One summer, my brother Michael and I had the responsibility of watering the vineyard, which consisted of laying irrigation pipes on a row, flooding the area, piling them on a trailer and moving them three rows down and flooding that area.  I can remember at 9 years old I used to sink almost to my waist.  Our parents only sent us with one set of pants, so we had to do laundry every night.  It sounds like a real  #*&%!  Job, but I really had a lot of fun.  (It was probably because my brother did most of the work and I just played around which in a way is very similar to today).  My praise goes out to my brother - he really has worked hard on building a recognizable and popular brand, so that my job is fun and exciting, which makes it easy for me to succeed.
 

The Honig family in the '70's
(I'm the tall kid in the striped shirt)

Motor vehicles were a very big part of our Rutherford experience.  It started with mini-bikes, then on to motorcycles,  go-carts, and tractors. Then we got into cars.  Since it was private property, the rules of the real world didn’t necessarily apply when it came to legal age of driving.  We used to take out our parents cars, but after hitting too many posts or driving them into too many ditches, our Dad decided to buy us our own “beater car” to use on the property.  It was a ‘64 Chevy with “three on the tree.” My brother and I were only 12 and 9 respectively, and we spent hours driving the car up and down the ¼ mile access road.  At the end of the road we would rotate all the tires just for fun, and we jacked the car up with a kit.  We spent hours upon hours with that car and as a parent today, paying for swim classes, afterschool programs, enrichment classes, yoga, basketball….. I understand that at $250 what a great investment it was. We later used our skills to drive grapes to the sugar shack (to measure the sugar quantity of the grapes ) and to weigh the load. Along the way we would pull-off the road and pull-off the leaves on the vines (too many leaves and they would bump down the quality rating and thus the price for the grapes).  Our final destination was too drop them off at Inglenook. 

I don’t think we were of driving age, but it was a different culture back then: We were rural –not the mega tourist attraction we are today.  Also, there weren’t too many highway patrol. (I think someone once said it was because there weren’t any Denny’s or donut shops on the Silverado Trail or Highway 29 but please don’t quote me on that). Anyway, my brother and I have turned in our love of motor vehicles for a more environmentally friendly pastime: mountain biking, which takes us into the mountains above the Napa Valley.

It was very confusing to grow up as a child around adult discussions about wine.  I was always confused when people would talk about aromas and flavors of grapefruit, lemons and limes, papaya, mango, passion fruit, red cherry, blackberry, currants. I really believed that we used to cut-up these aforementioned fruits and throw them in the barrel while the wine aged. Luckily, I know more about winemaking now.

The "Winery" in 1974

We’ve come a long way since the early days. I recently calculated that almost two million people a year taste our wine through By the Glass programs, friends sharing a glass, gifts, restaurants and retail, tasting room visitors,  wine dinners, and consumer tastings. Honig wines are represented throughout the United States, and have reached Europe and Asia. In 2008, our Sauvignon blanc was rated third on the list of Most Requested Sauvignon Blancs in the country in the Wine & Spirits Annual Restaurant Poll. Our Cabernet Sauvignon was 13^th. We get positive feedback from people and the press for making good wine the responsible way through our Solar Power and Sustainable practices.  From the time we were little boys basking in the warmth of the sun, driving motorized vehicles, and laying irrigation pipes in the Rutherford Dust, I am amazed and humbled by where we started, what we have achieved, and where we are going.