My former wine certification student Jenny S. is a first-year grad student in the Oenology & Viticulture Department of the University of California at Davis. Her emails about her first year have been a great read. She permitted me to reprint portions of them here. Thanks, Jenny!
I just got back from helping out at Folio, one of Michael Mondavi’s new wineries. A first year V&E master’s girl is working there for harvest so another new girl in the program went to work with her to get a feel for the winery world (since her and I are the only 2 kids in the program with no winery experience). It was fun. I bulked up my biceps doing some punch downs.
I was there about 2 weeks ago when we were visiting Napa and I managed to insult the Mondavi name infront of Robert Mondavi Jr. (not knowing who he was). Yea, leave it up to me to put my foot in my mouth … But he took it pretty well and I managed to turn it into a joke and just kept going with it.
They said they had some good laughs for the next week at my expense. Thought you would appreciate that. Some punk-ass Philadelphia kid coming out to Napa and telling Robert Mondavi that “the Mondavi’s like to throw their name around to get anything they want”
Jenny S
Keep ’em coming, Jenny!