that grapes from terraced hillsides were favored for centuries throughout the Mediterranean world. A saying that dates back to the Roman Empire, “Bacchus amat colles,” which translates as “Bacchus loves the hills,” illustrates the idea that the Romans believed their god of wine had a special affinity for wine sourced from hillside vines.
Finally, Jim mentioned a remote site in an area known locally as Stags Leap. He warned Dad that it had been on the market for three years and a number of knowledgeable winery owners had already seen it and turned it down.
It seemed foolish not to at least lay eyes on the site, so they drove out, and Dad has often recounted being awed by the beauty of the hillsides and the huge rock outcropping beyond called the Stags Leap Palisades, which soars some two thousand feet. Even so, he understood Jim’s warning. Once you got past the scenic magnificence, this was not an obvious gem to the eye of a Napa vintner of that era. Besides a rundown house and outbuildings, it was a rambling 209-acre site, with steep, boulder- and rock-choked hillsides on the eastern and northern flanks. A full three-quarters of the property was unplantable, thanks to the steepness of much of the terrain. The 30-acre vineyard established on the flatter, western portion sported a hodgepodge of red and white grape varieties, interspersed with walnut trees, and last planted in 1922.
But rather than view those steep, wild hillsides as a detriment, Dad was thrilled. The site was almost a photograph of what he had been searching for, chiefly, those south- and west-facing hillsides composed of thin layers of volcanic soil, ensuring that grapevines would struggle for survival, holding out the promise for producing rich, opulent, concentrated fruit.5
Dad returned to Chicago having completed his research and a year’s worth of property hikes—he had all the data he needed—but ultimately it took something gut-based to push him to the very edge of the decision. He put together a business plan, in which he projected his costs and profit, and drove it over to his accountant’s office.
The accountant sat at his desk and reviewed Dad’s figures. Then he took off his glasses, shrugged, and said that frankly it was impossible to gauge if Dad could make a success of running a winery. “Anyone can put together numbers that make a great-looking projection,” he said.
It wasn’t what Dad had hoped to hear, but he appreciated the frankness. As Dad headed for the door, however, the accountant stepped out of his role as financial analyst, and he said rather wistfully, “You know, John, you only go around once.”
Years later Dad told me that’s what did it: the featherweight of those words finally tipped the scales. Dad knew he wanted—needed—to make the leap into this new life in Napa Valley. He didn’t want to live in Chicago for the rest of his life, drinking gin and tonics and playing golf while wondering what if—what if he’d purchased that hillside? What if our family had pursued the dream of making wine?
Not long after, one night in November 1972, Dad stunned us all by announcing that we were moving to a place we’d never heard of called Napa Valley.
1. “Famous Alumni,” Chicago Sun-Times, May 23, 2007.
2. Bank of America, Economics Department, Outlook for the California Wine Industry, 1970, p. 1.
3. Wine Institute, Wine Consumption in the U.S., accessed August 1, 2011, www.wineinstitute.org/resources/statistics/article86.
4. Aldo Delfino, Agricultural Commissioner, 1964 Napa County Agricultural Crop Report, Napa County Department of Agriculture, Napa, CA, 1965, and 1969 Napa County Agricultural Crop Report, Napa County Department of Agriculture, Napa, CA, 1970, accessed June 28, 2011, www.countyofnapa.org/AgCommissioner/CropReport.
5. Our hillside vineyards have a soil depth of eighteen to twenty-two inches before hitting weathered bedrock. Both the steep slope and the permeable soils offer quick drainage, meaning that grapevines are never awash in moisture or nutrients. A variety of factors also creates a beneficial mix of long hours of sunlight—thanks to southern and western slope exposures—and overall cooler temperatures due to the site’s location in the southern end of the Valley, which places it in the path of late-day marine breezes from the northernmost portion of San Francisco Bay, located just eighteen miles to the south.
TWO
January 1973
There must be a million American stories that begin with a family packing themselves into a station wagon.
I can still remember my dad at the wheel of our wood-paneled Country Squire flying west on I-80. He was trim and handsome, his hair thinning a bit on top. My younger brother Brad, twelve, was in the backseat with our dog, Dingo. I was riding shotgun, a lanky, basketball-obsessed seventeen-year-old who wore glasses. On that gray, frigid day in January we’d packed into our car and started driving toward California.
The sense of adventure is hard to overstate. The only home I’d known was our three-story Victorian in genteel Hinsdale. This was going to be the longest trip I’d ever taken by car.
As the skyline of Chicago receded in our rearview mirror and the vast American heartland spread out before us, it was like finding ourselves in a huge novel on page one.
Like any good road story, within hours we ran into trouble, which began as drifting, popcorn-sized snowflakes. A charming flurry turned into a white pummeling and then a violent blur. Long stretches of interstate were hit hard with snowstorms, and we inched along, hoping not to slide off into a snowbank, praying not to smash into the back of a stalled truck. Each evening, as the trip continued, we stopped at a different white-blobbed, featureless motel and snuck Dingo in with us for the night. (My mom, who was probably smarter than all of us, was flying out and would meet us in San Francisco. My older siblings, Bill and Libby, were in college and missed all of this.)
Each day we crawled closer to that 200 acres of vineyard in a place called Napa Valley. As he drove, Dad’s mind was on grape prices, vine cultivation, the future of the wine industry, and a thousand other things.
My seventeen-year-old brain was absorbed with—what else?—my social life. In Chicago I’d gone to Hinsdale High, a big school, where I’d been a pretty small fish, although I’d gained a little late-game cachet as the kid who was moving to California, which my friends and I envisioned as a sunny partyland, where it was going to be Malibu and beaches and bikini time. I had high teenage hopes for life in the Golden State.
As such, this complete uprooting of our family and our lives didn’t seem traumatic or unwelcome. If anything, it felt very much a part of the ethos of the times. Just as my dad’s early life was molded by the Depression, mine was shaped by the change going on all around us. By 1973 America had been to the moon, schools were still working on racial integration, and teenagers were listening to acid-inspired rock. Meanwhile, there was still a whole generation of grandparents who had been born in the 1880s and 1890s. (My great-grandfather Coates Foresman had only passed away a couple years prior to all this.) When their parents had traveled west, it had been Little House on the Prairie-style in ox-drawn wagons and later by steam locomotive. They had played banjoes and split rails.
One
