Tony Horwitz: His blog details the "voyage long and strange" that is a book tour. Photo from voyagelongandstrange.com

I hit a low point on my first tour for The House of Mondavi on one of those days that come so seldom to Chicago. It was last June and the weather felt balmy, with the last burst of spring blooms still on display. Who would want to sit indoors on an afternoon like that?

Few did. At a bookstore known for its well-attended author events, only three people showed up (excluding my very patient Aunt Gene and Uncle Jack, who had sat through my book talk several times already.) I’d brought two bottles of wine – one from the Robert Mondavi winery and the other, a Charles Krug, from the Peter Mondavi side.

That was my mistake: the warm weather, combined with the alcohol, literally lulled a third of my non-family audience to sleep. The book lover who come to my talk that day had her head thrown back, producing a soft, ladylike snore.

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Christina Meldrum

I read the galleys of my friend Christina Meldrum’s stunning debut novel, Madapple, over a single, rainy afternoon a few months ago. I refused to get up off the couch, despite the requests of my husband and sons, until I’d finished the last page. What a book! I truly couldn’t put it down. Christina has written a gripping page-turner that explores the dichotomy between religion and science. Reading it, I felt as if I’d entered into a dream state where nothing was quite what it seemed.

Christina began her book nearly a decade ago, while she was still working as a high-powered litigator at a big law firm’s San Francisco office. She would rise at five a.m. daily and write in the darkness of dawn for about an hour, her computer providing the only light, before heading to her San Francisco office. She had majored in religion as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and then went on to Harvard’s storied Graduate School of Law. Although she had the drive and intelligence to be recruited as an associate by one of the top law firms in the world, Christina didn’t find what she was looking for in the practice of that profession.

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Above, an invitation to Burlingame's library fundraiser ... Image from wincountrygetaways.com

... While in Salinas in 2004, readers protest "death of the libraries." Photo from indymedia.org

On Saturday, May 3, the Burlingame Public Library Foundation hosted a lunch that was as much about building community as it was about raising funds. As one of the organizers put it, the afternoon was an exercise in “friend-raising.”

Michael Krasny, the host of the San Francisco Bay Area public radio station KQED’s Forum program, talked about his new book, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life, published this year by Stanford University Press.

Michael shared his often hilarious experiences interviewing everyone from Bill Clinton to the Merry Pranksters’ Ken Kesey, detailing the journey that took him from host of a show called “Beyond the Hot Tub” in swinging 1970’s Marin (the county north of San Francisco best known for hot tubs, peacock feathers, and the self-actualization movement EST) to “Bay Area cultural institution,” as author Michael Chabon describes him.

Henry H. Neff, a teacher at the private San Francisco boys’ high school Stuart Hall, spoke about his experience writing The Tapestry, a series of young adult novels that our 10-year-old son, who’s anxiously awaiting the next installment, describes as “like Harry Potter, but even better.” Charming, funny, and articulate, Henry’s next book comes out this fall – news that our son was delighted to hear.

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Michael Chiarello with guests at a past Bud Break Party (above) and with his own budding progeny, Aidan (below) Photos from NapaStyle.com and ChiarelloFamilyVineyards.com

Michael Chiarello is at home, making risotto alla primavera for 130 or so of the best customers of Chiarello Family Vineyards. He tastes a bit of the rice and parmesan cheese mixture, finds it to his liking, and orders it dished onto the scores of white plates which are laid out and waiting, where it will be topped off with a soffrito of spring vegetables.

Wearing his white chef’s coat emblazed with a burgundy emblem signifying his kudos from the James Beard Foundation, he dashes out of his modern farmhouse-style St. Helena home, navigates around the swimming pool, and bounds down a few stone steps, to a 125-foot table set up in the vineyards where he and his wife Eileen are hosting a late-afternoon supper for their best customers in the vineyards.

Barely pausing to say a few words to his guests, most of whom have bought a case or more of his wine to qualify for an invitation to join the day’s hospitality, he dashes back up the steps, towards the kitchen.

“Now, now!” he snaps at the waiters ferrying plates of risotto to the table. The temperature in the vineyard hovers around 85 degrees, even at five in the afternoon, so there seems little risk of the dishes cooling down in the moments it takes to deliver them from kitchen to table. He’s paired the course with a 2006 Giana Zinfandel, named after one of his three daughters.

Continue reading "Just a guy from Turlock: Michael Chiarello and lifestyle marketing " »

Kim Stare Wallace -- is she drinking a Meritage? Photo from Dry Creek Vineyard

As a newcomer to the wine world when I began The House of Mondavi, I discovered that its inhabitants spoke in a distinct language not so easily grasped by outsiders. When Michaela Rodeno, CEO of Napa Valley’s St. Supéry winery, first introduced me to the word “Meritage,” I had no idea what it meant. But she patiently explained it to me … almost, but not quite, concealing her surprise that I didn’t know it already.

“Meritage” is an invented name that grew out of a national contest to come up with a way to describe blended wines. As so many other things in the wine industry, it was born out of a response to government regulations. In 1985, U.S. federal regulators restricted the wording used on wines containing less than 75% of a single grape variety to the not-very-elegant sounding “table wine,” rejecting such descriptors as “Bordeaux-blend.”

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The future of community? Photo from smh.com.au (Sydney Morning Herald)

Writing, by its nature, is a solitary undertaking. Reading, too, is done mostly on one’s own. So why not bring writers together with readers in a virtual community?

Redroom.com is the one of several social networks devoted to the love of literature. Yet, it is pulling ahead in the race by attracting big names. Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, Jon Stewart, Salman Rushdie, and even Barack Obama are Redroom.com members. So are lesser known writers such as Belle Yang, author of The Odyssey of a Manchurian and Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders; Bill Hayes, author of The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy; and Peter Coyote, best known as an actor but also the author of Sleeping Where I Lie.

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Lunch in The Grotto Photo from sfgrotto.org

This month, I’ve been spending time at The Grotto, the famed San Francisco writers' community which is home to such West Coast literary luminaries as Po Bronson, David Ewing Duncan, ZZ Packer, Jason Roberts, Julia Scheeres, Ethan Watters, and many others. One of my favorite parts of making the trek to the Grotto’s offices on 2nd and Bryant Streets is lunchtime, when Grotto dwellers emerge from their offices, where they’ve been tapping away in the dim glow provided by their laptops, to gather in the brightly painted conference room for brown-bag lunches and conversation with other members of the tribe.

It’s not unusual for guests to join Grottoites over lunch. On Monday, Van Jones, founder of Green for All and co-writers of a forthcoming book called The Green-Collar Economy, joined us. Van, who lives in Oakland, was recently a guest on The Colbert Report and admitted to having been flummoxed by his host’s comments (including one about “green” love machines and another about “unicorn herding”). That prompted Laura Fraser to share her experience of having to strip down to her knickers while her suit was being ironed prior to her appearance on one of the network morning shows.

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