President's Letter

 

Gary Long, our Bob Lamborn Scholar for 2005, is St. Helena born and bred. He graduated from St. Helena High School in 1996, earned his degree in sports broadcasting from Arizona State, and worked in the tasting rooms of Charles Krug, Merryvale, Stonegate, and Sterling while concurrently completing the Wine Business Program at Sonoma State. He is now the Napa Sales Representative for Youngs Markets. He took part in the May 20 meeting of the Wine Librarians Association, will participate in our two seminars, and will assist at the annual tasting August 14.

Gary’s parents, Ron and Carolyn (talented musicians who have contributed to countless local productions) are life members of the association and probably have never missed an annual tasting! Congratulations to all the Longs and we welcome Gary to our team.

Those of you who have visited the library and enjoyed the view of our heritage vineyard out the back window will understand that we are watching with concern the process by which the City of St. Helena is opening a contiguous 5.6 acres to development. We have been promised a .3 acre “view corridor” adjacent to our tiny Barney’s Backyard vineyard on library property. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of the interested developers proposed an “open space” approach to the back of the parcel which preserved vineyards, views, and history?

With respect to the wine library collection, thanks to a generous grant, the process of binding and indexing the contents of the twenty-five years ’ worth of our own REPORTs has begun. This is wonderful original material by and about a broad range of people in the local industry which has not been readily available to scholars and historians. We are also “auditioning” a recommended service to preserve and transcribe the precious oral history tapes of the Heintz collection.

Bob and Haroline Thompson made a fascinating donation to our collection: the original photographs and working papers which resulted in the 1985 poster map published by the Napa Valley Vintners Association which separately designates vineyards owned by wineries and private growers. This map is not only beautiful, but a valuable snapshot of land ownership (Bob did all the research!) at a moment in time. A limited number of these poster maps – in their 20th anniversary year --will be available at the annual tasting for a donation of $20. Several weeks later, Alan Fowler of Alan’s Framing here in St. Helena donated two 1997 maps of French winegrowing regions (Cote de Nuits and Cote de Beaune) in which the parcels are designated by proprietor. We are grateful for these additions to our collection.

Our August weekend brings two changes of note: the Varietal Tasting Saturday, August 13, moves to a new Napa venue – COPIA, and the annual tasting the next day is a “wide open” tasting of all white wines. We hope you’ll give us your reactions to these variations to our long-established pattern.

Our association was a part of the Twenty-fifth Annual Napa Valley Wine Auction thanks to board member Bob Long. He and his wife Pat Perini included a life membership in their lot in the live auction June 4 at Meadowood Resort. The successful bidders were Phil and Monica Rosenthal of Southern California. We welcome them as life members and look forward to seeing them – and all of you – in August!

Julie Dickson, President