Editor's Letter

Dear Reader,

A few months ago, during an NVWLA board meeting, with our mind on the 50^thAnniversary of the Annual Tasting, we asked about topics for the REPORT. Casting their eyes about the Napa Valley Wine Library wing of St. Helena Public Library, board members were nearly unanimous with: “the portraits,” the 18 black and white photographs on exhibit at the library that were taken by Richards P. “Dick” Lyon, and are of Napa Valley winegrowers and winemakers Dick characterizes as “founders [who] never lost their joy in the vineyards and their desire to pass on what they learned to anyone interested enough to ask the questions.”

Dick chose practitioners he both knew well and had never met, but thought he ought to photograph as he came to terms with his own retirement. Three founders of NVWLA, Maynard Amerine, Louis P. Martini and André Tchelistcheff, are among the portraits. Dick, himself, was a board member of NVWLA, its president for two years, from 19992000, and a board member emeritus since 2006.

When Dick and his family moved to Napa in 1970, Dick commuted to an East Bay medical practice for 15 years. He retired at 67 and he and his wife moved to the top of Stone Crest where Dick kitted out a closet as a darkroom and ranged over the valley with camera and video recorder in hand. He had taken pictures since he was a boy, and as a general and then pediatric urologist says a camera helped amplify his powers of recall, on rounds and in the operating room. For several years Dick researched grape growing and winemaking, drawing from what he characterizes as “a living library from which to learn. “ He had also become a home winemaker, thanks to his Stonecrest neighbors, Lorrain and Tom Kongsgaard. In 1991 Dick published a photographic essay, Vine to Wine, followed by 100 Napa County Roadside Wildflowers, while he contributed taped interviews with vintners to the Napa Valley Wine Library’s collections. Dick’s most recent work, A Process Mind: A Timeless Journey of Identifying Problems and Creating Effective Solutions, was published in 2010.

We hope you enjoy this celebration of the collection of vintners caught in full stride by Dick Lyon. Dick was most helpful in readily providing his own prints and information about each shot. “At 95,” he says, “it is more important than ever to follow one of my precepts for success: Do it Now.”

Diana H. Stockton