Coincidentally, there came to me yesterday an email press release from Napa Valley College and the Culinary Institute of America announcing a special May 8 dinner in honor of Belle and Barney Rhodes, to “celebrate the[ir] significant contributions and impact…”.

Now, I suspect a lot of you never heard of Belle and Barney Rhodes, who are a married couple. But I want to tell you a little about them, and about some of their friends, who, in the 1960s, were directly responsible for helping make Napa Valley what it is today. (If you’re interested in attending the dinner, you can contact Holly Krassner at 707-252-7281, or holly@hkconnects.com.)

I first heard about Belle and Barney when I read through all of Harry Waugh’s wine diaries, 30 years ago. Harry was a Brit who was long connected with the London wine merchant and auctioneer, Harveys of Bristol, and also was a director of Chateau Latour. Born in 1904, he was already of considerable age when he received an invitation to visit Napa Valley. This had occurred after he ran into Fred and Eleanor McCrea, who had started Stony Hill, one evening in London. They invited him to visit next time Harry was in the States, and Harry dutifully set off his journey, in the Spring of 1969.

Harry already had made the acquaintance of William Dickerson, who ran the “First Growth Group,” a like-minded group of wealthy connoisseurs in San Francisco. Dickerson, learning of Harry’s impending visit, arranged for Harry to meet with Joe Heitz on his Napa trip. Harry’s plane landed on March 28, and who was at SFO to meet him? None other than Belle and Barney Rhodes.

Belle and Barney showed Harry everything there was to know about the wine scene back then. They took him to Esquin’s (later Draper & Esquin’s), the city’s finest wine shop (long since shut). They introduced him to Milt and Barbara Eisele, and served to him “an entirely new name to me [Harry wrote], a Schramsberg, elegant, distinguished and very good indeed.” That was only one of the vinous revelations Harry discovered on that trip. He tasted Louis M. Martini Cabernets from 1955, 1952, 1951 and 1947 (preferring the latter), and three white wines made from another winery Harry never heard of, Hanzell. He tasted the Mendocino wines of John Parducci, and met Dr. Richard Peterson, then Beaulieu’s winemaster (and father of Heidi Peterson Barrett), who served him a Tchelistcheff 1968 Pinot Noir, which he (Harry) called “a huge rich wine…I would like to lay my hands on a case of this.” The Rhodeses also took Harry to meet a rising star vintner, Robert Mondavi…to Buena Vista, in Sonoma Valley…to Mayacamas, where he was hosted by Bob and Noni Travers and declared their 1967 Cabernet “another for my collection.”

I could go on and on, but the important point is that, when Harry went back to Europe, he talked up California wine to “the right people,” at a time when the smart money in London (and, by extension, Paris and Bordeaux) thought California produced nothing but movie stars and plonk.

The Rhodeses were to host Harry several more times on subsequent visits, and in his books Harry always referred to “the Rhodeses splendid kindness to me.” Years later, on yet another visit, they took him to “an extremely popular restaurant called Mustard’s,” and introduced him to yet another generation of boutique winemakers: the Trefethens, Cakebreads, Joe Phelps, Ric Forman from Sterling, Freemark Abbey, Dominus. And once again, Harry wrote about these wines, and connoisseurs the world over learned about Napa Valley, and the excellence of its wines, from an enthusiastic Harry, who probably would not have understood without Belle and Barney Rhodes to guide him.

It was my great privilege to travel for a week with Harry through Washington State, when he was already nearly 90 years old and a little shaky, and the state wine commission asked me to help him (he had come entirely alone). I feel connected to much in the past through reading Harry Waugh’s books and from actually having known him. Nobody should dwell on the past for very long, but it’s worth remembering, from time to time, that we didn’t just get here automatically, like Athena springing from Zeus’s brow. People, like Belle and Barney Rhodes and Harry Waugh, make things happen.

But I digress. Yesterday, I came across this blog, written by a psychologist, Sarah Allen Benton, and entited The Great Wine Myth. After my first read-through, I thought, “There they go again, the anti-wine fanatics. Why do they get so upset that some of us like wine?” But then I read it a second time, and a third.

I’ll give Ms. Benton this: she’s got a point, although she’s also wide of the mark in some respects. I’ll get to her point in a minute, but first: Where I disagree with her is when she says there’s a problem with people who feel they’re being compelled to drink wine against their will, even though they don’t want to. For example, she writes, “I am hearing from those struggling with alcohol problems, that their friends are encouraging them to drink wine with them at their homes or at restaurants-ignoring the fact that their individual has a drinking problem. During dinner parties, glasses are filled and re-filled without guests even noticing or being able to keep track.”

Well, a couple things. First of all, I don’t see why these dinner party guests who don’t want to drink can’t just tell their host, “No thank you, I’d much prefer a nice cold glass of water,” or something like that. Nobody’s twisting anybody’s arm to drink at a party or in a restaurant. And not keeping track? If you know you can’t handle more than a glass, then you need help if you’re downing five. Of course, if the person who’s constantly refilling their guest’s glass knows that the guest has a drinking problem, then that person is a total idiot — and the guest might want to rethink the friendship. Friends don’t make friends who are alcoholics drink.

I also don’t quite get it when Benton writes about patients who complain that “every social function that they attend revolves around drinking, particularly wine and that they feel like they won’t fit in if they are not drinking.” Again, what ever happened to self-control? Isn’t it possible for these people to politely decline wine? I don’t know anybody who would resent or feel weird about a friend who didn’t feel like drinking alcohol at a social function. I have alcoholics in my family (more than one), and when we get together, the rest of us drink all we want to, the alcoholics don’t, and nobody blames anyone for anything. The lines are clearly drawn, and if there’s mutual respect and understanding, there’s no problem.

But Benton makes some good points. Her title, “The Great Wine Myth,” alludes to the fact that there probably is a tendency among some people to think that wine is somehow different from beer or hard liquor — that it’s cleaner, or healthier, or more refined than, say, a shot of cheap Scotch or malt liquor. Wine may be more refined in a cultural sense, but Benton’s point is that alcohol is alcohol, regardless of if “you are sipping on Chardonnay or chugging a 40-ounce beer in a paper bag.” That’s true. I myself drink more than most people would consider healthy. So do lots of people I know in the wine industry. I’m aware of the deleterious effects of alcohol, including calories. That’s why I hit the gym regularly, eat right and take good care of my body. And I would never, ever insist that a guest in my home drink wine, unless they were eager to do so.

So, bottom line: You wrote a generally fair essay, Ms. Benton. You made some good points. People should be incredibly sensitive to their guests’ needs and limitations. It’s called politeness, and it’s a human value as old as time.

Another thing you can do with winemakers is to let them take you on a tour of the winery. At this point, I’ve been on so many winery tours, I have bottling lines and fermenting tanks coming out of my ears. These days, when a winemaker walks me through the winery, it’s not uncommon for him to begin by saying, “You’ve probably seen a million wineries,” to which I silently think, Yes, I have, but I would never say that. Instead, I let the winemaker point out whatever he wants (I’m a polite guest). But really, the technological side of a winery has never much interested me (although the architecture does. I can just as easily appreciate a luxurious winery as a shed with a tin roof).

You can also walk through vineyards with winemakers. I like that because it takes me to the heart of where wine is made: the rows of grapevines that produce the grapes that make the juice the yeasts ferment into wine. But after a while, all vineyards begin to look alike. I know that’s heresy to those trained in the art and science of canopy management, but that’s how things are with me.

So what do I like to do with winemakers? I like to drive with them. Specifically, I like piling into the passenger seat of the winemaker’s vehicle (often an SUV, 4-wheel drive or pickup truck) and letting the winemaker do the driving. Winemaker vehicles are usually dirty and in disarray. You know how you sometimes apologize to a visitor because your house isn’t quite as tidy as it might be? Winemakers do the same, although I always tell them not to, because I could care less. Take a look at the inside of a winemaker’s car. Maps, gadgets and junk all over the place. Dried clots of earth on the floormats. Empty soda cans and water bottles. Clipboards on the dashboard, sunglasses and cell phone and pencils and pads and keys and boxes of tissue and little broken bits of metal and plastic. The inside of a winemaker’s vehicle is a veritable junkyard, but it’s a place I love to be.

Where do we drive? Typically around the property and/or the appellation. That’s what I really like to do with winemakers. They can tell me all about the hills and clefts inbetween the ridges that let the maritime influence filter in. They can point out that outcropping of limestone, that jumble of stones, or the way a bench rises suddenly from an alluvial plain. They can show me their neighbors’ vineyards. We can drive to high points where you can see for miles and miles and from that aerial vantage point gain an appreciation of an AVA’s physiognomy (if that’s the right word). Of course, you can do all this driving yourself, on your own, but then you can’t pay proper attention, and a winemaker is the best tour guide in the world. Winemakers know their appellations like they know the palm of their hand. (One of the nice things about chatting while driving is that, because it’s so casual, sometimes there’s some good gossip, oops I mean news, to be had.)

I was reminded of this because I just read my notes of my drive-around the southern Santa Rita Hills with Richard Sanford. One thing that struck me about that appellation was how quickly its vineyards have become famous. Ten years ago everybody knew about Sanford & Benedict Vineyard and Babcock, but who had ever heard of Cargasacchi, Fiddlestix, Fe Ciega, Richard’s own La Encantada, Sea Smoke, Clos Pepe, Melville, Mt. Carmel, Rancho Santa Rosa, Carrie’s, Huber? (I know I’m forgetting others.) Look how well-known they are today. There’s not another appellation in California whose vineyards have come so far, so fast.

I like winemakers anyway, most of them, and somehow they seem more themselves when they’re behind the wheel of their own vehicle.

My mom used to tell me there are no coincidences, just things whose reasons we don’t understand. But sometimes, the reasons are all too clear.

First there’s this headline from yesterday:

Wine & Spirits Wholesalers spend $280K on lobbying

from Yahoo News. Taken into context, that number is “up from the $240,000 the group spent in the year-ago period and the $260,000 it spent in the third quarter of 2009.” So WSWA is upping the amount they spend on lobbying, even in this most difficult period.

Then there’s one, also from yesterday, courtesy of Beverage World:

US Wine Exports Fell 15 Percent in 2009

That’s not good for wineries struggling to get by, and who depended on overseas to stanch the bleeding domestically.

Also yesterday the L.A. Times reported on the collapse of three wineries I’ve known well:

After the fall: The stories of three niche wine makers

This is extraordinarily shocking stuff. Garretson Wines was a pioneer in Paso Robles, Sauvignon Republic was co-founded by former Fetzer star (and Wine Institute head) Paul Dolan, and what can you say about Havens Winery that hasn’t been said? I consistently gave their wines high scores over the years.

Okay, so we know three things (at least):

1. Wholesalers have had the bejeesus scared out of them. When an industry jacks up its lobbying in hard times, it’s because it wants to avoid even harder times.

2. Such wineries as there still are, are finding it harder to sell, not only in America, but overseas, which had been a great hope for many.

3. Wineries are starting to fall like dominoes.

My friend Scott Carpenter, who runs the website The Everyday Wine Guy and contributes to CNN Radio and CBS stations, reports that, according to his sources, “The general guess is 200 [California] wineries will go down this year, mostly smaller guys…The wineries-for-sale list is allegedly way up for Napa and Sonoma.  Now it’s 60 and 51, respectively.” I myself recently wrote that, if things really do head south, we’ll find out this summer, certainly by the end of the third quarter.

What can wineries do to survive this avalanche or tsunami of bad economic times? Part of the answer is marketing. But you’d be amazed at how uninformed some wineries are when it comes to the simplest aspects of how to sell wine. A professional marketing consultant commented on this blog yesterday that “…it is troubling to me that so many [wineries] have no communications plan or comprehensive marketing strategy, yet they want to jump on Twitter or Facebook because it’s the latest thing…It is really shocking to me the number of wineries that make no effort to collect email addresses from tasting room visitors and, further, even those that do seldom use them! I was recently visiting a high end ($50-100/bottle) Sonoma County winery; purchased a couple of bottles, but no one even asked for an email address! Wouldn’t they like to sell me more wine?”

That’s the tip of the iceberg. If I was running a tasting room and somebody walked in and bought a couple bottles of $50-plus wine, I’d certainly ask them, at the very least, to give me their email! Then I’d send them periodic email newsletters, or find out if they want to sign up for my blog, or whatever. But to let them just walk out the door? Insane.

Think it’s just here in California? Nope. From yesterday’s Oregon Business online:

Wine glut possible

“Oregon’s wine industry is raising concerns about oversupply, as the state continues to expand grape production while wine sales drop,” the article says.

Australia, anyone?

An old bottle of wine is the complete opposite of a young bottle. Assuming it’s still sound (and you never know until you pop the cork), an old wine is like an old person: meant to be treated with respect and courtesy. You don’t go out for a 5-mile run with an old bottle, the way you might with a young friend; instead, you sit around the living room, talking quietly and letting the old wine reminisce. Young wines shout; old wines have conversations.

I brought it to Maxine and Keith’s for dinner, down in San Mateo. The first decision was whether or not it would go with her paella, which she made in the classic Spanish style, with clams, shrimp, chicken and chorizo and, of course, a dash of saffron. I figured the match would be fine.

To decant or not? I wished Richard had been there; he would have known. In the event, I waited until about 30 minutes before Maxine put the paella pot on the table. But first the bottle had to be opened. With a 31-year old cork, you never know. I used a waiter’s screwtop, probably not the best idea (an Ah-So would have been better). The cork broke in half, with the top impaled on the screw and the bottom stuck deep down in the neck. But the cork smelled clean. Sometimes old corks break; it’s not the worst thing in the world. Since I couldn’t extract the bottom half, I just shoved it down into the wine. A proper sommelier, I expect, would have filtered and decanted the wine. I did neither.

The color was pale, of course; a heavy sediment clearly had gathered into the bottom of the bottle. The wine wasn’t quite brown, but a sort of russet, the color the maple leaves turn in November just before they fall to the sidewalk in front of my house. A good, rich, natural color, but fading. Then the all-important act of sniffing. Ahhh. Clean, sound, attractive. Just a bit maderized — like a fino sherry. Not unusual in so old a wine. Not a problem. Inviting; not a trace of senescence. Gave it a few quick swirls, and out came the cherries, shy at first, like a little girl in her first ballet costume. Pretty and demure.

Before I could sip Keith asked for the glass. I normally don’t like to tell others what I’m experiencing because I know it can color their own expectations, but I did say, “The fruit’s pretty much gone. But it’s really nice.” As Keith sniffed I could see a certain disappointment. He likes young wines, like most people, because he’s used to young wines. So I went into teacher mode and told him something like this:

With wines this old, you look for different things than fruit. You ask the wine to give you its best, but you in turn must give it yours. Begin with respect. This wine is nearly 31 years old. It is still vibrant — still alive — more than alive. Alert, intelligent, with much to say. (It’s impossible not to anthropomorphize such wines.) There is no sickness unto death here. There is a halting quality; the wine is a shadow of its former self, but it is not a feeble shadow. A noble one, proud of its past. (I tried, unsuccessfully, to make an analogy with the aging Willie Mays, but gave up.) By then I had tasted the wine, and fallen in love. Through the maderization, still some sweet, refined fruit and spice. The more you think about such wines, the more you discover in them. It’s as if they are telling you their long autobiography, one memory at a time. There is a memory of climate. “This fresh acidity you appreciate,” the wine says, “is from the wind and the fog that loved me when I was grapes on vines.” Although the label on the bottle says, in those pre-AVA days, “Lompoc, California,” this was after all the same Santa Rita Hills that today is windswept and foggy; the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard still spills down the slopes to Santa Rosa Road (and Richard Sanford’s La Encantada Vineyard is right next door).

With the paella the wine was a dream. For comparison’s sake I opened a 2006 Siduri Cargasacchi Pinot. (If I’d had a recent Sanford & Benedict that would have been better but I didn’t.). You can see Cargasacchi right across Santa Rosa Road, so the two wines shared the same, or nearly the same, terroir. The Siduri is a wonderful wine — I scored it 92 points for Wine Enthusiast — but the minute Keith tried it, right after the old S&B, he pouted and said, “It tastes horrible!” No, it wasn’t horrible, it is a very good Pinot Noir, but everything is relative; and perhaps nothing in our sensory experience is as relative as when, and under what circumstances, you taste wine. The 3-1/2 year old tannins in the Siduri were hard as nails, after the silk of the S&B. The Siduri’s fruit was too bold, too aggressive, compared to the older wine’s discretion; it was like (and I’ve made this analogy before) the late Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup: garish. The S&B by contrast was evanescent as a ghost. Not a scary, chain-rattling ghost, but a friendly familiar. A spirit. An angel.

All of which, of course, leads to the big question: Will today’s Pinot Noirs, which routinely top 14% of alcohol and frequently are more than 15%, age like that ‘79 S&B? Its alcohol was 13.2% (and there’s no reason at all to think that number was not accurate, the way I routinely doubt today’s official alcohol readings on labels). I have no way of knowing. Keith asked why a higher alcohol Pinot might not age as well and, once more, I wished Richard had been there, for he would have given us the answer. I murmured something about balance. In complex systems, the slightest inherent imbalance, no matter how barely noticeable early on, may sometimes lead to gigantic consequences, like a space satellite spinning out of orbit. Maybe the winemakers who craft these modern-style Pinot Noirs will weigh in with their opinions. Will these 2007s and 2008s be as beautiful in 31 years as that old S&B?

And this just in:

The case of the mysterious mailing list deaths

This is a true story about one of the most terrible and horrendous events in the history of the wine industry. It is a tale of murder, greed and covetuousness — and the lengths to which humans will go in order to satisfy their unnatural lusts.

It began on a dark, stormy night in December, 2008, in the Hollywood Hills, where the well-known movie producer (“Cheaper by the Dozen 2,” “All About Steve”), James Schnorrer, was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool. His body was discovered by his housekeeper, who called police. The Los Angeles coroner eventually determined that the cause of death was accidental drowning. Schnorrer’s blood was found to contain traces of marijuana, alcohol, cocaine and prescription drugs. The presumption was that he had gotten high, gone for a swim, and passed out in the water. Case closed.

Two weeks later, in Boca Raton, Florida, in the upscale Highland Beach neighborhood, Jay Silverbring, a wealthy importer of East Asian antiques, similarly was found dead in his home. His wife, Lisa, had been shopping. On her return, she discovered Silverbring face-down on the livingroom floor. There were no signs of violence, no marks on the body, nothing to indicate that a crime had been committed. The coroner determined that Silverbring had died from a massive coronary thrombosis, although he had been in excellent health. His age at the time of his death was 54.

Over the next six months, which is to say through the summer of 2009, more than sixty men and women, all in upper income brackets, were found dead, of various causes: heart attacks. Strokes. Drownings. Car accidents. Falls down staircases and off cliffs. Nine were determined to have committed suicide: five by hanging, three by slicing their wrists, and one by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. By the beginning of 2010, the number has grown to 111. That is when a private detective by the name of Maury Saperstein became involved, and eventually solved the mystery.

Saperstein had been hired by the widow of one of the dead men, a Silicon Valley millionaire who had developed a new high-speed processor, whose patent he had sold to Cisco for $45 million. Claude Recluser — that was his name — had taken his fortune and decided to live a Larry Ellison-type lifestyle. He climbed mountains, including K-2. He sailed a 32-foot schooner from La Jolla to Melbourne, alone. He practiced hang-gliding, flew his own small jet, and kayacked whitewater rivers from New Zealand to Ireland. It was Recluser who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was only 37 years old at the time, was 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighed 150 pounds, and had 2.4% bodyfat. His overall health, including his mental health, had been perfect. His widow described him as “as happy as a man could be, living his dream.” He had had no reason to kill himself, which is why the widow — Katherine Recluser — hired Saperstein. She wanted to know why her husband had killed himself, or rather, she wanted to know why someone had pushed him off the Golden Gate Bridge, making it appear that he had killed himself. For she knew, in her heart, that he hadn’t.

Saperstein worked all the usual angles. Was there another woman? Multiple women? Nothing. Claude had been, seemingly, the perfect family man, devoted to Katherine and to their two young children. Had Recluser been involved in anything shady that might have cost him his life? No; there was no evidence of anything like that at all. Did he have enemies? Had he cheated someone out of a fortune, stolen an idea, caused an enemy to be fired, wrecked someone’s business? Again, nothing. Could he have been suffering from a deep depression that not even his wife had noted? Possibly, but Saperstein interviewed all Recluser’s friends — and he had hundreds of friends — and all testified to his happiness, his balance, his overall joy in life. He had accomplished everything he had set out to do, and now was enjoying the fruits of his labors. In fact, several of his friends noted, Claude had some new ideas about technology, and was even considering getting back into the business.

Saperstein was at a dead end when one of those serendipitous things happened that so often opens a door when all options seem shut. A wine fan himself, Saperstein happened to overhear a conversation at a wine bar in downtown San Francisco. It seemed that the owner of a famous cult winery, Babbling Buzzard, which had received a 100 point review from Robert Parker, had been complaining that his mailing list — the people to whom his coveted wine was offered, on a first-come, first-serve basis each year — had diminished rapidly and mysteriously. Even granted the effects of the recession, hundreds of his mailing list customers had allowed their subscriptions to run out, and simply disappeared.

Saperstein called Mrs. Recluser. Had Claude been on the Babbling Buzzard mailing list? Why yes, Mrs. Recluser replied; he had. In fact, she had just sold off a consignment of older vintages, since she, herself, was not a fan of wine.

Saperstein did his research. He obtained from the owner of Babbling Buzzard a list of the names of former members who had allowed their subscriptions to lapse over the previous 18 months. There was a total of 177 names. Saperstein further ascertained that, of that 177, 123, or nearly 70 percent — including Claude Recluser — had died under mysterious circumstances. The victims included James Schnorrer and Jay Silverbring. All were wealthy, all lived in good neighborhoods, and all had died tragically (or allegedly had killed themselves). This was an important enough discovery by Saperstein, the kind a private detective might work through an entire career without stumbling across, but what is even more amazing is how Saperstein determined that there was a single killer, a woman who had waited for more than 5 years to get onto Babbling Buzzard’s mailing list, unsuccessfully, and who then had determined that, rather than wait for the actual mailing list customers to die or voluntarily quit so that she could be admitted, she would help them along, by killing them, one by one. How Saperstein eventually discovered the killer will be the subject of a future blog.