Once & Future

In late 1972 I met Joe Swan and was given an extraordinary chance to learn the art of winemaking. I was a complete novice when it came to the craft but not when it came to wine.

I grew up in a household of two chemists: my mother Frances, who trained as a nuclear chemist worked on the Manhattan project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and my father Walter, who was employed as a physical chemist at Shell Development in Emeryville, California.

Afte...

Palisades Vineyard, Napa Valley, Petite Sirah

There’s a good reason that, until the 1960s, Petite Sirah was the most widely planted grape variety in Napa Valley. As is shown by the few remaining examples, grown in the right places it does very well there, making lovely, evocative wine even darker and spicier than Zinfandel, that other “California grape” from Europe. If Napa had only had the guts to stick with Petite through the renaissance ...