Just wanted to let you know that Michael Chiarello has joined the event and will be one of our celebrity chefs for the evening.

Also, best way to purchase tickets for this very special event:

707-256-3200
http://www.RhodesCelebration.com

Great article! Thank you for the history lesson. All of us in this wonderful industry should be reflective of our roots so we can grow a more fruitful canopy.

Nice recollections.

The Rhodes, about whom enough cannot be said, went out of their way to welcome the new boy to the business and to invite me to their house to meet such luminaries as Daryl Corti, Narsai David, Bill Dickerson, Dr. Adamson, Dennis Foley, Hank Rubin (then the wine editor for Bon Appetit and the wine columnist for the SF Chronicle) and Harry Waugh.

It was Barney who helped me design my two wine cellars, not as elaborate as his but with the same functionality, namely one colder cellar for older reds and one 55 degree cellar for everything else.

It was Belle who, having come to our house for a tasting and dinner, took one look at my wife’s cookware, and showed up the next day to take her to a chef’s outlet where all new pots, pans and utensils were purchased.

The story, as related above, of the host falling asleep, was not apocryphal. When Barney fell asleep, that was the signal that it was time to go.

It was the Rhodes who planted Martha’s Vineyard, and then sold it to the Mays. It was the Rhodes who planted Bella Oaks. The Rhodes were initial investors in Heitz and were part of the Heitz tasting panel every year when you would roll out the new vintage of Martha’s Vineyard for his group and they would taste it blind against the competition. It always won, of course, because it was so distinctively minty and deeply fruited that it stood out in a crowd of Mondavi Reserves and their ilk.

I complained to the folks who run the Vintner’s Hall of Fame that they need to have the Rhodes enshrined in that organization because of what they meant to the development of CA wine in what we now know as the takeoff period for today’s vibrant (yes, still vibrant despite the economy) wine scene here in CA, and, up in OR and WA as well. Of course, the Rhodes were also gentle, quiet people and the Vintners Hall of Fame is a public ballot and todays’ wine buyers have never heard of the Rhodes.

Yet, they belong in the company of the Andre T’s, the Brother Tims, the Bob Mondavis, the Joe Heitzs of this world because they were the quiet, kind, enablers of their day.