Dear Friends:  

Twenty-six years ago we distributed our first newsletter, the subject of which dealt the who-what-when-where-why and how there came to be an Alpen Cellars. It occurred to me that since there is a chance that the bulk of our original readers have by now either switched their liquid refreshments from Chardonnay to Ensure  or are too venerable  to remember that they once were devotees of that rascally Greek God, Bacchus, we could revisit the subject without fear of anesthetizing everyone.

Strangely the subject of wine was rarely a topic of conversation at our family dinners.  Once a year we would journey to Napa to visit friends and purchase a couple of cases of wine that would invariably last until the advent of a blue moon.  Only a heretic or a fool would have suggested that Keith might eventually acquire the sobriquet “Purple Foot.”

But to begin at the beginning.  Keith was eleven and had just announced his intention to go to college and become a forester, like his father. And of course since I was an understanding, sympathetic and loving father I said, “Then you better start saving your money ‘cause you’re not going to get any from me.”  I considered that since my parent’s game plan was relatively successful with me I would stick with the playbook. Besides, a good friend of mine, an inventor and founder of Wessex Electric, once told me, “One should not hinder his imagination with a college education.”

The matter dropped there until midway through Keith’s senior year in high school when he again broached the subject of forestry school.  Since I hadn’t followed his finances closely I was curious.  How much money had he managed to save?  He seemingly always had a job and was notoriously frugal, but I ventured to guess that even one year at a major college was a bridge too far.  And upon further inquiry I found he was close but no cigar.  Hence he reluctantly concluded that he was going to have to find a job after high school.  Shortly before graduation he received a fortuitous telephone call from his cousin, a winemaker and plant manager of Noble Winery, a bulk plant near Fresno.  He inquired whether Keith wanted a cellar job at the winery. And the rest, as they say is history: one year at Noble, two years at Shasta College in Redding, three years of enology at Fresno State University while concurrently working night shifts at Noble and, finally, a position at Korbel Champagne Cellars.

Admittedly I was incredibly dense when it came to discerning Keith’s ultimate scheme of starting a winery in Trinity County.  I only began to suspect something untoward was afoot when he telephoned from Fresno one day and requested ten years of weather data from the Weaverville and Coffee Creek Forest Service stations. He said it was for a class assignment.  I complied but found myself harboring an uneasy sense of foreboding which became despair when I discovered grape vines sprouting up like weeds around the ranch.  But before it became a fait accompli the arguments between us began in earnest.  My position was that foresters had no business investing their time and money in spindly little bushes.  The thesis had about as much effect on him as a slingshot on a grizzly bear.

Okay, so I was dragged kicking and screaming into the grape/winery business.  You would hoot and holler too if you were asked to finance a horse that was leaving the gate at 40 to 1 odds.   Oh, what the heck. I might as well come clean.  I haven’t had so much fun at anything since I acquired my Little Orphan Annie decoder ring which, if I remember correctly, turned my finger a delightful shade of green. Besides, in those days “text messaging” was thoroughly secure and free of meddlesome spying.  Unless of course you had snoopy neighbor who also drank Ovaltine from a container with a missing box top.

Every year the most frequently asked question is, “How’s the crop?” And our routine answer is “Wonderful!”  Short, sweet and factual. A similar answer this year would make Pinocchio the epitome of candor.  We were slain by arrows of late frost. Only the word “frost” conveys something far too benign, too salubrious, too warm and fuzzy cute. The truth of the matter is that were devastated by a horrific Alaskan freeze in May that destroyed our entire early growth. The harvest became problematic.

As it turned out the good news is that we did get a crop. The bad news is that it was less than 30% of normal.  The good news is that we are saving a bundle on glass, corks, capsules and labels. The bad news is that we will run out of product by the end of summer.  The good news is that we might have worried had this occurred in bad economic times. The bad news is that it has.

Despite my tongue-in-cheek protestations we are in good financial shape but we are, indeed, going to run out of some varietals much earlier than normal.  Because of the additional year in oak that the red wine requires, there will be no shortage of this product until the following year. Once again we wish to thank all of you for your loyalty and patronage.  It’s very gratifying.

Mark Groves