Passings

Warren Rossiter

Funny how things snowball. I was doing some background research on Laura Bartolozzi, recently departed, and discovered another loss to our community: Warren Rossiter passed away early in May. I remember Warren from our involvement on the first Board of the DCVA when Susan and I arrived in the Valley in 1973 and 1974. We were a bit wet behind the ears, but quickly picked up rumblings of unease over potential urban and suburban growth around our charming cow town that Healdsburg was then.

I spoke with Chris Haugsten who served with Warren on the first Board of Directors and he told me the initial impetus to organize was the possibility of a service station coming into the valley. How times have changed! Chris and Warren and a newcomer David Stare, who had just started Dry Creek Vineyard, met at the local library to figure out what to do to get "some kind of control". The Dry Creek Valley Association ensued. Seems innocent enough, this nascent effort to counter the threat of building up the valley, but it evidently raised some hackles and the founders decided it would be prudent not to take a position on the plans for Warm Springs Dam. Ever since then controversy has been the meat of the Association: should we or should we not take sides in some issue or campaign?

Warren and Chris, good friends and fellow candidates for County Supervisor at different times, collaborated on the DCVA's first newsletter called the "Expostulator". I have never seen a copy of that and would hope that some of you might have copies of early issues. Remembering the mood of the first Board I suspect it was provocative.

You Plow, I'll Drink

I wrote the following piece 8 years ago, partly as a tribute to Jim Guadagni the person who positively influenced my new life as a farmer, but also to Jim Guadagni the icon, who represented all the richness and challenge of a bygone era in Dry Creek Valley. Jim is gone now, of course, but as long as we continue to toast his memory he will continue to drive that infuriatingly slow 1956 Chevy pickup down the valley to check up on his neighbors. The jug I refer to in this piece is the purple salute to Jim that Susan and I still make Sundays in our wine cellar.

Jim Guadagni

My old neighbor Jim Guadagni was a second generation Italian farmer in Dry Creek Valley. His family moved to the area around 1900 and Jim grew up here during the inter-war and Prohibition periods. Unschooled, untraveled, and unable to read or write, Jim was nevertheless wise in the ways of people (opinionated), informed in the habits of his neighbors (nosy), and savvy in the wonders of grape growing and winemaking (if you didn’t do it his way, you weren’t doing it right). His unofficial reputation as “Mayor of Dry Creek” wasn’t for nothing.

I was a brash young newcomer to Dry Creek in the early 1970’s, and as he watched me ply my university-learned viticultural practices Jim would first needle, then kibitz, then share his own home-grown wisdom. “Don’t know nothin’ about them wire grapes”, he would say, referring to modern trellis systems, “but you plant pety-sarahs (Petite Sirah) over there by the creek and you’ll get a box to the vine.” Getting a box of grapes to the vine was tantamount to winning the lottery, so that’s what I did.

A home winemaker in his youth, Jim subscribed to the nascent cult of Zinfandel, racking by the phases of the moon and listening knowingly to the gurglings of secondary fermentation. “Malolactic” and “volatile acidity” hadn’t been coined yet but he knew when the wine was ready to drink, and also knew that the wine barrel continuously tapped for dinner beverage during the winter would provide salad dressing in the summer. A casual quaffer was his “Portagee pink”, a probably unintentional ethnic gaffe that referred to his home-made White Zinfandel; Jim was definitely ahead of his time.

A story that has stuck with me—and that is part of our inspiration for Jug Days—is Jim’s telling of ploughing hillside vineyards with his neighborhood buddy. Guiding a walking plow behind a sweating horse is the equivalent of today’s teenager’s mind-numbing lawn mowing chores. So the boys would spot a jug of red wine at one end of the rows and take turns: you plow; I’ll drink.

Jim’s jug probably came from the family barrel, but if you didn’t have your own you could go to one of several local wineries and ask them to fill ‘er up. Our jug might as well be Jim’s jug. Zinfandel mostly, it also has Cinsault (Jim used to call it Malvoise), Carignane, and Mataro (aka Mourvèdre). It’s easy drinking, not too expensive, easy to carry. So on Sundays you can come to Preston Vineyards and say “fill ‘er up.” And say hello to Jim.

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry