want to go in, the leading light of where we want to go in winemaking.”

In addition, Lions Head is the name of a mountain next to Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, where Persson grew up. “It’s a mountain I enjoyed climbing very much when I was a child. So for me, it had a poignancy.”

The Lions Head brand, he said, “was meant to be a process of discovery, really embracing technology and new technique as they come along. We would see this as an area where we would innovate and try new things.

But it actually became a story of

resilience, which wasn’t by design or intention.”

This began with the 2014 South Napa earthquake. “We had significant damage,” Persson said. “We lost a lot of wine but it also damaged one of our cellars really badly. So we took that as an opportunity to try and put a silver lining on a really bad day, and we rehabilitated that cellar into our Lion’s Head cellar.”

They installed state-of-the-art winemaking technology, “a lot of small lot fermenters, double insulated all around, computer-controlled. We bought our winemakers all the toys, so to speak,” Persson said. “That was largely to allow us to house some of the newer fruit that was coming off our vineyards that we had completely started to rehabilitate from 2011 onwards. In essence, Lion’s Head came out of that — making it work and embracing the fact that nature had designated which cellar had

to be overhauled.”

Next came the drought of 2015, and the wildfires of 2017 and 2020. This was in addition to the North Coast fires of 2018 and 2019, which destroyed fruit Hess had under contract for Hess Select wines. “All of our estates that we own are in Napa,” he said. “Our land investments are concentrated in Napa, outside through long-term partnerships.”

In 2020, they lost about 30 percent of grapes they had under contract, but all of their estate fruit in Napa. “We chose not to harvest it. It was a difficult decision to make and we will lose future sales from that wine. But unfortunately, we’ve had quite a bit of experience with smoke taint.”

“Through that process, we’ve found that once (the fire) gets to a certain level, we’re not comfortable in the predictability of the outcome for the wine, especially if you’re making it at a higher end. I think it’s a big risk to take. I know everyone’s aware of the volatility of those compounds, but what it means is through the bottle life of the wine, things can change dramatically,” he said. “We had this in 2008 where we bottled wine that seemed fine and six months later, it was like dousing yourself in an ashtray. That’s clearly not something we want to have happen for our customers.

“You’ve got to take the longer term perspective, although we’ve been taking that a lot recently, so we walked away; but we were lucky we had generous 2018s and 2019s.

“That said,” he added, “it looks like 2021 is going to be very light. This (season) is drier than 2016 right now — probably a decent thing, long term, because it brings everything back into balance. It will be a light and expensive crop and we’ll probably try to release that earlier to bridge the 2020 gap.”

LIONS HEAD‌ Despite all the challenges of recent years, Lions Head has SPRING/SUMMER 2021

When the 2014 Napa earthquake badly damaged this cellar at Hess Collection Winery on Mount Veeder, it was rebuilt to house the new brand, Lions Head.

We Service the BrandS We Sell!

Mariana Calderon Photography‌

moved forward. “The first wine we released in 2016 was the Lions Head red blend. and it’s a good example of what we’re trying to do,” Persson said. “The backbone of that wine is Malbec, which we’ve found to be amazingly successful up in Mt. Veeder, in the cooler areas.

His brother and sister-in-law have a winery in Argentina, he said, “so we had quite a lot of internal knowledge. (We) started to test it in Napa in 2007 and started to get excited about.

N o n e t h e l e s s , Pe r s s o n acknowledged, “it is a challenge to sell Malbec from Napa.” Although they felt the wine “could carry itself but we chose the red blend because we thought that was an easier format to introduce it. But in any given year, it’s approximately 50% Malbec, and I think a point of separation from red blends that have been developed in Napa or beyond.”

They next extended Lions Head into Cabernet with Lion Tamer “and after we started looking at Sonoma.”

For the Sonoma wines, they chose the name Panthera, from the genus for cat. “The imagery we use on the label is the mountain lion and there’s plenty of them around us and in the Mayacamus mountains between us and Sonoma.” A Sonoma Chardonnay followed by the new Pinot Noir, released for the first time this year.

“Whereas Lion Tamer was more of a masculine wine,” Persson said. “We wanted a more feminine treatment for our Sonoma wines.”

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

What’s ahead?

Persson doesn’t foresee a lessening of challenges.

“Certainly weather patterns seem more volatile and is the problem for us because the volatility represents a greater risk as the grower and a greater risk as a winemaker. So I do think winemaking in Napa Valley has become a riskier process than it used to be with regards to weather and predictability. That worries me. I think one of the biggest things that is on everyone’s minds is what are the fire mitigation plans that we collectively plan to employ and what are the investments in that? That for me has not been that clear.

“Granted,” he added, “we’ve gone into a pandemic. I used to joke that we were waiting for a plague of locusts but now we have a kind of a form of plague.”

“There won’t be 2020 Lions Head wines,” Persson said.

“We’ll go from 2019 to 2021.”

The winery will, however, release Hess Select wines from 2020.

“Certainly Mother Nature has been throwing up these obstacles to us,” he said. “It’s been an interesting process because each time the resilience has been tested, it’s made us more determined to succeed. It’s a wonderful realization, although I’d have liked an easier path to this.”

In other words, the lion will go forward.

The winery atop Mount Veeder is now open for tastings of Lions Head and other Hess Collection wines. For reservations and more information, visit www.hesscollection.com.

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Wine and

friendship that

sparkle ‌L

Tony Almanza‌

Miriam Puentes, co-owner of Honrama Cellars (left) and Lola Llamas, co-owner of Llamas Family Wines (right), take a bike ride to share several bottles of wine, a few from Honrama Cellars and a few from Llamas Family Wines. TOP OF PAGE: A bottle and a glass of Las Amigas Cuvée, a sparkling wine created in 2020 by Lola Llamas of Llamas Family Wines and Miriam Puentes of Honrama Cellars. Photo by Evan Roscoe‌.

Las Amigas Cuvée • Las Del Vino lasdelvinonapavalley.com • Honrama Cellars honramacellars.com • Llamas Family Wines. llamasfamilywines.com

76 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

JESSICA ZIMMER

as Amigas Cuvée, the first collaboration on a limited edition Napa Valley sparkling wine, is now available from Honrama Cellars, Llamas Family Wines, and third-party sellers. The wine is now also offered at a number of Napa Valley restaurants, including La Calenda in Yountville, Celadon in Napa, and Napa Valley Bistro in Napa.

Las Amigas’s 200-case run is the brainchild of two Latina friends, Miriam Puentes, co-owner of Honrama Cellars and Lola Llamas, co-owner of Llamas Family Wines, both in Napa.

“Our slogan is two families, two brands, one dream,” said Llamas.

Puentes said the wine comes from grapes picked in 2013. The cuvée is a 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay blend from grapes grown in Napa County. Both varietals are grown in the Los Carneros AVA. “This is a well-balanced, crisp, and refreshing wine with notes of pear and honeydew. It goes well with many different entrees, including mole, fried chicken, truffle popcorn, and shrimp ceviche,” said Puentes.

Llamas said the cuvée, which has an ABV of 12%, is light and not “super sweet.”

“Schramsberg Vineyards fans say it reminds them of those sparkling wines,” said Llamas.

Llamas and Puentes said they are the first Mexican-American vintners in Napa

Valley with their own wine brands who joined forces to create a sparkling wine separate from each of their portfolios. “(Our effort) is bridging our wineries together. We started this project together because we both own micro-wineries. We share the vision of scaling our wine companies. We also believe in building a legacy for the future of our children and our loved ones,” said Puentes.

She added making the cuvée has been like “sailing a ship with two captains.”

“We even have both our wineries’ logos on the label. This has been a journey, from our first step of acquiring the grapes to now, when we’re developing fun, welcoming events for guests,” said Llamas.

A FRIENDSHIP THAT STARTED WITH MAVA Llamas and Puentes’ friendship began in 2015, when they met through the Mexican American Vintners Association (MAVA).

Their wineries had joined MAVA before that year. Soon Llamas and Puentes were traveling to Los Angeles and San Diego together for wine-related events. They also regularly teamed up to put on MAVA’s annual harvest festival.

“Over the course of these six years, we’ve found we had so much in common.

During the pandemic, we started spending time together by taking walks and bike rides,” said Llamas.

On their travels, the two women would talk about the wine they were creating. In SPRING/SUMMER 2021

early spring 2020, Puentes told Llamas her husband, Juan Puentes, could offer them a batch of wine from an unrealized project.

“That’s when Lola and I decided to take our first step in making sparkling wine together. We both loved bubbly wine, but were new to the processes involved. Our baby steps involved figuring out the dosage (the amount of sugar that must be added to sparkling wine) and how frequently to riddle the bottles (regularly twist them back and forth to make sure the wine is freed of sediment),” said Puentes.

At the same time, Llamas and Puentes began promoting the wine.

“We did an Instagram launch for our brands (Honrama Cellars and Llamas Family Wines) in late May 2020, titling the project “Las Del Vino.” Later we created a website for the wine, designed and printed the label for the bottle. We also came up with budgets for operations and advertising,” said Llamas.

After the partners bottled the wine in late August 2020, they assembled a schedule of events that spanned the coming year.

EVENTS FOR DAYS Puentes and Llamas said it has been extremely challenging to work through the obstacles 2020 and early 2021 have presented.

“We faced the pandemic and related shutdowns as well as fires, smoke, and power outages. Our strategy was to start with soft launch parties in late August, just a handful of people outdoors,” said Puentes.

Llamas said over time, she and Puentes organized other events, particularly ones that involved local businesses.

“In September 2020, we shared the wine at an in-person Dailey Barre Express class at Honrama Cellars that featured a glass of Las Amigas Cuvée and light bites afterward. Also in September, we partnered with the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley to offer Las Amigas Cuvée at the organization’s annual Sisterhood Brunch.

That event was virtual. We gave attendees a 15% discount on all wine purchases and an invitation to two complimentary wine tastings at our homes, for not only Las Amigas but all of the wines each of us make,” said Puentes.

In October 2020, Llamas and Puentes offered a free virtual tasting of Las Amigas with the Napa County Hispanic Network.

“We donated 25% of donations to NCHN’s scholarship program,” said Puentes.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Evan Roscoe‌

Juan Puentes (left) and Miriam Puentes (second from left), co-owners of Honrama Cellars, with Lola Llamas (second from right) and Oscar Llamas (right), co-owners of Llamas Family Wines, all holding glasses of Miriam and Lola’s first collaboration, Las Amigas Cuvée.

In December 2020, Llamas and Puentes discussed Las Amigas Cuvée on “The Wine & Chisme Podcast,” a wine podcast hosted

by Jessica Yañez, a San Diego native. This podcast showcases wine professionals of color.

For Valentine’s Day 2021, Llamas and Puentes offered a deal of a bottle of Las Amigas Cuvée and chocolate-covered strawberries, with free local delivery.

In March 2021, Llamas and Puentes partnered with Be Bubbly Napa Valley, a sparkling wine lounge in downtown Napa, for a sold-out event. In April, Llamas and Puentes spoke about Las Amigas Cuvée as part of an Inspirational Women’s panel event at St. Helena Teen Center, a program of the Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Helena and Calistoga.

Puentes said the schedule has been full but she has loved working with Llamas on this project.

“Las Amigas is about two women supporting one another. I’m so happy with the outcome. It’s been eye-opening to go from being good friends to being business partners,” said Puentes.

Llamas said she is proud that Las Amigas has been well received well in Napa’s Latinx community and beyond.

“In the past, most of the sales happened in the tasting room. This year, we’ve gone outside those doors. We brought our sparkling wine to an audience that is enjoying

it, with yoga, meditation, and other activities that bring people closer together, but without the risk,” said Llamas.

Puentes said the effort has resulted in the sale of at least 100 cases.

“Given the success of Las Amigas Cuvée, this is an effort we want to repeat.

We’re going to make the cuvée again next year. We are also considering making a sparkling rosé,” said Puentes.

Llamas said working closely with Puentes and networking with other women has changed how she sees business.

“Sharing Las Amigas awakened me to the fact that there are so many women in the wine industry and industries tied to it. Let’s promote each other. We’re already supporting one another. Let’s do more,” said Llamas.

Puentes agreed, stating the productive and positive interactions with other women in Napa Valley motivated her to think of new ideas. She added she and Llamas are considering entering Las Amigas Cuvée into a competition for boutique wines.

“All of the work Lola and I did and the help other people offered to support Las Amigas was a bright spot during a hard year. Making this wine strengthened my relationship with a friend as well as with other women. That’s why we’re proud that we did this. I know we have the grit to keep Las Del Vino going and move forward this fall,” said Puentes.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 77

Patrick, Rachel and Charlotte Rue in the Erosion Wine Company tasting room.

‌E

rosion Wine Company opened its downtown St. Helena tasting room in Februar y 2020, which turned out to be one of the worst times in human history to launch a business. One would have been forgiven for expecting it wouldn’t last.‌ On the contrary, Erosion is not only still around. It’s expanding into brewing.

“When the pandemic hit, we were just opening, and there was no way we were giving up,” owner Patrick Rue said Monday.

“We’d put too many resources into this. We were highly motivated to make it work.”

On Tuesday, the St. Helena Planning Commission approved Erosion Brewery, a warehouse at 995 Vintage Ave. Rue plans to brew about 56 batches per year, at 108.5 gallons per batch.

He already secured a temporary use permit to serve beer at a new taproom in the space next to Erosion formerly occupied

by Cricket, probably starting in July or August.

The two spaces would be connected in the back, but each would have a unique feel. While the wine tasting room, which reopened at the beginning of 78 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

THE LEAP FROM WINE

TO BEER Erosion Wine Company, a rare pandemicera success story, expands into brewing J E S S E D UA RT E jd uar te @s the le nas tar. com‌ March, is dominated by shiny mirrors and lots of pastels, the new taproom will have a more gritty, industrial feel.

“It’s going to have more of a masculine beer vibe,” Rue said while showing off the new space, which is still under construction.

“If you’re more beer-oriented you’ll probably be more comfortable here, and if you’re more wine-oriented you’ll probably be more comfortable over there.

But you can always have wine on this side or beer on that side.”

The taproom will have a small kitchen preparing primarily savory and sweet dips to

Jesse Duarte, Star‌

wine have been complementary.

“In the past I specialized in making really esoteric beers and trying to elevate beer to wine status,” he said. “Then when I got into wine I tried to bring wine to beer status.”

That approach is evident in the Erosion tasting room, where the Instagram-friendly décor, playful vibe and fancifully named wines like Unicorn Eyes and Afraid of Clowns make it feel more like a millennial-friendly craft brewery than a typical Napa Valley tasting room.

In contrast to The Bruery’s heavy offerings, Erosion’s beer will be “the kind of beer you’d want to taste after you’ve been drinking cabs all day,” Rue said.

“You’re going to want a 4 percent crisp lager.”

Looking back on Erosion’s rocky first year, Rue said it’s always tough to get a business off the ground, “but we never could have anticipated something like this.”

“But hey,” he said. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

accompany the beers and wines.

Rue’s interest in beer dates back to his years in law school, when his wife, Rachel, encouraged him to take up home brewing as a hobby. It turned out that his destiny lay in beer, not law.

In 2008 he opened The Bruery in his native Orange County. He described it as a craft brewery specializing in “big barrel-aged beers, 15 to 20 percent alcohol.”

The Bruery was a success, but Rue ultimately sold a majority of the business, moved to St. Helena, and founded Erosion Wine You can reach Jesse Duarte at Company.

967-6803 or jduarte@stheleHis approaches to beer and nastar.com.

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A 1906 historic postcard of the Rutherford Station Depot.

THE FUTURE OF RUTHERFORD DEPOT TIM CARL

The deteriorating historic train station is trapped in uncertainty ‌M any historic structures within the Napa Valley are majestic, such as Inglenook, Charles Krug and the Culinary Institute at Greystone. But one of them — the Rutherford depot — has become a dilapidated eyesore.

The historic train depot flanks Highway 29 in the tiny hamlet of Rutherford. It was originally built in the 1870s, and its history is inextricably linked with the valley’s rise to prominence. The structure’s 80 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

The Rutherford depot today.

decay is heartbreaking to those who know of its glorious past and confusing to those who question why the disintegrating

Tim Carl LLC‌

structure is not just rebuilt or torn down.

“There is so much history contained in that one small

structure that it would be a shame not to see it rise again,” said Steve Tonella, a third-generation Rutherfordian and vintner who is a member of the Rutherford Dust Society.

The Napa Valley Wine Train owns the Rutherford Depot.

Since purchasing the Napa Valley Wine Train from the DeDomenico family in 2015, the property is now co-owned by Scott Goldie and Gregory Brun.

In 2019 the NVWT submitted an application to Napa County to renovate the Rutherford Station to include a train stop, a parking area and a refurbished structure that would include a wine-tasting area, retail food sales, a ticket counter and SPRING/SUMMER 2021

“activities related to the Wine Train’s rail operations.”

Speaking in 2018 on the “Napa Valley Inside Out” podcast, Goldie said, “We’ve been working with the county to develop the appropriate use of [the Rutherford Depot] that will allow us the economic incentive to restore it.”

On the one hand, this seems like it should be simple: The owners want to fix up the space, and many in the community long for such improvements.

However, the site has lain dormant for more than two decades, and a quick resolution remains unlikely.

At the heart of the issue is that this failing rail station — now with gaping holes in the roof that have been partially covered by tattered tarps, a barely standing cyclone fence hardly warding off would-be vagrants and the old redwood-planked platform a crumbling reminder of better days — exists on land that falls under the Napa Valley’s Agricultural Preserve.

Consequently, any renovations or changes of use are tightly regulated, with the conversion of such buildings or land to a non-farm use requiring a popular vote.

THE AG PRESERVE‌ The 1950 census showed Napa County having 46,603 residents, and because of its proximity to the Bay Area the state of California estimated that by 1980 the county would be home to more than 1 million. A decade after that dire prediction, in 1965, Assembly Bill 80 passed and decoupled the tax rate from revenue generated from the land, instead of taxing parcels at their “highest and best use.” In practice, this often meant land was taxed as if it were covered with houses and businesses instead of agricultural crops.

Napa Valley’s residents understood what the passage of the AB80 could mean to their agricultural community — a SPRING/SUMMER 2021

An artist’s rendering of the proposed Rutherford depot.

The back of the Rutherford depot.

likely speeding-up of converting agricultural land into subdivisions and strip malls. And they had good reason for concern.

Silicon Valley to the south was witnessing the rapid removal of nearly 100,000 acres of orchard land.

Driven by what they viewed as an existential threat to their agrarian lifestyle and their desire to preserve the natural beauty of the Napa Valley, a cohort of like-minded local leaders banded together and in February 1968 passed the groundbreaking Napa Valley Agricultural Preserve. This legislation restricted the use of agricultural land within the county, limiting subdivisions of land to a minimum of 20 acres (now 40), rather than the one acre allowed at the time.

Today, of Napa County’s 505,000 acres, nearly 45,000

Tim Carl LLC‌

are covered with cultivated vineyards that brought in over $1 billion in 2018. However, in 1968 the valley was a very different place. Then there were only 13,836 acres of planted vineyards and wine grapes brought in $6 million, whereas beef cattle amounted to $5.9 million.

The point of the original Agricultural Preserve (a fourpage document) was not so much to promote vineyards or the wine industry but instead to guard against unconstrained development by creating a zoning designation that favored agricultural use. Preferences included “general farming,” “facilities for the processing of agricultural products,” and “public parks and recreation facilities” that complied with the Napa County General Plan as well as a few other categories,

such as animal husbandry and dairies.

Shortly after the AP passed, state officials announced the cancellation of plans to build a freeway stretching up the Napa Valley, and many housing subdivisions were taken off the planning schedule.

The limits of Napa County’s Agricultural Preser ve ping-ponged back and forth in terms of how large a parcel was needed before it might be subdivided. The original version set the minimum at 20 acres, but in 1979 the county raised it to 40 acres, then back to 20, then again to 40. Presently, with Measure J passed in 1990 and its successor, Measure P, in 2008, the legal 40-acre minimum remains in effect until 2058. Any change of use must be OK’d by a vote of the people.

Some people have always opposed the Agricultural Preserve. When it was passed they called it an affront to freedom and un-American. A month earlier John Daniel, the former owner of Inglenook, had called it “socialistic in concept” and “destructive to future land development and business, confiscatory and grossly unfair.”

Even with the objections, the Board of Supervisors enacted the agricultural preserve with a 4-0 vote (a majority of Republicans held the board at the time), with one supervisor abstaining.

Since then the Agricultural Preserve has been at the center of conflicts within the Napa Valley INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 81

and beyond, with those who see any change to its wording or intent as opening cracks that would be exploited by developers and others who see it as stifling business and hindering affordable housing (although such arguments might be refuted by anyone trying to find affordable housing in Silicon Valley).

Decisions about the Agricultural Preserve and changes to the Rutherford Station depot remain in a stalemate between those seeing any change in use as a precedent-setting erosion of the original intent of the Agricultural Preserve and those who feel restoring a historic building might be a reasonable exception.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE RUTHERFORD DEPOT‌ In July 1864 17-year-old Elizabeth Yount received a gift from her grandfather, George.

His gift was 1,040 acres of land north of Yountville that had already been planted with wheat, a few orchards and possibly a vineyard or two.

George Yount, an explorer and pioneer, had been the first Euro-American permanent settler in the Napa Valley.

With the help of his employer and friend, Gen. Mariano G. Vallejo, Yount had been granted two Mexican land grants: the Rancho Caymus land grant (11,887 acres) in 1836 and the Rancho La Jota land grant (4,454 acres) on Howell Mountain in 1843. Rancho Caymus resided between what are today Oakville and Rutherford.

Around that same time another prominent Napa Valley resident, Samuel Brannan (California’s first millionaire), financed and built an extension of a railroad from Napa City to Calistoga. Brannan’s idea was to transport customers to his new hot springs resort in Calistoga and goods from the valley to the rapidly expanding Bay Area.

Brannan became rich after 82 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Courtesy Napa County Historical Society‌

The former Rutherford train depot as it appeared around 1978, when it was home to Clyde Tucker Plumbing.

he helped whip up excitement in San Francisco after gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

In a move that seemed to some unscrupulous, he waited to announce the gold’s finding until after he’d bought up all the mining supplies in the region and sold them through his own shops at astronomical prices.

The result of the subsequent gold rush was the greatest mass migration in U.S. history. In 1850, when California became an official state, it only had roughly 20,000 non-Native American inhabitants, but by 1855 that had grown to more than 300,000. The flood of people had made staples such as lumber, firewood, flour, mercury, dairy, meat and produce exceptionally lucrative commodities.

The influx caused the flour market to expand rapidly, with the price skyrocketing from $6 a barrel to nearly $30. Thomas Rutherford had immigrated to San Francisco in 1852 to mill flour at the perfect moment.

A few years earlier he had left Lawrence County, New York, with the idea of starting a mill on the West Coast. Eventually, he co-owned the Grosh & Rutherford Flour Mill in San Francisco, which later moved to the city of Napa.

It’s likely that Rutherford and Elizabeth Yount met as a result of their shared business dealings in wheat. In 1867 they

wed, and soon after they negotiated with Brannan to build the Rutherford Station depot as a platform for transporting goods and also as a more convenient method of transport for themselves as they traveled between their homes in San Francisco and their ranch at what they called Rutherford Station (now Rutherford).

Eventually, the small depot would see less and less wheat, replaced instead by everything from thousands of white mulberry trees used in a short-lived fad of growing silkworms to homeless boys from San Francisco arriving to attend the archdiocese-run “Rutherford Agricultural School” to plenty of wine and wine-industry related items. Two train cars full of the first phylloxera-resistant St. George rootstock clones shipped from France in 1909 to Beaulieu Winery at the bequest of George de Latour. More history of early Rutherford can be found in “A Rutherford Farm”

by Cecelia Elkington Setty, published in 2014.

Passenger service on the railroad ended in the 1930s as cars became the preferred mode of transportation. Gone, too, was the supply and demand of the natural commodities that had once filled freight cars destined for Bay Area consumers.

Since those heady days when the Rutherford Depot had a distinct purpose, the structure

has housed a few businesses, including a plumbing shop and an architect, but since 2001 the building has remained vacant.

The previous owners of the Wine Train, the DeDomenico family, inventors of Rice-ARoni, had tried and failed to renovate the Rutherford Station. In 2011 the county proposed an ordinance allowing a restaurant, lodging or retail use at the Rutherford depot and five other rural landmarks, but the Board of Supervisors canceled a scheduled vote that December.

The Rutherford Depot is emblematic of a uniquely Napa Valley issue with no easy answers To research this story I reached out to dozens of people in an effort to wrap my head around what initially appeared to be a straightforward matter. Very few wanted to go on record, citing little interest for becoming wrapped up in a controversy that might require taking sides as the valley slowly emerges from the pandemic and one of the worst fire seasons on record.

“There are three ways this will go,” one of them told me.

“It turns into a big battle that goes to a public vote that will cost millions and continue to fracture the community, or the public has become so beaten down that this thing slips through the county somehow without triggering a popular vote, or the owners decide they have bigger fish to fry and just put the poor thing out of its misery and tear it down.”

Or, as Supervisor Diane Dillon, whose 3rd District includes Rutherford and the rest of the Highway 29 corridor upvalley, said during a 2018 interview with the Napa Register: “It would be wonderful to see that building reused and restored. (But) for every decision we make like this one, we need to look at the bigger picture, the broader context. And there are a lot of issues involved here.”

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Parents, 2 kids sailing Caribbean waters after selling their Napa home JENNIFER HUFFMAN j huf f man@nap anew s . c o m‌ ‌As a kid growing up on the East Coast, Andrew Siegal learned how to maneuver little Hobie Cat sailboats during summer camp. As an adult, living in Napa, he had a fishing boat.

But Siegal had bigger boating plans.

Much bigger.

Plans that included selling his Napa home, homeschooling his two sons, buying a 45-foot catamaran, and heading for the open water, full time.

“COVID hit and we were like, ‘Let’s just do it,’” Siegal said. “We decided we wanted to change up our entire lifestyle.”

By “we” Siegal means his wife Sara Guzman, age 37, and two boys, Austin, 9, and Arthur, 8.

In January, the family of four left a Florida dock on a possible years-long sabbatical that has them planning to sail wherever the wind and water take them.

“We decided that our kids were just growing up too fast,” he said. “It’s so fleeting — their childhood and life.”

“I love it so far,” said Guzman. “You meet all sorts of interesting people from

Submitted image‌

Napans Andrew Siegal, Sara Guzman and their two sons Austin and Arthur bought a catamaran and now live aboard their boat, One Tusk, full-time. They are currently sailing around the Bahamas.

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Follow the adventure: To follow the Siegal and Guzman family on their sailing adventure visit: SailingOneTusk.com

Submitted image‌

Napans Andrew Siegal, Sara Guzman and their two sons (Austin and Arthur) bought a catamaran and now live aboard their boat, One Tusk, full-time. They are currently sailing around the Bahamas.

completely different parts of the world and there’s a real camaraderie.”

Siegal said that the plan to become fulltime “cruisers” actually started a number of years ago. He and Guzman went to a boat show in Miami where they got to see some larger family-sized boats in person. “That opened our eyes,” he said. “Then that bug became a fever and there was no stopping us.”

They put their name down for a slip in a Sarasota, Florida marina, and waited. It took two years but they finally got a spot wide enough to fit a catamaran.

When COVID-19 turned their son’s schooling upside down, the two boys were reduced to lessons by Zoom.

That’s when they decided to make the move onto water, and homeschooling, along with it.

Why a catamaran?

The truth is, “We didn’t know how to sail (the catamaran) until we bought the boat,” admitted Siegal, laughing. “I just figured I’d buy the boat I wanted and then figure it out.”

“We just fell in love with the catamaran.

It had the room we wanted and all the features to live aboard it.”

“If we are all going to be living on this boat together, I wanted the most amount of spaces on the boat where we could have some alone time and not be in everyone’s space all the time,” said Guzman.

They named it One Tusk, which they SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Submitted image‌

The Siegal family is currently sailing in the Bahamas, where the two sons snorkel in open waters.

said refers to unity, courage and stability.

Because Siegal wasn’t experienced at sailing a catamaran (and Guzman had no sailing experience at all), they hired a captain to take the boat from the Caribbean, where it was purchased, to their new slip in Florida.

“We did nothing but sail 24 hours a day,” said Siegal. It was like “baptism by fire,” he said. He started reading, joined Facebook groups and “watching a lot of YouTube videos,” he said. “We started figuring it out.”

Once in Florida, he started adding extras to the boat, like solar power, new batteries and other improvements. The idea was to be able to stay out at sea for longer periods of time, especially with COVID-19 spreading.

Learning to sail isn’t terribly difficult, according to Siegal. “I always felt it was well within my capabilities to figure this out.”

“The harder part is the weather, the shifting of the winds and the navigation combined with the weather,” he said. And

figuring out how to fix things that break while in remote areas, he said.

Plus learning good seamanship, which is “something we will learn for the rest of our lives.”

Safety is another primary concern, of course, “and making sure I wouldn’t be putting our family in harm’s way.”

Yes, there is fear, but “you have to overcome it,” he said.

“For me, it was a lot of humility. I need to learn and learn and learn. And learning how to read charts and learning the weather, especially offshore weather.”

A typical day for his family on the water includes getting up, starting homeschooling, and then chores and boat maintenance.

About 95% of the time they are at anchor which means they are in the water every single day, said Siegal.

Right now, they are in the Bahamas, on the southernmost part of the Exumas INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 85

FAR LEFT: Napans Andrew Siegal, Sara Guzman and their two sons live aboard their boat, One Tusk, full-time.

The boys, Austin and Arthur, are homeschooled.

LEFT: Napans Andrew Siegal, Sara Guzman and their two sons bought a Edited by David Steinberg May 29, 2021 catamaran and now live aboard 44 Small spoiler 9 Google’s 38their Margot boat, One in a certain mobile who played Tusk, full-time. film from operating Harley Quinn They are currently abroad? system 39sailing Voting against around the 47 More, in 10 Reclined 42Bahamas.

Author Zora

Universal Crossword

islands.

“I’m looking in the most crystal clear turquoise water I’ve ever seen,” he said during a phone call last Monday. “It’s just remarkable.”

“This afternoon we’re going to do some spearfishing for lobster,” Siegal added. There is plenty to be found. In fact, a few weeks ago, they collected 35 lobsters to eat, he recalled.

Diving and snorkeling are also frequent past-times. One son is getting into freediving.

“It makes my heart palpitate but he’s good at it,” said Siegal. “They are thriving in the outdoor marine environment.”

Interestingly enough, instead of the actual sailing, it was the homeschooling that most worried Siegal.

“I just didn’t want to screw it up,” he said. But when his kids were reduced to Zoom and virtual instruction at the start of COVID-19, he and his wife figured “What do we have to lose?”

And how are the kids handling this switch?

“Oh my god, they are the ones who have adapted the best and fastest,” Siegal said.

It turns out that the person who had to make the biggest adjustment was Siegal himself.

“I’m a very independent-minded person,” he said. But when you live aboard your sailboat, there’s no escaping to an office across town.

“It was and remains a big adjustment,” he admitted. Plus the work of owning a sailboat is all-consuming.

86 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

ACROSS 1 Home run ball’s path 4 Phonograph records 9 Bold poker Barcelona bet 50 MLB stat 14 Word before 51 Fashion “star” or city west “There’s all kinds of stuff that comes up “power” of Venice on15 a daily basis,” Siegal said.

“It’s salty, Tiptoe, 52 Andre of you are constantly repairing the maybe washing and tennis fame boat, need to be homeschooled,” etc.

16 kids Smallest 54 Successful nation video game “It’sisland definitely not the easiest thing I’ve 17done.” ___ Taylor ever The family is55 alsoLetters isolated and (fashion chain) before “Q+” the internet limited.

18 58 Songs Yet,Thumb’s he’s happy with their choice. that alternate don’t go on “It’s great,” said Siegal. “I wish my parname? forever? ents did this for me.

I want to take these 20 Fruit with a 61 Underground years and big embrace bottom them.” deposit As far as their plan, Siegal said course he’s hop22 Angsty 62 101 ing to music continue on for as 63 longSay as three years genre without —23 or perhaps Author longer. thinking Hemingway Above-water “Who knows? I may 64 never come back.

24there’s College sign of But onlylogo so long the funds will last. on aretired.” car, a shark We’re not for one 65 in Once more Siegal still has property downtown 26 Mop & ___ 66 Having Napa 27 that Likehe a manages, including somethe Feast it Forward building on McKinstry wallflower attitudeStreet and adjacent that has been pro28a property Make ready 67 Gave posed for as the Black Elk Hotel.

“I will be a moon sustenance to flying walk? back from time to time” for Napa DOWN 32 Gillen of 1 “Right now!” business, he said. of friends terribly,” 2 Russo of “We“Game miss our he admitThrones” “Thor” ted. Some have come to visit but it’s not the 33 asLike a back in Napa.

3 When many same being 41-Across “There’s something very maple special leaf about 37 Many a call flags are being requesting in Napa,” he said. A born entreprewaved neur, “Ipersonal feel like I’m missing a little bit.

4 out Hours Ariz.

Who’sinformation going to build something?

A lot of doesn’t that I miss that. I 38energy Toughand guyexcitement; observe in films 5 Ready to really do.”

40 Start from mate, as hot Guzman said she misses “long scratch on She doesn’t a cat showers and baths.” miss their 41 Coin-that the family6got Respectable belongings rid of when operated 7 they moved onto the boat. Baja resort, communicafor short “It tion was really cathartic,”8she said.of Before device Piece 43 10-, 11- or slaloming 12-year-old gear

11 Winter Neale ___ Olympics 43Submitted No. onimage‌ a s sleds business card 12 From Cork, 45 Cape this downsizing, “I held ontoCanaveral way too much say stuff,” saidsome Guzman. Even among the items 13 Like countdown they did put into storage, “I’d say there’s a crunchy term good desserts five boxes of stuff I46 really want.

EverySoda bottle 19 Itelse” uses lessso important sizes thing is not anymore, she 47 Crime family said. cream than ice cream 48 Wine-making Where is the Siegal family headed next?

21“We’re Overhauls process about to do a big passage to 25 Ohio’s Puerto Rico Reds, on our way49to Comet Grenada,” Sieon a controller? gal said. scoreboard 53 Voice from many of the formerApple French colo26Yes, Chow nies are still closed but “we’re hoping as we 28 (Holy cow!)

54 Dance you slowly make___ our way down,may theydo willinstart 29 Costa to30reopen.”

Marisa with a grass skirt aninsurance Oscar reasons, 56 “We Softhave topping For to be 31 Swimmer withof Capricorn for abycracker south of the Tropic the start a large tusk of hurricane season.” 57 Watch over 34 Driving near 59 “Conan” a golf cart network You can reach reporter Jennifer Huffman 35 Biblical 60 Messy room, at 256-2218 or jhuffman@napanews.com paradise metaphori36 “Stop that!” cally

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Carol Bush has owned North Star on Lincoln Avenue in Calistoga for 40 years this month.

Cynthia Sweeney, Weekly Calistogan‌

Celebrating 40 years CYNTHIA SWEENEY ed i tor @we e k lycali s tog an. com‌

North Star began as Pacman video arcade in 1981 ‌One of the great things about living in a small town is the people you get to know. In Calistoga, one of those is Carol Bush, owner of North Star on Lincoln Avenue.

Bush has been operating the store on Lincoln Avenue for 40 years in March. That longevity has brought with it life-long relationships, as friends, neighbors, and kids who used to play in the one-time video arcade, drop into the store on any given day to catch up on the latest.

The journey to Calistoga started in the early 1980s, when Bush and her partner, Derek, moved from Oakland to Santa Rosa.

Both cities were too big for their liking.

“We decided we’d get in the car and drive around until we found a town we liked,” she said, adding, “We moved here with no money.”

In 1981 they moved to Calistoga and started North Star, which was then a record shop and video game arcade — think Pacman and kids in town with nothing to do.

88 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

“Derek had made friends with a guy who was willing to put in video games and just split the take. We’d be the people that paid the rent and ran the place,” Bush said. “But we made money from the first day and managed to hold on ever since.”

Though she said there are those who might disagree, the town has physically pretty much stayed the same. There were two hardware stores and fewer restaurants.

Except, “It was more wild and woolly in those days,” she chuckled.

There was a campground, she recalled where Calistoga Ranch used to be, and that attracted “transient men. Not farmworkers.

We were open until 11 p.m. or midnight sometimes. They would wander into town and kind of drink and carouse around.”

Bush also ran a used bookstore with her brother, which didn’t survive.

In the beginning customers in the arcade were mostly boys, and a few girls.

“That’s how I knew all the boys in town.

Occasionally they come back and say ‘remember me?’ and I literally haven’t seen them in 35 years.”

As home video games became more

popular, the store phased in clothing, making T-shirts that said “Calistoga.”

“One of the oddest things that happened was a man came in one day and asked why the T-shirts said ‘Calistoga.’ It turned out he thought he was in Napa. I didn’t even know how to answer him,” Bush said.

Back in Oakland, Bush had a preschool, and is now on the board of Hearts and Hands Preschool in Calistoga. Her knack with kids is evident, as she watched kids who played in the arcade grow up and, now, all grown up, some still come into the store to visit.

Bush’s partner, Derek, died 19 years ago.

She has also weathered economic downturns, wildfire threats and evacuations and this past year, the pandemic.

“The secret this year was the landlord who was very conscious, really wanted us to make it through this. And Social Security,” she said.

So how long does Bush think she’ll be running the store?

“Probably until they drag me out of here.

I have no desire to retire.”

You can reach Cynthia Sweeney at 9424035 or csweeney@weeklycalistogan.com.

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BRION WISE’S UNCONVENTIONAL APPROACH Three sites, three winemakers and one old barn in Napa Valley

JESS LANDER Single-vineyard Cabernets may be a dime a dozen in Napa Valley, but Brion, a bucolic winery in Yountville is taking an unconventional approach. Founder Brion Wise has pushed the region’s hyper-focus on terroir-driven wines one step further by hiring the best winemaker for each site. That’s why he has not one, but three prominent winemaking consultants on his roster, each bringing their AVA-specific expertise to the table.

With Napa County getting the greenlight to reopen for outdoor wine tastings, these unique expressions from the 2016 vintage can now be experienced inside a historic bank barn that was one small earthquake from falling down until until Wise came along and insisted on restoring it. The result is a hybrid of old and modern-day Napa, of history versus luxury.

FROM APPLES TO GRAPES Like many, Wise’s romance with wine began via travel, his favorite place being Italy. And like many, he dreamed of being

a part of it. “I fell in love with living in a wine area and actually being involved. I wanted that flavor of what goes on in the bigger picture. I wanted to be close to the best of the best but feel a little bit farmlike,” said Wise. “The intent always was to be in Napa.”

But his path to the wine industry can actually be traced back to when he was a boy, growing up on a fruit farm in Washington. “While they were grafting, there was a sleigh with a fire on it to keep the grafting wax hot. I was pulling the sleigh at 5 years old,” he recalled. “I fell in love with the different flavors of not just apples, but particular clones of apples. Same with peaches. Our farm was like an experimental farm. You got to experience different flavors and textures and acidity, and that’s what really drives me in this business.”

Wise is a man of unending projects and new ideas, his wheels constantly turning, and his entrepre-

neurial spirit has been in action since long before his adventures in wine. For instance, he grew cotton in Australia, developed a titanium bicycle chain, and opened a restaurant, Trios, in Boulder, Colorado, along with a wine bar (also called Trios) in Denver.

Locals may recognize him from his Sonoma Valley-based brand B. Wise Vineyards and Amapola Creek Vineyards & Winery in Sonoma, originally owned by winemaker Richard Arrowood. He started Brion in 2002 and as of last year, finally has a Napa Valley winery and tasting room to go with it.

RESCUING THE BARN “The old lady was on its last legs,” said Wise. “Everything on the ground was rotted. People were afraid to walk into it.”

Brion operates out of an old, white bank barn that dates back to 1876 and is one of just

Entrepreneur Brion Wise, who grew up on an fruit farm in Washington, grew cotton in Australia, developed a titanium bicycle chain, and operated a restaurant and bar in Colorado before moving to wine country.

Submitted photo

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two left in California. All the others have been torn down and this barn was inching towards the same fate. It appeared to be falling down and had barely survived more than one earthquake.

Wise, who has a chemical engineering background, couldn’t stand to see it go.

Still, he had trouble convincing everyone else that it was worth rescuing.

“The engineer he hired, he was not [originally] on board,” said his wife Ronda West Wise. “He had to convince him it was worth saving.”

The barn is located on Sleeping Lady Vineyard, which Wise is a part-owner of and where he sources fruit for one of his wines. Located in the Yountville foothills off Solano Avenue with the Mayacamas hillside as its backdrop, Sleeping Lady has 46 acres planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and a little Sauvignon Blanc. Both wine and table grapes have been farmed on the property since the 1800s.

Wise’s focus at Sleeping Lady, and with every vineyard he works with, is on dialing in every individual vineyard block to perform to the best of its ability, experimenting with different farming techniques and clones. “The cherry on top is adding the winery to the estate,” he said. “It closes the loop.”

The entire rebuilding project took over four years to complete. The permitting alone took a couple of years and the barn is now safe for both winemaking and hosting tastings, but Wise did his best to retain its rusticity, pulling inspiration from historic European structures.

From the outside, it still looks a lot like an old, dilapidated barn. Wise maintained 80 percent of its original redwood siding on purpose. Walk around and up the bank and you’ll see the winery. It’s a small operation, but it’s just large enough to fit Brion’s small, four-ton fermenters used for small lots of separate blocks. Wine is gravity fed into barrels underneath from the same area that horses used to feed on alfalfa thrown down to them. Again, there’s a primitive feel that’s starkly contrasted by the state-ofthe-art winemaking equipment. A window provides the best view of Sleeping Lady Vineyard.

“We haven’t changed it a lot. It’s historic, so we had to keep it intact. We couldn’t throw out or change the footprint,” said Wise. “I love the fact we brought it back.

The old lady is making wine now instead of milk.”

This past year was the first harvest SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Submitted photo‌

Brion Wise rescued the 1876 white bank barn, which is now the tasting room for his wines.

processed at the new winery, although 2020 did put a damper on the celebration.

“Opening a winery in 2020 had many challenges. Our team has been extremely diligent with making things right as this was our first harvest at the new winery. From equipment to getting our processes in order and staying on top of testing and handling any potential smoke taint, there was a lot to learn,” said Wise.

“Because of these efforts, we didn’t pick all the vineyards. Location and position of vineyards is the critical factor on how you are impacted by smoke and we, like many others in Napa, were lucky in some instances. Any lots that have shown smoke damage have of course been rejected and as we go forward we continue to check the chemistry to ensure clean wines.”

Downstairs on the first floor is the barrel room, which in keeping with the upstairs, is truly nothing fancy other than the fact that Wise controls the manufacturing and toasting of each and every barrel, working with a master cooper and customizing them to the desires of his winemakers. Adjacent to the barrel room is a tasting area and where the barn joins up with the 21st century. Ronda West Wise, an interior designer by trade, gets all the credit here. The tasting space was her domain and it continues to evolve.

Natural light seeps in through a sliding garage door and a floor-to-ceiling glass panel looks into the barrel room. With a wide mix of textures and materials, the furnishings and art pieces are contemporary, yet eclectic; for instance, there’s an old-fashioned yellow telephone set on a table and a pair of canvases by a Mexican artist depict goats dressed up as people. The space has several nooks for private tastings (guests are greeted with a glass of Dom Perignon and given a tour of the property) and has a nice indoor/outdoor feel, but there’s also a long farm table amongst a grove of olive trees for pure outdoor tastings.

TOO MANY COOKS?‌ Brion’s trio of consultants makes up an all-star winemaking team that includes Massimo Monticelli, Mark Herold and Julien Fayard.

On paper, it looks like a possible recipe for disaster, but each winemaker has his own dedicated vineyard site or sites from the regions they know best, specialize in, and above all, are most passionate about.

While they may share ideas and confer with each other for input, their work doesn’t often overlap. Moreover, they’ve worked together before. They know each other’s “bad habits,” joked Fayard.

“And quirks,” added Herold.

“You build teams of professionals to handle the different things you’re doing. I prefer that approach,” said Wise. “The belief is that winemakers have a style they love, so you have them make a style they love from a vineyard they love. That’s why we have a team.”

This variation of winemaking styles enables Wise to curate an especially diverse portfolio of single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons that showcases the different nuances of several AVAs. Moon Mountain’s cool nights enable the wines to retain great acid and fruit to strike a perfect balance while the cool afternoon breeze that flows through Coombsville results in an extended growing season for added complexity, layers, and darker, inkier wines. The rocky, cobble wash soils of Sleeping Lady in Yountville bring elegance, freshness, and texture, while Oakville’s red clay soils on top of volcanic andesite and basalt make the wine big, soft, and plush.

“All properties are fun and all different and that’s why I want to keep them separate as vineyards. They all have their own historical property, farming practices, and philosophy,” said Wise, who when asked if he has a favorite, quipped, “It’s like drinking whiskey and scotch. I pour a different one each time.”

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 91

Meet Napa’s new poet laureate H OWA R D Y U N E hyune @nap ane w s . com‌

A life teaching music led Lyon to poetry ‌More than four decades of teaching music – from Napa and the Midwest to Brussels and Hong Kong – laid the foundation for Marianne Lyon’s later-life entry into the world of poetry. Now the Yountville resident’s passion has culminated with her selection as Napa County’s literary ambassador for the next two years.

A Montana native who spent her early career teaching choral music at a Minneapolis Catholic school, Lyon had long incorporated verse into her music lessons, she recalled Thursday, two days after her appointment by the Napa County Board of Supervisors for a two-year term as the county’s poet laureate. She replaces Jeremy Benson, a Yountville resident and organic farmer who gave up the position after three years following a move out of the county, according to the Arts Council Napa Valley website.

“I always wrote songs, but I never put them down as poems,” said Lyon, who turns 70 in April. “I think I was always writing with the kids because I took the books kids would read and turned them into music experiences, and then I would write my own.”

“As a music teacher since 1973, I’ve always thought music and poetry are twins.”

A stint teaching at the Hong Kong International School from 2009 to 2012 set Lyon on a road to writing standalone verses, a path she estimates has produced about 240 published poems.

“I really had some experiences in my travels that inspired me to write, (like) ancient poets that you’d read and think, ‘Oh my God, the 12th century in China, the poetry written about Great Wall,’” said Lyon, who is now an adjunct music professor for Touro University in Vallejo. “And so I started to write about my travels while in Hong Kong and when I came home … that’s when I started to write poetry without putting it to music.”

Lyon’s latest position will include appearing at various public events, linking poets to the community, and inspiring others in their writing, performance and personal expression.

“I want for talented people in the collective to offer those who never viewed themselves as 92 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Submitted photo‌

Yountville resident Marianne Lyon has been selected for a two-year term as poet laureate of Napa County.

poets many venues to ignite their inner poet,” she said, referring to religious services, informal singing and other forms of versifying in everyday life. Poetry is a part of everyone’s life, even if they don’t know it.”

As the county’s literary ambassador, Lyon hopes to forge a similar bond between verse and music, as well as a stronger outreach to residents. Her plans include assembling a “Revolutionary Poets Society” collective to encourage a wider range of Napans – including Spanish-speakers and local students – to give voice to their life experiences, along with a series of concerts about once every two months to showcase new poetry and instrumental music based on those works.

In her early years of teaching in Minnesota, Lyon, who earned a degree in vocal performance, taught choral music to high schoolers and organized recitals of opera arias and art songs in German, French and Italian, she recalled. Arriving in Napa in 1995, she put her musical grounding to new uses while teaching at what was then the Westwood Elementary School.

“My passion was using music as a vehicle for language development,” she recalled of her work for the academy that became the Napa Valley Language Academy, one of the Napa school district’s three English-Spanish dual-immersion campuses. “If kids came to my class not speaking English, I would sing songs in English, Swahili, anything to get

them to speak in different languages.

“I did a lot of folk songs, songs where kids could play drums and sing, dance to them.

I didn’t want to always do English songs because kids at that age can soak everything up. When they hear sounds like that, they’re like ‘wow’ and they immediately pick it up.”

Recent contest entries by Lyon include works filled with musical imagery such as “If the Beach Could Sing She Would Sound Like a Cello,” a second-prize entry at the 2017 Dancing Poetry festival in San Francisco, and “Major to Minor,” a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2016.

Another of Lyon’s ideas seeks to use verse as a salve of sorts for emotions rubbed raw by a year of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting worries about health, jobs and loved ones.

“I will propose a call out for poetry of humor,” she wrote in her application letter to the county. “Humor can bring us together and show us our shared ridiculousness and love of laughter.”

“I love idea that even under COVID, we can ask, what can we do with this?” she said last week. “I want to ask the collective to find a funny poem and send it to as many people as we can, because that’s what we need right now.”

You can reach Howard Yune at 530-7632266 or hyune@napanews.com SPRING/SUMMER 2021

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An author rediscovers

‘LOST NAPA VALLEY’

Lauren Coodley takes a nostalgic look at where we worked, shopped and played in past decades K AT H L E E N R E Y N O L D S

‌B

ored on a Saturday? Why not head over to the Wheelhouse Roller Rink, Paradise Mini Golf, or the Kay-Von Drive-in to skate, putt or snuggle in your car to watch movies? Oh, wait. The skating rink at River Park Shopping Center closed in 1988, the mini-golf course on Third Street was demolished to make way for the Flood Project in 2005 and the drive-in theater was gutted by fire in the 1970s and shut down in 1981.‌ In her newest book, “Lost Napa Valley,” author Lauren Coodley presents a fascinating if poignant, remembrance of Napa Valley’s past. The book includes chapters on “Where We Worked,” “Where We Played,” “Where We Shopped” and others describing

the Napa Valley that used to be.

“I especially enjoyed writing the shopping chapter,” said Coodley. “I remember all the places when I was a young mother of two children. I loved the small businesses downtown and the places like Family Drug Store were important in my life.”

She doesn’t dwell on a particular decade in Lost Napa Valley. “Each generation misses something different from their childhood. I didn’t write it for a particular generation but wanted to honor all of them.”

For example, she’s spoken to students who

mourn the loss of the much-maligned Clock Tower in Dwight Murray Plaza. “It was their aesthetic.”

Coodley praises the people who worked the valley; from its indigenous tribes, through the prosperous ranching Californios who drove out the natives, to the family farmers such as the Minahens, Buhmans and von Uhlits that made Napa Valley unique.

Author Lauren Coodley’s richly illustrated new book examines long-vanished places in Napa Valley.

Submitted image ‌

Downtown Napa in the 1960s.

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More recent history includes the Cameron Shirt Company, which opened in 1901 by W. H. Cameron and thrived with workers such as Carl Franco, whose father had been an indentured servant working in Napa orchards and his mother, descended from an Italian pioneer Napa family. Carl was the president of the local Garment Workers Union and a member of many local organizations, including assistant scout leader of Troop No. 10, until his untimely death in 1946 in the cutting room, at 36 years old. One hundred Scouts formed a guard of honor at the church for the funeral.

Cameron Shirt Company became part of Rough Rider Clothing Company on Soscol Avenue in 1955. Rough Rider closed its Napa operations in 1980.

“There were so many people involved in forming the Napa Valley from Rough Rider to the State Hospital. This is like a scrapbook of the past to preserve for the future. I’m motivated to honor these places and people.”

When thanking the dozens of people who helped her with their memories, family photos and yellowed news articles, Coodley chuckles. “There are always readers who come up to me and tell me all that I didn’t include. The lost service station that their fathers ran, those kinds of things.”

Coodley isn’t a native Napan but feels like she is. “I came here at age 24. Due to a friend’s recommendation, I got my first real job teaching Women’s Studies at Napa Valley College’s up-valley campus.

“I didn’t have a background in history, but I had studied Women’s Literature. I thought a long time about how the class should be. There was hardly any literature on Women’s Studies. The few articles I could find were often mimeographed copies.”

In the ‘70s, when women realized there was more to history than what the male historians explained, her classes grew in popularity.

“Women hated history. In high school, most of the history classes were taught by the sports coaches. Since I had the freedom to design my own course, I decided there would be no intimidating tests. I told the students ‘the only dates you need are these,’ and passed out dried dates. Instead, I had students write about the history of women in their families. They would create small books to preserve that history.

“Napa women have a history no one knows but family. I even wrote a little book for my grandmother’s birthday and wrote another small book for a friend when she SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Bryant’s Candy shop in downtown Napa, an old favorite, from “Lost Napa.”

Lauren Coodley

Submitted photo‌

was ill.”

Coodley decided if she was going to teach history, she wanted credentials. She headed back to college and received an MA in history in two years. Her “American Women’s History” classes grew to include courses on “California History” and “NapaVallejo History.” She received the McPherson Distinguished Teaching Award and was elected president of the faculty.

Around that time, an American History publisher, Arcadia, sent letters to history

instructors across the country asking for books about “The History of My Town.”

“I’d read everything I could on Napa and had always clipped articles and saved them. I thought this is a chance to put what I know into a book. In the summer of 2003, when I had a break from teaching, I worked on the book.”

Her manuscript became Napa, the Transformation of an American Town.

Since then, she’s written many other titles, including Napa Valley Chronicles, 2013; Upton Sinclair: California Socialist Celebrity Intellectual, 2013; and The Same River Twice, 2018.

Since her retirement from teaching, she spends quality time with her two grandsons.

Although she loves that, she says she misses teaching. “I wanted to weave an experience, one that my students would always remember. I used some of my students’ quotes about local history at the end of Lost Napa.

I hope they’ll be thrilled.”

Coodley wants people to find her books, especially Lost Napa Valley, to be educational but fun.

“When people ask why I didn’t include this person or that place in the book, I tell them that I know there are a hundred stories for every story I tell and a hundred people for everyone I interviewed. What I write is not definitive, people need to write down their family’s stories and preserve them.”

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 95

Pancha’s

The last dive bar SARAH KLEARMAN sklearman@napanews.com‌

Celebrated by Playboy, the Yountville landmark has resisted going fancy

‌T

o the right ear, the names of the bars that lined the streets of Yountville half a century ago might sound like a chorus of old friends: Claudia’s. Mexicali Rose. Yountville Saloon. The Whistle Stop. The Two Spot.

At the time, Yountville was mostly dive bars.

During the seventies and eighties, the list of town bars stretched at least a dozen long, with the residents of the nearby Veterans Home a vital clientele. Today the list is just a single name: Pancha’s.

It was 1982 when Bobby Solis opened Pancha’s doors. The bar scene just seemed the way to go to Solis, a life-long Yountville resident who had been working as a general contractor.

In a way, he was joining the family business: his father, Roberto Solis, had been a bar owner intermittently over the course of his life, and his maternal grandparents, Frances and Ruben, owned Jalisco and Café Rancho Grande, two restaurants in Napa County popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

After setting his sights on the bar business, Solis began a search for the right piece of property. There were potential sites littering either side of Washington Street, but Solis didn’t just want to lease a bar – he wanted to own one.

“The land is what I was after,” Solis, 72, said, nursing a Coor’s Light in the yard behind the bar on a Friday afternoon in mid-February.

If he owned the land, Solis knew, there would be no landlord to answer to. There would be no one to demand big rent increases; no one wanting to sell the land.

In short: it would be harder to get rid of him.

The dusty yellow building at 6764 Washington St. was owned by Bob Del Rosso, who’d done well for himself as the owner of Silverleaf Night Club, a popular, rowdy spot in Napa in the 1940s. When Solis first approached him about buying the bar, Del Rosso offered to lease it him and told Solis he’d have “first option to buy” if the property ever came up for sale. Solis walked away.

96 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

“I said, ‘That doesn’t mean a thing, Bob. That could happen – when? Any time from now until I die,’” Solis said.

But a year later, he reconnected with Del Rosso, who agreed to sell the property to Solis if he’d rent it for the first five years. (“I think he was hoping that I wouldn’t make it that long,” Solis said.)

Rent was $450 a month in those early days, Solis remembers. Five years later, he purchased the property for $110,000. He thinks it’d go for something like $5 million in the today’s market.

Today the bar, which will celebrate 39 years in business next month, is Yountville’s oldest business.

“And I have no intention of ever selling it,” Solis said, peacefully puffing away at a cigar.

THE MAKING OF A LANDMARK‌ The building that houses Pancha’s today has barely been touched since Solis bought it from Del Rosso in 1987, and it shows. The northern half of the bar was built in what Solis calls “oldstyle” construction: it has no concrete foundation. The walls sit directly on dirt, and that half of the floor sits hard on a motley base of rocks and grit.

On the outside, the beige paint is faded and chipping, exposing swaths of the old wood behind it. From the inside, the walls appear slightly concave, as if the room were perpetually in the middle of a deep inhale.

The building is a portrait of Yountville as it once was, according to Lynda Castell-Branch, a lifelong Napa resident who worked there as a bartender in her mid-20s nearly four decades ago.

“Pancha’s is pretty much as it was when I worked there, and a lot of time has passed since then,” she said, fondly recalling shifts spent listening to World War II veterans tell war stories.

“Yountville has gotten to be so well-manicured.

Seeing all the massive changes that have happened in the valley, I kind of like seeing one last little picture – a little window into what was.”

Solis has worked to preserve the bar beyond the physical. Pancha’s is still very much a family business: almost every member of the Solis family has worked there in some capacity, he said.

Pancha’s owner Bobby Solis outside his bar, which has gone largely untouched since he purchased it in the late 1980s.

Sarah Klearman, Register‌

His niece, Rose Franco, 67, has been a fixture of the bartending staff since the early days. His nephew, Rose’s brother Rene, 65, used to regularly pick up shifts before he began his own driving business. And except for the addition of hard liquor – the bar in its early days served just beer and wine, though “the wine didn’t really sell,” Solis said – the menu has remained largely the same. Beers still go for $3.

The Yountville Solis grew up in was a rough town: the preponderance of bars often drew tough clientele. Rene remembers stories his older brother Dave would tell about men who’d make the trip to Yountville from out of town just to get in bar fights.

There were only a couple hundred permanent residents of the town when the Solis boys were growing up; the local kids were bused into Napa for schooling, Rene remembers, where the other children were warned by their parents to keep their distance from the Yountville kids.

Highway 29, today the main artery for tourists visiting wine country, once ran right through the middle of town. (“There’d be a car every five minutes,” Rene recalled.) Yountville’s downtown didn’t have a single stop sign or a red light, Solis said, and there were only two restaurants in town.

It was that sleepier, cruder version of today’s Yountville that birthed Pancha’s. At the time, Solis’ bar was one of many, but it quickly became something of a spot for veterans, farmworkers and the town’s working class residents.

Even as its clientele base grew, Solis was acutely aware that some of the town’s population disapproved of the bar. Pancha’s was one of just two Mexican-owned bars in all of Yountville, and Solis believes there were those who would have quite liked to have seen his business fail.

He faced pressure from the town council a few times to “do something” with the building, SPRING/SUMMER 2021

according to Gary Loomis, who has bartended nights at Pancha’s for the last 28 years, and sometimes there’d be trouble with neighbors or from law enforcement.

“They just didn’t know how hard-headed I would be, especially because by then, I had purchased the property,” Solis said. “It was, like – you think I’m not going to stay here?”

It helped that Solis’s local roots run wide and deep: three generations of his large Mexican-American family had lived in Napa Valley before him. The bar itself is named for his maternal grandmother, Frances, whom everyone called Pancha. She was the matriarch of the family, the mother of at least 13 children, of whom Jenny, Solis’s mother, is the oldest. Solis, born to Jenny when she was 14, was Pancha’s first grandchild, and the two had a close bond.

Pancha, who passed away in 2000, could hold her own, Solis remembers. She often stopped by the bar to joke with even the rowdiest of patrons, and pulled some shifts from time to time. He hadn’t consciously planned to name the bar for her, Solis said; one day it just came to him, and he asked his grandmother for her approval.

“She said, ‘Go ahead, mijo, maybe it’ll bring you some luck,’” Solis said, using Spanish slang for ‘my son.’

As the reputation of the valley and Yountville itself grew, its bars were replaced with wine tasting rooms and demand for a table at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, a single block away from Pancha’s, exploded. Pancha’s clientele began to shift: veterans and farmworkers were still cornerstone customers, but so were the waitstaffs of nearby wineries and high-end restaurants.

Some nights, Rene, bartending, would see “a big group, and it’d be all attorneys,” he said, using an expletive. Then there might also be a bunch of doctors, and next to the doctors, a throng of leather-clad bikers.

“Drive by on weekends, you might see a Jaguar and a Ferrari outside, but also a bunch of motorcycles,” he said. “This bar gets a very mixed crowd.”

Pancha’s reputation was spreading, too.

Franco, in particular, became notorious for her fiery, take-no-prisoners attitude when it came to misbehaving patrons; she’s thrown out an unknowable number through the decades, according to Solis.

After pop star Jessica Simpson, ostensibly on a trip to Napa Valley, entered Pancha’s and refused to pose for a photo with one of the bar’s most beloved regular customers, Franco promptly threw her out, too – along with “her entourage,” which included a large bodyguard, Rene said. (Simpson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

“I have a reputation on Yelp, and it’s ridiculous, some of the stories,” Franco said. “Some SPRING/SUMMER 2021

people come into the bar and go, ‘Well, I just wanted to come in here and get thrown out, so I could (say that I had).’”

In the summer of 2012, Pancha’s caught the eye of Playboy Magazine, which promptly featured it as the number one spot on its list of the top dive bars in the entire country.

“When night falls in Napa Valley, off-duty cult-cab winemakers, French Laundry chefs and vineyard workers gather at this dimly lit beacon to soak up Buds and shots with beef tongue burritos from the taco truck in the parking lot,” the description read. Solis was floored.

“God bless Hugh M. Hefner,” he said, pulling a worn issue of the magazine out of the bar’s back office and pointing proudly at the blurb. “I was doing OK before that, but this really turned things around.”

WAITING OUT THE PANDEMIC‌ The past year has not been kind to California’s bars. Pancha’s has sat dark almost the entirety of last year; the state’s bars aren’t permitted to open whatsoever until their respective county reaches the orange tier, and cannot open for indoor service, even at limited capacity, until the least-restrictive yellow tier.

Even when the county briefly rose to the orange tier for a period of weeks last fall, Solis balked at moving his service exclusively outdoors: it seemed a recipe for open container violations and drunken, wandering patrons, he said.

Nearby wineries have installed touchless payment technology, plexiglass dividers and begun offering virtual experiences, but those are strategies that just don’t make sense for Pancha’s, according to Loomis.

Patrons, be they regulars or tourists, don’t come to Pancha’s for tweezered, craft cocktails; they come to experience the place, a thing that can’t just be bottled up and taken to go, he said.

Recreating a pre-pandemic atmosphere is an obstacle for the entire hospitality industry, but “definitely more of a challenge” for dive bars, according to Alex Susskind, professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University’s school of hotel management.

“The experience within the four walls of the business is what makes (a dive bar),” Susskind said. “It’s more difficult to recreate the environment that built that business with a third or a quarter of the people there.”

In June, Susie’s Bar – a beloved Calistoga dive that first opened in 1944 and last changed hands in 2013 – went up for sale. Its owners had attempted to cobble together a to-go menu strategy for the pandemic by partnering with a nearby restaurant since takeaway drinks had to be served with food, the Weekly Calistogan reported, but business had proved shaky.

Bars across the state – including centuries-old

haunts in San Francisco – are grappling with the same restrictions, wondering if they’ll make it through the pandemic’s last leg.

Loomis, who’s been making ends meet on unemployment insurance since the bar closed last year, says he’s confident Pancha’s will emerge from the shutdowns. He’s just not sure what’ll be waiting for the bar on the other side.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever see the same crowds,” Loomis said, pausing. “I just don’t ever see it going back, so we’re thinking about how we might make up the difference (in) business, and what that might be like.”

Crowds aside, there’s likely to be some pent-up demand among consumers, according to Cornell’s Susskind: data has shown that roughly 70% of consumers want to patronize restaurants.

“My guess is the demand for bars is the same,” Susskind said, adding the notoriously high virus transmission rate in bar settings could initially depress things.

When Solis opens Pancha’s again for the first time since March 2020, there’ll be at least a few familiar faces waiting for him – including Kevin Hangman, who before the pandemic had spent every afternoon since his retirement three years ago at the bar, sometimes joined by his wife, Christina.

Before COVID, he’d get there at noon, take a seat and light up a cigar. Franco, who has become a dear friend of the couple, would have a gin and tonic waiting for him. They’d strike up a conversation, and Hangman would queue up a few songs on the jukebox before heading home.

Hangman still stops by Franco’s house once a week for a drink and a cigar, but he misses his fellow regulars.

“The old timers of us – it’s like that TV show Cheers,” Hangman said. “We all know each other’s names, and it’s a pretty remarkable group.”

Solis’s initial hunch that he might stick around in business longer as a land owner has undoubtedly contributed to the bar’s longevity.

And even having been closed for the last 49 weeks, Pancha’s has had the good fortune to avoid drowning under the high overhead costs threatening the viability of many of the state’s small businesses. It’s survived earthquakes, floods and its fair share of rowdy bar fights: it’ll survive the pandemic, too.

Solis, asked if he thought naming the bar for his grandmother brought him some luck after all, hesitated.

“I never thought of it that way,” he said, pausing to consider. “I just thought, hey – thank God for Playboy.”

You can reach Sarah Klearman at (707) 2562213 or sklearman@napanews.com.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 97

Not your typical

wine shop JESS LANDER

Bay Grape’s second location is open in Napa ‌“Do you want the real story?”

The willingness of Josiah Baldivino and his wife Stevie Stacionis to admit that their decision to open a second location of their popular Oakland wine shop Bay Grape in Napa came on the heels of a clarity-inducing mushroom trip in Snow Canyo, Utah, is enough to show that this really isn’t your typical Napa wine business.

“But that happened later,” Stacionis reminded her husband, for it’s not quite as 1970s as it sounds.

Like many, the couple had been having a particularly rough summer, and on top of the pandemic and months of social unrest, their 8-month-old restaurant Mama Oakland, which had just started gaining momentum, had to shut down.

There was a lot of uncertainty about the future, which is why it’s maybe a little perplexing that the couple’s solution was to open another business. But so many people had been telling them that they should open a shop in Napa, it didn’t hurt to look.

“I think particularly during Covid, more people from Napa were coming down to Oakland to our shop. They weren’t working, there was no traffic, so there was more of that feedback specifically during Covid,” said Stacionis.

In October, they took a look at the empty space off Solano Avenue, just north of The Green Door, which had a pretty spacious patio, and decided to put in an offer.

Then, they took off in a rented RV to meet some friends in Utah, and yes, hallucinogenic mushrooms were involved.

“We left Snow Canyon and we were headed to Zion in the RV, 98 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

the windows were rolled down, we were listening to The War on Drugs and living the dream,” said Baldivino, an advanced sommelier and former wine director at Michael Mina restaurant in San Francisco.

“This song was on and it was amazing and felt very spiritual,” Stacionis chimed in. “It ended and we looked at each other and we were like, ‘Yes. Bay Grape Napa.’”

When they returned, they signed the lease and just a few months later, they were able to open on March 27 with the help of general manager Samantha Bauer. A geologist and former Bay Grape Oakland customer turned wine lover and certified sommelier, Bauer started as a sales associate in Oakland and is now running the Napa location.

NAPA ROOTS‌ The store opening also prompted the couple to move their family to Napa, but they’re not your typical transplants from the Bay. Their connections to the Napa community run deep and back a decade.

“When we first moved to the Bay from New York in 2011, the first friends we made were in Napa, and immediately, the whole Napa community welcomed us in. It was all really iconic, incredible producers from this area that had been sort of like superstar legends in my mind and I was kind of star-struck.

Everybody seemed so collaborative and welcoming,” recalled Stacionis, a certified sommelier with a background in wine communication and education. She is the founder of the Bâtonnage Forum, which took place in Napa in 2018 and 2019.

“I feel like this was our core community, even before we were able to build one in the Bay, and

Emma K. Morris‌

The ever-changing wine selection at Bay Grape isn’t what you’ll find at most Napa Valley wine shops.

has remained true to the point where, as we were questioning whether to open this or not, we were like, ‘We don’t even have that many friends left in the Bay anymore. All of our community is up there, so why aren’t we there?’ I still love the Bay and a huge part of my heart is in Oakland, but now it feels like I get the best of both worlds because we’re still down there a few times a week.”

SOMETHING DIFFERENT‌ The ever-changing wine selection at Bay Grape isn’t what you’ll find at most Napa Valley wine shops. For starters, don’t expect to find any of the big named Napa brands. Small producers are Bay Grape’s focus, and not all local either. You can find wines from all over the world, even Georgia, Slovenia or Serbia, right alongside NorCal bottlings from brands like Matthiasson, Maitre De Chai and Carboniste.

“Sometimes we’ll carry people and they end up getting big and you can find them anywhere, and that’s when we’ll move on to find the next big thing,” said Baldivino.

“That’s part of the fun of it, the selection is never stagnant. We’re always tasting and searching for the next person that’s doing cool shit.”

The couple also seeks out producers “with a mindset on preserving the planet for the next generation,” said Stacionis. This naturally

leads them to carry a solid selection of natural wine producers, though nothing that’s too flawed.

They are really catering to the local and wine industry crowd. Bay Grape’s website tagline is “we want to make wine less douchey,” and they have Reissdorf Kolsch by the bottle because they know a lot of winemakers just want a cold one at the end of the day. Wine pricing ranges between $15 and $200, but most bottles are in at an affordable price point of $20 to $50.

“Locals — I can’t speak for everyone — but they probably can’t afford a lot of the Napa wines.

Now that I’m a local, I just need a $16 bottle of Muscadet that I can crush on the patio, go home, still make dinner, and go to bed at a decent time,” said Stacionis. “From what I’ve seen in Napa, both industry and locals, we want to have a place where we feel like it’s ours and where we’re able to relax and still be taken care of nicely, but not feel like it’s a whole production and not feel like it’s breaking the bank.”

Bay Grape’s patio makes it seem more like a gathering place than a shop, and patrons can enjoy any bottle they purchase for an extra $10 corkage fee or a glass or flight from the month’s featured producer. In April, Bay Grape is featuring a sparkling wine flight from Carboniste and upcoming producers include Benevolent Neglect, Enfield, and Massican.

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