Seventy Years In, Subject Shows No Signs of Acquiescing
From a Chicago kitchen to Lodi’s most decorated cellar, by way of Julia Child, k.d. lang, and one very stubborn idea.
ACAMPO, Calif. — The subject of this newspaper was born in Chicago in the last days of August 1956, into an Irish family, an Elvis summer, and a national wine market that considered lemon-flavored port the height of sophistication. She would spend the next seven decades correcting the record.
The early evidence was culinary, and hereditary. Her father, LeRoy — an Army man who worked wartime kitchens, once served Nazi officers their dinner, and stood in Paris the day the war ended — was a foodie before the term existed: butcher-direct, farm-stand loyal, everything from scratch, vegetables out back. His daughter took notes. Then she took on Julia Child — recreating the recipes, hosting weekly, treating a dinner table as something worth doing properly.
Chicago also supplied her other formative discovery: a co-worker at Chicago Faucets — the family firm, as it happened, having employed her parents too — where hot and cold first ran together. The company made fixtures. It is not known whether it ever made a better match.
What followed was the itinerant chapter: three sons, corporate relocations across several states and an ocean, and a family culture built on honesty, self-reliance, and the firm parental position that they were not, in fact, going to the movies. The boys turned out fine. All three confirm this independently.
The prophecy came in Portland. She was running a successful mail-order business; Oregon Pinot was running a successful campaign on her palate. One evening on the patio, wine in hand, k.d. lang’s “Acquiesce” on the stereo, her husband made a prediction: someday, a place with that name. Reasonable people file such remarks under patio talk. This family files them under planning.
In 2000 they bought land on Peltier Road in Lodi — a property that came with trellised Zinfandel in the heart of Zinfandel country, which is a bit like inheriting a drum kit in a marching-band town. She sold the grapes. She had heard something better: the white Rhône blends of Château de Beaucastel, in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and a conviction — hers alone, at the time — that Lodi’s soils could speak that language.
In 2008, in her 50s, when most careers begin negotiating their exit, she planted cuttings sourced from Tablas Creek, Beaucastel’s Paso Robles partner, and started over as a winemaker. An all-white winery. In Lodi. People advised against it. The record does not show that she asked.
The record shows other things instead: a Viognier named Best White at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. Woman Winemaker of the Year, 2022. Winery of the Year. And this summer, the house style she built swept the California State Fair — Best of Show White, Best of California, 99 points — proof that what she planted now grows without her hand on every vine, which is, of course, the point of planting.
Asked to summarize seventy years of ignoring consensus, the subject could not be reached for comment, as she was busy. Those who know her offer a shorter version: she acquiesced to exactly one thing — the name.
The Weather
Fair and unseasonably accomplished. Sunsets guaranteed, address permitting. Rainy days ahead.