Crush: A Childhood in the California Wine Industry

Crush.

My first memories are snippets, simple scents and bright visuals of dust and vines, barrel mold and Zinfandel grapes baked in hundred degree California days that seemed ready to explode with steaming juice and tannic seeds.

 Life as a child revolved around the tiny winery that was my father’s dream.  The oversized tin shed in which old redwood fermenters sat weighted down and saturated with aromatic must was on the broad side of a nasty curve on Broadway Street- a main two lane artery which lolls out like an extended tongue from Sonoma’s city hall to the far reaches of the fog rich Los Carneros.  It was in and around this building that my earliest adventures lay.  Plastic Renaissance Fair armor on, I drew pictures of valiant knights picking Pinot Noir into stainless steel gondolas before taking my training wheeled steed to inspect decomposing pear picking bins from a bygone age where salamanders and purple-bellied lizards hid.  After school everyday I would be rescued from the paste filled, dull scissored, stick figure kindergarten by my father who would set me free to fish in the creek and steal persimmons from a clueless neighbors tree.

Those days not spent at the winery I would be in the front seat of the dusty Puegeot 505 Turbo visiting the handful of vineyards from which we sourced our grapes.

I distinctly remember those long and winding trips through Napa Valley crossing to Alexander Valley, up to Dry Creek, and finally back into the town of Sonoma via Santa Rosa.  Each vineyard had its own personality- its own smell and its own feel.  My father would explain these personalities as the terroir, the stuff of which a wine’s personality was made.  For me, the wine was simply a small element of a much bigger universe which included the old oak trees, the types of scrubgrass around the vines, the contours of the hills, and the granite colored lizards that kicked up dusty trails while they fled my eager grasp.  These vineyards, like my memories, still remain, and each time I taste a Ravenswood wine I am brought back to memories of dust puffing up around my always too loose Keds, the remaining dust formations around the almost invisible hairs on my legs, collecting grapes from plump clusters and feeling pleasantly sick from a combination of my fathers fast driving and too many grapes.

On these trips we would usually stop first at Dickerson Vineyard, an old Zinfandel and Merlot vineyard planted on the floor of Napa Valley.  The vineyard always seemed a touch out of place, its solitary head-pruned vines that date back before prohibition standing in strange juxtaposition with the younger, and well-manicured Cabernet vineyards surrounding it.   My father loved it for its bright raspberry and eucalyptus elements, Robert Parker loved it because it yielded a wine that he called the Mouton Rothschild of Zinfandel, and I loved it for its towering fig and black walnut trees. In my teens when I began to cook with walnut oil, I would invariably remember the almost tarry black-brown residue that the hulls would leave on my hands, rubbing off onto the figs and causing my mouth to pucker in a combination of extremely itchy tannin and explosive warm fig fruit.  Dickerson Vineyard also meant a stop at a pre-touristy Oakville Grocery where I would be allowed to have Orangina and refined sugars, two things forbidden in my milk and carob laced home.  After following Highway 29 beyond Calistoga and over the last hills of the Mayacamas Range populated by more manzanita, madrone, and fir trees than grape vines we would drop into Sonoma County.

When we finally got to Dry Creek we would stop at the Teldeschi’s.  Upon arrival my father and the family would talk business over huge portions of olive oil and garlic drenched pasta served with the house wine.  The wine, made in large trashcans and then served in old Petri jugs, was delicious (and strong)- a fantastically pure expression of the black peppered and brambleberried Zin found in Dry Creek.  A close and loud family, I adored being with the Teldeschi’s as they shouted at each other as the lunch went on.  Of particular interest was Uncle Remo.  A man who slept with a bust of Mussolini over his bed, he refused to learn English and would shout in Italian while his big, bare, and tan stomach stuck out at least a foot in front of him.  Equally amazing was the whirling dervish matriarch of the family, Catarina, who to this day, in her 80’s, wakes up and leads picking teams during harvest, all the time hollering in a cross between Italian and Spanish.  After the long lunches in the heat I would invariably fall asleep just in time to be woken again when we reached Old Hill.

Old Hill, which has been the winery’s greatest wine virtually year in and year out, is a small vineyard in Sonoma Valley that is estimated to be more than 125 years old.  The old vines yield up tiny numbers of thick-skinned, awesomely intense grapes that create one of the greatest, and most age-worthy Zinfandels in the world.  The owner, Otto Teller, was a gruff old-guard environmentalist that scared the living crap out of me, and this, combined with the vineyards pocketed placement in the folds of Sonoma Valley made the place seem rather dark and otherworldly.  Compared to the vines in other places these were rugged and taxed and were surrounded by nettles and wild grasses that came up high on my short legs.  Old mossy oak trees, euculyptus, and sprawling blackberry bushes leaned over the tenuous barbed wire fences, shading the darker corners of the vineyard.  It seemed too old, wise, and ponderous of a place for my energetic young rustlings. 

Around the end of August crush would begin.  There was always a certain excitement when I would run up to the road to watch for the old orange truck loaded down with filled grape bins and my dad. A favorite activity of mine was to jump up on the truck in order to guess what types of grapes had come in and to pilfer a few select bunches that had remained sheltered and cool.  I always loved Zinfandel, disliked the tannic and seedy quality of the Cab, and adored the Chardonnay when it came in simply because there would be about one small truck of it delivered each year.  Ravenswood was a red wine world, so the white grapes carried something of a mystique (this went far enough that I made my father brave a barbed wire fence in order to steal Gewurtzraminer grapes for me at one point because I had been taken in by their exotic name and alluring golden orange color).  Harvest is the beginning of the year in the wine world; it carries with it all the portents and hopes of the metaphorical springtime.  In those mornings and nights as the grapes came flying in, sometimes at a ridiculously fast pace, vinous midwifery was being performed.

Perhaps my very fondest memory though was accompanying my father to the shed on cool fall evenings for punch-down.  My father, a strict believer in artisanal winemaking, would punch the caps of seeds and skins that had been lifted by CO2 three to four times a day.  When I was still small enough he would do punch-down with me on his back.  When I grew too big I would jump from redwood fermenter to redwood fermenter tightwalking the sides or sitting on the two-by-fours that crossed over the top watching the gentle bubbling of the fermentation process.  Any place where grape fermentations take place develops fascinating odors, and the combination of the old shed’s grit, leaking fermenters, and the heady smell of freshly fermented grape juice made for a strange but addicting potpourri. 

My father inherited his love of wine from my grandparents- both chemists and original members of the first Bay Area wine tasting club.  Gourmands at their best, they took their chemist like precision to documenting the wines they drank, where they were from, and how much they paid for them.  At a young age, my father accompanied them and was allowed to taste and spit.  Wine is a splendorous commodity, rich in history, having numerous variations and locales; it is a substance that unites the new world with the old, and perhaps most importantly, appreciation for it can be passed from generation to generation.  It is also something that is relegated to the adult world, where people begin to gain an awkward understanding of its intricacies at a time in life already complicated by other priorities.  For my father and myself, I am sure that the opening of this territory at a young age instilled an understanding of the way wines taste and should taste on a level that is almost preternatural.  My father, who became a cancer researcher before making wine, was able to combine the sensoro-aesthetic understandings of his childhood with the science of wine and create something innovative and singular.  He truly encapsulates that Nabokovian inversion which states that one should be passionate as a scientist and precise as an artist.  To this day he has the greatest palate of any person that I have met and I am sure that he credits as much of that to his parents as I do to him. 

In my family though, the love of wine was equally paired with the love of food.  My parents, after being married in Bolinas, CA (where hippies go to die), proceeded to have their wedding reception at Chez Panisse.  When I was born the first substances to cross my lips were breast milk and 1974 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne.  Clearly, this left a lasting impression because to this day I will do just about anything for good bubbly or a strong woman (I have a fantasy that my future partner will propose to me by placing a ring in a bottle of 1990 Krug Clos de Mesnil).  Both of my parents are good cooks, though not quite as great as my grandmother, and each night the family came together to trade jagged barbs and food.  As the feisty language grew into more emotional strife, and the family divided and grew and divided and grew again, meals were relegated to those most important days in the life of a young friand- Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

In my memory, the most satisfying meals I have ever had were at home on these two days.  The cast of characters that came together (and still do) would make Dickens quake with fear, and when I tell East Coast friends of the meals they simply shake their heads and say “only in California.”  It was not irregular for the meals to include my parents (my mom, dad, and step-mom), my grandmother and her second husband Dave, my two older sisters (from my mother’s previous relationships), my sister Caitilin’s biological father and his girlfriend, my sister’s husband and two children, my sister’s old boyfriend with his wife, and of course my precocious little brother who is eighteen years my junior.  Then, joining us from outside the family would be no less than eight friends from various walks of life.  As the group gathered champagne would be cracked, the caviar and oysters consumed, and a year’s worth of catching up would commence.  It was when we all sat down at the long table though that the magic began, where oeniphilic epiphany and organoleptic orgasm were one small hand motion away.  Time stood still for me several times in my young life but nothing can match the existential pauses created by such supernacular wines as 1961 Romanee-Conti, 1945 Chateau D’Yquem, and 1947 Lafite.  That wines like these would be paired with thick slices of Niman Ranch prime rib practical invisible under layers of horseradish mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts with bacon, sweet potato casserole, buttery green beans, wild rice and cornbread stuffing, and ginger-orange cranberry sauce only made me more reverential of the possibilities of wine.  The tangled web of my family would loosen for those few hours as the comfort instilled by good company, wine, and food opiated the harder realities of life.

In 1986, at the age of five, I decided to make wine.  My father offered to provide me with some fruit from one of the vineyards he sourced from, but I had my sights set on other things.  Earlier in the year I had been particularly beguiled by the aromas of an older vintage Gevrey-Chambertin and had developed a fascination with Pinot Noir.  My father swore that he would never touch the grape, arguing that it was almost never as good as the effort it took to make it well, which I am sure only added to my resolve.  Taking initiative I paid a visit to Angelo Sangiacomo, the grower on whose land Ravenswood’s shed stood, armed with a leather purse in which I had placed several thousand lira collected by mother on a trip to Italy.  Angelo, after talking to my father to make sure I was for real, offered to give me a half-ton of Pinot Noir for free- something he has done every year since.

On a fall day, approximately three months before my sixth birthday, a half-ton of tight clustered, thin-skinned, and ever so delicate Pinot Noir arrived in a small white bin on the large orange truck.  Prior to its appearance my father had opened several finer examples of Pinot, some Burgundian and some Californian and asked me which I preferred and why.  It was clear he was pleased when my nose showed leanings towards the elegant, complex, and more austere wines of Burgundy.  In accordance with French methods I placed nearly half of my newly arrived Pinot clusters in the bottom of the small, open-top, redwood vat I had sealed with water and wax to prevent leaking.  We crushed the rest of the berry’s over the clusters, added some stems for increased tannin, and then we were done for the day.   Fermentations take time, and Pinot fermentations are especially fickle creatures- not a recipe that makes winemakers happy, much less a five year old.  After several painstaking days new aromas besides those of fresh juice took over the vat.  Happily, the natural yeasts started their feeding frenzy on the sugar and fermentation began.  Following the completed fermentation the wine was pressed and then placed into a new French oak barrel where it sat through a year of my worrying, ignoring, and tasting.  My father aided me along, often reminding me that the best wines (like children) are those that are allowed to follow their natural course, and by the end of the year we had a wine.      

Over the following years I received half a ton of Pinot without fail.  Some years we experimented with different techniques, other years there seemed to be hardly the time to worry about it. Always a bit of an experiment, I used such things as Slovakian oak and other times played with the percentage of whole clusters to mediate the levels of de facto carbonic maceration that took place.  In 1989 we foot-stomped the berries, however, the year was so overwrought with rain (especially bad when it comes to tight clustered and thin skinned varieties like Pinot) that any foot rot would have only added slightly to the bevy of unwanted bacterial growths and mold already on the grapes.  In other years, when sage incense and hacky-sac were as ubiquitous as my adolescent acne the wine would sit untouched, open to any biochemical tricks that the Pan-like Pinot Noir felt like playing.  Somehow though, the tradition endured and expanded- 250 cases (rather than 25) are now made a year from better fruit from an older vineyard also in Sangiacomo’s possession.

The project was witness to all of my adolescent gains and failings.  Being around the winery in my teens provided all sorts of opportunities for mischief, but it still was a second home.  When Ravenswood finally began to turn a profit (nearly fifteen years after it was started) we were able to move to a larger location and leave the shed behind.  As my teen years went on many a summer day would be spent with friends grinding out hours on the new bottling line.  My barrel of Pinot looked a little smaller next to all the barrels in the new location and especially small compared to the tower of those extracurricular activities that consume a college bound high school student.  Still, through a long and drawn out divorce, a second mom, and myriad hormonal changes the wine functioned as a constant, a perennial project, shared by my father and me. 

In an act of kismet, a name and new beginning were discovered for my wine on an Easter morning in Venice.  We were all awoken early in the morning by the crying of a baby across the narrow alleyway and the plaintive cry of “Oh no, Bambino!!” from its father.  Later in the morning, ridiculously sugar buzzed from meringue cookies and chocolate and battling a case of mononucleosis, the man’s paternal moanings had somehow transmuted into VinoBambino, or child’s wine.  A little time after that we created a label for the wine- a green cherub against a burgundy border and, after some more time, the best of the previous vintages had been labeled. 

After spending my first year at Vassar I took a job at Chelsea Wine Vault in New York City.  The owner, Christopher Cree, was nice enough to take several cases of five vintages of the wine and I was allowed to sell my creation.  In July, I sent out invitations for a grand release party to the sommeliers at virtually every great restaurant where my wine would fit the wine list.  In retrospect this was a rather brazen move motivated by youthful self-importance, but if a large ego succeeds anywhere, it does in New York.  By the end of the day I had wine committed to Gramercy Tavern, Aureole, Mesa Grill, Blue Hill, and several others.  A couple of days later Matthew McCartney called to tell me that my 1996 would be on the opening wine list for Tom Collichio’s new restaurant, Craft.

The lattermost restaurant was fitting because VinoBambino owes its success to the patronage of Collichio’s restaurants as much as anything else, for it was at another of his restaurants where I discovered just how good a match my wine was for good food.  The summer before college began, a time of turmoil and adjustment, I was living in the city with a friend in a studio apartment that was no more than 300 square feet.  Two friends from California happened to be in town, as were my parents.  I called up Gramercy Tavern at the last moment to see if they had a spot available for that weekend because my father had agreed to take the brood of us out to dinner.  Pleasantly surprised to hear that they would take us, I mentioned in passing to Paul Greico, the sommelier, that I was going to bring in three different vintages of VinoBambino- the 1997, 1995, and that first 1986.  When we arrived we were seated at the center table of the backroom and informed that the restaurant was going to take care of us that night.  Rather puzzled, we soon found this meant that Tom had prepared a special nine course meal for us with the middle three courses prepared to match my wines.  I became rather terrified that my wines would not match the incredible food at the Tavern.  Served in 56 oz. Riedl glasses, the wine equivalent to a fool-proof lie detector test/dissection device, the wines, and particularly my five year old project, turned out to be of the venerable sort.  The quarter-ton of whole clusters had proven their might, giving the wine enough tannin, that when paired with the acidity and fruit allowed the wine to glow in the glass for a few last minutes before drifting away to the soft burial grounds of wines that have lost their luster.  As the tawny-tinged Pinot curled gently against the crystalline walls, wafts of dried rose petals and soft cedar notes, signature of fine old Pinot, drifted lazily upwards intermingling with the soft smells of butter poached baby lobster tails.  For a split second I had one of those life stopping pauses of my childhood.  I looked at my father smiling over his nose into the glass and I knew that my sensations were no fluke- he too was experiencing the memory of a five year olds dance, painted in warm grape juice and aromatic must, play across his lips.  

 On a recent trip home I saw by warm August light that the original shed that had housed Ravenswood in my childhood years had burned down.  The blackberry bushes and wild grapes had grown larger, brutally fighting each other for space in a field that remained large and bare. The potholes that used to be filled with gravel in the spring had grown larger and deeper and there is a chance that the day may come where only a pickup truck will be able to go down the road.  The place is tiny, absolutely and totally tiny, I never realized how small.  The concrete landing and crush pit, which I remember my father making, had cracked open, filling with dandelion dander and decomposing leaves.  Though I found myself touched through with melancholy it was a bittersweet moment.  Better, I thought, for it to be interred back into the earth than to live on as a ghostly shell of memories.  Like Lord Ravenswood, who is sucked into the earth’s innards in The Bride of Lammermoor, the edifice belongs where reverential memoralization can provide limitless contemplations of youth, free of any constraining physical manifestations.

It was blackberries, chamomile, persimmons, salamanders, sticks, stones, and Pinot Noir.  Jackrabbits, taking the character of my namesake and eternal nemesis Morgan La Fay, ran under the vines with my self-constructed arrows in close, if not accurate, pursuit. It was and shall forever be a place of my father, of aromatic fermentations and stale air scented by damp fiberglass insulation on mornings and evenings painted over with coastal fog.  Though its crush may have already passed, the constituent elements will continue to age in me until I too become tawny at the edges, smell faintly of dried rose petals and cedar, and pass on to that place where life goes when it dies.