After finishing design school, my mom took me to Napa and Sonoma as my graduation present. At the time, it was simply a trip to celebrate finishing school. Looking back, it became something much more. It was the beginning of my relationship with wine.
I remember loving everything about being in wine country. The air, the smells, the rows of vineyards stretching across the landscape and, oh yes, the wine.
One of the wineries we visited was Robledo Family Winery. Their story stayed with me just as much as the wine did. The Robledo family came to the United States from Mexico and built their lives working in the vineyards of California before eventually establishing their own family winery.
There was something special about being there. You could feel the history, the work and the pride behind the vineyard. It made me realise that wine isn't simply something in a glass. There are people, families, places and generations of knowledge behind it.
We also visited Gundlach Bundschu, and its history is quite something.
The winery traces its roots back to 1858, when Bavarian-born Jacob Gundlach purchased 400 acres in Sonoma and named the estate Rhinefarm. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed the company's offices and wine vaults, including a staggering one million gallons of wine, as well as three family homes. The family continued producing wine from Rhinefarm until Prohibition forced the winery to close in 1919.
Decades later, Jim Bundschu began replanting Rhinefarm with premium wine grapes, and in 1973 the family celebrated the first crush of the revived Gundlach Bundschu Winery. Today, the family wine story has reached its sixth generation.
I love stories like this because they make wine feel so much bigger than what is in the glass. You're tasting a place, but you're also getting a glimpse into the people, history and determination that kept that place going.
At the time, of course, I wasn't thinking about any of this academically.
I wasn't analysing climate or soils. I wasn't mentally cataloguing grape varieties. There were definitely no tasting grids involved.
I just knew that I loved being there.
Years later, when I began studying wine seriously, drawing vineyards, making maps, creating illustrated notes and eventually building Vinlore, I could trace a little line all the way back to that graduation trip with my mom.
Sometimes a passion doesn't announce itself when it arrives. Sometimes it begins with a trip with your mom, a vineyard and a really good glass of wine.
That was mine.
Source: Gundlach Bundschu Winery.