In Memorium– Frances Peterson

Last Sunday, around 12:30, my grandmother passed away.  She was 88.  If it was not for her it is highly unlikely that me, or my father before me, would be in the wine industry.

Stubborn and old-fashioned in some ways, Grandma Frances was also a remarkably evolved and modern woman for her time.  She was the first-female to graduate Phi Betta Kappa from the Chemistry Department at UC Berkeley.  It was following this path of chemistry that led her to my grandfather.  They met at the romantic setting of Oakridge, Tennessee, isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Following their stints in Tennessee they moved back to the Bay Area for the remainder of the war– my grandfather working for Shell Development (eventually making a grease compound that would not break down in the heat of the North African deserts) and my grandmother teaching high school chemistry.

It was following the birth of my father in 1947, and the resulting long hours spent with a baby in the house, that wine entered the Peterson household.  My grandmother, who was already an excellent cook, happened upon a recipe that called for Chateaueuf-du-Pape to be served in conjunction with it.  Perplexed, she made a call at one of the few wine retailers in San Francisco at the time, City of Paris, who referred her to a wine shop in southern California that brought in the wine.  Upon receiving the catalog, she ordered a mixed case of French wines.  The shipping, which amounted to $5 was more than she had ever spent on a bottle of wine or liquor.

What is amazing is that the receipt for those wines still exists today.  It is a staggering array of wine– everything from Suduiraut Sauternes, to Cru Beaujolais, to Alsatian Riesling, to 1947 Chateauneuf.  The piece-de-resistence of the lot was a bottle of 1945 Mouton that carried the whopping price, by the standards of the day, of $10.  Yes, Victory-label Mouton.  And so the story goes, my grandparents served this rare ‘47 Chateauneuf with the meal at a dinner party and became hooked.  As my grandmother put it “If it had been a 1948 thing could have been very different.”

My grandfather began buying wine from the store and reselling it out of his trunk at work to similarly captured co-workers.  They formed one of the first tasting groups in the Bay Area, and began to take methodical and detailed notes befitting their chemist background on every wine they tasted.  When my father became a little older (around 12) he too came to the tastings and was allowed to evaluate the wines.  My grandfather carefully measured the wine poured to him, and, if the amount in the spit-cup equaled the amount poured my dad was allowed to come back.

In my family though, despite the extensive tasting experience of my father and myself, it was my grandmother who possessed the best palate.  I remember as a child as she would pick out older vintage Bordeaux blind at the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner table.
On top of being a pioneer of wine, my grandmother was an avid world-traveller– I still have postcards of elephants in India and pyramids of Egypt with her tight script inhabiting the back.  She was also a remarkable chef– trusted by Alice Waters to be one of the people to trial recipes for the first Chez Panisse cookbooks.

By all standards she must have been a first rate catch.  Pictures of her as a young woman reveal a woman with the smile of Katherine Hepburn and the figure of Audrey.

And though this bird-like structure gradually broke down to the wear and tear of age and eventually disease (good god girls, please keep the calcium coming!), and despite the great pain she coped with for the last couple years of her life, my grandmothers alacrity was amazing.  The pain killers she was on would probably kill me, much less allow me to render cogent sentence structure, yet she was always with it.  Though the length of our visits shortened due to a burgeoning cloud of fatigue, she was always aware of the news, was wondering what was going on with our lives.  She wanted the blow-by-blow of trips paid to Bordeaux “Do they still have the beautiful old cellar at Latour?,” or, “Ah yes, I met Anthony Barton when he was quite a bit younger I am afraid, is he aging well?”

When I saw her last Wednesday she was in the hospital.  The delicate body that had bent to the conditions of age at such an acute angle was finally giving up on her.  Though she slept for most of my visit she still was able to string together cogent sentences when her eyes opened so slowly and sleepily.  My uncle, Chris, and cousin, Evan, and I talked with her.  Then, when she appeared to have fallen asleep, we had one of those strange three-way conversations where we kept the fourth voice open, in case she wanted to say something.  We talked about backpacking in the Sierra’s (I was leaving for a three night trip the next day), about the coming harvest, about college, and the smoke-filled skies, and basically anything that could come to mind.

She came home on Friday– back to the warm living room filled with radiant heat, rugs, and redwood perched over the bay in Pt. Richmond.  Having fallen asleep so many times in that room myself as a child– with the hum and buzz of adult talk and laughter at the dinner-table– I can imagine she was comfortable despite the foreign and harsh contours of medical apparati around her.

Looking at most of the things I love I realize that many descended from this remarkable woman.  Food, wine, and roses.  I thank her for buying that 1947 Chateauneuf– though who knew it would bring so much happiness and a livelihood or two with it.  More, I thank her existence, for her bright and slightly gravelly tone, for her dignity and beauty, I will remember her.