When I was a tadpole my mother used to say, “Son...” (Mother frequently called me son when the words “Whelp” and “Pissant” failed to get my attention.) “Son,” she would say. “You and a bar of Ivory Soap have something in common. You’re both ninety-nine and forty-four percent pure. Except in your case it’s pure “Blarney.”

This was when she was feeling particular Irish and loving. When she was feeling less than Irish and loving she would accuse me of having a “convenient” memory and the attention span of a gnat.  Naturally, I thought her opinion lacked merit and was outlandishly prejudicial.  There was nothing wrong with my memory. Granted, it’s verbalization was perhaps a shade questionable, but the memory itself was sound as a yen. The crux of the matter was that mother was a stickler for exactitude and straying an iota from the truth was tantamount to becoming a first cousin to Herr Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of popular Enlightenment and Propaganda.

As the years progressed mother never curtailed her efforts to mold me into a junior Diogenes. Alas, it came to nothing. And as proof I submit 27 years of Alpen Cellars newsletters. Take, for example, the mountain lion incident of a few years ago. I wrote that the lion was ‘precisely” eleven feet from where I was pruning. Poppycock. The actual distance was later measured at twelve feet nine inches. And in 2003 when I stated that Trina, an employee, was “always on time. Diligent to a fault, hard working and never complains.” A total fabrication. She complained incessantly. And the beat goes on, ad infinitum.

Okay, so why the sudden candor? Well it just occurred to me that since this will be my last newsletter I should make a clean breast of it.  Admittedly, the newsletter hyperbole was not so flagrant to force Keith into wearing a ski mask and hood in public, but invariably he would sigh wearily and pronounce “Dad, you have a convenient memory.”

In any event, it’s been a fun ride. I’ve enjoyed it. And just remember, old foresters never die. They just go the way of the passenger pigeon, the dodo bird and hopefully, the spotted owl.

Now to finish the “winery” newsletter I’ll turn it over to my son Keith, who unlike his father knows something about wine and has never told a lie.  God, there I go again!

Mark Groves

Thanks Dad,

I must apologize; I’m running very late in finishing this year’s “Spring” news letter. But since it’s approaching Father’s Day during the completion of the letter, I thought it appropriate to tell a story on my father. Of all  the things my father has done for me, the  first story that popped into my head was when I was raising sheep for 4H, as a young teenager. My father had built a pen thought strong enough to keep the bears and mountain lions at bay, only to have a pack of neighborhood dog’s chase my sheep out of the pen, cross the field, and straight into the creek.  As you can guess, sheep with 3 inches of wool on their backs are not the best swimmers. So as the sheep went bobbing down Coffee Creek my father yelled “jump in the truck, we can catch him at the bridge”.  Racing down our ½ mile driveway with a cloud of dust billowing behind us, we passed the sheep. Reaching the bridge, dad flung the door open grabbing his lariat and ran into the river roping the sheep with the skill of John Wayne.  But the swim was too much, and the sheep was unconscious, so my father immediately started CPR.  As he worked tirelessly to revive the sheep it was sinking in to me that this was not going to end well.  As I look back, such devotion in a father is rare thing. So the lesson was that, farming is a tough business and Pinot Noir goes well with leg of lamb.

Thank you for your support,

Keith Groves