I loved meeting with Lou Foppiano, Sr. Lou is what Sonoma used to be about. Lou was more grape farmer than winemaker. I can close my eyes and imagine Lou fifty years ago sliding open the old barn door. His old winery cold, wet and musty. His fermentation tanks concrete with wide open tops. It’s cold. He is lanky. His heavy wool shirt tucked into his jeans making him look even skinnier. The steam is showing with each breath. He climbs the ladder to the top of one of the fermenting tanks and looks down. The cap is still steamy, fully raised and to his horror he sees perfectly preserved in the purple cake of grape skins and stems the tiny barefoot prints of his two young boys. They had entered the winery on their own, their imaginations captured by the secret cellar. How fun to run across an open tank of grapes and not fall in! Years later both boys would understand death as one lay failing - a victim of Leukemia. Only Lou could understand how close they were to death that day, the atmosphere inside a fermenting tank about as friendly as the moon. It was some twenty years later when I first met Lou. I was a college friend of the boy who was lost. You would meet with Lou in his office just off the lab in those days. There were always Chihuauas around him. You would be working on a deal and the dogs would be crawling up his arm and sitting on his shoulders. I can close my eyes and see Lou laughing, sharing some story about his buddies Julio and August. Lou is in his nineties now and still working.

August Sebastiani was something special. He created the Sebastiani brand from its roots as a bulk winery. The winery sells fewer cases now than when August was alive and running it. I used to make wine in another winery and sell it to Mr. Sebastiani. We did business for several years, but he never called me by name. I was always, “young man.” August would invite me to meet with him in his office. It is true that he always wore bib overalls. After a few warm, cordial comments he would invite his lab guy and his winemaker into the office and signal them to sit on either side of me. He would then smile and ask their opinions of the wine I had shipped him. They immediately would launch into a diatribe of horrible descriptors. After a few minutes, August would raise his hand and stop them. Then he would turn to look at me, smiling like an old fox which had just cornered his next meal. “Young man,” he would say, “let’s talk about next year’s price.” He would fight me for a ¼ of a cent. We did this for several years. I was sorry when he died.

Dan Bagnani had a gift. He was a gentleman. He was Italian. He dressed beautifully in three piece suits and bow ties, except for those odd days when he would come to work in his favorite Hawaiian shirts. He preferred his champagne in a tall glass with a strawberry. He was a good friend of San Francisco’s favorite son Herb Caen and was often quoted in Mr. Caen’s columns. "Uncle Dan" is what we called him. He founded Geyser Peak Winery and Four Monks Vinegar. He sold Geyser Peak to Schlitz Brewery and Four Monks to a Japanese firm. He told me what he told many others, “Prohibition was so scary I almost stopped making wine.” He taught me the following: if you order a pasta dish with fish, never added cheese to it; if there are more than six of you at the table you can begin eating when your dish is served; Tortellini was fashioned after the navel of the Pope and not after Lucrezia Borgia or the Goddess Venus; never, ever begin a meal without a toast. The last time I saw Uncle Dan he was in the hospital. He brightened when we entered the room. He was excited to have visitors. His cafeteria tray of hospital food had just been served and a Forty Niners game was being broadcast from the television on the wall. Uncle Dan loved puns and he loved to tell stories. He wasn’t able to talk very well when we visited. I shared so many extravagant dinners in so many fancy restaurants with this elegant man and there he was, dressed in a hospital gown, sitting on the edge of his bed, eating from his hospital tray. He had just taken a bite of food when on the television Jerry Rice caught a touchdown ball. The camera focused on Rice. I looked at Uncle Dan. His eyes had that same beautiful twinkle they always had. He pointed at the television and then down to the rice on his plate. Then back at Rice on the television. I smiled and nodded my head. I will never forget that.