Inside Napa Valley - Winter/Spring 2020

inside

napa valley Winter/Spring 2020

Winter

blooms in the Valley

**ECRWSSEDDM*** LOCAL POSTAL CUSTOMER

WINTER SPRING 2019

PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID NAPA, CA PERMIT NO. 359 INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 1

POIS MOI COLLECTION

2 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

3341 Solano Ave. (Redwood Plaza) Napa, CA 94558 | (707) 252-8131

WINTER SPRING 2019

inside

napa valley

5

21

14

‌ monumental artist A Art from the heart Hobby store for all ages Bikes get a boost Living the Life Getting to Know You: Geoff Ellsworth Neighborhoods: American Canyon MFK Fisher’s Napa Valley legacy Wings over Napa Tastemakers Crossword Puzzle Brewing Fearlessly Food Trucks of the Napa Valley Canine comfort Preserving wildlife Develop your wine taste The wine underground Combating climate change at home

4 9 13 16 20 22 24 28 36 44 47 50 54 58 62 73 78 102

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

Winter may be here, but there’s so much going on N O R M A KO S T E C K A Ad ve r ti s i ng Di re ctor‌

‌T

he air is chilly and the vineyards are quiet.

There’s no mistaking winter in the Napa Valley. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty going on in our pleasant little corner of the world.

In this edition of Inside Napa Valley magazine, we’ll visit with NORMA KOSTECKA a pair of artists, sculptor Mario Chiodo, who makes monumental works, and Arleene Correa Valencia, an up-and-coming figure in the art world who brings her highly personal immigrant story to her pieces.

We’ll soar high above the WINTER SPRING 2020

Napa Valley in a private airplane, and we’ll meet the people who nurse ailing migratory birds back to health on their journey along the Pacific Flyway. We’ll meet volunteers working to combat climate change and look at a church ministry using a comfort dog to spread its message of love and healing.

We’ll visit with a Napa business that specializes in importing hard-to-find hops and other products for breweries, and we’ll learn how St. Helena left a lasting impression on M.F.K. Fisher, possibly the most influential food writer of the modern era.

In our Neighborhoods series, we’ll meet two women who live in the oldest part of American Canyon and have watched the city grow up.

We’ll drop in on an oldschool hobby store that’s stood the test of time, and learn how e-bikes are gaining acceptance with commuters and bike enthusiasts. Experts will give you advice on how to develop your taste for wine, and we’ll look at the important role wine caves play in making Napa’s signature beverage.

We’ll get to know St. Helena’s mayor, who also happens to be a working musician, and we’ll introduce a new feature: Tastemakers. Each issue, we’ll ask Napa Valley insiders for their tips on enjoying the good life in our Valley.

All this and we’ll bring you some of our favorite food, wine and feature stories that have run lately in the pages of all the

Napa Valley Publishing family.

So grab a glass of Napa’s finest and join us for the latest edition of the award-winning Inside Napa Valley magazine.

On the Cover: Mustard pops in a vineyard along Old Sonoma Road in this 2016 photo by former Register Photo Editor J.L. Sousa.

Editor’s note: Many of you will be receiving this edition by mail, the second time we have distributed our free quarterly magazine to postal customers in and around Napa. If you like what you see and want to be part of supporting local journalism, please consider becoming a member at napavalleyregister.com/members.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 3

Tim Carl Photography‌

Remembering

THEM Moved by 9/11, Napa artist artist Mario Chiodo honors courageous humanitarians

M ‌

ario Chiodo was a multimillion-dollar artist who traveled around the world checking in on his numerous art installations, hosting QVC shows on TV or designing enormous story-sculpture-scenes at various casinos, but when the 9/11 terror attacks happened, he felt an urgent need to take action.

He wanted to help, to do something that would address the hatred that had fueled and motivated such cruelty. The idea came quickly.

He would do what he did best. He picked up his pencil and started to sketch.

“I wanted to make something that celebrated what was good in this world,” Chiodo said. “I couldn’t bear to have my young daughters grow up in a world so full of violence and hate. I wanted them – all of us – to remember that the courage and goodness of anyone can have amazing and beautiful results.”

4 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

TIM CARL ‘REMEMBER THEM: CHAMPIONS FOR HUMANITY’ That initial sketch eventually morphed and evolved to become the “Remember Them: Champions for Humanity” collection of statues that now resides at the Kaiser Memorial Park in downtown Oakland, Chiodo’s hometown.

It took nearly a dozen years to complete, but today the exhibit stands as a bronze tribute to some of the world’s most courageous humanitarians, including Thich Nhat Hanh, Frederick Douglass, César Chávez, Harvey Milk, Chief Joseph and Ruby Bridges.

Bridges is shown at one end of the statue holding an untitled book and depicted as a 6-year-old – one of the rare monuments of a child humanitarian. However, like many of the other luminaries included, Bridges’ image is not unfamiliar. She is the African-American girl depicted in Norman Rockwell’s 1964 “The

Problem We All Live With,” which is widely considered one of the most iconic images of the civil rights movement in the United States.

COURAGE WITHIN EVERYONE’S DNA In total, 25 different such “champions for humanity” are depicted in a massive collection of sculptures that is 52 feet wide and 21 feet high, covering 1,000 square feet, all laid out to form a spiraling double helix to represent the structure of DNA. “The more I studied the lives and writings of international champions, the more I saw the similarity in people everywhere,” said Chiodo, who works out of his Napa studio.

“The quest for freedom, equality and peace is universal despite geographical, religious or cultural boundaries. This is in all of us, it’s in our DNA.” Please see Rembering, Page 6 WINTER SPRING 2020

Garaventa’s Florist Weddings & Events 707-255-8878

All arrangements are custom designed to your individual taste by professional floral designers Serving the Napa Valley Since 1970

www.Garaventasflorist.com 851 Lincoln Ave., Napa, CA 94558

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 5

Tim Carl Photography‌

A selection of the masks that launched Mario Chiodo’s art career.

Tim Carl Photography‌

REMEMBERING From Page 4

What had begun as a selfless act to remember the courage of regular people for Chiodo after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks grew into a 12-year arduous journey of endurance and pain for the artist, full of financial hardship, political backlash and even death threats to him and his family. But Chiodo was not unfamiliar with challenges.

A TEST THAT CHIODO WAS BORN TO FAIL Born in 1961 to an immigrant Italian family living in a blue-collar neighborhood in Oakland, Chiodo was drawn to creating art from an early age. By the time he was 5 years old, he could think of little else, and after watching a show on channel 9 (KQED) about a sculptor’s work creating a bust of Abraham Lincoln, he spent the next few days out under a large fig tree knee-deep in mud trying to form the head of the 16th president of the United States.

“I would draw on anything I could get my hands on – paper bags, napkins – even using mud to make sculptures,” Chiodo said.

“To my parents’ credit they encourage me but didn’t push me, scraping their money together they eventually even bought me actual paints and clay.”

However, in school his restless and constant doodling led his fourth-grade teacher to recommend that he be placed into what was 6 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

painfully called the “slow class.”

“It was a dark time,” Chiodo said. “I wanted to create, and I couldn’t understand why anything else was important.”

One of the tests to determine his fate was to spell the name of a colored card flashed before his eyes. It was a test he was born to fail.

“I’m an artist and I can’t see color – I have deformed cones in my eyes,” he said. “At the time no one knew this, including me, but later I was tested at Stanford and found out that I have the most severe type of color blindness.”

But within the “slow” class other teachers began to see his talent and encouraged him, placing his numerous sketches of faces, animals and scary monsters out in the hallway for everyone to see.

In 1970, Marcus Albert Foster had been appointed as the superintendent of the Oakland School District, making him the first African-American superintendent of any large school district in America. Foster had gained national recognition for his innovative approach to education while serving as a principal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late 1960s.

During one of his early tours of the district, Foster inquired about the young artist who’d made the sketches lining the hallway of one of the schools. Not long after that Foster was assassinated by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, but not before Chiodo found himself immersed in one of Oakland’s new magnet schools, the Renaissance School.

“Mario was shy when he first came to the school, but he had a ferocious appetite

for learning about form and the history of art,” said Kathy Porter, one of the founders of the Renaissance School and Chiodo’s first sculpture instructor. “The school was based on focusing on what the kids loved to do and then learning everything related, weaving their love of art into everything they learned – from history to mathematics, all in the service of their interests.”

It was a new approach to learning, without which Chiodo says he’d not be the artist he is today.

“My experience at the Renaissance School had the single biggest impact on my life,” he said. “Find what a person’s interest is and build on it naturally to see where that takes them is a philosophy that I live with every day.”

At the school, Chiodo studied the lives of Michelangelo and Rodin, learning that history, advanced algebra, geometry and trigonometry were integral pieces to becoming the type of artist he wanted to become.

A CRAZY IDEA By the time Chiodo finished the Renaissance School and entered high school, his art had taken a distinct turn: Instead of making likenesses of presidents and historic leaders, he’d shifted toward a fascination with horror movies from the 1930s and ‘40s, such as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.” But he was also considering pursuing a more standard career path.

“My parents were telling me I had to pursue whatever would make me happy,” he said.

“They’d say, you’re still young and nothing you do will be a mistake; whatever you do you’ll utilize at some point.”

Imagining he could blend his experience in sculpture with medicine, Chiodo left high school believing he’d become a plastic surgeon, but before entering UC Berkeley he hesitated.

For extra spending money during the summer, he’d worked on a few low-budget horror films, making masks and prosthetics.

“I had this crazy idea that maybe I could make some Halloween masks and sell them to local shops,” Chiodo said. “There wasn’t much WINTER SPRING 2020

like what I was doing at the time.”

A horror story Borrowing money and working in his family’s garage he developed some prototypes.

After a lukewarm response from local shops, he made one last effort and with a few dollars in his pocket, a single pair of pants and a dozen prototype masks in hand he headed to the first Halloween convention in Chicago.

“I set up my table and by the next day the line was out the door – people loved the masks, and by the time the convention ended I had over $125,000 worth of orders,” Chiodo said. “Of course, I also had no idea how I’d fill them.”

But fill the orders he did back home, with the help of friends and family, and over the next 20 years he and his business partner, Mel Goldberg, built a multimillion-dollar company that produced thousands of different masks, animated contraptions and artwork. When he hosted the first-ever QVC Halloween show in the late 1980s the innovative designs brought in an average of $7,000 to $10,000 per minute.

From horror to fantasy By the early 1990s, Chiodo had sold his mask business only to start another. Casinos, restaurants and retail shops around the world were looking to transform into fantasylands for both adults and children. Places like Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta hoped to create environments that recalled ancient civilizations or memorialized historic events while restaurants such as the Rainforest Café wanted to transport their guests to a tropical forest while they ate. Chiodo’s designs helped achieve their visions. But he was also redefining his notion of the power of sculpture, developing what he calls storytelling artwork.

to Oakland, his hometown and a place that helped his family and other immigrant families to grow and prosper.

But at nearly every town meeting were those who angrily rejected the list of individuals included on the monument or the placement or the relatively small cost to the city used to ready the location. More than once, Chiodo came home to find a letter threatening him with death if he were to continue the project without removing some of the figures.

“It was a tough time,” Chiodo said. “I wasn’t working and the recession was in full swing. It was tough financially, but I was more worried about the safety of my family.”

Gaining encouragement from his family and friends as well as former governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chiodo continued on, gaining support and overseeing the final installment of the monument in May 2013.

Today thousands of visitors, including busloads of schoolchildren come to the monument to remember and be inspired. Rudy Bridges sees the monument as being more important than ever.

“New Orleans was going to tear down the William Frantz Elementary School after it had become damaged in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but the Ruby Bridges Foundation was able to save the school that I had integrated by putting it on the National Register of Historic Places,” Bridges said. “The foundation commissioned the statue of just the little girl from Mario’s amazing piece and sat her in front of the school so that everyone who is moved by this story can actually see that a child, especially a child of color, can help to change the

BACK TO REALITY Then 9/11 happened and his focused shifted from fantasy to telling the stories of real people thrown into unimaginable conditions and displaying exceptional courage.

“I spent thousands of hours on the ‘Remember Them’ monument,” he said. “I basically only worked on that for years, mostly seven days a week. What I thought was going to take three years ended up taking 11, with some corporate sponsors coming in in the nick of time to help make it a reality. I am so grateful to all those who supported and encouraged me. What surprised me most was the anger that some people had regarding the monument.”

Although the piece is a monument that seems more likely to be found in Washington, D.C., Chiodo was adamant that it be given The Remember Them monument on Oakland WINTER SPRING 2020

face of education in our country.”

Today the Ruby Bridges statue stands in front of the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans as a reminder of the power of courageous acts. And although the school has recently had fencing placed around it with an opaque wrap to discourage shootings, inside the walls stands a little girl’s statue holding a book in quiet defiance of violence and hatred.

“Mario’s work is more important now than probably any time in our history,” Bridges said. “We need to remember that no one is born with hatred in their hearts, but that it is learned. My work is with children, and the ‘Remember Them’ monument provides a teachable moment, an opportunity to inspire, build curiosity and ask why are these people on this monument? The answer is that it’s about humanity, that regular, ordinary people at any age and from any walk of life can take a stand and do the right thing.”

The sculpture “Farm to Table”

Tim Carl‌

Tim Carl Photography‌

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 7

JOIN US FOR LIVE MUSIC AT THE UPTOWN!

NAPA'S PREMIER ENTERTAINMENT VENUE, WHERE EVERY SEAT IS A GREAT SEAT!

TOWER OF POWER

THE MAVERICKS

SAT. & SUN., MARCH 7 & 8

TUES. & WED., APRIL 14 & 15

THE WAILERS

BOZ SCAGGS

FRIDAY, APRIL 24 U PTOW N T HE ATRENA PA .COM 8 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

SUNDAY, MAY 10 135 350 THIRD STREET NAPA, CA 94559 | 707.259.0123 WINTER SPRING 2019

Embracing her

heritage

Napa woman paints to honor the struggle of immigrants VA L E R I E OW E N S

‌W

ithin the walls of liberty lies a body of undocumented immigrants paving the way for generations to come. For MexArleene Correa Valencia‌photos ican artist, Arleene Correa Valencia, her artistry is rooted in culture, depicting a linage of hard work, dedication and triumph.

B o r n in Arteaga, Michoacán, Correa Valencia came to the United Arleene St a t e s a l o n g Correa with her family Valencia when she was just 3 years old, Submitted photo‌ arriving in Napa in 1997.

“My father was an artist and became a house painter to make ends meet,” Correa Valencia said.

Raised in a valley dedicated to artistry, Correa Valencia dedicated herself to the same passion which ran through her veins. Honoring the Latin community in her body of work, Correa Valencia’s subjects showcase an expression of courage, and strength.

“My work is centered around my Latin culture, our history and my migration story,” said Correa Valencia, 25, who now lives in American Canyon.

Please see Heritage, Page 10 WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 9

HERITAGE From Page 9

Unable to enroll in art school after high school, Correa Valencia was determined to not let her immigration status dictate the depth of her ambition. ‘’I was not able to go to art school because I was undocumented,” Correa Valencia said.

Submitted photo‌

Arleene Correa Valencia

Submitted photo‌

Arleene Correa Valencia as a child, left, with her father, Armando, and sister Karla.

Submitted photo‌

“However, I knew that the Napa (Valley) College had an incredible art program. Once I enrolled, I immersed myself in every art class available.”

Although she is undocumented, she was allowed to stay in the United States because she qualified for <span class=”ILfuVd”><span class=”e24Kjd”>Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals</span></span>. the Obama-era policy that deferred possible deportation for young people who were brought into the country illegally as children.

Proving that hard work does pay off, Correa Valencia’s earned a full-ride scholarship to The California College of Arts, where she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2018 and will attain her Masters of Fine Arts in 2020.

“I attended the junior college for four years,” said Correa Valencia. “Though it’s not the ideal plan, some of our paths take a detour but that does not 10 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Arleene Correa Valencia

Arleene Correa Valencia‌

mean that achieving our dreams is impossible.”

Even while focusing on her education, Correa Valencia’s career has taken off. She has gained national recognition for her project inspired by the 2017 wildfires, a portrayal of undocumented immigrant workers entitled En Tiempo de Crisis, In Times of Crisis.

Correa Valencia has showcased her work in various exhibitions throughout the country, and was featured at the Latina Film Festival as part of a documentary called “Waking Dream” and has raised social awareness for undocumented immigrants.

The paintings in her two-year project depict immigrants toiling in the vineyards of wine country.

Many are painted on wooden pallets, symbolizing the commercial and industrial nature of the work her subjects are doing.

The wooden pallets are a collaboration with her father, Armado Correa, a professional woodworker who still lives in Napa. Some pallets he made, others he found discarded around his workplace. He prepares the surface of the wood and his daughter paints on top.

She expects to display the En Tiempo de Crisis project next in March, at the annual Watsonville

Film Festival, she said.

Speaking through her art, Correa Valencia exposes the Latin culture and social climate in a tangible and visible way.

“I like to bring visibility to current issues,” said Correa Valencia.

Success is the result of hard work and dedication. Dedication to a craft, and a movement to absolve the stigma associated with undocumented immigrants.

By telling her story, Correa Valencia has given a voice to her community and created a footprint through her work that will last a lifetime.

“Coming from a place like Napa is a great position to be in.

I had a great education and we have the resources,” said Correa Valencia. “What I have learned is that by working hard and putting in the effort, we can achieve anything.”

WINTER SPRING 2020

Warming the hearths of the valley since 19 87.

Traditional and Contemporary Indoor & Outdoor Fireplaces - Inserts - Stoves

NAPA VALLEY HEARTH

1527 Silverado Trail Napa 707-255-6854 napavalleyhearth.com

1300 First Street, STE 365, Next to EIKOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

707.224.0997

March 20 - 29 at Lincoln Theater For tickets, visit: LincolnTheater.com WINTER SPRING 2020

napavalleyjewelers.com INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 11

THE

Napa hobby store stands the test of time.

Loose ‌M Caboose ROLLS ON

K I R K K I R K PAT R I C K

anager Roy Ballard, a 24-year veteran of The Loose Caboose hobby store, considers himself a lucky guy.

“Any job that you enjoy, let alone love, where people come to your store in a good mood, is something to be grateful for,” says Ballard. “People don’t come here because they have to, they come because they want to.”

The Loose Caboose was begun by Ray Dahlgren in 1995, according to Ballard, because he couldn’t find the large outdoor model trains that he liked. “I happened to walk in around that time and Ray asked me if I wanted a job and I said yes!”

Please see Store, Page 14

Loose Caboose founder Ray Dahlgren. He died several years ago and the store is now owned by a family trust, manager Roy Ballard says.

Submitted photo‌

WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 13

Trains are central to the history of the Loose Caboose, though they only make up a portion of the store’s merchandise.

STORE From Page 13

How does a smaller store like The Loose Caboose compete against the big-box stores?

“For us, the trick for survival for this kind of business is to specialize, even super specialize, and to diversify,” Ballard said.

“We could have gone all trains and concentrated on nothing but that, or can go the way we chose because Carl’s Hobby Shop went out of business at that time. That meant we had more and more call for general hobby stuff like paint, glue, models and kites, so we decided to diversify and carry a bit of everything.”

Don’t let the name fool you.

The Loose Caboose carries all kinds of things and appeals to all ages. The store has puzzles, slot cars, Thomas the Tank Engine, as well as Brio and other wooden trains that are consistently popular.

“We have Duplo/Lego for younger kids,” Ballard pointed out, “as well as Dungeons and Dragons and other war games, board games and model rockets are very popular. We do very well with the rockets because there are lots of Science Clubs and even teachers who teach model rocketry. “ A nod to a current trend are the drones the hobby shop carries.

“Drones are a very tricky market because people have different 14 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Sean Scully photos, Inside Napa Valley‌

Longtime manager Roy Ballard at the register in the Loose Caboose hobby shop in Napa.

Tables set up for wargames using miniature figures at the Loose Caboose.

ideas about what they are, what they can do and how much they cost,” Ballard said. “For a drone that does everything that people think of when they think of drones, you’re looking at around the $1,000 range.”

“Those are the kinds of drones that travel in a pattern, they go out and can come back to you, have GPS and you can do waypoints and consistent altitude and things like that. We even have one customer who is a professional drone pilot licensed by the FAA.” But if you just want to practice with something less advanced, The Loose Caboose also carries smaller toy drones that are less

expensive.

What’s the most surprising thing about The Loose Caboose to first-time customers?

“People are often surprised to find there’s a hobby shop that’s still in business,” Ballard said.

“We get a lot of foot traffic from people who are walking along the river walk, people who come in from all over the country. But we couldn’t survive without our local customers.”

Which hobbies stand the test of time?

“Many people have a tradition of putting a train around their Christmas tree,” Ballard said. “So trains and radio-controlled (RC)

cars are always popular. We even have remote-controlled boats, which are very maneuverable and great for pools. Then, of course, there are Legos, the magic brick which archaeologists will be finding in backyards for thousands of years to come.”

The Loose Caboose gets a wide variety of customers and tries to stock for everyone.

“We don’t get as many girls as we do guys,” Ballard said. “But we do have girls’ Legos and puzzles, and a lot of generic craft things like scenery and lights which a lot of people use for doll houses.”

The hobby store space shares its 4,400 square feet with another business, RPals Music, which rents all manner of musical instruments.

“It’s a good draw for customers especially around the beginning of the school year,” said Ballard.

The Loose Caboose is located at the northeast corner of Soscol and Third in downtown Napa, and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Sunday from noon-5 p.m. and is closed on Monday. Their phone number is 707-258-1222 and you can find them on the web at loosecaboose.com.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Explore the Extraordinary The Estate Yountville invites guests to a grand exploration – a village within a village, the centerpiece of Yountville. Michelin-starred restaurants, award-winning tasting rooms, worldclass art, and incredible natural surroundings are all within walking distance.

Two hotels anchor its in-town grounds—one glamorous and social and one a stylish and serene haven—both with a shared pulse, dialed into Napa Valley.

Welcome to Hotel Villagio and Vintage House YOUNTVILLE, CA VILLAGIO.COM

WINTER SPRING 2019

|

V I N TAG E H O U S E .C O M

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 15

Asileva, Dreamstime.com

An electrifying

RIDE

Electric bikes make strides with riders, retailers and commuters

I S A B E L L E S C H M A LT Z

When Napa Valley resident Dan Castner underwent a double-lung transplant at UCSF three years ago, he hoped to finally return to one of his greatest passions: road biking.

Castner was an avid cyclist for 45 years before a medical condition “hardened” his lungs and made it impossible for him to ride.

Having new lungs gave him optimism that he could return to cycling but that hope was shortlived.

“I couldn’t get back on the road bike,” he said. “I was unable to ride.”

Castner’s wife, also an avid cyclist, suggested he try electric.

An electric bicycle, or e-bike, is similar to a standard bicycle but includes an electric motor to assist riders who want to exert less energy, allowing them to travel longer and faster with ease.

For Castner, the e-bike was a revelation.

“It changed my life,” Castner said. “It has been, for me, a wonderful thing.”

Castner uses his e-bike for shopping and other errands, as 16 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

“E-bikes are growing the cycling community because they allow folks who would otherwise not be riding a bike to participate in cycling at whatever level is comfortable for them,” Nelson said.

Dan Castner and his ebike.

well as for recreation and exercise.

He estimated that he rides his e-bike about 30 miles per day.

“Sometimes, I don’t get in my car for a week,” he said.

Castner purchased his e-bike from Pedego Electric Bikes in downtown Napa in September of 2018.

“In 12 months, I put 5,000 miles on that bike,” Castner said.

Robert Nelson, the store

Submitted photo

manager of St. Helena Cyclery, first tried an e-bike about a decade ago and has owned one for the past four years.

“I love my e-bike and go through periods where it’s pretty much my ‘daily driver,’” Nelson said.

One of the greatest benefits of an e-bike is it allows riding partners of different abilities to ride together, Nelson said.

GOING FARTHER, FASTER When it comes to bicycling, “the world becomes a bigger place of possibilities” on an e-bike, said Rick Stuart, who works for Napa Valley Bike Tours & Rentals in Yountville.

“I pretty much love everything about e-bikes,” Stuart said.

During a tour using regular bicycles, Stuart will typically lead a group from Yountville to Rutherford. On a tour using e-bikes only, Stuart said they can go as far as St. Helena — and they’ll be able to complete the ride in the same amount of time.

“The e-bike allows them to do that,” he said. “They can go longer and not come back sweating and worn out.”

How far an e-bike can travel depends primarily on how much the rider is using the battery for assistance, said Brad Dropping, WINTER SPRING 2020

owner of Pedego Napa Valley.

Typically, small-battery bikes have a range of 20-40 miles, Dropping said. Bigger batteries can last 30-60 miles, and some have a range of more than 80 miles.

The battery will drain faster (and the range will be limited) if a rider chooses not to pedal at all.

Pedaling for part or all of the ride helps preserve battery power and extends the range.

The distance covered on one charge is also determined by the weight of the rider, the topography of the terrain, and wind resistance, Dropping said.

Once an e-bike battery is fully depleted, it takes 2-6 hours to recharge. The time it takes to charge depends on the size of the battery.

Castner said his e-bike takes 4-5 hours for a full recharge.

Depending on the level of use, the average e-bike battery will last five years, although Dropping said he’s had customers whose batteries have lasted up to seven years.

The quality of an e-bike is tied to its battery life, Dropping explained. Replacing an e-bike battery can cost $250-$800, depending on the brand and the battery capacity, Nelson said.

From 2006-2013, most e-bike batteries lasted six months, Dropping said. But in the mid-2010s, battery technology changed “significantly,” he said.

“The battery life now is phenomenal,” Dropping said.

Although he uses them frequently at work, Stuart doesn’t own an e-bike — yet.

“I’m so close to buying one all the time,” he said.

The only downside to riding an e-bike is speed, Stuart said.

“It’s a little bit like riding a wild animal,” he said. “At first it’s like, ‘oh my God!’ You’re going to pedal and go much faster than you expect.”

Going 20 miles per hour is “easy” on an e-bike, so riders need to pay close attention to turns and braking, Stuart said.

Anyone who knows how to WINTER SPRING 2020

On a Specialized Como bike in Yountville.

ride a regular bicycle will get the hang of an e-bike pretty quickly, Stuart said. In his tour groups, he said it takes only about 100 yards for people to realize how easy and fun an e-bike is.

“I hear so often on my bike tours, ‘Oh my God, this is great!’”

IS IT CHEATING?‌ E-bikes have a stigma that they’re “cheater bikes,” Dropping said.

Minimal effort is required to pedal the bike because of the electric motor — but choosing to rely 100 percent on the motor is up to the rider.

“I call them ‘option bikes,’” Dropping said. “You decide how much effort you want to put into it.”

Riders choose their assistance level by pushing a button on the e-bike controller, located on the handlebar.

Some e-bikes are equipped with throttles, which means no effort is needed to pedal the bike.

This is a great option for older people, those with disabilities, or people with an injury or ailment, Dropping said.

Think of the throttle as a “back-up plan,” Dropping said.

A rider can begin a bike ride by pedaling, but if their knees get sore, for example, they can switch to the throttle and get to their destination without any effort.

Nelson agreed that it’s wrong to label e-bikes as “cheating.”

“I am always amused at the amount of negative emotional energy that some people put into criticizing e-bikes and those who ride them!” Nelson said. “Many folks with that opinion have

Napa Valley Bike Tours‌

never actually ridden an e-bike, and are often poorly informed about their qualities and characteristics.”

Nelson referred to a 2019 study from Brigham Young University that showed an e-mountain bike provides almost an equally strenuous workout as a traditional mountain bike — but the exercise on the e-bike was less difficult.

After putting 33 experienced cyclists, equipped with heart rate monitors, on a 6-mile trail loop — once on a traditional mountain bike, then later on an e-bike —researchers found the e-bike exercise averaged just 9.9 heartbeats per minute lower than the same trip performed on the traditional bike.

These results, according to the study, should help promote e-bikes as an easier way to work out.

“On an e-bike, you’re able to exercise without feeling like you’re going to pass out,” Nelson said.

Some of the e-bike critics, he said, come from a cycling background where they’ve invested a lot of time and money to become talented and experienced cyclists.

“It violates some of their core cycling beliefs to see an inexperienced rider on an e-bike riding at a similar level of performance,” Nelson said, adding: “If you’re someone who doesn’t want to ride or buy an e-bike, then don’t.

But let other folks make a choice that’s right for them without judgment.”

problems, Dropping said.

Class 1 e-bikes do not have throttles. They are pedal-assist only with a maximum assisted speed of 20-mph.

Class 2 e-bikes also have a 20-mph maximum but are throttle-assisted.

Class 3 e-bikes are pedal-assist only (no throttle) with a maximum assisted speed of 28 mph.

For most municipalities in California, Class 1 and 2 e-bikes are allowed on non-motorized paths (such as the Vine Trail in Napa), but Class 3 is not, Dropping said.

Class 3 e-bikes are illegal on paths like the Vine Trail, but they are allowed on the road or in a bicycle lane on the road, Dropping said.

Most of the “avid, die-hard commuters” prefer a Class 3, Dropping said.

At St. Helena Cyclery, Nelson said the focus is on Class 1 and Class 3 e-bikes, which are pedal-assist only and no throttle.

Dan Castner’s e-bike includes a throttle, but he said he never uses it. Castner prefers to pedal during the entire ride, and he typically chooses a speed of about 17 miles per hour.

THE COST‌ E-bikes can have a high up-front cost, depending on one’s budget. In Dropping’s bike shop, the cost of an electric bicycle typically ranges from $1,500 to $3,000.

Think of an e-bike as a standard bike with an upgrade, Dropping explained. Anyone who purchases a car with leather seats or high-performance tires, for example, is paying more for those upgrades. The same goes when purchasing a bike equipped with a battery, he said.

“If you want the bicycle to help you pedal, you’ve got to pay for it if you want that functionality,” Dropping said.

Non-electric, high-performance road bikes can cost thouTHE E-BIKE CLASS SYSTEM‌ sands of dollars — as much or There are three classes of more than any e-bike, according e-bikes, and each has its own legal to Dropping and Nelson.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 17

G R E AT E X PE R I E N C E S A WA I T AT C H A R L E S K RU G W I N E RY

Fro m s i g n a t u re e ve n t s l i k e t h e Na p a Va l l e y Fi l m Fe s t i va l a n d Ta s t i n g s o n t h e L a w n t o c o n c e r t s a n d c o m e d y n i g h t s , C h a r l e s K r u g i s q u i c k l y e m e r g i n g a s a c u l t u r a l h u b o f Na p a Va l l e y.

Ne w f o r 2 0 2 0 , a re o u r n e w Fe a t u re d A r t i s t Ex h i b i t s a n d o u r Se r i e s o f In t e re s t i n g Pe o p l e ( S I P ) s p e a k e r s e r i e s .

Vi s i t o u r we b s i t e t o e x p l o re t h e m y r i a d o f h a p p e n i n g s t h a t a w a i t yo u .

Visit CharlesKrug.com/Events Open Daily 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

2800 Main Street, St. Helena, CA 94574 | FB + IG: @CharlesKrugWinery | 707.967.2229 18 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

document

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 19

LIVING THE LIFE

Colin MacPhail‌

C O L I N M AC P H A I L

‌C

ampbell and Alice are losing their magic. At age 8 and 7, the days of fairies, elves, goblins, dwarves, trolls, and giants are about to fade into the mists of childhood.

We will continue to read “Grump The Tomte” together on the couch before bedtime.

However, they’ll know that all the magical creatures they have been so enthralled by are constructs of the adult world. For now, they inhabit that funny time of suspicion, preferring to live in a limbo of denial rather than lose this vibrant part of their childhood.

For years, I have told them tales of Magnus, our house dwarf.

He was a mischievous character who lived up behind our house in a cozy tree stump where he made shoes for the local elves. At night, he would come to our house and take things, or hide them.

Removing odd socks was one of his favorites, as well as hiding pencils, hats, school bags, and all manner of things you could not find in the morning school rush.

Campbell and Alice just accepted that he was having fun and often would return the items once he got bored of tormenting us. He’d keep something permanently if he had a particular use 20 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

A way with the

FAIRIES

for it.

In the early mornings, I’d occasionally catch a glimpse of Magnus on the porch or at the kitchen window. Sadly, he had always ducked away just before Campbell or Alice could see him.

Recently, they don’t ask about him.

Then there was the “Midnight Monster.” He was the one that came in the middle of the night and ate the rest of the Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream in the freezer. An audit of the refrigerator before breakfast would reveal his antics.

The disappointment about the precious dessert disappearing from possible future consumption caused dissension in the ranks. No one cares about socks or a glove. Ice cream, however, is serious. Perhaps this is why the “Midnight Monster” was the first magical character to fall by the wayside, and small fingers turned and pointed at “Dad!” The “Full Moon Fairy” was a new one on me as we never had

hiding spots in their bedrooms for some dollars and change.

There was a pang of guilt, but I wondered if they’d notice. I reasoned that they had got most of their loot from me in the first place. I never replaced what I had pilfered.

Then, a few weeks later, I heard them talking to each other behind the couch. They like sitting there in privacy the warm central air vent discussing whatever is uppermost in their world.

I heard Alice say to Campbell in all innocence, “I think the Money Fairy has been taking some of my dollars.” He responded, “Yeah, he has taken some of mine too. I have $10 less than I had before.”

To be clear, we never discussed a “Money Fairy,” so she created this new fairy to explain the unexplained. I was surprised they were even aware of how much money they had as it was strewn around in the various hiding places.

As I walked away, I felt an overwhelming sense of being present in that moment. Present because this was likely the last time they would spontaneously create a magical solution to one of life’s more mundane events.

I’m going to miss the fairies.

such a thing in my childhood.

For years, Sarah has diligently put a little something in the shoe they each put outside the back door on a full moon. She then sprinkles some sparkling fairy dust around to show that magic has happened once again. Our kids are consequently aware of the waxing and waning cycles of the lunar month.

One of Sarah’s best uses of fairies has been on Halloween.

The “Sugar Sprite” is a voracious little beast and demands at least two-thirds of their Halloween candy haul in order to be placated. Our kids protest slightly but then studiously pick out their favorite items and hand the rest over. It goes in a bowl on the porch, and in the morning, it’s all gone. They have come to accept that a fairy can give, but a fairy can also take away.

In life, you can sometimes sense when you are at a tipping pint; a moment to which you can never return. I was short of Colin MacPhail is a wine conchange to get some groceries in sultant and writer who lives in Calistoga and raided the secret Calistoga.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Welcoming new patients.

Napa Valley Health and Well Being Stuart Bursten, MD, FACP Internal Medicine & Nephrology

Napa Valley Health and Well Being Experienced, Board-Certified Internal Medicine specialist with a special interest in nephrology, is now accepting new patients.

Stuart Bursten, MD, FACP, graduated from Yale University School of Medicine before completing an internship at Boston City Hospital. He continued his medical training at the University of Washington School of Medicine, completing his residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in nephrology.

Dr Bursten has extensive research experience in pharmaceutical drug design, inflammation, anti-inflammatory models, immunology and optimum individual wellness and anti-aging.

The practice is in the concierge style. Enrollment for the practice is limited and will be open from January 25th 2020 until the practice is filled.

Call 707.299.0597 To schedule your appointment WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 21

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

St. Helena Mayor and musician

GEOFF ELLSWORTH Favorite day trip? Visiting Point Reyes area, Bodega Bay, aka Bodacious Bay—stop in Sebastopol for tai food and ice cream, find a beach out there to walk on, look at birds, contemplate the past, the future and next steps forward.

Best day off? A day off for me is generally a day of recovery where I try to touch base on the other important parts of my life such as drawing, painting, playing guitar/singing, swimming, reading and “analyzing” college football.

Why music? I’m interested in transition moments in life when language become melodic, similar to the moments when regular physical motion becomes dance. I feel melody and rhythm in everyday experiences, music is a way to process and express that.

Favorite song? “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash.

The structure, the spareness, the enigmatic nature of the lyric.

Song you can’t stand? The old song “Bingo” It’s a long story going back to my childhood.

What do you sing when nobody’s listening?

To keep in practice I often sing my own songs when nobody is listening. I’ll also sing along to songs or an artist that challenge and exercise my vocal range like Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash or Freddie Mercury.

Occasionally a song will get stuck in my head from the radio like “7 years” by Lukas Graham or a commercial like that dang Meow Mix song. Try singing that a few times and see if you can get it out of your head.

Best recipe? A handful of peanuts. It’s an old Civil War recipe.

Why politics? Participating in the political process is a way to give back to the community that gave me so much growing up and I want to make sure a few more generations of kids have that positive experience.

It was not necessarily my intention to be involved at this time or in this way, however I saw a need and had the ability to step in. We’re in a challenging time where I believe it’s important for all of us to be civically engaged while at the same time remaining positive and remembering gratitude for all that we have.

What’s with “Rock Hard Abs?” The original intent of the song was to gently poke fun at TV infomercials and the culture of body image self-absorption, but while I was finishing the video I came across some medical reports that made the case that having a strong abdominal core has long-term benefits to spinal health, posture, good digestion, long term quality of life. etc., etc. So while the song began as a spoof, I’ve gotta say it is a good idea to maintain a strong core.

Why all the cool hats? There is a practical purpose to hats as they help regulate heat around the head, particularly on someone like myself who maintains a

22 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

very, very, very short haircut. However hats are like guitars, you start with one and think that’s enough, which really it is, but then keep convincing yourself there is a specific purpose that a new hat or guitar that you like will fill.

What’s for breakfast? Something light, I’m usually moving quick and I try to fuel up in small amounts as I go through my day.

Cats or dogs? The toughest question of all. I am predisposed to liking dogs however after years of pet-sitting I believe that cats are somehow easier to co-exist with. But just by the smallest margin. I love all animals.

Best part of living in the Napa Valley? While the physical beauty of Napa Valley/County and proximity to all the resources of the San Francisco Bay Area make this a wonderful place to live, I have to say the best part of living here is being in a community where neighbors c a r e about e a c h other. I have been to every state in the U.S. and have seen a lot of incredible places, yet Napa Valley/ County has some special magic that we all recognize and why it is so important we all work together to protect it as a wonderful place to live and for people to raise families.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Watching as a

city grows up R AC H E L R A S K I N - Z R I H E N

A pair of friends recalls American Canyon as it was, and looks to what it will be

F ‌

ran Lemos has lived in American Canyon since before it was a city, and while her immediate area retains most of its rural flavor, she said she has seen the town grow into its own over the past 70 years.

Lemos, 90, and her friend Beth Marcus, 66, live in two of the oldest parts of Napa County’s youngest city, on the west side of Highway 29, which basically bisects the town down the middle. The county’s southernmost city is also its second-largest and fastest-growing.

Both women said they recognize that American Canyon is closer to Vallejo in several ways besides geographically, than it is to Napa.

Both women, and city officials, often say the city prides itself on its ethnic diversity, and is known for putting its proverbial money where its proverbial mouth is: when, in 2013, a racist, anti-Filipino social media rant caused officials and residents to march through town, and prompted the creation of 24 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

“American Canyon (Hearts) Everyone” posters that remain ubiquitous around town.

Until 1870, the area now known as American Canyon was part of Solano County. At that time, Napa gave its northern parts to Lake County and took American Canyon as its own.

Incorporation did not come easily. There were three failed attempts: one in 1903, to create Napa Junction City to provide housing for the employees of the Standard Portland Cement plant, another in 1955 by local businessman and Napa County Supervisor John Mikolajcik, and another try in 1962, to form Lombard City was also rejected. The city finally incorporated as American Canyon in 1992.

The area’s first residents were the Patwin and Wappo Native Americans, before the arrival of the Spanish, who named the area, likely for the Americana Creek that flows through the canyon east of town, according to some historical sources. A letter from a Fred Levy to an Ivy Leober at that time, however, said the area was named for the few Americans living there then, since they were an oddity in an area mostly inhabited by Indians and Mexicans, at least one source says.

A man named Simpson Thompson developed a ranch and nursery in 1852, making

him the first American settler in the Napa Junction/American Canyon area.

Early settlers lived mostly around the railroad and the cement plant. The first subdivisions were McKnight Acres, built in 1948, and Rancho del Mar, in 1952. Junction City became Napa Junction in 1923, and finally American Canyon in 1992.

“The subdivisions built before the 1990s – before incorporation – were approved by Napa County and built to rural standards, without sidewalks and we’re just doing them now,” City Manager Jason Holley said. “Originally, there was a focus on housing for those working on Mare Island (Naval Shipyard) and the basalt mine here.”

Lemos moved to American Canyon from her native Vallejo when she married at 19, and her family gave the couple an acre of land upon which her father and her husband built the house in which they raised four children.

“I grew up on Arkansas Street, when Nebraska Street was the end of town,” Lemos said. “There was a lumber yard and a field.

There was a horse stable on Couch Street. We played cops and robbers under the Sacramento Street Bridge. I met my husband working at the Savages Ice Cream Parlor behind Lincoln School on Sonoma.”

American Canyon back then was basically WINTER SPRING 2020

a backwater train station for people heading between Napa and Vallejo.

“At that time, there was only a service station and a little grocery store. There was no way to meet anybody. We had no neighbors.

There was no school here – it was all open fields. All there was, was a wrecking yard and a very active train that rattled the windows,” Lemos said.

Lemos said her children rode buses to private schools in Vallejo until high school, when they took the bus to school in Napa. The bus stop was near the site of a Hostess distribution center, where her son got a $10 per week job he kept through high school. Her three sons worked on Mare Island after that, she said.

The young family lived in Lemos’ small house on the same property, while her own was being constructed.

“While we built the house, we only had an outhouse,” she said. “The closest neighbor was two blocks away. There were a few houses on Theresa Lane – and I still remember the neighbors’ names and the number of kids they had, because my kids played with them.”

The rural, isolated nature of the area, which persists today, started Lemos on the path to attending county meetings “to find out what was going on,” she said, adding that she has attended nearly every City Council meeting since the city was created, missing a few “only when I had to.”

Lemos said Napa County officials’ attitude toward its southernmost city stifled growth for decades.

“The county didn’t want us to grow in the ‘40s and ‘50s,” she said. “We were zoned for heavy industry and there was no infrastructure, and the only industry we had was the railroad tracks and a repair facility.”

That began to change in the late 1940s with the creation of the McKnight Acres subdivision, she said.

This, historians agree, was likely driven by the needs of the thousands who came from all over the country to work at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard during the war years, when it “was going 24 hours per day,” Lemos said.

“Chabot Acres was built in Vallejo, and another housing track went in on Curtola; Bay Terrace and Floyd Terrace,” she said. “Then, a Mr. Wirtz bought all the land where Rancho del Mar (in American Canyon) is, and built homes with flat roofs that sold for $4,000, and better ones for $9,000 to $12,000.”

The first neighborhoods in American Canyon were built on the west side of the highway, where both women still live.

“There was a fruit stand where City Hall is now,” Marcus said. “It’s still a fruit stand, just with different kinds of fruit.”

WINTER SPRING 2020

The relationship between the city of American Canyon and Napa County began to warm under the stewardship of former American Canyon Fire Chief and retired Napa County Supervisor Keith Caldwell, both women said. Prior to that time, many old-timers say the city was treated a little bit like the proverbial ugly stepchild.

The town had something of a “rowdy” reputation in the 1960s when “the Hells Angles used to go to Lena’s Bar, near where the Walmart is now,” Lemos said.

A Cincinnati, Ohio native, Marcus, has lived in town for more than 40 years, having been stationed on Mare Island with the Navy in 1974. She was forced to leave the service when she and her husband learned they were expecting their first child, and found their American Canyon home by fortunate accident.

“We were at a flea market, and he saw a guy selling rabbits,” Marcus said. “He asked if there were more, and the guy said there were, at his house.”

The couple followed the man to his home to see his rabbits, and were impressed by the houses in the small neighborhood.

“We asked if any of the houses around him were for sale, and he said, ‘Yes, mine.’”

Now, as then, there are houses only on one side of the street, and an empty field on the other, where children play and people walk their dogs. Another thing that has not changed, are the neighbors, Marcus said.

“When I first moved in, horses used to walk down the street, and there were very few cars,” she said. “Our dog could sleep in the middle of the road and nothing happened to her. Now, I literally can’t pull out of my driveway in the morning. There are a lot of cars, now.”

But while the admittedly terrible traffic that plagues the city is a change, some things remain the same, she said.

“We have the same neighbors on either side of us, as we did when we bought the place, and we look out for each other,” she said. “It’s a special neighborhood of custom homes. Palby’s and Dick’s Campers are the only things there. There used to be a rest home across the street, and I remember the residents coming out and emptying their bedpans in the mornings. There was a video store and a post office, and we didn’t’ need anything else.”

Most residents will agree that these days, traffic is the worst problem the city faces. This was not the case 40 years ago.

“We had no law enforcement or stores then,” the women said.

“Now, our high school has a choir of more

than 300, and we have bigger parades with our own high school band,” Marcus said.

City Manager Holley said the city is “evolving and growing and fulfilling its promise and its destiny. It isn’t Vallejo and it isn’t Napa. It’s American Canyon, and it’s in the process of becoming what it wants to be – a family-friendly city with many different types of cultures and age groups – like Vallejo, but in Napa County and the benefits of the Napa school district.”

American Canyon now boasts several well-maintained parks, trails and open spaces for public use, and there are big plans for the abandoned basalt mine, which can be seen from Marcus’ house. A town center/ event venue/retail and commercial space, medium-density residential and gardens are planned for the area.

“I can’t wait to see what they’ll do with that,” Marcus said.

“The Ruins are going to put American Canyon on the map,” Lemos agreed.

Rachel Raskin-Zrihen‌

A framed sketch of The Egg Basket.

Noel Brinkerhoff, Eagle‌

The old cement factory ruins will be converted into a new town center as part of the Watson Ranch development, which the American Canyon City Council approved in October 2018.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 25

PulasKi - CourisTan - CaPel - nourson - CenTury - HigHland House - miles TalBoT - ComForT design - FleXsTeel

PulasKi - CourisTan - CaPel - nourson - CenTury - HigHland House - miles TalBoT - ComForT design - FleXsTeel

- Fine Home FurnisHings - Floor Coverings - WindoW FasHions - aCCessories For every room since 1958, our family serving your family!

706 Trancas Street.

707.224.5544 Hours: M-F 9-5:30 Sat. 10-3

www.customhousefurniture.com 26 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Celebrating Our 62st Anniversary

WINTER SPRING 2019

8VANESSACOURT.COM Beth Braby just sold this south Napa condo for $485,000.

Ready to begin your 2020 home buying or selling process? Call Beth for her Buyer/Seller Questionnaire first step & get started today!

And thank your for your constant referrals!

Beth Braby, Realtor®

CaDRE #01095551 | 707.592.2462 bbraby@terrafirmaglobalpartners.com

Giving your home

a new style

CALL NV DESIGN TODAY TO SCHEDULE YOUR FREE CONSULTATION

707-483-9214 | 1506 MAIN STREET | NAPA | CA | nvdesign.com WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 27

M.F.K. FISHER’S

LEGACY A renowned food writer found a home in the Napa Valley TIM CARL

A

lthough M.F.K. Fisher died in 1992, her books and essays on food and wine remain a powerful testament to a woman who built a literary genre that transformed culinary writing from simple lists of ingredients into evocative literature that explored everything from the psychology of taste to food as a cultural metaphor.

Fisher’s writing career spanned nearly 70 years, during which she published dozens of books, hundreds of stories for The New Yorker, an English translation of Brillat-Savarin’s book “The Physiology of Taste,” scores of travelogues, a novel, a screenplay and even a book for children.

The English-American poet W.H. Auden called her “America’s greatest writer.” Her colleague and good friend Chef James Beard said she was “a goddess, Juno maybe, who descends to earth now and then.”

Another close friend and fellow author, Julia Child, characterized her as a “sensuous writer.”

Fisher’s writing often revealed a meal’s more passionate side, prompting Clifton Fadiman — an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality who was popular in the 1940s and ‘50s — to say, “She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better.”

Perhaps Chef Jeremiah Tower summed up Fisher’s coquettishness toward food and wine most succinctly: “Reading M.F.K. is like making love.

When I read her, it makes me want to 28 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

MFK Fisher in 1942

MFK Fisher in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s.

George Hurrell

go straight to some little restaurant in France and spend five hours at lunch with friends.”

Many know of Fisher’s reputation for her appreciation of nearly everything French, but few realize the influential role the Napa Valley played in her life. After three husbands and the death of her mother and father, Fisher and her two daughters — Mary (“Kennedy”) and Anne — sought the “peace and quiet” of St. Helena from 1953 through 1970.

During her time in the Napa Valley, between bouts of an unnamed illness and trips to Provence, she helped launch the Napa Valley Wine Library, taught numerous wine and food classes, and published “The Art of Eating” (1954), “A Cordiall Water” (1961), “Wine in California” (1962), “Map of Another Town” (1964), “The Cooking of Provincial France” (1968), and “With Bold Knife and Fork” (1969).

“Almost half of my heart was there [in St. Helena], sharing honors with Aix-en-Provence,” she’d write in 1985 for the San Francisco Examiner about her time in the Napa Valley.

MARY FRANCES KENNEDY FISHER M.F.K. Fisher was born in Albion, Michigan, on July 3, 1908. The first child of Rex Kennedy, a small-town newspaper

MFK Fisher at the Wine Library.

Tim Carl photo

owner, and his wife, Edith, Fisher eventually had a brother David, who died in 1942, and two younger sisters, Anne, who died in 1965, and Norah (died in 2014, never believing that her family read or cared about her writing). The two sisters (Norah and Mary Frances) remained close and often travelled together on culinary trips later in life.

Before she reached school age, her father purchased The Whittier News, a newspaper in Whittier, which was at the time a Quaker community that was leery of outsiders. “[She was] on the outside looking in,” reported the New York Times, “an Episcopalian, [and] never invited to the home of a Quaker.” Fisher wrote about her experience growing up in “Among Friends” (1970).

From early childhood Fisher was drawn to food. Her maternal grandmother, however, was a strong believer in bland food that didn’t stir up the passions. After the grandmother’s death in 1920 the family eagerly expanded their culinary proclivities and began eating “… a voluptuous riot of things like marshmallows in hot chocolate, thin pastry under the Tuesday hash, rare roast beef on Sunday instead of boiled hen.

Mother ate all she wanted and of cream [and of ] fresh mushroom soup; Father served a local wine, red-ink he called it, with the Please see Legacy, Page 31

Tim Carl photo

1467 Oak Ave., St. Helena

1467 Oak Ave., St. Helena 1467 Oak Ave., St. Helena in 1956

WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 29

OTTOMAN ART ORIENTAL RUG & HOME DECOR STORE

• Handmade Oriental Rugs and Kilims • Iznik Turkish Ceramics • Jewelry, Shoes and Bags • Rug Cleaning and Repair • Handmade Lamps and Fixtures Free Pickup and Delivery

Serving Napa Valley for 9 Years!

1226/1228 Main Street • St. Helena, CA 94574 (707) 963-9300

www.ottomanartsthelena.com 30 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

The modern basement of 1467 Oak Ave., St. Helena

LEGACY From Page 29

steak; we ate grilled sweetbreads and skewered kidneys with a daring dash of sherry on them,” she’d write later in “To Begin Again.”

Growing up as a young child during World War I and then coming of age during the Great Depression and World War II had an influence on Fisher’s life view. She, like many at the time, was greatly influenced by writers such as Hemingway, artists such as Picasso and a growing romanticism with all things from Western Europe. She also grew up surrounded by four generations of Scottish and Irish newspaper professionals so that being a writer was taken for granted.

She told California Magazine in 1986 that she had “published five books before anyone at home even noticed.”

Beyond her immediate family, literature and art were consistent themes. Her first husband, Al Fisher, wrote and taught English at various colleges. Dillwyn (Timmy) Parrish, her second husband — a painter, novelist and restaurateur — was rumored to have volunteered with his Harvard classmates e.e. cummings and John Dos Passos as ambulance drivers in France during World War I. Her third husband, Donald Friede, published and often acted as the literary agent for many of the young literati “Lost Generation” of the day.

THE LOST GENERATION The moniker “Lost Generation” was inspired by Gertrude WINTER SPRING 2020

Stein and used in an epigraph in Hemingway’s novel, “The Sun Also Rises” (1926).

“You are all a lost generation,” he wrote, highlighting the disillusionment felt by those growing up during the war, witnessing firsthand pointless deaths on a large scale, and for many losing faith in traditional values such as courage, patriotism and masculinity.

Some of these turned to material wealth, unable to believe in abstract ideals any longer, while others became aimless, hedonistic or reckless.

Fisher was thrust directly into the middle of those times and societal changes when she married in 1929 and moved to France.

Surrounded by artists and writers, she also found the food astonishing. Often she’d spend the day searching the local markets to create gastronomical wonders: “My meals shake them from their routines, not one of meat-potatoes-gravy, but of thoughts, of behaviors.” (“A Measure of My Power”).

Her intent was to use the power of food toward not only strangers but even family and friends, such as Lawrence Clark Powell, who came to eat often at the Fishers’s home in Dijon.

“There in Dijon, the cauliflowers were very small and succulent, grown in that ancient soil,” she wrote in “The Gastronomical Me” (1943). “I separated the flowerets and dropped them in boiling water for just a few minutes. Then I drained them and put them in a wide shallow casserole, and covered them with heavy cream, and a thick sprinkling of freshly grated Gruyere, the nice rubbery kind that didn’t

come from Switzerland at all, but from the Jura. It was called rape in the market, and was grated while you watched, in a soft cloudy pile, onto your piece of paper. “…The cream and cheese had come together into a perfect sauce, and the little flowers were tender and fresh. We cleaned our plates and Al and Lawrence planned to write books about Aristotle and Robinson Jeffers and probably themselves, and I planned a few things, too.”

M . F. K . F I S H E R A N D DILLWYN PARRISH For three years, Fisher cooked and observed in France, taking notes as she studied to become an artist at Beaux Arts in Dijon.

After the couple ran out of funds, they returned to the United States and lived in Laguna Beach. In 1932, the young couple met and became fast friends with Dillwyn Parrish and his wife, Gigi, an actress known for “Kiss and Make-Up,” “A Girl of the Limberlost” and “Girl O’ My Dreams,” all movies released in 1934.

According to Joan Reardon’s biography of Fisher, “Poet of the Appetites,” it was Parrish who first encouraged Fisher to write.

She penned short essays that she would read aloud at dinner parties, and then they would talk about them later, first as writers and then as lovers.

By 1934, Fisher had published her first paid piece about Laguna Beach. According to a 1986 article in California Magazine, she’d received $10 for the article and $25 for the sketch she’d included. Three years later, Mary Frances and Parrish divorced their spouses, married and moved to

Tim Carl‌photo

Switzerland.

In a sad twist of fate, by 1939 Parrish had become ill, possibly linked to his time in the muddy trenches in World War I, where he had breathed mustard gas and fended off starvation. His limbs turned gangrenous from Buerger’s disease, and his leg had to be amputated.

Even under such duress, the couple co-author a novel called “Touch and Go” under the name Victoria Berne. Today the book is rare, with only a few remaining copies. The Kirkus Review on May 9, 1939, wrote: “A pleasant tale, with likeable characters, a moral around the edges.” The book cover proclaims, “A novel of gay good humor.”

Eventually, after numerous attempts at treatment, growing levels of pain — analgeticum was unavailable in the United States and pain-blocking injections with Novocaine proved ineffective — and the possibility of more amputations, Parrish shot himself on Aug. 6, 1941.

Distraught and adrift, Fisher moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, and lived there with her sister, Norah, and their brother David and his pregnant wife. Almost unimaginably, David also took his own life later that year, one day after being inducted into the Army.

Throughout it all, Fisher held fast to the idea that food and wine can provide spiritual healing, transforming grief into something meaningful. The result was that she poured herself into writing, her work becoming even more evocative and tender than before.

Please see Legacy, Page 32 INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 31

LEGACY From Page 31

She completed “How to Cook a Wolf” in 1942. She dictated the book to Norah because she was unable to sit and type for long due to grief and an undiagnosed, life-long respiratory ailment. The book is both melancholy and ebullient at the same time but also defiant: “… when the wolf is at the door, one should invite him in and have him for dinner.”

By 1943, she had published “The Gastronomical Me,” a collection of essays that stretch from her childhood to her living in France, World War II, the end of her first marriage, her marriage to Parrish and his death. This single book is often considered Fisher’s emergence as one of the great voices of our time.

solidified Fisher’s reputation both as one of the world’s pre-eminent food writers and also as a true connoisseur, baiting her readers with highlighted sentences such as “Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating.”

By 1949, Fisher’s third marriage was in trouble. She moved back to Whittier with her two daughters after her mother died of heart disease and found that her father was ailing, too, and unable to keep up with the dayto-day running of the newspaper.

Fisher jumped in, writing stories and providing assistance to her father while she also found time to speak to the Wine and Food Society of San Francisco.

“It was at the Bohemian Club and I was the first woman who had ever spoken there,” she said during a 1981 interview with The Napa Valley Wine Library Asso-

Submitted photo

M.F.K. FISHER AND THE NAPA VALLEY In 1943, Anne was born, and by 1945 she’d married Donald Friede. A year later, Kennedy was born. During this time, Fisher wrote for magazines that included The New Yorker, created screenplays for Paramount in Hollywood and in 1949 published her translation of Jean Anselme Brillat-Savarin’s “Physiology of Taste.” This single book 32 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

ciation (NVWLA). “I had to be taken [in through] the servants’ entrance…because they didn’t want me coming in the front door.”

The next day, a contingent from the Wine Institute took her by car to the Napa Valley.

“I knew, the first time I ever smelled the pure sweet air as I drove from Napa to St. Helena, that I’d live there,” she said in “A Welcoming Life.”

“…so when I went home…I told my Father that when he died that was where I was going. He was taken aback, not about my mentioning his dying but he wanted me to stay on in Whittier and run the News [but] I didn’t want my girls in Southern California with that terrible air,” said in the NVWLA interview.

After her father’s death in 1953, Fisher sold the paper. And per her father’s wishes, donated the land and family home to the City of Whittier. The house was demolished to make room for a wading pool for children. The park still exists today — Kennedy Park — located on South Painter Avenue. From there, Fisher moved with her girls to St. Helena, initially renting a small place on Sulfur Springs Avenue.

“I imagine that the Valley reminded her of her happy life in Switzerland with her second husband Dillwyn Parrish,” Kennedy Friede Golden wrote in an email.

“At first we lived in what we called the ‘Red Cottage.’ Our aunt and cousins lived for a bit across the vineyards to the west in what we called the ‘White Cottage.’ Both homes were still there when I last drove by. We went to the St. Helena public schools and spent lots of time with [local] children…

Those were good times.”

Not convinced that St. Helena should be their permanent home, Fisher packed up her young family and moved them all to France.

It wouldn’t be the last time.

“We left for the first time to go to live in Aix-en-Provence, France,” Golden said. “We lived for a time above the carriage house at on old chateau. It was rustic, to say the least, but I have fond memories of delivery trucks of fruits and vegetables, meats and also a truck that brought us household items like brushes, cleansers and other such items.”

LIFE WITH A FAMOUS MOTHER “[When in Europe]…we often ate most meals at local small restaurants, as we did not have kitchens,” Golden wrote.

“We lived in pensions or shared time together away from our studies, so gathered at good small restaurants that we frequented often enough to allow us to become friends with both servers and patrons. We ate simply, but always well. Many of these experiences are chronicled in her books, especially in ‘Boss Dog’ (a story of our experiences at the Glacier Restaurant in Aix) and also ‘Map of Another Town,’ chronicling our time in Aix.” Their move back to the Napa Valley was followed by more extended stays in France and Switzerland. In 1956, Fisher purchased a Victorian house at 1467 Oak Ave. in St. Helena.

“Once we moved into town we lived simply but well,” Golden said. “My sister and I each had a bedroom on the main floor of the house, and our mother slept in what we called the attic. She loved being up there, as there were nice windows by her bed and she was, I believe, at peace.”

“She ordered groceries from a grocery store on Main Street, and they were delivered to the house, and I have fond recollections of the fish truck coming up the street on either Thursday or Friday with its assortment for our good Catholic town. We had a milk delivery once a week, and putting out the bottles and the information about what we wanted was a weekly highlight.

We could walk to the movie theater on Main Street for matinees, and we spent many hours in our basement playing card games and board games with friends.”

But peace can be fleeting, and as Fisher’s reputation had grown so had the number of people who wanted her time.

“I was probably running one of the best bar-restaurant-motels north [of San Francisco],” Fisher told the NVWLA. “Because there were nine beds … people would come up for lunch and stay three days and so I was doing nothing but cook, market, cook, wash dishes. It was a lot of fun but I wasn’t getting any work done.”

Unlike the preceding decade, WINTER SPRING 2020

the 1950s saw fewer magazine articles and only one Fisher book publication — “The Art of Eating” (1954).

“I used to hide,” Fisher said.

“I’d stay in the Valley Hotel…in a back bedroom that they used as a sewing room. There was gossip that I had a friend in there, but I thought, ‘My goodness, what a strong fellow he must have been’… because I’d go there as soon as the girls went to school… [and leave] at 3:00 or 4:00,” she told the NVWLA. Busy as she was, those within Fisher’s orbit witnessed her dedication and focus.

“It is clear to me now,” Golden wrote, “that the only way my mother was able to write without constant interruption was to get away from her home on Oak Avenue. As a gathering place, the telephone was not her sole interruption. In fact, many good friends and others stopped by the house when they were ‘in town.’ Although my mother often began writing in the wee hours of the morning — I know because when we slept in the basement her typewriter was about 10 feet from my head — I had no problem tuning it out and continuing my slumber. Many mornings she would rise very early, go upstairs to tidy up the kitchen and prepare for the day, often listening to Fats Waller or Jelly Roll Morton on the record player, and then return to the basement to begin her work. Clearly, in hindsight, I can see how she might have needed to flee the house in order to have uninterrupted time. So, her room in the hotel, above Vasconi’s Pharmacy, provided that work space. No doubt her friends understood. Perhaps only the teens with whom I was in school thought it at all strange.”

Those fortunate enough to enjoy Fisher’s hospitality always got a bit more than they expected.

“Most of our meals were eaten at the large table in the kitchen on the main floor,” Golden wrote.

“We ate simply and well. My mother enjoyed preparing simple, but good, meals: salads, lots WINTER SPRING 2020

of fresh vegetables and protein of some kind. Mealtime was sacred, whether we had guests or not.

We gathered at the table, talked freely about our days, what we were involved in and our hopes.”

One of Golden’s favorite memories is of the picnics they’d hold in the patio behind the house when the weather was good.

“My mother would always have some good fruit punch to drink and often she would cover a platter with leaves from our fig tree and lay out fresh fruit, some good cheese and a meat of some kind: salami, ham, prosciutto or even cold beef tongue. Whatever it was, it was always beautiful to look at and delicious to savor.

She had a real talent for presentation: simple, elegant, but always pleasing to the eye and the palate.

There was also always a basket of good bread with some fresh butter… Oh, this is making my mouth water!”

THE NAPA VALLEY WINE LIBRARY AND FISHER’S PROLIFIC DECADE — THE 1960S Hosting all of the guests and taking care of her girls resulted in fewer publications through the 1950s. But by the 1960s Fisher had regained her prolific pace, publishing numerous books and articles.

During that time, beyond her expanding influence as a writer, she also found time to co-found the NVWLA, taught wine and food appreciation courses, and held some of the first wine tastings with local Napa Valley luminaries such as Lee Stewart, Andre Tchelistcheff, Joe Heitz and Louis Martini, who poured their wines, hoping patrons would donate their own wine-related books or provide donations to build the fledgling library.

“I can remember the first wine tasting we had down at the old hardware store,” Fisher said. “… It was very amateurish. Joe started out quite keen about us … but we hurt him very much because there was a tasting up

at Spottswood…[we brought French Champagne]… and opened it! It peeved Joe Heitz so he withdrew completely. He felt we were supposed to be serving Valley wines. Well, we had a hard time getting 150 people to come to that first tasting in a lumber yard. We bribed our uncles and children,” she told the NVWLA. According to Fisher’s account, Maynard Amerine, a pioneering researcher in the cultivation, fermentation, and sensory evaluation of wine at UC Davis, procured the first 100 books for the library. Today, the collection — housed in St. Helena’s public library — contains thousands of books, as well as periodicals, newsletters and oral histories from three decades starting in the 1960s that cover what is widely believed as Napa’s golden era.

Departing St. Helena “[The house] is now quite fancy but was then quite run down,” Golden wrote of the St. Helena house. “A beautiful Victorian house with no curtains but with amazing bamboo obscuring the windows on the main floor.

[My mother] reinforced the underpinnings of the house, creating a wonderful cool place for us to spend long, hot nights, and she put 12x12 alternating blackand-white vinyl squares on the floor of the entire main floor. She also had a wonderful old map of Paris wallpapered to the wall in the living room.”

Fisher recalled the St. Helena house with her eloquent and evocative style, referring to it as the “Dear Old Lady.” “…the house was airy…filled with clear colors and the lacy flicker of light through bamboo leaves,” she wrote. “[but] I found myself more and more in the basement, so that finally everything I was pondering on was there, almost beside the bed I grew to prefer it to all the other [rooms]…” (speech transcript, “One Verse of Song”).

Eventually, Fisher’s daughters went away to school, and by 1970 she decided to depart St. Helena, finding the three-storied home

and yard difficult to maintain.

A longtime friend of Fisher’s, David Bouverie — a London architect who came to New York in 1933 and later migrated west, buying land in the Sonoma Valley — offered to design and build her a forever home on his 535-acre estate, now known as Bouverie Preserve, in Glen Ellen.

She gratefully accepted and playfully called her new home “Last House,” which is now run by the Audubon Canyon Ranch and is opened for select small events that “promote Fisher’s vision of a community focused on food, wine, literature and nature.”

Select belongings and artwork have been returned to Last House, including her typewriter, which sits in the corner where she once worked. But it was St. Helena and her time there that made their own special and lasting impression.

“Other people now take care of the Dear Old Lady, as a lot of us call her, and they have made her look tidier than we ever did, certainly,” she wrote. “And as long as I possibly can, I’ll sing my own songs of love and thanksgiving for the lives she helped us lead.”

Note: Special thanks to Kennedy Friede Golden and to Luke Barr, former features editor at Travel + Leisure magazine and a grandnephew of M.F.K. Fisher who grew up in the Bay Area and Switzerland. His first book was the New York Times bestseller “Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste.” Also to Diana H. Stockton, editor of the Napa Valley Wine Library Report and Lynne Albrecht, head of Reference and Technical Services at the St. Helena Public Library.

Editor’s Note: Unless otherwise indicated, permission was given for use of photos in possession of Literary Trust

by Kennedy Friede Golden as Trustee of the Literary Trust u/w/o M.F.K. Fisher.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 33

Prestige. Performance. Protection.

Whether you are sprucing up the interior or exterior of your home with a fresh coat of paint, or getting your deck ready for the winter, Devine Paint Center has what you need. We carry the finest quality paints with a myriad of colors to choose from. Or, we can help you create your own custom color.

When it comes to getting your deck ready for the winter, we carry the best stains to protect your wood from the elements.

971 Lincoln Avenue, Napa 707.226.5211 • www.devinepaintcenterinc.com • Mon- Fri 7 a.m. – 5:30 p.m Sat: 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Closed on Sunday 34 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

Love Where YOU BANK

We love to help you succeed by offering better rates, fewer fees, and great rewards.

A T M

Debit Card with Rewards

Free Checking

Nationwide ATM Access

Earn points redeemable for

No hidden fees or

Plus, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll reimburse up to

cash back, travel, and more.

balance requirements.

4 ATM fees per month!*

1 (800) 479-7928 | redwoodcu.org Membership open to anyone living or working in the greater North Bay and San Francisco. Some restrictions may apply. Debit rewards available for personal accounts only. Business accounts not eligible for debit rewards. Signature-based transactions only. Federally insured by NCUA. *First 2 non-RCU ATM fees reimbursed with checking; ďŹ rst 4 non-RCU ATM fees reimbursed with checking and active RCU loan or credit card.

Active loan or credit card = at least 1 transaction or payment in prior month. Casino/gambling and ATMs outside U.S. excluded.

WINTER SPRING 2019 INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 35

Wings over the valley Our writer soars 15,000 feet above Napa at 170 miles an hour M A RT Y O RG E L

‌‘ T Mike Quick piloting his 1979 Piper Turbo Arrow above Napa.

Marty Orgel photos‌

View above Lake Berryessa from pilot Mike Quick’s 1979 Piper Turbo Arrow.

36 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

wo – eight – seven – niner – Papa,” Mike Quick called into his headset, rattling off the tail number identifying his plane, as he asked permission from the tower to take off. His 1979 Piper Turbo Arrow sat next to the runway at the Napa County Airport, its engine idling. Given the go, Quick revved the motor and the Turbo Arrow roared forward, picked up speed, and lifted effortlessly into the sky.

In less than one minute and already at 3,500 feet and pushing 115 miles an hour, the plane was over Browns Valley.

Quick’s first plane, he reminisced, was a Piper Cherokee. His second, this much more advanced and beloved Arrow “is like a sports car compared to a station wagon.” Eyes moving constantly between the instrument panel, the ground, and the blue morning sky, Quick joked, “I have always liked to look at the clouds.

They are like big blankets.”

Inside Napa Valley magazine first introduced Quick to readers in our 2019 summer issue story about having cocktails after a day of wine tasting, “Cocktails in Napa Valley wine country—Looking for a change”. Quick, quite the contrarian was nursing a beer while those around him sipped cocktails. Born and raised in St. Helena, he is a sales representative with Young’s Market Company.

During our conversation Quick mentioned he was a pilot and invited Inside Napa Valley to soar with him above the clouds over Napa. He was not just being nice. He thought it would be a great way WINTER SPRING 2020

to tell people about the shortage of pilots and the need for more. What would be better, he opined, than to take INV up, up, and away in his beautiful airplane?

As our altitude increased he explained that the major reason for the pilot shortage was the mandatory retirement age of 65 for commercial aviators. Men who flew during the Vietnam War and then got jobs afterward with commercial airlines were now retiring.

The number of certified pilots has declined over decades. In 1990 there were roughly 700,000 actively flying pilots. In 2017 – the latest year numbers are available – there were slightly more than 600,000 certificated pilots. That is 100,000 fewer pilots in about 30 years.

On the ground and days later, flight instructor Kimberly Sanders-Smith with Mike Smith Aviation in Napa discussed the dearth of pilots. Yet despite the shortage she was optimistic about the future of aviation.

“Being a pilot or working in the aviation industry is really exciting for our flight school students.”

To help recruit new pilots, Mike Smith Aviation opened a flight school at the airport this past June. Teachers across the county are offered the chance to go on a flight for free.

“We are doing this,” Sanders-Smith said, “because teachers inspire and influence so many young people.” She said once you have looked at the world from a bird’s eye view your paradigm changes. “You no longer see borders; you see that the world is really a very small place.”

Back in the air at 4,500 feet and moving along at 147 miles an hour, our flight became a bit bumpy as the Turbo Arrow encountered winds off Mount Veeder. Not scary bumpy, but a soft, almost gentle buffeting. We flew over The Hess Collection winery and the Veterans Home of California in Yountville. Still fire-ravaged hills from the 2017 fires were visible in Yountville and St. Helena.

Despite memories brought back from seeing the scarred land, the view from a single engine airplane soaring above Napa is breathtaking. Cars and people look like ants; buildings are no larger than thumbnails; visibility is unlimited. Yet most Napa residents and visitors will never get to experience wine country from this perspective. The only real viable option is to fly with a private pilot.

Sure, you can take hot air balloon rides over the Valley but they usually top out between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. And if money is no object you can charter a helicopter out of San Francisco or Oakland for about WINTER SPRING 2020

Marty Orgel‌

The view through a fisheye lens from Mike Quick’s 1979 Piper Turbo Arrow above Napa.

$2,000 an hour, and also pay for travel time to and from the airport.

As the Turbo Arrow sped along and continued its ascent heading toward Calistoga, Quick pointed out Sterling Vineyards and continued to advocate for becoming a pilot.

Pilots don’t earn as much money when compared to many other occupations he said, “But the thrill never goes away.”

Moments later, with the Arrow reaching its highest altitude of the trip at 15,000 feet and a cruising speed of 170 miles an hour, there was a realization the experience did not feel like driving furiously down a highway at 170 miles an hour. It felt slow, lumbering.

An awareness of speed only came by watching the ground swiftly passing by. The flight was also a bit antiseptic, or put more positively, Zen like. This high up the plane was a sleek yet isolated vehicle cutting through the sky with almost no interaction with the outside world. Add noise cancelling headsets and even the pilot’s chatter was subdued.

Awareness of height is also different and somewhat incomprehensible at 15,000 feet.

On the ground we relate to distance and height by what is around us. We understand what it feels like to be on the top floor of a two story building. At 15,000 feet, the Turbo Arrow was 2.8 miles high. Two-pointeight miles.

To compare, the Empire State building in New York City is 1,454 feet tall tip to tip and has 102 stories. It would take about ten Empire State buildings stacked one on top of each other to reach the Turbo Arrow.

The tallest building in the world when completed in 2020 – the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – will be “only” 3,281 feet

tall and have a mind-boggling 213 stories.

Banking right over Calistoga to start our return to the airport, the Arrow flew over Pope Valley, southeast over Chiles Valley, and then approached the southern tip of Lake Berryessa. We had descended to 5,500 feet and were now just slightly more than one mile high.

Offering up a bit of local aviation lore, Quick told how amphibious light-sport planes are designed and built at ICON Aircraft in Vacaville. Lake Berryessa is ICON’s proving ground to show they can land on water. Once with tragic results. In May 2017 an ICON plane crashed on the shore of Lake Berryessa killing the two men onboard; the ICON pilot and another company employee.

While it might seem morbid to talk about a deadly airplane crash while flying, Quick said dying in a crash is constantly on a pilot’s mind. “I’m always scanning the horizon. Looking for a place to land if there is an emergency.”

A more upbeat factoid about aviation safety: Pilots do not wear polarized sunglasses. Polarization reduces glare. And glare is a pilot’s friend. They constantly check their instruments which have built-in antiglare properties. Polarized glasses would cancel that out, making the instruments harder to see. Glare in the sky can indicate another plane, a power line, or a telephone line. A pilot wants to see this glare, especially when it comes to telephone and power lines in order not to run into them if forced to land.

Heading south across Atlas Peak and Luna Vineyard on the Silverado Trail we flew over Oxbow Public Market. After one hour in the air the wind had picked up again as we made our descent to land. It was bumpy again. Ears popped at 1,500 feet. At 1,000 feet the Piper’s landing gear was lowered.

With late morning temperatures heating up the air, the plane started “crabbing” into the wind; drifting back and forth and no longer flying in a straight line as we approached the landing strip. Quick said unless you have zero wind conditions you are always crabbing into the wind during a flight or landing. It is not a bad thing. The plane is just acting like a weather vane, he said.

Every flight is thrilling and impactful for Quick. He said there is always something new to discover. Like a new house being built on a hill. Or the progress of a winery under construction. “It is all just wonderful,” he said, as his much loved Piper Turbo Arrow gently touched down.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 37

Come Home to Beautiful Windows!

Doing it right for over 75 years!

1014 Broadway, Vallejo •

707-643-5609 • Mon-Fri 8am-5pm

Lic# 202251 • Se Habla español • Free Estimates 38 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

www.calglassofvallejo.com

WINTER SPRING 2019

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 39

Katie Solari Baker and husband Cam Baker, proprietors of Larkmead Vineyards. The Bakers made a $200,000 to U.C. Davis that will be used to digitize the work of Dr. Harold Olmo.

JIMMY HAYES/JBH Photo

Preserving

Napa’s history SARAH KLEARMAN sk lear m an@nap ane w s . com

Larkmead owners donate $200,000 for research

T

he owners of Larkmead Vineyards have announced a $200,000 donation to the University of California, Davis, in honor of the winery’s 125th anniversary.

Larkmead proprietors Katie Solari Baker, daughter of former owner Larry Solari, and husband Cam Baker made the donation to spur university efforts to digitize the research collection of Professor Emeritus Harold Olmo, who Cam Baker described as “one of the most influential viticulturists” of our time.

Olmo’s collection, called “The Olmo Papers,” is the product of his decades-long career as a scientist and viticulturist at the forefront of wine grapegrowing, according to Kevin Miller, university archivist and interim head of archives and special collections at the U.C. Davis Library.

40 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Olmo’s work, in its physical form, comprises more than 100 large boxes of papers – letters, data, photographs and hand-drawn maps of experimental vineyard blocks, according to Miller.

“He was an extremely significant figure in viticulture working with grapes and grape varieties,” Miller said of Olmo, who died at age 96 in 2006. Among Olmo’s most important achievements, Miller said, is the impact he had on the movement of different grape varieties around the world.

Olmo’s research with wine grape varietals lent itself to time abroad: he spent parts of his life in wine grapegrowing regions as far away as Australia and Europe. Much of his important work was done domestically, though, including in Napa – some of it in vineyards that Larkmead still owns today, according to Larkmead’s winemaker Dan Petroski. Before Davis’ Oakville Station, Dr. Olmo tended to experimental vineyard blocks at Larkmead, Petroski said.

The work that Olmo would go on to do at the Oakville station would ultimately

produce the Oakville clones, famous strains of Cabernet that would seal Napa’s reputation as an ultra-premium wine grapegrowing region.

“Napa Valley owes much of its success as a wine region to him,” Baker said in a press release.

Before Petroski was a winemaker, he worked in publishing; when he arrived at Larkmead as an assistant winemaker, the Bakers dubbed him the winery’s unofficial historian, Petroski said. He’d heard talk of Olmo’s research vineyards at Larkmead, and discovered that Olmo had planted Cabernet at Larkmead in 1939, before the creation of Oakville Station.

Petroski obtained a letter from Olmo to a fellow viticulturist that confirmed he’d moved the Cabernet clones Oakville Station from vineyards at Larkmead.

“I was like – wow, the Oakville clones are from Larkmead,” he said. And he was struck

by Olmo’s apparent premonition. “That was 1939, when Napa was prune and oak trees.

It wasn’t Cabernet country, and he planted WINTER SPRING 2020

Cabernet – before anyone else.”

Larkmead has a “Dr. Olmo” wine label in the viticulturist’s honor, made from Cabernet vines planted in the very vineyards Olmo is thought to have used for research, Petroski said.

And Olmo was indeed ahead of his time – in 1984, only 6 percent of California’s wine grape crop was Cabernet, according to Petroski. He said Olmo’s insight could have been the product of his extensive research around grape varietals and climate. And though his work dates over half a century, Petroski said it’s more relevant than ever in the face of today’s changing climate.

For that reason, the Bakers have donated the $200,000, Petroski said. They’re hopeful Olmo’s research will be of aid to today’s viticulturists and enologists.

“A digitization project done well democratizes access to the collection,” Miller said. “(Currently) researchers need to physically travel to us to access the material, and that’s a huge financial burden for most people.”

Scanning and digitizing a collection like Olmo’s could be advantageous for other reasons, Miller added: each of its components will be contextualized as the collection is organized. Hand scrawled notes and listless pieces of individual data may not make sense as separate pieces of the collection, but could be a resource of invaluable proportion for scientists once they’re sorted and paired correctly.

Once the project is completed – Miller says it could take about a year and a half – the Olmo Papers will be searchable for

ABOVE: Handwritten research data from 1949 and 1950 at Larkmead Vineyards, part of the Olmo Papers.

Courtesy of UC Davis Library/Archives and Special Collections‌

RIGHT: Professor of Viticulture Harold Olmo Courtesy of Academic Technology Services Photographs, UC Davis Library/Archives and Special Collections‌

.

WINTER SPRING 2020

keywords, similar to Google Books, allowing even more efficient access.

“Olmo’s papers get a lot of research consideration, and (as a result we’ve come to the) realization that there are certain problems with the catalog,” Miller said, referring to the collection’s index. “We’ve actually wanted to take the first step of (digitizing) for quite some time.”

Earlier this year, Larkmead began its own experimental vineyard block in the face of climate change. It’s part of a “culture of experimentation” at Larkmead that the Bakers say Olmo helped create. Petroski, for his part, hopes Olmo’s work will foster curiosity and growth industry-wide.

“We’re hoping we find information

relevant to today based on questions (the industry) asked itself when Dr. Olmo was working,” Petroski said.

The Bakers’ donation will help jumpstart that process. Petroski says it’s in theme with Larkmead’s take on its 125th anniversary in 2020.

“It was almost like – who cares? Everyone has a birthday, an anniversary,” Petroski said. “But what’s the future? The most important part of what we can do next is giving back to historical precedent and education, and find something to propel us forward.”

You can reach Sarah Klearman at (707) 256-2213 or sklearman@napanews.com.

800.227.3849 RiversideResort.com 42 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

PRECISION BUILDERS CORPORATION

KIM CARPENTER DESIGN

Largest and Best Selection of Stone and Quartz Material in the North Bay In House Tile and Stone Fabrication and Installation – Beautiful Boutique Tile Showroom Design | Fabricate | Install | One Shop | One Stop Family owned and operated for over 30 years.

2019 Best for Counter Tops and Flooring!

3854 Santa Rosa Ave • Santa Rosa, CA 95407 • Monday through Friday 8:30 - 5:00 • Saturdays 9:00 - 5:00 707-586-2064 • www.nctile.com • Lic.#641574 WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 43

NAPA VALLEY TASTEMAKERS

We ask Napa Valley insiders for their guide to getting the most of life in wine country

Jamie Jamison, general manager at Brix Restaurant TIM CARL ‌Jamie Jamison is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he spent two years with the U. S. Navy aboard the USS Vulcan as a boatswain’s mate before deciding his career path. Since then, he has been a wine and food professional, and he holds an “Advance Sommelier” certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers. Before joining Brix, Jamison was the director of restaurants at Las Alcobas resort in St. Helena.

Beyond the Napa Valley he has worked at numerous restaurants in several states that include New York, Colorado, Missouri and Southern California.

As a member of the Guild of Sommeliers he has traveled widely throughout France, Germany, Italy, California and Oregon on educational enrichment scholarships. He has also been a speaker at a number of festivals – Aspen Food & Wine, Naples Winter Wine, Paris of the Plain Cocktail, Crush Michigan Wine the James Beard Benefit Dinner at The American Restaurant and the Nantucket Wine Festival. Jamison has been named the Riedel Crystal “Sommelier of the Month” and has also participated in numerous regional wine-tasting competitions around the globe.

Other than wine, what is your favorite local beverage? Loch & Union gin is made here in Napa by a distiller trained in Scotland. It’s clean and smooth with balanced botanicals.

What is your favorite local bar? Press – great selections and classic bartenders.

What is your favorite local restaurant? Compline – unique food Jamie and wine selections Jamison, general with a comfortable manager atmosphere and proat Brix fessional staff.

Restaurant W h a t i s yo u r in Yountville favorite inexpensive Tim Carl‌ treat? Hot dogs from Kelly’s Station or a breakfast sandwich from the Model Bakery. Both cure the most savage hangovers.

What is your favorite outdoor place to unwind on your day off? Any winery or spa. We have an embarrassment of riches, but the wines and spas complement each other.

44 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Stacy Vogel, winemaker at Napa’s Miner Family Winery and Vineyards TIM CARL ‌Winemaker Stacy Vogel grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in biology she joined the Peace Corps and spent time in Zambia. After returning to the U.S. she spent a short time in the Information Technology industry in New York Stacy before workVogel, ing as a sales winemaker at adminisNapa’s Miner trator for a Family Winery wine and and Vineyards beer disTim Carl‌ t r i b u t o r.

That’s where she fell in love with wine and the idea of becoming a winemaker took shape.

Soon after, she headed west and eventually received her master’s degree in viticulture and enology at UC Davis. Vogel has participated in harvests around the globe – the Napa Valley; Burgundy, France; and Australia. Prior to joining Napa’s Miner Family Winery and Vineyards in 2008 she worked at St. Helena’s Cain Vineyards as enologist and then at Sonoma County’s Ledson Winery as assistant winemaker.

Other than wine, what is your favorite local beverage? I like to enjoy a vodka gimlet at the Rutherford Grill – cleansing and refreshing.

What is your favorite local bar? Bistro Jeanty, which has an excellent by-the-glass wine list, cocktails and great bar food – steak tartare and fries.

What is your favorite local restaurant? Angele. Always solid food, wine and somewhat reasonable prices for Napa.

What is your favorite inexpensive treat? Bouchon Bakery – croissant.

What is your favorite outdoor place to unwind on your day off? We love to hike in Alston Park with our dogs and kids.

WINTER SPRING 2020

(707) 450-5956 343 3rd St. Napa CA

Lic. #1014145

Our family cares what your family walks on.

Lic.#1014145

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 45

Serving

NapaforValley over

55 yeaRS!

SHOWROOM OpeN eVeRyDay! Come Explore Our New And Pre-Owned Inventory

Cars • Trucks • SUVs • Vans • All Electric

NISSAN napanissan.com 510 Soscol Ave. (707) 253-1551 46 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

49 Veto

2/15

ACROSS 1 Cuisine with green curry 5 Out of control 9 Glittery rock genre 13 Rimes of country 14 Name hidden in “erudite” 15 Verdi heroine 16 Con artist’s ideal victim 18 Alpine lift 19 Beast of burden 20 Skater Midori 21 Slopes athlete who aptly crosses the first 4 letters of 9-Down 23 Pa. neighbor 24 Already cut, as a lawn 26 Turkey’s capital 29 Like some prunes 31 Flatter WINTER SPRING 2020

controller

www.upuzzles.com

Athletic Breakthroughs by Paul Coulter

33 FICA funds it 34 Word after “sweetheart” or “square” 36 California’s Point ___ 37 Makeup, e.g.

39 Certain tide 41 Pool athlete who aptly crosses the first 5 letters of 30-Down 44 Makeup class?: Abbr.

46 Short Spotify releases, briefly 49 Veto 51 Northern Manhattan neighborhood 54 Cooking oil brand 55 Ga. neighbor 57 Sch. near Brown 58 Spendthrift’s excursion 60 Survive in musical chairs 61 ___ de mer 62 Cheesecake variety

64 Stick with it 67 Censorshipfighting org.

68 Pineapple center 69 Avid 70 Ramadan observance 71 As soon as 72 Homer’s hangout DOWN 1 Afternoon services 2 Major inconveniences 3 “Take your pick” 4 Eventually 5 Sharp projectile that aptly crosses the last 6 letters of 16-Across 6 You may bring one to a coffee machine 7 Keats creations

8 Breakable candy bar 9 Access controller 10 Return trip destination?

11 Computing pioneer Lovelace 12 Fold, spindle or mutilate 13 Detectives follow them 17 Butting heads 22 The “I” in IV 25 Hoops grp.

27 Regret 28 Calc BC and others 30 Tornado relative in the Florida Keys 32 Arm bone 35 Research paper abbr.

38 Program problem 40 Of a cultural group 41 Average name?

42 “___ got it!”

43 Ships and such

45 After expenses 47 Peacock’s pride 48 Sonora shawls 50 World Heritage Site org.

52 Country song?

53 Distance runner who aptly crosses the last 4 letters of 64-Across 56 Cosmetician Lauder 59 Major with lots of competition, briefly?

62 Ungraceful sort 63 Label for Sia and SZA 65 Middle Earth monster 66 Chinese “way” Answers Page 63 INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 47

GRAND KITCHEN EVENT

LIMITED TIME EVENT

Create the kitchen of your dreams and save.

Purchase a qualifying Sub-Zero and Wolf appliance package and receive three additional years of protection, or a $1,000 rebate.

For details, visit our Napa store or subzero-wolf.com/promotion

707-294-2559 333 3rd Street â&#x20AC;¢ Napa, CA 94559 www.PearsonsAppliance.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 49

Rob Bolch, CEO of John Fearless Co., at their warehouse in Napa Tim Carl Photography

Napa’s

John

Fearless TIM CARL

Providing ingredients for making craft beer and beyond

called “gruit” that had provided beer a bitter-stabilizing component.

With hops at their disposal, European brewmasters led a revolution, crafting new beers that became popular for their bold flavors, heady aromas and complex bitterness.

J

ust as winemakers can make great wine only with the help of grape-growers and barrel-makers, so it is with beer. Craft brewers can make great beer only if they have high-quality ingredients such as hops, malt and extracts.

The Napa-based John Fearless Co. provides those critical elements, often from far-flung locations that most American brewers can’t access, including New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia.

“Our goal is to provide products and services to small brewers, winemakers and distillers, both locally and globally,” said Rob Bolch, CEO and co-founder of the company. “Beyond hops and malt, we also supply fruit additives, oak-derived additions and barrels that are being used to improve all sorts of fermented products, including beer, wine and spirits.”

50 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

A COMPANY NAMED AFTER JOHN THE FEARLESS — THE GODFATHER OF HOP-MADE BEER John the Fearless was Duke of Burgundy, France, from 1404 until his assassination in 1419.

While in his early 30s, he gained the moniker “Fearless” during the Crusades when he was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. Most of John’s fellow Burgundian knights were massacred at the time, but John survived, eventually being ransomed

and set free.

Returning home, John found strife between the economic classes, a political quagmire within the ruling factions and an ongoing war with England.

To make matters worse, brewing beer with aromatic hops was either banned outright or heavily taxed.

In a move that may have eased tensions while also bringing in additional revenues, the duke led an effort to expand the use of hops, replacing the more common herbal concoction

CRAFT BEER HAS BECOME A GLOBAL PHENOMENON As in France in the 15th century, beer remains a popular beverage. According to Nielsen research, more than 1.5 billion cases of beer are consumed annually in the United States.

In 2018, the overall U.S. market for wine was $70 billion, while the beer market was a whopping $114.2 billion, according to the Brewers Association website.

Nearly 80% of the beer sold in the U.S. is made in enormous factories that use generic ingredients that are mass-farmed in Midwestern states. For these beers, similar to soft-drink products such as Coca-Cola , the emphasis is on consistency of flavor and a steady supply. But for WINTER SPRING 2020

the last couple of decades, a new type of beer has been on the rise.

And as with many fine wines, the emphasis is on local ingredients and handmade artistry. Today, these craft beers represent $27.6 billion of the U.S. market.

In 1978, there were 89 American breweries, according to the Brewers Association. By 2007, that number increased to 1,511, and by 2016 it topped 5,300. In 2018, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that there are now more than 900 breweries in California, with 29 new brewery licenses issued in the Bay Area between December 2016 and December 2017, bringing the total number to more than 200.

MORE AMERICANS DRINK BEER THAN WINE Presently, 62 percent of Americans drink alcohol. Of those, according to Gallup, in 2017 some 40 percent preferred beer, which is down 3 percent from 2016 but still ahead of wine, which is now at 30 percent.

Still, Americans consume more than 6 billion gallons of beer a year, which converts to about 18 gallons of beer for every man, woman and child in the country, statistics show. The numbers for beer sales are slowing somewhat, with consumer sentiments shifting toward spirits. But even so, craft beer continues to outpace more generic beer sales.

“The initial burst of very rapid, double-digit growth in the U.S. craft beer industry has settled out at around 4% to 6% growth per year, and that looks to remain the case in 2020,” Bolch said. “The industry is maturing, with brewers refining their business models. This process will inevitably see some breweries with less-sustainable models falling by the wayside, but, still, a lot more breweries are opening than closing.”

JOHN FEARLESS CO. Bolch grew up in Melbourne, Australia, where he eventually worked at the Foster’s Group, which made beer, wine and soft WINTER SPRING 2020

drinks.

“I moved to Milwaukee when Foster’s and Miller partnered in the early 2000s,” Bolch said. “At the time, Foster’s had acquired a lot of wineries — Beringer and a few others in the valley. In 2005, they asked me to relocate to the Napa Valley because I had experience with distributors and supply-chain optimization. It was an easy and pleasant move.”

In 2013, he was contacted by the Ciatti Co., a company based out of Novato that is — according to its website — the world’s largest broker of bulk wine. They also broker grapes, grape concentrate and grape spirits.

“They [Ciatti] wanted to get into the craft brewery business, so it was a perfect fit with my background and interest,” Bolch said.

“It has been a fantastic experience working with a group of committed partners who see and support what we’re doing together.”

Since the business was launched, the number of customers has grown from a couple of dozen local accounts to well over 1,000 today. And while most of the early customers were local, now John Fearless products can be found on the shelves of smaller breweries throughout the United States, Mexico, and even France and China.

“We might be fearless, but we’re not reckless,” Bolch said.

“Early on, we were hearing that our brewer friends were constantly on the hunt for high-quality, hard-to-find ingredients, whereas they should have been focused on crafting their art. What we learned early on was that there was demand for a source of consistent and reliable ingredients for specialty producers who were often being overlooked and underserved.”

The partnership with Ciatti provided the growing business with contacts, help with the dayto-day logistics and deep expertise in selling agricultural products used as ingredients for fermented beverages. Bolch provided people, expertise for interacting with craft producers and a passion for the

product.

“As we grow, we continue to learn,” he said. “For example, the growing Chinese middle class is boosting demand for craft beers.

At the moment, the Chinese palate prefers more subtle, less hoppy beers than – for example – the average U.S. consumer. That said, hops are still a critical ingredient for them, and they have very particular types of hops they want.

Normally these specialty products are tough to get, but that’s what we do. We offer over 30 different options from farms in the U.S., South Africa and New Zealand.”

tradition play a large role in what defines these products, according to Bolch, some craft brewers are expanding their portfolios into other types of alcoholic beverages, such as flavored malt beverages and alcoholic versions of clear, carbonated soda drinks known as hard seltzers.

“These can diversify a brewer’s product range while utilizing the same equipment and incurring little extra cost,” he said.

And while hops remain the most popular of their products, malts and extracts are also growing in popularity.

The company also offers malt, natural extracts and stabilizers.

“In China, as in many other markets around the world, craft beer is often not pasteurized, so our oak additives and 100% natural stabilizers have a positive impact,” Bloch said. “These items are also becoming increasingly popular with winemakers and distillers who use them to impart oak character and finishing tannins at a fraction of the cost of using new barrels.”

“We are seeing an increased demand for our dried-fruit products,” Bolch said. “The great thing about these is that they can be stored at room temperature, removing the need for the freezing and refrigeration required when using purees or concentrates. We supply everything from blackberry, blueberry, mandarin/ orange, mango, peach, pineapple, pomegranate and more, all imparting great flavor and color.”

IS THE FUTURE OF FERMENTED BEVERAGES MORE HOPPY OR MORE FRUITY? The range of fermented beverages is staggering — wine, spirits and beer. And while history and

NAPA’S JOHN FEARLESS CO. LOOKS TO THE FUTURE “The valley has always been a place for innovative, high-quality products,” Bolch said. “And we are thrilled to help support that tradition.”

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 51

Music Lessons For All Ages • Beginners & Adults Welcome • Private and Group Lessons • Over 20 Instruments & Voice • All Styles • Garage Band 101 • Summer Music Camps

CALL TO SCHEDULE YOUR FREE TRIAL LESSON! See store for details, some restrictions may apply.

Call 707-252-4040 or register online at https://napaschoolofmusic.com/ 4032 Maher St., Napa CA

NOW ENROLLING

FOR THE 2020-2021

SCHOOL YEAR 52 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2020

Thank You, Napa Valley

L to R: Joe Peatman of the Gasser Foundation, Alicia Hardy of OLE Health, Linda Reiff of Napa Valley Vintners, and Jose Fleites of award sponsor AUL Corp.

OLE Health was honored to be co-recipients of the Napa Chamber of

Commerce’s Collaborating Community Champions of the Year Award with The Peter A. and Vernice H. Gasser Foundation and the Napa Valley Vintners for the dedication and collaboration that resulted in the opening of OLE Health’s new Napa Valley Vintners South Napa Campus. This location – OLE Health’s 7th – has seen approximately 10,000 unique patients walk through its doors since opening in June 2019.

We are so grateful for the Napa Valley community for supporting and believing in our mission to provide primary health care to our entire community.

Learn more about OLE Health at olehealth.org.

olehealth.org 707.254.1775 300 Hartle Ct, Napa

Hablamos Español

FOOD TRUCKS OF THE NAPA VALLEY

Origenes,

David Morales, one of three chefs at Origenes

a taco truck with some

Maria Sestito‌ photos

delightful surprises M A R I A S E S T I TO ‌W hat you’re eating: At Origenes, expect typical taco truck fare – tacos, tortas, burritos, and quesadillas – as well as some delightful surprises. Meat options include steak, adobe marinated chicken, braised pork and pork shoulder, braised beef, braised beef tongue and a fish of the day – perhaps salmon or mahi-mahi.

Who’s making your food: Blanca Morales of American Canyon had helped open Chipotle restaurants in the Bay Area before moving into catering, but she hadn’t actually thought of running a food truck.

“I didn’t like cooking,”

54 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Morales said, “[but] rolling a burrito was never a challenge for me.”

She had taken some cooking and wine pairing classes at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and wasn’t planning on stopping at food. Then, three years ago, a colleague who was closing his truck convinced her to take his spot.

She hired three chefs to come help her, including her friend and previous employee, David Morales, who is now her husband.

“He’s used to me telling him what to do,” she said.

Their marriage isn’t the only unique thing about the business, though. Morales and her three chefs participate in profit-sharing, splitting a percentage of the truck’s gross income each year. “ T h e y’r e m o r e t h a n employees,” she said.

Morales’ family is from Guadalajara, Mexico, but the truck serves up a fusion from all around the region.

“It’s a combination of where all of us are from,” she said. “All of us bring something.” That’s why she named the truck “Origenes,” meaning “your roots.”

Don’t leave without trying: A fish taco. The catering end of the business is the most lucrative and, because Morales does so many events, there is always fresh fish available.

“They’re a really good deal,” she said. “You can have wild catch salmon for the price of an ordinary fish taco.” Depending on the season, of course.

The other item to try is the torta. Morales doesn’t like the bolillo bread that tortas are usually served on, so Origenes uses grilled focaccia, making for a slightly firmer sandwich. It comes with meat, cheese, pico de gallo, lettuce, sour cream,

jalpeños and salsa.

Pro Tip: If you’re craving something special like a fish taco, it might be helpful to go early in the day because, once they sell out, they won’t make more.

Price Range: Tacos start at $1.75, fish tacos are $2.50, and burritos and tortas start at $7.

Where to find it: Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. in the parking lot of the 76 gas station at the intersection of Redwood Road and Trancas Avenue in Napa, 2005 Redwood Rd. Origenes is closed Saturdays and Sundays.

Word to the wise: Morales has a taco cart, hot dog cart and mobile wood-fire oven for catered events, but occasionally needs the truck. If that happens, though, it should be posted on the Origenes Facebook page.

WINTER SPRING 2020

VAN WINDEN'S

GARDENCENTER Adding Beauty to the Napa Valley for over 65 years

707-255-8400 1805 Pueblo Avenue Napa vanwindens.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 55

Mention this ad and receive free kitchen faucet fa aucet with your y full kitchen cabinet cabine et purchase. p urchase. ( up p to $150.00 $150.00 value valu ue e) Kitchens starts start rtt at $2395.00 rts $2395 00 0 (1 (10’ 10 0’x1 ’x10 10 0’-a 0 ’-a ask sk for ffo or details) details s) Call VCDC today y and make an appointment! appointmen pp nt!

691 6 91 Lincoln Lincolln Ave, Ave,, Napa Napa p CA CA 94558 94558 ((Behind Beh hind d Chevron) Chevron n)

Relax in Comfort.

Visit us Today in Santa Rosa and Vacaville!

&

100 Fourth Street • Santa Rosa, CA 395 E. Monte Vista Ave #B Vacaville, CA (707) 575-3198 707-449-9710 www.oldtownfurnitures.com 56 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2020

Enjoy

T H E R E T I R E M E N T Y O U ’ V E E A R N E D. The Meadows of Napa Valley is a Life Plan Community with the feel and amenities of a world-class resort, and an incredible array of people you’ll be proud to call your neighbors. You’ll have convenient access to the best the area has to offer, while escaping to a gorgeous, spacious home away from the hustle and bustle of tourists. Whatever passions you wish to pursue, your dream retirement starts right here, free from the hassles of home maintenance and the peace of mind that comes with having a healthcare continuum that will be there for you should your needs change over time. Our spacious, newly built apartment homes are move-in ready, so come see how The Meadows of Napa Valley can revolutionize your retirement lifestyle!

Schedule a tour today! Call 707-320-2185 or visit us online at MeadowsNapa.com.

1800 Atrium Parkway, Napa, CA 94559 An IOOF Community. A not-for-profit, resident-centered community. Equal housing opportunity. RCFE#: 286801070 • COA#: 334 • SNF#: 110000292.

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 57

A love to

comfort

Luthran Church Charities uses comfort dog to minister to those in need

F

ebruary is filled with hearts and flowers embodying a spirit of romance and enchantment.

Where public displays of affection represent the greatest gift of all, love.

For one local ministry, the expression of love can be found in the form of a dog named, Aaron.

“The Lutheran Church Charities K9 Comfort Dog ministry is a ministry of presence,” said Lutheran Church Charities K9 Comfort Dog Regional Co-Coordinator Christy L. Kramer.

Since 2008, the Lutheran Church Charities (LCC) K9 Comfort Dog Ministry program has been dedicated to a mission of mercy, compassion, presence and proclamation of Jesus Christ. According to their website, the organization is a, “national humancare ministry embracing the unique, calming nature and

58 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

VA L E R I E OW E N S skills of purebred Golden Retrievers.”

Placed in churches, schools and other ministries, comfort dogs are trained for over 2,000 hours from just eight-weeks-old to interact with those who are suffering or in need of comfort. Richard Martin, director of K9 Ministry for The Lutheran Church Charities said that placement includes a comprehensive training program for handlers and caregivers along with continued support and training.

“This is such an amazing ministry to serve all and love all,” said Martin. “It is very humbling day in and day out. Our affiliates have been making such a difference. Dogs can touch people’s lives that few can.”

Affiliates such as St. John’s Lutheran School in Napa have helped those who are suffering, through compassion.

“Everyone, whether grieving or not, appreciates the fact that Aaron and his team share their time and listen. This demonstrates the love that Jesus has for all people,” said Kramer.

With a team of 40 volunteers, including 13 handlers, Aaron is a bit of a celebrity. His work in the field and in the classroom has

left an lasting imprint, which explains why dogs are considered man’s best friend.

“Aaron is an amazing dog. He can sense which people are hurting and need him most,” said Kramer. “While at home, when he is out of vest and not working, he is a normal dog but with rules that still need to be followed. He is not allowed on the couch or in bed, and no people food. His favorite treat is an ice cube. He loves to play with his Kong Frisbee.”

With the motto, “boots and paws on the ground within 24 hours of being invited,” The St. John’s Lutheran K9 comfort dog ministry team has been called to several disasters during Aaron’s nearly five-year tenure. Aaron has also been deployed to the mass shootings in Las Vegas, Umpqua College, and Marysville Pilchuck High School.

“Our goal is to be there and show mercy and compassion,” said dog handler and ministry partner Jennie Lovie. “Whether people are believers or not, it is what our world is needing. We want people to know they are not alone and our objective is not to preach the gospel, but to be the gospel.”

Today, the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dog program serves 27 states with more than 100 comfort dogs in place. With an expansion to two other vital ministries including Kare 9 Military Ministry Dogs and LCC K-9 Police Ministry, the comfort dog program is spreading love throughout the country one paw at a time.

As for Aaron and the entire comfort dog ministry team at St. John’s Lutheran School, every day is a gift.

“This ministry has been incredibly rewarding,” said Lovie. “It has given all of us the opportunity to share compassion and give back.”

WINTER SPRING 2020

Submitted photo

Comfort dogs, including Aaron, traveled to Las Vegas to comfort survivors after the 2017 mass shooting at a music festival.

Aaron, the new comfort dog from Lutheran Church Charities, gets petted by one of his handlers Ken Arnold at Saint Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lutheran Church in Napa in 2015.

Submitted photo

WINTER SPRING 2020

Register file photo

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 59

WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR 2020?

Call for your FREE LASIK consult today!

ST. HELENA • AMERICAN CANYON • NAPA

YOUR LOCAL VISION & LASIK EXPERTS VSP Premier Provider Richard A. Beller, MD • Paul K. Row, MD • David S. Kim, MD Michelle F. Kerr, OD • Amy K. Moussa, OD • Gregory S. Wingren, OD • Joelle M. Zarzana, OD Call 707.934.3151 or visit napaeye.com 60 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

Your Fireplace Remodel Experts from Design to Finish Let us enhance the style and comfort of your home!

Free In Home Estimate!

AWNINGS &ENS SOLAR SCRE E! BL NOW AVAILAte s!

Free Estima

ZONE HEAT, SAVE MONEY!

No Power, No Problem!

GREG SCHULZE, OWNER & GENERAL CONTRACTOR • LIC#657984

MON-FRI 10AM-6PM • SAT 10AM-4PM • CLOSED SUNDAYS WINTER SPRING 2019

2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 61

Wildlife

IN NEED Animal rescue group specializes in birds, deer, foxes, and oh so many squirrels M A RT Y O RG E L

Marty Orgel‌

Leah Wilcox, Doug Walker, and Elizabeth Monk, left to right, in front of a squirrel rehabilitation cage built by Walker.

A squirrel condo used for rehabilitation.

62 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

John Comisky‌

‌Thirty years ago at the end of a long drive down a dark highway, Napa Wildlife Rescue president John Comisky says, windshields would be covered with dead, smashed bugs.

“That does not happen anymore,” he said.

This exemplifies a dire truth at its simplest level. Migrating birds eat insects. When insects die off, so do birds that depend on them as a food source.

Comisky said his insect and windshield story shows the delicate and dire balance between the insect population and the ongoing decline in the world’s bird populations. And it can get worse. “If wildlife disappears, so eventually do humans,” Comisky said.

In the United States falcons, hawks, raptors, and even some barn owls instinctively migrate south for the winter. Millions fly through the Pacific Flyway, a vast route that leads birds to warmer southern climates in Mexico and other parts of South America. All look for food along the way.

For many, their journey runs through wine country. This where Napa Wildlife Rescue comes into play. Nonprofit volunteers nurse migrating birds back to health if they fall ill or get injured in American Canyon or Napa. The birds are rehabilitated and then released back into the wild.

The Pacific Flyway runs 4,000 miles north-to-south from the Artic to South America, and

1,000 miles east-to-west from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It passes through the Golden Gate, the Marin Headlands, Sausalito, and then into American Canyon and Napa wetlands. Rescued, rehabilitated, and released birds include crows, doves, eagles, falcons, hawks, owls, pheasants, quail, ravens, songbirds, turkey vultures, waterfowl, and woodpeckers The nonprofit also takes in more than just birds.

“We rescue, rehabilitate and release bats, deer and fawns, foxes, jackrabbits, and opossums,” Comisky said. On occasion the center receives bobcats and coyotes. And many, many squirrels.

Rehabilitation starts when someone delivers an ill, injured, or orphaned animal to the Silverado Veterinary Hospital. Specially trained Napa Wildlife Rescue volunteers check the hospital for animals three times a day in high season and once a day in low season, and animals are then taken to the appropriate species rehabilitator.

All rehabilitators have advanced certified training.

Late December last year, Napa Wildlife Rescue got a Christmas present for the ages – an anonymous donor gave the organization enough money to buy a two acre property in the Carneros region.

“We can see the outlines of our future there,” Comisky said of the Please see Wildlife, Page 63 WINTER SPRING 2020

64 Name drinks, say hidden in 24 “I”ndigo and “believer” others?

65 Ref. that 26 Fit of pique added 28 Caveweeks of age.

It is exhausting work, “safe space” dwelling Monk said, but well worth it.

WILDLIFE in 2020 meanie Napa Wildlife Rescue workers nonprofit always needs From Page29 62 Widespread,said the66 Prescribed more volunteers.

Many, many amount as appeal donation. more volunteers. “We need volbelow 32 Word after unteers 67 Leah Wilcox, Doug Walker, as wellSinks as monetary donatheequipment horizon “chocolate” and Elizabeth Monk all work with tions, and even like squirrels at various of their specialized egg incubators that are DOWN orstages “corn” lives. Each cares for an injured perfectly adaptable to care for new1 Indian Salsaage.singer squirrel at35 a certain Said born squirrels,” said Leahstate Wilcox, famous for Cruz Monk, “Once folks see a baby another volunteer squirrel rehabilsquirrel they get hooked.” itator.

Volunteers use pedialite forsilk 37 Old ___ Doug Walker is a retired aero- mula and esilac – puppy milk – for 2 John ___ (London space engineer from Los Angeles. newborns. And the infant squirrels tractor theater) When he relocated to Napa he must be incubated at a steady tembuilt two squirrel cages in his back perature.”

3 Artichoke 38 “T”ankard yard. “We keep and newborns about Once healthy, part animals are others? six weeks; move them to another released back into their native 4 “Green Not right volunteer 40 between six quite and seven habitats. Volunteers followEggs strict weeks. And41 a third volunteer takes species-specific release protocols.

Senate and Ham” them from seveninvestigation to 17 weeks. At Napa Wildlife author Rescue works closely 17 weeks they are released back with other animal agencies, includ43 heWomen into the wild,” said. ing county5andPut state in parkorder systems, in habits 6 Candy Crush “All of the squirrels are especially and law enforcement agencies like warm and 44 fuzzy Nutritional to hold and expe- the Department of Fish and Saga, forGame. one rience,” added volunteer Elizabeth Said Comisky, “We are contin7 Super Monk. NewbornNew squirrelsYear’s require uously expanding our education to resolution muscular food every two hours until several improve the care we give.”

2/16

58 33 Critical hosp. locale 60 34 Rock fans who may 61 have CROSSWORD ANSWERS mohawks

Horror film staple Stamp’s ink source Warm embrace

Answer for puzzle Page 47 PREVIOUS PUZZLEon ANSWER

2/15

© 2020 Andrews McMeel Universal www.upuzzles.com

Letter Sounds by Alex Eaton-Salners

FREE CONSULTATION! WE CAN HELP! CALL TODAY! (707) 346-2600 • Major Insurance, MediCal, Medicare, Covered CA and Care Credit Accepted • Se Habla Español

935 Trancas Street, Suite 2C, Napa, CA 94558 WINTER SPRING 2020

www.TreatYourLegs.com INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 63

TM

3 Years in a Row!

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Customer Appreciation Month!

Wine &dine IN THE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 65

NAPA VALLEY WINERIES

Pes

ton

i Fa

mil

yE

sta

te

Fau

st

Prisoner Wine Company

Wines

Chateau Montelena

25 Years in napa! celebrating 26 River View dining

Happy Hour Hoppy Hour Monday - Friday 4PM - 6PM

Monday Friday $3 Beers 1/2 priced -Wine & Appetizers We are always open!

Breakfast-Lunch-Hoppy Hour - Dinner and Late Night

BeeR to Go!

Pet FRIendLY pet PAtIo pAtIo

sPoRts spoRts BAR

onsIte GReAt onsIte tap LocAL GReAt HABLA LocAL BReweRY Food BReweRY Room wInes Food espAÑoLwInes dAncInG

LIVe mUsIc

FULL BAR

902 Main St., napa 707-258-2337 • www.downtownjoes.com

66 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

A COMPLETE MAIL • SHIPPING • PACKAGING SERVICE

and company MAKE YOUR COLOR COPIES HERE!

Print Print from from thumb thumb drive, drive, scans, scans, even even print print photos photos from from your your SD SD card. card. Perfect Perfect prints prints every every time! time!

Wine Shipping FREE SHIPPING BOX WHEN SHIPPING

COPIES, MAILBOX RENTALS, UPS & FEDEX Mon-Fri 9 - 5:30 • Sat 9 - 2

3379 Solano Ave. • Napa Phone: 707-257-1888 www.stagecoachexpress.com Email: shipping@stagecoachexpress.com

MAP

Benton Family Wines

WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 67

Four Generations of our family... servinG Yours

HOURS: MON-TH 11AM-9:30PM, FRI-SUN 11AM-10PM

707.254.9700 | 645 FIRST STREET, NAPA | REALCHEESEPIZZA.COM

Happy HOUR 11am - 6pm

Monday - Friday

The mission is simple: serve delicious, affordable food that guests will want to return to week after week.

Sun. - Thurs. 11am - 9:30 pm Fri - Sat. 11:am - 10 pm 1106 First Street, Downtown Napa â&#x20AC;¢ 707-252-4707 68 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2020

Voted one of the Ten Best Restaurants in San Francisco Bay Area by diners on Open Table.

Steakhouse

Garden Fresh Salads

Mesquite Grilled Seafood and Finest Quality Meat Private Room Available for Group Events www.cordeirossteakhouse.com 2025 Monticello Rd., Napa WINTER SPRING 2019

For Reservations

707.224.1960

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 69

Bar Lucia and El Porteño Empanadas coming to Oxbow R E G I S T E R S TA F F

Celebrating

30 years in Napa!

Napa’s Neighborhood pizza parlor siNce 1990 local Family owNed

$5 OFF Order of $25 or more!

70 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

‌O xbow Public Market in Napa has announced two new tenants; Bar Lucia and El Porteño Empanadas will open this spring.

Bar Lucia is created and designed by Napa Valley residents Kara and Michael Lind, founders of Kara’s Cupcakes, and will be located adjacent to the existing Kara’s location in the south end of the main market hall.

Named for Kara’s great grandmother, Angela Luci and her daughter, Lucia, Bar Lucia will feature a variety of local rosés, sparkling wines and a menu of seasonal light bites, all designed to pair with the wine selection.

Among the menu items will be a little gem salad with garden peaches, Point Reyes blue cheese and toasted almonds, and a selection of artisan Panini sandwiches including a smoked salmon on rye with dill, fromage blanc, preserved lemon, fennel and a Petaluma farm-fresh egg.

Many of the garden greens, herbs and stone fruits on the menu are grown in Kara’s Napa Valley backyard.

“We enjoy a long tradition of celebrating in my Italian family, which always includes bountiful meals, homemade wine, generations of family, friends and good cheer,” Kara said. “Bar Lucia honors the memorable traditions passed down through generations of incredible women in my family who gave me the courage to pursue a creative passion and bring it to fruition. Whether it’s a large gathering, or casual get-together, please stop in, say ‘hi’, and have a toast to celebrate life’s greatest moments!”

El Porteño at Oxbow is the third location of the popular Argentina-inspired eatery offering traditional empanadas and alfajores, traditional sandwich

cookies joined with house-made sweet fillings.

For El Porteño owner Joseph Ahearne, he said feeding folks good food is in his DNA. His mother owned Maria’s Restaurant in Napa, where Maria’s was a family affair with Joseph and his siblings helping raise cattle and hogs on the family farm for the restaurant well before the farm-to—table boom.

“Most of my days were spent in the restaurant’s kitchen reviving old family recipes like the empanadas we are now known for,” said Ahearne. “Little did I know that it would lead to a food business of my own, with the help of my wife Teresa and sister Maria Liza, a French-trained pastry chef, who helped create El Porteño’s signature empanada crust—a fluffy, flaky, melt in your mouth dough baked to perfection!”

Representing both the local food movement and the preservation of traditional cuisine, El Porteño’s empanadas fuse family recipes of generations past, using only ingredients that are organic, always local, and seasonal.

Ahearne has made it a mission to partner with like-minded companies who share his same vision for healthy and sustainable food.

El Porteño at Oxbow will offer both savory and sweet empanadas. Savory selections include carne (beef), camarones (shrimp), and pollo (chicken), plus vegetarian options. Sweet empanadas include Dulce de Leche with Bananas, along with Manzana filled with pisco-soaked raisins, soaked with savory sugar.

Alfajores come with a variety of fillings, including Dulce de Leche (Argentine Caramel), limón (Lemon), frambuesa (Raspberry) and more.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Small

in

25

d

Ye

o W to W

a

n

rS

World orld RestauRant n

a

pa

!

Food From Nazareth, Israel

• Middle Eastern Food • Falafel • Hummus • Shawarma • Lamb Gyros

World Wide

e Peac

WE DO CATERING 928 Coombs (Downtown Napa)

707-224-7743

FRIDA’S

MEXICAN GRILL

We oFFeR cUstoM cAteRinG MenUs FoR Any occAsion!

FULL BAR!

We have Happy Hour at the Bar Every Day from 3 to 6 PM! Mexican | BBQ...and More!

We do catering for all occasions!

Great Food! Great Drinks!

Great Atmosphere!

We open every day at 8 am for breakfast.

FREE GUACAMOLE

Happy hour is from 3 to 6 pm

Not valid with any other offers or promotions.

Local’s lunch specials are from Monday to Friday from 11 am to 3 pm.

Present this coupon when ordering And receive a free Guacamole Appetizer Valid only with any purchase of $7.95 or more off the menu.

Valid thru April 30th, 2020

FRIDA'S HAS IT'S OWN HOUSE BREWED BEER! 72 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

1533 TRANCAS ST., NAPA, CA 94558

707-252-3575

Lunch served 11 am – 4 pm • Dinner served 4 pm – 10 pm

Follow us on Facebook.com/Fridasmexicangrill WINTER SPRING 2019

Acquiring

the taste

Experts offer tips for sharpening your appreciation of wine JESSICA ZIMMER

G

aining skills in wine tasting requires paying attention to details about the wine, from fruits that a wine smells like to how it tastes after opening. Experts from sommeliers to winemakers agree the best way to learn is to taste multiple wines with different food pairings.

“The most important thing to remember with wine tasting is that there’s no bad answer,” said Abbey Golden, private tours manager at Platypus Tours in Napa.

“You shouldn’t let people deter you or feel afraid to say the wrong thing. Everyone’s preference is different. The primary question is, ‘Do you like it?’” said Golden.

Tasting is a skill that everyone can develop, said Jay Turnipseed, winemaker for Rutherford Wine Company in Rutherford.

“It’s like learning a foreign language.

You just need to practice to get better. You shouldn’t taste just once every six months.

You should taste as often as you can and as broadly as you can,” said Turnipseed.

Turnipseed said his favorite way to learn about wine is to invite five to six friends over, with every friend bringing a different bottle.

“You can pick a feature that the wines have in common, such as the type, like

Robb McDonough

Jay Turnipseed, left, draws a sample from a barrel.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Matt Stamp, right, pours wine for customers at Compline in Napa.

Emma K. Morris

Chardonnay, vintage, or year, or region.

Have everyone taste the wines blind and then talk about their individual perceptions of each wine. It’s a great way to learn smells and flavors,” said Turnipseed.

HOW TO GET STARTED Golden said she encourages people to start “where they’re at.”

“If you’re at the point where you say, “It tastes like grapes,” the next thing to draw out is whether the wine tastes like white or red grapes. From there, you can start to identify where a wine smells like vanilla or nutmeg.

Those spicy flavors come from barrel aging.

After knowing these facts, you may be able to say, “I like barrel-aged Sauvignon Blanc,”” said Golden.

Learning the difference between vineyard-specific wines is more advanced, said Max Porterkhamsy, founding chef of Vine Dining. Vine Dining is based in the town of Sonoma and offers private chef services in Napa and Sonoma counties.

“I like tasting Pinot Noir especially, because in this varietal, you can really sense the differences in terroir. With time, a person can distinguish between wines from the Sonoma Coast and the Carneros region in Napa Valley. Later they will be able to tell whether a wine came from a specific vineyard, such as Napa’s incredible Hyde Vineyard,” said Porterkhamsy.

Porterkhamsy said for some types of wine, such as Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons, it may be hard to distinguish specific vineyards.

“An intermediate taster will want to focus on wines from areas where growing conditions are dissimilar, such as Rutherford, a warm area of the valley floor, and Carneros,

Submitted photo

Abbey Golden of Robert Sinskey Vineyards.

a cool area with fog and breezes from the Bay,” said Porterkhamsy.

Nathaniel Beckum, a certified sommelier at DBL Limited Executive Wine Tours, a Sacramento-based business that offers tours in Napa Valley, said differences between toptier wines are subtle.

Matt Stamp, master sommelier at Please see Taste, Page 75 INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 73

Defining Excellence

hBest Winery

in North America

-The Discoverer Blog h Best

Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

-California State Fair h Winemaker

of the Year: Sara Fowler

-Napa Valley Life ‘16, ’17, ’18 h Best

Place to Work

-North Bay Business Journal

Open Daily, 10am - 6pm | Preferred Reservations 10am - 12pm 8466 St. Helena Hwy., Rutherford, CA 94573 | 707.963.3600 | peju.com

74 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

TASTE From 73

Compline Wine Bar in Napa, recommended that a beginning wine taster home in on the taste of wine, not the smell.

“Think acidity, sweetness, and tannin. If you want to see if a wine is tannic, think about that grippy sensation on your palate.

Tannins are typically found in red wines,” said Stamp.

Stamp said a novice wine taster should also work on recognizing whether a wine is full or light-bodied.

Max Porterkhamsy

“The term ‘full-bodied’ means a wine has a high level of alcohol. Knowing the body of a wine helps you pair it with different foods and sauces,” said Stamp.

Beginners should also be aware that white wine does not always goes with lighter dishes. Red wines do not always go with heavier ones.

“A Rombauer Chardonnay is a full-bodied white wine. It goes well with a heavy dish like buttered lobster. Branzino, also known as European Sea Bass, with seasoning and a good crust, is a white fish that goes very well with a red wine,” said Beckum.

Stamp said lighter-bodied wines tend to pair with a broader range of foods, especially delicate dishes. Fuller-bodied wines pair well with richer foods, such as robust winter stews and steak.

WINTER SPRING 2020

EXPLORING IS PART OF THE PROCESS‌ One of the hardest obstacles for beginning wine tasters is overcoming the body’s natural inclination to not like bitterness.

This process is a journey, said Beckum.

Beckum said most wine drinkers start with a preference for sugary wines.

The “Sweeter wines are more Sensory Experience with sought after initially because Chardonnay at they are less expensive, often Brasswood Cellars. enhanced with sugar, and because the novice wine palate is “As a Abbey Golden‌ immature,” said Beckum. wine warms Beckum said a wine drinker can to room temperature, it also gets learn to understand aromas of different exposed to oxygen in the air. It evolves wines by buying a wide range of fruits and a lot in that period,” said Turnipseed. vegetables.

Typically, after opening, wine becomes What a wine drinker will smell in the less fruity and more mellow. Turnipseed said produce aisle is often what they will smell a wine drinker can observe these changes by in the wine. discussing the wine with companions who “When you get the fruits home, smell are also enjoying a glass. them. Put a memory imprint in your mind.

Golden said culinary experience may help Later, this will help you tell whether a Sau- a little when learning to taste wine. vignon Blanc has a tropical note, with a hint “I was a chef before (I began to give tours). of pineapple or papaya, a stone fruit note of It takes a lot to train over to an expert tasting peach or apricot, or a citrus note like grape- level for wine,” said Golden. fruit,” said Beckum.

Golden said for her, advanced steps in Turnipseed said with enough practice, a wine tasting included noting differences wine drinker can discern the pungency of between vintages of the same wine and distincertain flavors. guishing between the same type of wine made “You may go from being able to tell from grapes in different blocks in the same whether a wine is fruity or oaky to knowing vineyard. Golden also became more skilled at whether it tastes like lime zest versus fresh noticing the flavors and balances in blends, lime juice,” said Turnipseed. from general blends like a California red to Turnipseed also recommends that regional blends like a Napa Valley Cabernet wine tasters start out by isolatSauvignon.

The ing wine from food. Beginners “A winemaker creates blends Sensory should consider first taste wine with pipettes and a beaker. The Experience with in a different room from where process looks like a science Cabernet Sauvignon the food is cooked or located. experiment,” said Golden. at Brasswood After they taste the wine, they Stamp said that being curiCellars. should bring prepared dishes ous and staying open to trying Abbey Golden‌ into the room. new wines has been his key to “BBQ smells, like learning more. smoky, vinegary, and “People who enjoy sweet smells in parwine assume that proticular, can confuse fessionals have these your nose,” said really special noses,” Turnipseed. said Stamp. “That’s Tu r n i p s e e d not true. The reaalso advises that a son we are able wine drinker taste to identify qualithe wine every ties of wines and few minutes, from tell them apart is immediately after because we’ve learned the wine is opened to think with our to half an hour later. senses.”

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 75

Experience

The Cab Lovers

For those who expect nothing less…

Vertical taste our cabs from barrel to library in our private cave.

Now showcasing cigars & gourmet chocolates

Family Owned Single Vineyard Estate Cabernets 4455 St. Helena Hwy, Calistoga, 94515 707.942.9999 • By Appointment Only www.josephcellars.com Call to reserve this special tasting 76 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

Celebrating 40 years of world class Ports Family owned and operated since 1979

Open Daily 10:30 – 4:30

Prager Winery and Port Works 1281 Lewelling • St. Helena, CA 94574 707.963.PORT www.pragerport.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 77

The wine cave at B Cellars Submitted photo‌

GOING UNDERGROUND The stories behind Napa Valley wine caves

‌W

ine caves present an opportunity for wineries to store wine efficiently and sometimes, to showcase the winemaking process.

The small to grand spaces dot the hills and mountains, representing time, investment, and memories for the wineries that create them.

“One of the main advantages of having a wine cave is that it stays cool consistently without air conditioning. A cave is also slightly damp, which slows the evaporation of wine in the barrel. The portion which evaporates away is commonly known as the ‘angel’s share,’” said Curtis Strohl, general manager of B Cellars Vineyards and Winery in Napa.

Strohl said a cave also helps prevent wine from going through temperature swings.

“Keeping the wine in a uniformly cool space allows for proper aging in the barrel,” said Strohl.

78 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

JESSICA ZIMMER

The wine cave at B Cellars.

Mark A. Shurgot‌

B Cellars’ cave, located in the side of a hill rising off of the valley floor, just west of the Vaca Mountains, holds a few thousand barrels, three private tasting rooms, and a double loop connecting two main hallways.

Strohl guides visitors through a “little rounded door” in the hillside to explore the cave. There, he conducts barrel tastings of incomplete wines, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.

Strohl said the cave was completed in 2014.

“It’s still very new and squeaky clean. We keep it clean by power-washing it twice a year, especially after we rack and move barrels,” said Strohl.

Strohl said the upfront cost of construction was great.

“Over time, the cave will use less energy than an above-ground storage area. In time, it will pay for itself,” said Strohl.

HOW TO CREATE A CAVE Building a small cave involves simple steps like installing lighting and setting a door. Midsize to large caves are bigger endeavors. B Cellars secured permits from the county for the construction and use of the cave.

Julie Johnson, winemaker and owner of Tres Sabores Winery in St. Helena, said Please see Cave, Page 80 WINTER SPRING 2020

B Ri ay de Ar & ea W 's in B e e st Fe B st ik iv e al

Saturday, April 18, 2020 Three ride options for cyclists of all levels.

15 mile | 25 mile | 50 mile

Cycle for Sight and Rotary Ride for Veterans ends with a very fun food, wine, beer and music festival. It's a great way to celebrate your eďŹ&#x20AC;ort on the bike, or if not cycling, then just join the party!

Who We Ride For: Enchanted Hills Camp For The Blind & Visually Impaired The only camp of its kind in the western United States that provides a once a year opportunity for children, adults, and veterans to experience the wonders of nature and the world that most of us see every day.

Local Non-ProďŹ t Organizations Charities emphasizing care, treatment and continued education for returning veterans.

Learn more and sign-up at Cycle4Sight.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 79

CAVE From Page 78

her cave of 60 feet does not require a lot of upkeep.

“We use this small but cozy space at the back of the western Rutherford bench exclusively for barrel and amphora storage. It holds about 120 barrels,” said Johnson.

Johnson said the winery built the cave in 2002. It was the most energy- and space-efficient option compared to constructing another building.

Her sole expense is steam-cleaning the floors and drains regularly.

“At some point, I would love to expand the cave. That would require adding a second entrance,” said Johnson.

Anna Brittain, director of the Napa Green program, said wine caves that do not maintain consistent desired temperature can incur extra energy costs.

“We’ve been surprised to review several cave systems where...the winery is mechanically cooling the cave. It’s a significant energy load and cost to cool a cave,” said Brittain.

Brittain said the concern may be due to design issues or a desire for cooler temperatures than the cave is naturally providing.

MODERN WINE CAVES ARE COMPLEX According to the Napa County Assessor’s office, 80 wine caves in Napa Valley are considered real estate improvements subject to property tax.

The first wine caves, built in the 19th century, were simple, unfinished tunnels used for barrel storage. Owners created them with picks and shovels. Prohibition paused cave development for several decades.

Modern cave construction began in the 1960s, with cave owners shifting to using tunneling equipment. Today, building a wine cave involves geological investigations and oversight by the state’s division of mining and tunneling.

A winery has to work with local building and fire departments to build doors, electrical systems, plumbing, and other features into a wine cave. A winery must get a use permit from the county’s planning department to construct a tasting room or wine production facility.

Brittain said 24 of the 96 wineries that the organization has reviewed for Napa Green Winery certification have wine caves.

“By and large, most of the caves are already in place. We rarely work with a winery installing a new cave,” said Brittain.

Brittain said Napa Green’s winery certification and recertification involves an energy 80 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

ABOVE: An artist’s rendering of the cave complex at Palmaz.

LEFT: The entrance to the wine cave complex at Palmaz.

Submitted photo‌

audit. “(We establish) how many kilowatt hours of electricity the winery is spending per case of wine. Night-time cooling and good air flow maximizes efficiency in a cave. (Caves) have helped Napa Green wineries (that have them) reduce their energy baseline,” said Brittain.

Christian Palmaz, owner of Palmaz Vineyards in Napa, said his cave also reduces the winery’s impact on groundwater use.

“The cave, which we began to construct in 2000 into the side of Mount George, contains a state-of-the-art aerobic water treatment plant. The tunnel is three city blocks long and holds 1.5 million gallons,” said Palmaz.

Palmaz said the winery’s reclamation system has saved between 25 million and 30 million gallons of water since 2003.

Palmaz said the winery also utilizes the energy-efficient process of gravity flow to minimize the degradation of delicate tannins important for the wine’s structure.

“The gentle handling gives the wine a smooth quality,” said Palmaz.

He said the layered cave structure making up the winery is equal to a 240-foot tall building.

“There’s five layers connected by a quad shaft with ventilation, utilities, and two elevators. It’s such a large space that it feels like an underground city. Guests often comment they feel like they’re seeing something out of a Bond movie,” said Palmaz.

He said the massive ventilation portal for the cave sits underneath a gallery where visitors taste the wine.

“That’s part of the strategy. The winery is breathing, taking cool air from the outside at night and breathing out air during the day.

We carefully monitor the exchange to make sure the cave doesn’t pull too much air out from the surface. That would increase the temperature of the aging wine,” said Palmaz.

He added the cave also allows the winery to efficiently age a wide range of terroirs.

“We’re an estate project, with all grapes grown onsite. We grow grapes at three different elevations. We also isolate each of the 24 regions in the vineyards. Yet we only make 10,000 cases overall. If the winery was aboveground, it could get very large. The cave allows us to conserve energy and maximize the terroir by avoiding consolidation,” said Palmaz.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Competitive rates, terms and loan products to meet your needs.

Local Really is Better!

1700 Soscol Ave., Suite #22 Napa, CA 94559

DRE lic.# 966782/944064 I NMLS lic.# 298353/845079

CustomLending.net WINTER SPRING 2019

(707) 252-2700

dale@clgroup.net INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 81

Spirit of the times Zeitgeist Cellars tries to capture the era in a bottle

‌Z

TIM CARL

eitgeist is a German word that roughly translates to “the spirit of the times,” an attempt to capture the mood of an era through the lens of cultural, ethical and spiritual practices. For the last 14 years, Napa Valley’s Zeitgeist Cellars has been on a mission to capture the spirit of both the land and the times.

Founded in 2005 by winemaker Mark Porembski, who was joined shortly after by his wife, winemaker Jennifer Williams, Zeitgeist Cellars makes only 1,000 cases of wine per year. As is the case with many small wineries, the couple does nearly all of their own work — from processing the grapes and making the wine to blending and bottling — while they each hold down additional winemaking jobs at other wineries and share the duties of caring for their three young daughters.

To better understand the Zeitgeist of the present wine culture in the Napa Valley, it’s helpful to look at the history of winemaking over the last century and a half.

WAVES OF NAPA VALLEY WINEMAKERS‌ The first wave of winemakers arrived in 1854, when John Patchett, Hamilton Walker Crabb and Joseph Osborne first introduced Vitis vinifera grapes to the Napa Valley. Patchett and his winemaker, Charles Krug, established the first commercial winery in 1861. In a review of Krug’s first wines, the California Farmer Magazine wrote that “The white wine was light, clear and brilliant and very superior indeed; his red wine was excellent; we saw superior brandy, too.”

By 1889, fueled by early successes and a growing public interest in wine, a mass influx of immigrants to the area and new money flowing in from the Gold Rush, nearly 200 wineries and 18,000 planted acres of wine grapes carpeted the valley floor.

Today in the Napa Valley, there are 46,000 acres of planted grapes and well over 500 physical wineries (more than 1,600 if you include “virtual” wineries). However, by the end of the 1800s, a series of financial downturns coupled with a shift of consumer preferences away from alcohol stunted the growing industry. Soon 82 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

TIM CARL PHOTOGRAPHY photos‌

Winemakers and partners Mark Porembski and Jennifer Williams own Zeitgeist Cellars.

after, a tiny root louse called phylloxera — originally transported on cuttings from the east coast of the United States to Europe and decimating vineyards in France, Germany and Italy before traversing the country to haunt California — left many vineyards withered and the majority of wineries abandoned. By 1905, only a handful of functioning wineries and only 2,000 planted acres of wine grapes remained.

THE SECOND WAVE‌ By the 1960s, the Napa Valley was again poised to become a wine-focused region. By then a slow trickle of adventurous vintners had begun to reinvigorate the wine scene. Setting for another “Gold Rush,” this time for wine. In 1970, an influential article by Bank of America economist John Knechel appeared in the September issue of Wines and Vines. Knechel claimed that, “Over the next 10 years, California vintners will enjoy a period of the strongest growth in wine markets ever recorded.”

That article was reprinted in the Wall Street Journal and across the broader popular press.

The idea of California becoming the hub for fine wine production was eagerly embraced by a public desperate for distraction from the Vietnam War and political discontent. The result was a second wave of young people seeking a bohemian lifestyle as vintners. Like the first, their desire was eagerly funded by wealthy families and businesses that saw the wine business as both culturally attractive and a lucrative investment. The result was that by the mid-1970s there were nearly 300 wineries and more than 24,000 planted acres of vines in the valley.

In 1976, Napa Valley wines received top prize at the “Judgment of Paris,” and by the mid-1990s, wine critics were giving Napa Valley wines high scores, all of which provided validation and further investment momentum.

Meanwhile, restaurants around the country began hiring more dedicated sommeliers to service wealthy and sophisticated patrons, many in search of Napa Valley’s newest “cult wines.”

Popular culture followed suit, releasing an ever-increasing number of movies, books and TV shows that romanticized wine, be it lifestyle or livelihood.

It was within this near frenetic wine craze of the late 1990s that a new class of winemakers entered the Napa Valley scene. Drawn for a host of reasons, those coming to the valley in the late 1990s and early 2000s often found a world of extremes. While there was a growing collection of superficial wines that sought to either cash in on the frenzy or gain the ego-boosting status of becoming the next cult wine, there was also another less vocal cohort that was attempting to maintain and expand the art of winemaking.

THE THIRD WAVE OF WINEMAKERS‌ Like all of the waves before them, the third wave of winemakers sought to make their mark.

Many had not attended formal winemaking school but instead found mentors who enabled them to learn the craft, often while working on multiple projects at a time, sometimes including their own wine brands.

A few winemakers in this class, such as Dave Phinney, found great market success. Phinney made delicious consumer-friendly wines and sold his first wine brand (the Prisoner) for $40 million in 2010, having launched the brand only in 2000, three years after arriving to the valley after college. Other third-wavers focused less on broad market appeal and turned their attention toward crafting wines that represented a return to the basics and used only biodynamic or organic grapes, sourced obscure varietals or Please see Zeitgeist, Page 84 WINTER SPRING 2020

100’s of wedd in CoCkt g sets, ail rin gs, braCe tiffan lets, y, rol watCh ex e & mor s e!

ry, mpora Conte ge & a t vin elry e jew estat from s item ,000 $5 $19 -

We Service the BrandS We Sell!

L! L U B !

S K NO C I MM I G O N

support your loCal gold/silver shop. we pay multiple times more than road shows, home shows, etC. let us prove it!

PRICES JE

WHOLESALE PRICES ON GOLD AND SILVER JEWELRY

We can turn your old tarnished/broken gold or silver jewelry into CASH! • U.S. Coins • Gold Eagles • Silverware • Silver Dimes • Gold Buffalos • Gold Jewelry (1964 & earlier) • Old Gold Coins • Silver Jewelry • Silver Quarters • Krugerrands • Silver Halves • Maple Leafs • Silver Dollars • Pandas • Halves • Foreign Gold 1965-1970 • Sterling

10% OFF Wine

Any Jewelry in stock

Expires 4/30/2020

WE SELL THE FOLLOWING ITEMS

• Gold Coins • Silver Coins • Collectable Coins • Gold/Siver Bullion

Stop in to see the great selection!

ADD 5%

COuntry

www.winecountrycoin.com • Lic#28021052

To Your

Gold Payout

Expires 4/30/2020

COin

707-265-6500 1455 West Imola Ave Napa, CA 94559 WINTER SPRING 2020

• Commemorative • Coin Sets • Silver Bars • And more...

*ON SELECT ITEMS “LIKE US” ON

NAPA

Power equiPmeNt

NAPA’s power equipment dealer!

Call 253-0468 For Details 3145 Jefferson Street • Napa 8-5 Monday - Friday INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 83

ZEITGEIST From 82

made natural wines.

It is within this third-wave cohort that we are now finding some of the finest wines ever produced in the United States. Winemakers such as Helen Keplinger, Jeff Ames, Victoria Coleman, Mike Hirby, Thomas Brown, Julien Fayard, Bibiana González Rave, Dan Petroski, Steve Matthiasson, Mark Porembski, Jennifer Williams, and many others have transformed and advanced the level of quality and consistency of wine. At the same time, they have advanced such important causes as sustainable/organic farming, fair pricing, climate-healing practices and the exploration of varieties beyond Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.

ZEITGEIST CELLARS‌ Representing a near-perfect example of the third-wave ethos is Zeitgeist Cellars.

Porembski and Williams married in 2007 after meeting when they worked in the cellar at Trefethen Family Vineyards years earlier.

Porembski grew up in New England and went to college in Texas, where he studied poetry, gained an interest in wine and also met two friends, both of whom grew up in St. Helena. He had heard of the beauty and idyllic lifestyle in the Napa Valley throughout college, so when he graduated in 2000 he packed his car with all his belongings and moved sight-unseen to Yountville. The day he arrived, he interviewed at Domain Chandon, and 20 minutes later he found himself washing out barrels in the cellar.

By 2003, he was working for one of the master mentors of the third wave, Les Behrens (Behrens and Hitchcock, now Behrens Family Winery), and by 2005 he’d become the winemaker at Anomaly Vineyards. That same year, he launched his own brand.

Williams grew up in California and went to Cal Poly with the intention of either becoming a veterinarian or going into some sort of agriculture. A friend in college — Josh Clark, son of second-wavers Tom Clark and Laurie Claudon, owners of Clark-Claudon winery and vineyard — invited her to visit the Napa Valley during the summer. When she did, she “fell in love” with the valley and decided to dedicate her life to wine-grape growing and making. She spent each summer interning at various wineries from 1996 until she graduated and then moved to the Napa Valley full time. By 2006, she was the winemaker at Spottswoode.

Today, the couple makes roughly 1,000 cases of Zeitgeist wine each year, and many 84 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

of the grapes come from either obscure smaller vineyards or sections of larger well-known vineyards that they’ve been able to procure through their deep network of connections.

The wines are consistently very good to excellent with an intensity and precision that speaks to their approach.

“Les Behrens originally suggested the name Zeitgeist, and we felt it was so apropos for a new generation of smaller producers,” Porembski said. “We wanted to share the variety of exceptional [grapes] that are being grown around the valley but that sometimes get overlooked.”

“A bottle of wine encapsulates an entire vintage, and that’s really the spirit of a place at a particular time,” Williams said. “The other part of the story is that when you open a bottle around the table with friends or loved ones there’s a spirit of that night, too.

The combination of capturing and sharing these moments in time are exactly why we feel the name Zeitgeist is perfect.”

A close-up of the Chenin Blanc grapes harvested in St. Helena.

orange and a hint of jasmine.

Perfect pairing: oysters or grilled leeks with Chermoula sauce or local crab made in the Singapore black -pepper-crab style.

With only 26 cases made, it’s unlikely that much of the 2015 Grove Cabernet Sauvignon will be available. But given the quality and limited quantity, it’s a must for any collector’s list. Dark and rich, this wine speaks to the quality, concentration and complexity that can come from Cabernet made using grapes grown with care at the Lewelling vineyard in St. Helena. Full of blueberry, dark cherry, lavender and chocolate-covered raspberries, this wine also has complex earthen aromas of fern-forest floor, nutmeg and duck confit. It would pair perfectly with grilled pork loin with Uzbekistan-pickled cherries.

With nearly 400 cases made, Zeitgeist Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is still rare but more widely available. A blend of some of the most sought-after vineyards in the valley, this opaque and brooding wine is full of aromas of dark THE WINE‌ espresso, Nutella, dried currants, cedar and cinWe tasted four of the current released namon and seems to scream for a pairing with a wines: the 2018 Chenin Blanc St. Helena, roasted leg of lamb with rosemary and turnips.

Napa Valley (98 cases made, $32 per bottle); the 2018 Trousseau Gris, Russian River Val- FINDING ZEITGEIST‌ ley (350 cases made, $26 per bottle) the 2015 Zeitgeist wines can be ordered at zeitgeistThe Grove Cabernet Sauvignon St. Helena, cellars.com or found at local wine retail shops: Napa Valley (26 cases made, $150 per bot- Sunshine Market, 750 Wines, Compline, tle); and the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Gary’s, the K. Laz Collection and ACME Valley (396 cases made, $85 per bottle).

Fine Wines or at local restaurants: The French Tasting the Zeitgeist Chenin Blanc is a bit- Laundry, Press, Acacia House, Goose & Gander tersweet experience. First, this is a wonderful Pizzeria Azzurro, Mustard’s and Farmstead. example of what this varietal can achieve. The As of Nov. 22, Zeitgeist is also being offered color is straw-gold in the glass with aromas at the newly opened Heron House in Yountville. of quince, lemon verbena and citrus blossom. This “co-op” wine- tasting space was the brainA luscious but balanced mouthfeel accompa- child of Napa Valley native Allison Steltzner. In nies flavors of marzipan, pear and ginger that a nod to the current nature of wine- tastings, made me think how well this wine would go the new tasting room/retail shop offers wines with baked halibut and a simple butter sauce from different local producers. In addition to made with a dash of preserved lemon. The Zeitgeist and Steltzner’s own wines — Steltzner bitter part of tasting this wine comes when Vineyards and Bench Vineyards — there are one realizes that, whereas there were 2,000 also wines from Eponymous Wines, Hobel acres of Chenin Blanc planted in Napa Valley Cellars, Lindstrom Wines, Myriad Cellars and in the 1980s, there are now only 16 acres Switchback Ridge. remaining.

The Heron House Yountville is open ThursLike Chenin Blanc, Trousseau Gris (Grey day through Monday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., and Riesling) was once widely planted in the there are four curated wine-tasting flights from region, but because growers can make more which to choose, five wines in each flight ($85 money from growing more popular varieties it to $125). Appointments are recommended and has become rare. This is a crisp, minerally wine can be booked at www.heronhouseyountville. that is full of lime zest, golden apple, Mandarin com.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Exclusive Laser Therapy Kills Stubborn Nail Fungus in Under 20 Minutes!

FREE

Consultation if laser is booked the same day.

With this ad.

WINTER SPRING 2019

Family Footcare Specialist

Dr. Katrina Di Pasqua, DPM 2017 Jefferson Street, Napa 707-224-8865 I NapaLaserPodiatry.com

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 85

Le

Paris Cafe opens Popular American Canyon bakery expands into downtown Napa

F

or four years, Napa County residents have enjoyed Jay Magsano’s patisseries and other bakery goodies, either at his Le Paris Artisan & Gourmet Café in American Canyon, at the Chardonnay Golf Club where he was the in-house pastry chef or at his catering events.

Now, with the opening of a second location of his popular cafe, his pastries, breads, and other foods, handmade daily from scratch in small batches, are available in Napa.

Magsano’s purchase of the former Molinari Caffè at 828 Brown St., was both fortuitous and quick, only a couple of months in the making. Magsano said his goal is to “make sure that whatever we bring to Napa 86 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Jay Magsano at his new Le Paris Cafe in Napa.

Elizabeth Smith photos

ELIZABETH SMITH is made with love.”

“After running the business for four years, we also realized that a large portion of our customers are also coming from Napa city itself, so we decided to open another shop and bring us closer to the locals,” he said.

He described December 2019 as his month of transition. His approach to following in the footsteps of the previous venue is to continue to provide great coffee – that means his choice to use Moschetti Frenchstyle coffees and espresso from Vallejo – paired with classic bakery items like croissants and baguettes, but to also remain relevant by following the trends in modern patisserie and creating innovative offerings driven by Napa’s customer preferences.

The current staff in Napa is made up of

Magsano, who is there to oversee the transition, training, development, and evolution from old to new, as well as some of his seasoned American Canyon employees, who will serve as mentors to new hires. He said he is building a team that “works from the heart.”

Magsano hails from the Philippines, where, as a young person, he held a number of positions in the food service industry, which allowed him to “develop and improve” his culinary palate, he said.

His varied work and academic background also includes the financial sector as a former loan officer, a degree in restaurant management, and pastry and confectionery Please see Le Paris, Page 88 WINTER SPRING 2020

WE STAGE HOUSES TO SELL!

Serving the Napa Valley for over 27 Years!

1326 Main Street, Napa 707-224-8485 Monday - Friday 10-6 Saturday and Sunday 10-4

Remodeling & Additions Custom Redwood Deck & Fencing

257-2222

Earthquake Retrofit and Bolt Downs, Termite Repairs Serving the Napa Valley for 42 years!

Contractors License #425734 (Circa 1978) WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 87

LE PARIS From 86

studies at the former Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in San Francisco.

For many years, Magsano worked and traveled between the United States and Japan, as he has family there. He owned and operated restaurants in Japan prior opening the Le Paris Artisan & Gourmet Café in American Canyon.

It was also in Japan where he originally discovered and fell in love with French pastries. When deciding on a theme for his café, it seemed natural to focus on them.

“French baking has been passed on to generations and still hasn’t changed for the most part, and we wanted to do something classical with which many people are familiar,” he said.

While the menu includes French pastries, Magsano also noted that what sets his baking and cooking apart from others is the mélange of the cultural and culinary influences of his life, which he called “French, American, and Filipino fusion.”

Most importantly, though, is that his pastries, breads, and other foods are handmade daily from scratch in small batches, which requires long days that begin in the wee hours of the morning, he said.

Some of the staff and customer favorites include Magsano’s Cropuffs – his signature croissant and cream puff creation – as well as the almond croissants and the adobo pork empañadas, which he insists is “an absolute must-try.”

The menu for the Napa location is still evolving, as Magsano learns who his new customers are and what they enjoy. He insists on serving “what you want to eat” and ensuring he makes enough of each menu item to meet customer demand. Other factors influencing the offerings include seasonality and availability of ingredients.

The café serves breakfast 88 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

ABOVE: The pastries at Le Paris Cafe, made from scratch and baked daily, include traditional French croissants.

LEFT: A sampling of the creations at Le Paris Cafe.

and lunch items such as butter croissants, breads like sourdough and French-style baguettes, the quiche of the day, the empañada of the day, a variety of sandwiches, as well as pastry confections like raspberry tiramisu, Cropuffs, ganache tarts, and macarons. A peek at a draft menu also includes morning and sticky buns, Danishes, brioche, scones, éclairs, cookies, custom cakes, tarts, cream puffs, cheesecake, and chocolate mousse.

A “standard” menu item, such as his avocado toast, shows Magsano’s approach to preparing his foods. He chose a slice of sourdough bread as the foundation for the avocado toast because it will support the layered stack of ingredients. However, as the ingredients intermingle with the bread, it

naturally becomes more malleable, chewy, and replete with a plethora of flavors and textures offered by an optional runny egg, creamy avocado, thinly sliced smoked salmon, madefrom-scratch crème fraîche, crunchy seeds, and the umami taste of balsamic.

In addition to the café, Magsano also offers catering for events and weddings. He makes wedding cakes and other confectionary delights. For example, he offers five kinds of bite-sized desserts.

The hours for the Napa location are Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. It is closed on Sundays. An official grand opening is planned for January 2020.

Le Paris Artisan & Gourmet Café is at 828 Brown St., Napa, across from the courthouse.

For more information, email jay@leparisartisan.com or visit leparisartisan.com/.

Chef Jay Magsano, who is originally from the Philipines, discovered French pastries while working in Japan.

WINTER SPRING 2020

Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport ©P N TS

Fly local and enjoy nonstop flights to 11 destinations & worldwide connectivity!

WE KNOW YOU WANT REAL SERVICE FROM REAL PEOPLE.

WE LIVE WHERE YOU LIVE.TM Mark Coleman

Seattle (SEA)

1842 Jefferson St Napa

Portland (PDX) Minneapolis (MSP) (seasonal)

STS

707-253-1200 License# 0641927

San n Francisco (SFO) Lass Vegas (L (LAS)

Denver (DEN)

(seasonal)

Los Angeles (LAX) os An Orange e County (SNA) Phoenix (PHX) San Diego (SAN) Dallas (DFW)

LIKE A GOOD NEIGHBOR, STATE FARM IS THERE. TM

www.flySTS.com

Auto • Home • Business • Life www.statefarm.com

Bring this ad in for 10% OFF ENTIRE PURCHASE! Valid thru 4/30/2020 BEST customer service and top quality gear.

Guitars/Keyboards/Amps/Drums & More

At Napa Music Supply we have everything you need for the musician. Whether you are a beginner to the seasoned professional.

All in Stock Fireplaces, Inserts and Stoves 10% OFF! CLEARANCE STOVES UP TO 25% OFF

We have a large selection of Guitars, Basses, Acoustic Guitars, Amplifiers and more!

We are locally owned and operated providing the BEST customer service and top quality gear.

Open Daily 10 am - 6 pm

Napa Music Supply 2026 Redwood Road • Napa, CA 94558

(707) 265-8275 •

www.NapaMusicSupply.com www.NapaMusicSupply

Locally owned and operated

WINTER SPRING 2020

Locally Owned and Operated for over 40 Years!

Gas & Wood stoves • Inserts • Fireplaces and BBQ’s Expert Earth Quake Chimney Repair and Installation.

4680 East 2nd St., Benicia 707-745-5933 CA Contractors’s s Lic# 880285 • www.calcomfort.com INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 89

Philippe Langner owns Napa Valley’s Hesperian winery and vineyards.

TIM CARL PHOTOS

FOLLOWING ITS OWN STAR

Hesperian wine is not a place, the owner says; it’s an idea

M

any believe that the first “Judgment of Paris” was a wine event held in 1976 that put Napa Valley wines on the world stage. But that’s not the case. The phrase was first used thousands of years ago.

In ancient Greek mythology, the Hesperides were nymphs who tended queen-god Hera’s westernmost garden. A tree grew within the garden that produced golden apples, one of which the goddess of discord, Eris, gave as a wedding gift. The result was the original Judgement of Paris, which set in motion what eventually became the 10-year Trojan War that Homer chronicled in “The Iliad” around 750 B.C.E. Since then, the word Hesperian has morphed to mean anyone living in the West, but it can also refer to the western evening “star,” Venus. But for Philippe Langner, owner of Napa Valley’s Hesperian winery and vineyards, the word means something more.

“Hesperian is not a place, it’s an idea,” 90 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

TIM CARL Langner said. “It’s about crafting something beautiful, complex and individual. Over time my ideas about winemaking have changed.

Whereas I once looked to power and intensity, I now look for sensitivity, precision and delicacy as a way to best express our vineyards’ particular personalities.”

PHILIPPE LANGNER — A WORLD TRAVELER To say that Langner is well-traveled is an understatement. He was born in El Salvador, grew up on family ranches in Zaire (cattle, pisciculture and citrus) and Colombia (cattle) and moved to Switzerland when he was 16 to finish school. Next, he headed to the United States, where he attended UC Davis, graduating with a double master’s in agronomy and agricultural economics. As a result of his nomadic life and the heritage of his German father and Parisian mother, Langner now speaks French, Italian, Spanish and German in addition to English and at least a little

Congolese-Lingala, a language spoken in Zaire.

After school, Langner moved to France, where he worked for La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild Banque in Paris. But he found city life constraining and longed to feel the earth beneath his feet again. On a recommendation from his sister, Ariane — who is married to Benjamin Rothschild, a son of Baron Edmond Rothschild — Langner headed to Bordeaux to spend a “short time” working at Château Clarke in Listrac-Médoc. The chateau has been owned by a part of the Rothschild banking family since 1973.

Once there, Langner felt at home, and he extended his stay for five years as he learned the life of a vigneron and winemaker, training under luminaries such as Jacques Boissenot and Michel Rolland before heading to South Africa and the Fredericksburg Winery (Rupert & Rothschild Vignerons) winery for a year.

In 2001, Langner spent a vacation in the Napa Valley. There, he thought he’d visit wineries, take in the sights, and indulge in good WINTER SPRING 2020

food and wine. Never did he guess that he would become so smitten that he’d make it his permanent home.

“I’ve been to some wonderful places on this earth,” he said, “but there’s just something about the Napa Valley.”

After a friend introduced him to the Sullivan family in Rutherford they hired him in 2002 and he eventually became their viticulturist and winemaker. By 2010, he had started his own brand and taken on other clients as their winemaking consultant. He purchased An aerial view of Hesperian’s 1,400-foot elevation vineyard located in the Atlas Peak AVA that looks over the Napa Valley. Philippe Langner, the owner, named the vineyard Kitoko, or “beautia home and a 14-acre vineyard in the rocky ful,” from the Congolese-Lingala language spoken in Zaire, where he spent much of his youth. eastern hills above the city of Napa in an area called Atlas Peak.

But rebuilding has taken much longer than grapes grown in vineyards on the valley’s floor he’d imagined and has cost at least twice as and has a distinctly different mouthfeel — ‘KITOKO’ MEANS BEAUTIFUL‌ much as he expected. plush and uncoiled — and yet it strangely has Although Langner obtains grapes from a “I feel compelled to rebuild, but it’s not many of the similar aromatic nuances as the variety of different vineyards throughout the easy,” he said. “It’s not only the time and Kitoko in a sort of herb-roasted-meat quality. region, he has a particular love for his Atlas money, but when the winds came up again this But these aromatics are not merged with a redPeak vineyard. year during harvest I was honestly surprised fruit core as in the Kitoko, instead this wine “I named this vineyard Kitoko, which is by my reaction — I felt panicked. It felt as leans toward the darker side with licorice, sunthe Congolese-Lingala word for ‘beautiful,’” if I needed to harvest the grapes before a fire warm plum, dark-roasted coffee and a wonderhe said. “The name is apropos because the destroys them again.” ful creamy cinnamon-toast finish. wine that comes from the Kitoko vineyard Luckily, there were no fires in Atlas Peak in Anatomy is a simpler, but still lovely, wine is perfumed and complex yet more nuanced 2019, but the memory of the terror in 2017 that would make any fan of Beringer Knights and subtle than you might expect from grape- lingers. This might be especially true for res- Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon sit up and vines growing in such rugged conditions. It’s idents of Atlas Peak, where six residents per- take notice. Aromas of fig, clove and lavender basically a pile of rocks up here, which forces ished, hundreds of structures were burned to join flavors of black cherry and huckleberries the vines to struggle, only producing limited the ground, thousands of acres lay scorched, with a finish of black olive, wild sage and amounts of concentrated fruit per vine.” and nine wineries were damaged or destroyed. mocha chocolate. This is a more consumDuring a tour of his vineyard ranch, he And yet, even with the trauma and devasta- er-friendly version of Langner’s wine perhaps, talked about his winemaking approach and tion, the small community is slowly returning, but it retains the elegance found in the more his plans for the future. He said then that he with vintners such as Langner determined to expensive alternatives. had lost his home in the 2017 fires. Up until push forward, believing that Atlas Peak and To taste the wines, we’d come to a wooden that point, his laughter had been loud and its nearby neighbors on Prichard Hill produce picnic table on the bank of a pond that was often, but as we approached where his home some of the finest wines of the region. surrounded by vineyards that sloped skyward. had once stood he became quiet and hesitant.

The only sounds were our voices, the occaIn front of us a lattice of shiny metal beams THE WINES OF PHILIPPE LANGNER‌ sional cry of a hawk and the light breeze that formed the skeleton of what would become his Langner has made many different types of rustled through the reeds that lined the shore. new house, its silvery bones glinting in the sun. wines during his career, but now he focuses “This place is worth the effort,” he said.

He’d lost his home, the barns and the tool his attention on making Cabernet Sauvi- “There is so much more to learn, so much to sheds, and the fire was so hot and fierce that gnons, including the 2015 Hesperian Kitoko do.” even a few acres of vineyard had succumbed to Vineyard ($150 a bottle with only 300 cases He then paused and grew silent and serious the relentless heat. made), the 2015 Hesperian Napa Valley as he slowly put both hands on the table as if “I lost nearly everything,” he said, his voice ($100 a bottle with 300 cases made) and the bracing himself. He then leaned his head back tight. “Fortunately I make the wines off-site at 2014 Anatomy blend ($45 a bottle and 3,500 and looked up at the sky. It wasn’t clear if he a facility in the valley, so the wines were OK, cases made). Because of his belief that wines was looking for divine guidance or checking but other than that…” should be aged longer than what is customary, the sky for smoke before lowering his gaze.

He waved his arms to indicate that the the wines are often released a few years after “We have a lot of work ahead of us, but this flames had consumed almost everything else. their peers. is important,” he said and then let out a long “I even lost my winemaking notes that I The Kitoko is opaque with a brick-red rim. breath, shaking his head slightly. had kept on every wine I’d ever tasted — poof, Aromatics of red-cherry liqueur, herb-roasted Until the winery is ready for visitors (somegone,” he said. “I’m rebuilding in such a way mushrooms, Morbier cheese, Chinese five spice time in 2022-23) anyone who is interested that that will never happen again.” and mulled wine coupled with silken-but-ev- can book a tasting of Hesperian wines at the Langner is building with metal and plenty er-present tannins reminded me of Lynch Kitchen Collective located at 1650 Soscol Ave., of fire protection — a 2-inch water pipe around Bages with its wonderful acidity and balance or find the wine at Backroom Wines in Napa the entire house that can soak it when needed. that produces an elegant structure and a lin- and V Wine Cellars in Yountville. For more He is also building his winery within caves for gering, memorable finish. information or to purchase wine, visit www. both protection and energy conservation.

The Hesperian Napa Valley is sourced from hesperianwines.com.

WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 91

Over 30 Years Of Experience

SWIMMING POOL

Weekly Maintenance • Equipment • Repairs • Upgrades

SOLAR POOL HEATING Service • Maintenance • Equipment Installs

Serving Napa, Marin and Solano Counties CALL 707-317-6930 FOR APPOINTMENT poolcraftinc.com 92 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2019

Lift Chairs, Stair Lifts, Car Lifts & All other Medical Supplies!

Certified Mastectomy fitter on Staff

Specializing in

480 Redwood St., Vallejo 707-644-4170 506 Main Street, Vacaville 707-446-7014 OPEN 6 DAYS A WEEK

We bill Medicare!

604 Main Street, Woodland • 530-661-7409

FREE DELIVERY Must present this coupon.

Not valid with any other offers.

Purchases over $100. Expires 5/1/2020

9 10

9 OUT OF EVERY 10

SENIORS

www.jacksonmedicalsupply.com

want to Stay Home.

Our mission is to help them do just that.

Senior Helpers stans ready to serve your family’s needs with: • Proprietary LIFEProfile™ Risk Analysis and personalized Senior Helpers Smart Care Plan™ to identify and address the concerns most important for successful aging • Consistent, data-driven approach • Proven care programs for Dementia, Round-the-Clock Care,Transition Care, and Short and Long-term hourly needs

707.200.6665 • seniorhelpers.com/NAPA

HCO #284700002 All rights reserved. Senior Helpers locations are independently owned and operated. ©2020 SH Franchising, LLC. WINTER SPRING 2020

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 93

New Siam Thai House in Napa New owners, new chefs, and a new menu of Thai specialties

ELIZABETH SMITH

Siam Thai House

‌“A

t first, I began by helping my mom at the restaurant she used to work at when I was younger, but then slowly I started to really enjoy the restaurant scene.”

Thus, began the restaurant career of Jaime Gomez, who, with his wife, Daisy, are the new owners of Siam Thai House in Napa, located in an unassuming building in Lincoln Plaza at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Jefferson Street.

When Gomez began working in his mother’s restaurant at age 13, he was the weekend dishwasher. Across the next 14 years, he worked his way through the ranks, working in the back and the front of the house in restaurants across the Pacific Northwest in Oregon and Washington.

From dishwasher, to every role in the kitchen, to busboy, to server, and now co-owner, Gomez knows restaurants inside and out. He also has experience working with a variety of cuisines, including his native Mexican and Thai.

However, it was Thai cooking that won the heart of Gomez and his wife, who, under the age of 30, are first-time restaurant owners. How Gomez, his family, and his team — chefs Mali Rector and Ptoon Poonsukwattana — landed in Napa is an uncanny turn of

Bento boxes are a lunch-time special at the new Siam Thai House in Napa.

94 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

Siam Thai House is at 1139 Lincoln Ave., Napa, (707) 226-7749, siamthaihouse. com/ Hours are: Monday: Friday 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 4:30—9 p.m.

Saturday: Noon to 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 -9 p.m.

Sunday: 4- 9 p.m.

Sasha Paulsen photos/Register‌

New owner Jaime Gomez and chefs Mali Rector and Ptoon Poonsukwattana have reinvented the Siam Thai House in Napa.

events.

Rector and Poonsukwattana, Thai chefs for decades, are well connected in the Thai restaurant community, and knew the previous owner of Siam Thai House.

When they and Gomez, a server at the same restaurant in Salem, Oregon, learned that it was for sale, it immediately piqued their interest.

In what would be called a restaurant miracle, all three had the same day off earlier this year and drove to Napa to see the restaurant and sample the food. Within two weeks, after training the staff in Oregon prior to his departure, Gomez and his wife relocated to Napa after having purchased the restaurant.

Gomez himself is a chef, but he realized the tremendous value he had with Rector and Poonsukwattana as longtime, native Thai chefs, so he brought them with him to Napa.

Siam Thai House is a family affair, the combined efforts of Gomez, his wife, and their two children, Rose and Adriel, and Poonsukwattana and Rector, who are husband and wife.

After a brief, two-month closure for remodeling and a kitchen expansion, the restaurant reopened in early June. The staff is small – Gomez, Rector and Poonsukwattana – but they are mighty.

Gomez is the hands-on owner,

working any of the roles that need to be covered, including being the restaurant’s only server. Gomez has tentative plans to hire another team member in early 2020.

Chefs Rector and Poonsukwattana bring different regional styles of Thai cuisine to Siam Thai House, as Rector hails from the countryside and Poonsukwattana, the city. Gomez and his team revamped the menu and recently added 25 items from both styles.

Always in search of the freshest and most authentic ingredients, Rector shops twice weekly at Oakland and Sacramento-area Thai, Asian, and other farmers markets. On the menu, one finds house-made curries that can be made to any spiciness level – yellow, green, red, Massaman, Panang, Gang Pa, mango, pineapple, and pumpkin (red) – the latter that was originally a seasonal offering. However, because it became both a customer and a staff favorite, it is now part of the permanent menu.

Other customer and staff favorites include Rector’s handmade appetizers – especially her Lady Fingers (shrimp-filled wontons) – mango and papaya salads, fresh rolls, Tom Yum and Tom Kha soups with choice of protein, pineapple fried rice, eggplant basil stir fry, pad Thai, and drunken noodles.

As part of its lunch menu, the restaurant offers a Siam Lunch Combo, which includes two entrées, veggie rolls, jasmine white rice, and a choice of spicy Tom Yum soup or a salad. The entrées and rice are beautifully presented in a red Bento box.

Popular beverages include three Thai beers – Singha, Leo, and Beer Lao – and traditional Thai iced tea and coffee. A meal at Thai Siam house is not complete without a dessert like mango sticky rice, cheesecake egg rolls, or fried banana with ice cream.

All of the dishes are made to order, which means the chefs can customize most of the menu items for those who prefer alternatives like gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, vegan, and Keto-friendly.

Unlike some Thai restaurants that are closed one or two days per week, Siam Thai House is open, walk-ins only, Monday through Saturday for both lunch and dinner and Sundays for dinner only. It is closed only two days of the year for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Both take-out and delivery are also available, which makes for busy days for Gomez, Rector, and Poonsukwattana. However, Gomez and the team are happily immersed in their restaurant lifestyle, and committed to providing Napa with a delicious and extensive menu, both in the restaurant or in the comfort of one’s home.

As Gomez asserted, “It’s awesome to see everyone working together as a team with one goal — to serve delicious food to the customer.”

WINTER SPRING 2020

28th Anniversary

MATTRESS SALE 36

MONTHS SPECIAL FINANCING With approved credit.

See store for details.

FREE 300 GIFT

$

Providing Best-In-Class Selection, Service, & Satisfaction

wITH PuRCHASE OF ANy TEMPuR-PEdIC MATTRESS SETS

FOLSOM

(916) 984-6000 2761 East Bidwell St., Folsom, CA 95630 Broadstone Plaza in front of Total Wine

NAPA

VACAVILLE

Across from The Westin Hotel & Napa Wine Train

Near DMV Next to Kings’s Buffet

SEE STORE FOR DETAiLS.

image is for display purposes only. See store for details.

CAMERON PARK

(530) 677-5301 3291 Coach Ln., Cameron Park, CA 95682 Next to Applebee’s

WOODLAND CITRUS HEIGHTS ROSEVILLE

(707) 254-9542 (707) 446-9793 (530) 668-7500 1551 Soscol Ave. 601 Orange Dr. 2145 Bronze Star Drive Napa, CA 94559 Vacaville, CA 95687 Woodland, CA 95776 Near Costco, Target and Best Buy

CLEARANCE CENTER (916) 721-3000 8042 Greenback Lane Citrus Heights, CA 95610

Corner of Greenback & Sunrise Blvd.

(916) 782-9793 9650 Fairway Drive Roseville, CA 95678

Fivestar and Fairway Drive Across from Chuck E. Cheese

NOW !

OPEN

SACRAMENTO

(916) 835-4116 1417 Howe Ave., Sacramento, CA 95825

FOLSOM

Corner of Hallmark Dr. and Howa Ave.

(916) 983-9292 1325 Riley St. Folsom, CA 95630 Next to Raleys

ELK GROVE

(916) 685-0555 10064 Bruceville Rd. Elk Grove, CA 95757

Cross Street Whitelock Pkwy Across from Super Walmart

FREE DELIVERY • SET-UP • REMOVAL OF OLD BED*

*With $700 minimum purchase within 30 mile radius. Excludes Sundays. See store for details. • www.MatthewsMattress.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 95

APPLY ONLINE NOW at NVCH.ORG!

MATCH-UP PROGRAM A FREE SERVICE We match home providers who have an extra room in their home, with renters seeking an affordable place to live in Napa County. We screen and check references for each candidate and refer potential housemates to one another. We help facilitate the home sharing agreements, and are available for follow up questions and concerns.

150 Camino Dorado, Napa CA (707) 253-6157 | NVCH.ORG

Napa Valley’s

“super food”

Photos courtesy of Andrew Cates

The Rayzyn Rig and the ‘rayzynette’, which Andrew Cates drove through the country to promote the company. Cates lived in the rig following the loss of his home in the 2017 wildfires (though the rig itself has since suffered damage in a car accident).

Napa family markets raisins that have been influenced by adversity SARAH KLEARMAN s k le ar man@nap ane w s . com

A

Chris Cates, left, with his son Andrew, who lost his home and 40 percent of his Mount Veeder vineyard in the 2017 wildfires. The Cateses turned their remaining crop of wine grapes into raisins for their company Wine Rayzyns, which has since continued to grow.

WINTER SPRING 2020

ndrew Cates’ Cabernet grapes were ruined.

At least that’s what buyers were telling Cates following the wine county fires in 2017. Those same fires would ultimately claim his home and much of the land at Segassia Vineyard, the Mount Veeder property his family purchased in 2013.

Three-hundred-year-old redwoods burned, leaving the landscape charred and changed.

There were other little tragedies: the fire destroyed a 140-year old grapevine from the original vineyard, library wines, countless possessions.

It was a tremendous loss for Cates and his family – one made worse by the news that even the surviving wine grape crop would be lost to the fires.

“For all the passion, the expense and the effort – everything you’re doing to cultivate those grapes, and then your harvest is no good.

It was really devastating,” Cates said.

Buyers feared smoke taint, but 60 percent of the grapevines on the property had made it out of the fires with their grapes intact. Cates couldn’t watch them go to waste. His thoughts went immediately to Wine RayZyn, the company he and his father, Chris Cates, had begun in 2014.

The two had often lamented the waste involved with green drop, a process during which a few grape clusters are selectively clipped off to increase the quality of remaining fruit. They’d collect the clusters, sometimes Please see Rayzyn, Page 99 INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 97

Our Proven Experience andd Expertise, E p ti Your Well-being and Peace of Mind.

Hired Hands Homecare is a local, family owned and operated company founded ded in 1994. Our mission: to provide our clients the highest quality homecare and our professional caregivers a rewarding workplace. We bring expertise that consistently earns us national honors for trustworthy care, with 25 years serving the Bay Area and a management team whose combined homecare experience is well over 100 years.

As a California licensed Home Care Organization (HCO), our hiring process is stringent. In contrast to many caregiving sources available, all Hired Hands Caregivers are registered Home Care Aides with the Home Care Services Bureau of the California Dept. of Social Services. We legally employ our caregivers and handle all wages, taxes, bonding, liability insurance and worker’s compensation. ion.

Our management style is hands-on. We cater to each client’s specific needs and d preferences, matching caregivers and clients for a perfect fit. Our complimentary ry, ongoing care management provides oversight fostering security and peace of mind.

We deliver full-service, non-medical caregiving. Many ways we can assist: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Assistance with Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) Basic grooming and personal hygiene Medication reminders Transfers and ambulation Assistance with exercise programs Cooking basic meals and specialty diets

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Light housekeeping and laundry Reading and assistance with correspondence Driving to appointments, shopping, errands Leisure trips to the park, senior center, movies Appointment scheduling

Hired Hands Homecare provides “hands down” the best staffing service possible.

They are creative, can-do people who respond immediately 24/7. Most importantly, customer satisfaction is number one!

— Molly H., Conservator

707-265-6400

• HIREDHANDSHOMECARE.COM Also serving Marin, Sonoma and the Tri Valley. Lic. #214700014

CA License#

214700014

RAYZYN From 97

eating the grapes themselves, and wondering if there was a way to share the health benefits of the fruit – wine “in food form”, as Chris Cates described it. The answer presented itself in raisin form.

“We in Napa take it for granted that we’re around vineyards and eating these grapes,” Chris Cates. They patented their process, leaving the skins and the seeds, which are toasted and caramelized.

“That’s where all the health benefits are,” Cates added. He worked for years as an interventional cardiologist at Emery University in Atlanta, placing stents in patients’ arteries to prevent stroke. Even in his career in medicine, Cates was drawn to wine: it was the French Paradox, he said, that first grabbed his attention.

“The French were living longer than Americans, even though they ate butter and smoked,” he said, citing research released in the 1970s that showed low incidence of heart disease in French people. “Wine was the big critical factor there. I, like every other cardiologist in America, became an immediate wine lover. I prescribed red wine to patients for years.”

Following the crop’s rejection, Andrew Cates said, his first thought was that he probably wasn’t alone, that there were others with grapes still on the vine. They reached out to neighboring vineyards.

Their suspicions confirmed, the Cateses mobilized. They hired workers whose harvest seasons had been stymied by the fires. They reached out to strings of neighbors, who donated their remaining crop, and to Food Rescue Network, a nation-wide nonprofit whose mission is to prevent food waste. Ultimately, Wine Rayzyn partnered with Food Rescue Network to create Rescue Rayzyns.

What remained of Andrew Cates’ Mount Veeder home following the 2017 wildfires.

Buyers also rejected his surviving wine grape crop, prompting Cates and his father, Chris, to turn to Wine Rayzyn, a company they’d launched earlier in 2014.

WINTER SPRING 2020

For every purchase, $1 would be donated to charities reducing food waste and aiding California wildfire victims.

In the end, something like 150 tons of grapes were harvested, including those that remained on the vine at Segassia. There might have been more, according to Chris Cates, but working under tight harvest deadlines and with a limited amount of labor and resources made for a challenging end of season.

There’s continued interest in the product on the supply side, as wildfire after wildfire produces grapes, like Cates’, that won’t be used by the wine industry. Smoke taint only surfaces after the fermentation process, meaning smoke impacted grapes are perfectly good for raisins.

Following wildfires in Oregon in 2018, Wine Rayzyn received calls from growers in the state offering up their grapes; limited resources meant the company was unable to go through with the harvest there, Chris Cates said, though it’s their goal to expand that way one day.

“You can only eat an elephant in small bites, and we’re a start up company,” he added. “But we tried to put a flag in the sand and say – when tragedy strikes, what can we do to help?

What can we do to set an example?”

Their company is certainly unique in its mission. There is some overlap between grape varietals used for wine and raisins. Muscat is sometimes also used for raisins, though not commonly. (95 percent of raisins are produced from the Thompson seedless varietal).

It’s a tough market for raisins, which have struggled to maintain sales numbers in the 21st century. A prominent ad campaign in the late 1980s featuring clay-mation California Dancing Raisins and Martin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” sent raisin sales at the time spiking. Inter-industry feuding spelled the end for the campaign, and as alternative snack foods continued to flood the market, industry numbers flattened and shrank.

But the Cateses bill their product as a “super food” – a label that’s made other products, like kale, avocados and acai, trendy for consumers and distributors. And the company says it comes armed with the facts.

“Everyone talks about super foods – there’s more scientific date about wine, wine grapes and wine grape seeds and the health benefits that translate to actual treatment and prevention of disease in human beings than in all other foods combined,” Chris Cates said.

Wine RayZyn is working on expanding its product line; one 1.6 ounce package of wine grape raisins has as many antioxidants as 100 pomegranates, according to the Cateses. Pictured here: ChardonayZyn, MerlayZyn and CabernayZyn (trademarked names for the company’s products).

The company has continued to grow since 2017. Their dark chocolate CabernayZyn, the company’s most popular product, was selected by United Airlines for its first class baskets; the product is “the number one snack” at Microsoft’s corporate campus, Andrew Cates said.

And the RayZyns (a trademarked name) have become Cates’ livelihood, a kind of silver lining of the immense losses he endured in the fires.

“This process, in the wake of something so negative and disastrous, has helped us heal,” Andrew Cates said.

Wine Rayzyn is still in its early stages, Chris Cates said. The company is not yet fully profitable, though Chris Cates says it’s poised to enter that stage after a year of significant growth. The company launched a chocolate cabernet truffle this year, expanding upon its current products (MerlayZyns, CabernayZyns, both dark chocolate covered and regular, and ChardonayZyns) and has a sea salt carmel ChardonayZyn and greek yogurt MerlayZyns in the works.

The Cateses say a single 1.6 ounce pack has as many antioxidants as 100 pomegranates.

Wine Rayzyns are available at 5,000 or so distributors nationwide; in Napa, Whole Foods, Robert Mondavi Winery, Hotel Indigo and Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch carry the raisins. So does Amazon.

Rebuilding what was lost in the 2017 fires has not come easily to Andrew. He only recently managed to get a well put in on the property; contractors have given him quotes as high as $950 dollars per square foot for a new building. In an effort to move forward, he said, he’s put “100 percent” into Wine Rayzyn. It’s been about making lemons into lemonade, Chris Cates likes to say.

“It’s been a real challenge and a test personally, but I remain optimistic and excited about the entire experience,” Andrew said. “The faster you can turn something negative into something positive, everyone’s better off.”

You can reach Sarah Klearman at (707) 2562213 or sklearman@napanews.com.

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 99

368 Yolanda Ave Santa Rosa

707-523-7747 M-F 8:30-5 Sat 10-3

We Satisfy Burning Desires Family owned & operated for 60 yrs.

For rental information, pricing, or tours, please contact Lisa Tyler at 707 944 2959 or ltyler@yville.com

Yountville

COMMUNITY & EVENTS CENTER

Napa Valley event experience We can help you create a

without the high price-tag!

Looking for a venue for your special event? ^

^

^

^ ^ ^

Yountville Community Center is an ideal venue for outdoor summer weddings or rehearsal dinner for 150 guests on the lawn. Patio available for cocktail hour.

Indoor receptions for 250 to 350 guests for dining.

Tables and chairs included.

Full Size commercial kitchen.

Bring in your own caterer or prepared food.

Alcohol - Bring in your own beer and wine - no corkage fees.

On-site parking.

Located in the beautiful Town of Yountville.

outside catering

/

no corkage fees

/

reasonable hourly rates

6516 Washington st. yountville, ca 94599

yvilleparksandrec.com/Weddings 100 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2020

We are proud to be celebrating our 57th year serving Napa County.

“Your Dream. Your Happiness. Our Goal.”

St. Helena Branch

Liz Cooper

Lin Rodgers-Pina

Patty Campoy

Napa Branch

Stacey Glenn

Emily J. Howe

Connie Rendon

Suzette Rose

Elizabeth Arroyo

Carl Accardo Jr. Tessie Quintos-McKinney

1700 Second Street #120 Napa, CA 94559

Maria Pantoja

Jonny Karpuk

1361 Main Street St. Helena, CA 94574

707-963-7151 707-254-4500 www.firstamnapa.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 101

Protecting our

natural

treasures

Conservation groups respond to climate change, build a sustainable future JESSICA ZIMMER

C

limate change is leading to more variations and unpredictability in the weather of Napa Valley’s wild areas, including increased heat and dryness in the hills, and sea level rise near the Napa River’s wetlands in American Canyon and Napa. The changes do not occur to the same degree in all spots. Long-term, wide-ranging studies are underway to measure actual climate impacts on the distribution of different species.

Climate change is defined as a long-term shift in regional weather patterns.

“We’re seeing a trajectory unfold of a longer summer season and increasingly mild winters, with more variable rainfall. As a result, during our recent drought, the landscape became increasingly arid over time. This trend is likely to continue,” said Dr. Lisa Micheli, CEO of Pepperwood Preserve, a nonprofit environmental education and research organization. Pepperwood operates a nature preserve that sits on 3,200 acres of hills between Napa and Sonoma counties.

John Woodbury, general manager of Napa’s Open Space District, said as the weather gets hotter and drier, he is seeing certain animals and plants move to higher elevations. They are also moving to spots that are further north.

“For some flora and fauna, this means a Submitted photos move from southern-facing slopes to northEduardo Rodriguez of Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District ready to plant ern-facing slopes,” said Woodbury.

Woodbury added that climate change also seedlings at The Cove. means “wet weather is getting wetter, and dry weather is getting dried. One result is higher vulnerable to change. were less common on the preserve after the storm runoff and soil erosion.”

“It might start to get too hot and too dry 2017 fires. There is some evidence that memfor certain species. We’ve seen fewer ‘chilling bers of these species were burned or trapped The changes scientists are seeing hours’ at night and in the early morning,” said on barbed wire fences.

Micheli said Pepperwood’s scientists are Micheli.

Woodbury said the last three years have closely watching species that live in cool, Micheli said although wildlife can be very moist habitats. These habitats may be highly resilient, some medium-to-large sized species Please see Conservation, Page 104 102 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

WINTER SPRING 2020

1

1968

SHOP FAMILY FOCUS

2018

Lito that we we are are recognized recognized as as the the Lito Auto Auto Body Body isis proud proud to to announce announce that #1 Service in in the the 11 11 state state Western Western #1Auto Auto Body Body Repair Repair Shop Shop for for Customer Customer Service Region INSURANCE! Region of of the the United United States States by

by NATIONWIDE NATIONWIDE INSURANCE!

Thisisiswhy whyNapans Napans CHOOSE CHOOSE Lito This LitoAuto AutoBody: Body: • Superior Craftsmanship • Superior Craftsmanship • Outstanding Customer Service • Outstanding Customer Service Guaranteed Repairs Repairs for ••Guaranteed for Life Life •• LOCALLY Operated for for 50 50 Years LOCALLY OWNED OWNED and and Operated Years RentalCars Cars on on site site for • •Rental for Your Your Convenience Convenience Honda and and Acura Acura Certified ••Honda Certified

We you for forsupporting supportingus!us!

Wesupport supportNapa Napa–– Thank Thank you AUTO BODY

INC.

Conveniently located in the heart of Napa Since 1968

1725 Action Ave • 255-8550 Call for fleet rates for Napa Valley Businesses

www.LitoAutoBody.com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 103

Volunteer Elizabeth Wroblicka plants native buckeyes to stabilize the banks of Moore Creek.

CONSERVATION From 102

been “record hot years with record wildfires.”

“There’s been a lot of fuel buildup of brush and dead trees, which burned off in the fires.

That ‘sterilized’ the landscape,” said Woodbury.

In response, the district is replanting native species in certain areas, such as The Cove, a 160-acre property at the top of Mt. Veeder.

“We’re putting in a diverse mix of native plants and trees. This way the area is less susceptible to large fires. We’re creating breaks so a fire won’t jump from the grass to the trees,” said Woodbury.

Woodbury said the district is also removing invasive plants, including French broom, a fire-prone shrub that can grow up to 10 feet tall. The district is engaging in the removal in Moore Creek Park and on the west side of the Mayacamas Range.

The size and intensity of fires is the trend of greatest concern to local residents, said Napa County Fire Chief Geoff Belyea.

“The weather is trending toward high heat and low humidity, with strong winds that accelerate fires. In certain rural and wild areas, CalFire is working to remove some of the brush and taller vegetation. We want to keep the lower grasses. We’re encouraging property owners to also engage in brush and dead tree removal. This will lessen the intensity of fires,” said Belyea.

Belyea said grass fires have the potential to spread quickly, but burn less intensely than brush fires. They are also easier to put out.

Belyea said he is seeing vegetation in many areas take several years to recover from the prolonged drought and the fires. Last winter’s heavy rains helped more grass return.

104 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

“Once the brush is removed, grass grows back into the scar of the fire,” said Belyea.

Belyea said Silverado Highlands and Circle Oaks, both in the hills of Napa, have protected themselves by placing largescale shaded fuel breaks around their communities. The fuel breaks slow the advance of the fire.

The plants and animals that mark climate change Heat and dryness are making Napa Valley’s young oaks vulnerable to being eaten before they grow into mature trees.

“Oaks in California seem to have a problem with making the transition from the seedling stage to the mature stage. Researchers are examining different species throughout the state to see why this is occurring. Locally, we’re monitoring the health of blue oak populations across Quail Ridge Reserve,” said Dr. Jeffrey Clary, the staff director for the UC Davis Natural Reserve System, a group of six natural reserves throughout the state administered by UC Davis.

Quail Ridge Reserve, one of the reserves, sits on 2,000 acres that project into Lake Berryessa.

Clary said under normal conditions, blue oaks grow very slowly. In dry times, seedlings see their tender leaves eaten away by deer and rodents. The animals may be doing this because they are stressed for food.

“We’re seeing blue oaks that are at least 10 to 15 years old stay at seedling stage, about

ABOVE: Tanks near Lake Berryessa simulate natural ponds so scientists can study the effects of climate change on dragonflies.

LEFT: Tuk-Tuk Tours uses electric carts to transport tourists as a sustainable alternative to automobiles.

two inches tall. They have an incredible ability to ‘hang out’ at this stage for years without getting bigger. It’s a concern that they’re not getting big enough to escape getting eaten by deer and other herbivores,” said Clary.

Clary said if blue oak seedlings’ leaves are eaten off enough times, the trees may die.

“We have seen that at Quail Ridge Reserve, as well as the death of grey pines and live oaks that we lost in drought years and in fires,” said Clary.

Shannon McCauley, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, said data about native dragonfly species also show how heat and drought are affecting animals.

McCauley has been studying four native species of dragonflies in covered cattle water tanks at Quail Ridge Reserve since 2012.

The tanks simulate freshwater ponds. In some areas of Napa County, lakes, ponds, and creeks are experiencing a gradual warming.

“The heating has decreased the rate of survival for blue dashers, but Western pondhawks are doing well. Several species have relatively smaller wings, which hampers flight. We think stress due to heating is making certain species die from other things, like pathogens WINTER SPRING 2020

You Don’t Have to Wait For Your Tax Return to Purchase A New Heating and A/C System Now! Here is Why You Should Choose Us! Tune-Up Your Existing Heater ONLY $8000

PG&E Suggest homeowners should have regular maintenance performed on heaters.

Properly maintained equipment raises efficiency while lowering run times.

Exp. 2/29/2020

*Get a complete Air and Heating System for the price of 00 a cup $ per day day. of coffee per

3

**Zero Due At Signing

Enjoy Your System For 18 Months Interest Free!

*O.A.C

*O.A.C.

Call For Details

**With 3.5% minimum monthly payment.

I’ve been using A-1 Guaranteed since I purchased my house in the early 2000’s. I had my water heating system replaced with a tankless, after the 2014 Napa earthquake. In 2018, I had my HVAC replaced with an energy efficient system. I had all my windows replaced with energy efficient Amerimax Windows. The quality of the work by A-1 is unmatched. Their attention to detail, cleanup, and 110% customer service is remarkable. Their expertise and workmanship is impeccable! I wouldn’t use any other HVAC company for my HVAC needs.

A-1 has helped to make my home an energy efficient home. It’s a noticeable improvement on my energy bills and keeping the house energy efficient. I can’t thank them enough and I’m giving A-1 the highest rating for expertise, quality of service, workmanship, and most importantly customer service. The Very BEST. THANK YOU, A-1 GUARANTEED HEATING & AIR!

PEACE OF MIND

NVR DR-GM WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 105

CONSERVATION From 104

or lack of food,” said McCauley.

McCauley said mosquito populations could increase if certain dragonfly species get “knocked out by global warming.”

“It’s unclear at this point whether other dragonfly species would fill that gap. It would be good if temperatures stop warming or other predator species step in to eat mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes are major vectors of disease,” said McCauley.

Measures that protect the wilderness The Land Trust of Napa County is actively working to address the threats posed by climate change by keeping different landscapes in the region connected, said Kimberly Howard, development manager of the Land Trust, a local nonprofit dedicated to preserving the character of Napa County by permanently protecting land.

“Habitat linkages, or corridors, are the most frequently recommended approach to maintain ecosystem resilience. Landscape connectivity protects our water resources in an increasingly arid region. It also provides room for plants and animals to adjust their locations to survive in response to a warming climate,” said Howard.

Howard said the Land Trust is prioritizing the protection of habitat corridors and landscape linkages across a broad range of habitats, elevations, terrain and microclimates.

“This effort is aimed at helping native plant and animal species shift and move between lower and higher elevations, interior and coastal areas, and along south-north trajectories through the Napa, Mayacamas, Blue Ridge and Vaca Mountain ranges,” said Howard.

Howard said the Land Trust works to remove invasive exotic plant species and restoring native plant communities across its network of preserves.

“In addition, our ongoing land stewardship priorities include ... watershed restoration projects and tracking the recovery of native plant communities following the massive 106 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

ABOVE: Volunteers pull French broom seedlings in Moore Creek Park.

LEFT: Land Trust staff places remote wildlife camera.

2017 North Bay wildfires,” said Howard.

Howard said the Land Tr ust is a partner in the Mayacamas to Berryessa (M2B) Landscape Connectivity Network project. The M2B is a public-private collaboration between land trusts, open space and park districts, state and federal land managers, and ecology researchers dedicated to landscape-level conservation of Northern California’s Inner Coast Ranges.

“The Land Trust has a series of remote wildlife cameras associated with the M2B project. We are in year three of cataloging wildlife pictures. The cameras have already documented a photo of a ringtail (a native species that is the relative of the raccoon). It’s the first wildlife camera documentation of ringtail in the nine-county Bay Area region,” said Howard.

There are a number of ways to reduce our contributions to climate change, said Chris Benz, a member of the executive committee on the Napa Group of the Sierra Club and cofounder of Napa Climate NOW!, a group that promotes science-based solutions to climate change.

Benz said it is beneficial to promote the use of vineyards as firebreaks, encourage the enactment of water quality and tree protection ordinances, and advocate for increased county code enforcement of such ordinances.

Benz said local residents can also retrofit homes for fire safety and prevent erosion on their property and public lands. Erosion leads to increased sediments in waterways, which adversely affects wildlife in creeks and rivers.

Benz said one of the most significant steps residents can take is to find ways to reduce the number of gas-powered vehicles on the road.

“Our traffic situation is probably our

biggest countywide contribution to global warming. We need to examine how we can reduce the number and impact of gas-powered vehicles. We need to get local employees and visitors out of their cars and into ride-sharing and electric vehicles,” said Benz.

A green tourism experience Michelle Helms, founder of Napa-based Tuk-Tuk Tours, is using her fleet of “tuk-tuk” electric vehicles to offer a green travel experience.

“Our vehicles seat up to six people and go up to 25 mph. For our tours, we take guests through backroads to two wineries per tour.

We visit wineries that include Italics Winegrowers, Sodaro Estate, and Palmaz Vineyards, as well as a handful of other boutique wineries, just outside of downtown Napa,” said Helms.

Helms said traveling slowly through vineyards’ narrow pathways allows visitors the chance to see grapevines and native plants and animals up close.

“Guests especially like going up Howell Mountain on an incline to get to the top.

They love the view,” said Helms.

Helms said the tuk-tuks have a special advantage over cars. They are silent, which means birds and animals are not disturbed by their passage.

“Deer casually walk alongside the vehicle. Birds are all around us. Our guests are stunned by the beauty,” said Helms.

Helms said conducting the tours has showed her wild areas can and will make a recovery.

“After the fires of 2017, tourists thought the whole county was destroyed,” said Helms.

“Traveling through wild areas without noise or fumes have helped them see it’s not. I’ve learned that sometimes, it’s so important to pull over the vehicle, stop, and take it all in.

When you see nature, you see peace.”

WINTER SPRING 2020

Schedule Your Appointment Now! ONLINE OR GIVE US A CALL

We do more than just tires!

WE OFFER A VARIETY OF SERVICES TO GET YOUR CAR BACK ON THE ROAD WHERE IT BELONGS!

Oil Change

Fluid Exchange

Brake Repair

Belts & Hoses

Engine

Batteries & Electrical Systems

Cooling System

Fuel System

Emissions

Heating & A/C

(707) 255-0411 • 1655 Silverado Tr. • NapaTire.Com WINTER SPRING 2019

INSIDE NAPA VALLEY | 107

Buy-Before-Selling Advantage.

Move on and move forward faster.

Move Out Before Preparation and Showings Improve Accessibility and Appearance Make Non-Contingent, “Cash-Like” Offers

Trusted Vendor Selection.

Our vendors have expertise at all price points.

Qualified and Insured Vendors Contract Administration Customer Satisfaction Guarantee

Contact one of our agents to learn more.

Next-Level-Concierge.com GoldenGateSIR.com 780 Trancas Street 707.255.0845

108 | INSIDE NAPA VALLEY

1435 1st Street 707.690.9500

WINTER SPRING 2019