What was Napa Valley like when you first saw it in 1948?
Well, it's very, very difficult for someone who sees it today to understand how it was then. You'd have to think very rural. The crops were mixed. There were more acres in prunes and walnuts than there were in vineyards.

During the war, Napa Valley grew a lot of the vegetables for the Bay Area. As a matter of fact, my wife's grandfather used to raise chickens for the local restaurants.
It certainly wasn't, how should I
say, panache.

So when you moved from Manhattan, what was here?
We pulled in front of the Sutter Home Winery, the weeds were waist high, dirt floors, no electricity. They had just hooked up the water.

My mother cried for like three months. She just couldn't believe that my father would do this to her. I thought they might even break up. She was really upset.

And then worse upon worse, we couldn't find a place to live. There was this little shack behind the El Bonita motel. No bathrooms. Two bedrooms and a kitchen. Period. It was like a campground. It was pretty tough. And it was a cold winter. The winter of 1948 was one of the coldest on record and it snowed Christmas Eve. We had four to six inches. I've never seen that since.

What kind of work did you do early on?
Well, my father put me to work the first week I got here; I was 12 years old. I would work here on Saturdays and after school. I was the bottler. We had this little siphon bottler, and being a kid, you're quicker.

What kinds of wines were being produced in the Valley then? Mostly jug wines?
You did have some that just made [it into] bottles. There was BV, which was owned by the de Latours, who spent most of their time in Europe. And then there was Inglenook, [owned by] John Daniels. But he was a very wealthy guy who also owned Alaska Canners and Packers. Ships, all kinds of stuff. So this was more of a hobby for him, although he loved it dearly and certainly took it seriously. The Mondavis over at Krug were doing jug wines, and we were. Christian Brothers, they had jug wines.

But customers didn't have to buy in bottles, they could bring containers to wineries, right?
Absolutely. We'd sell it any way. We used to make all these different wines, vermouths, aperitifs, we had dessert wines and we had table wines, we even did sparkling wines. We did everything. Little batches of everything.

At what point did you become a winemaker?
Oh boy, that was a very slow, torturous process. I was discharged from the air force in 1958. And I asked my dad for a job and he said, "You know Bob, the winery really can't afford to support you and your wife so sure, come on board, but try to look for a job. Try to find something with a future."

So making wine in Napa Valley didn't have much of a future.
No, it didn't. They weren't making very much money. So then my uncle decided to retire. This was 1960. And it was, "You can make the wine Bob." Well, I had no formal training. So I went around and I started bugging people. Louis Martini, I'd go across there and I'd say "Gee how do you do this or that?" And they were really very, very nice. Louis Martini was really a super guy. And then Joe Heitz, I didn't know how to run analysis. I'd go across the street and ask Mr. Heitz how do you run a total acid and this sort of thing. And so it just evolved.

Thank God wine pretty much makes itself. The only thing you can really do is screw it up. And basically that's what I was trying to do - not to screw it up.

What really did it for me, I was introduced to a vineyard in Amador County, and I bought my first 20 tons of Zinfandel grapes from the Deaver family. And I made the wine, now this is 1968. I really thought I'd come of age with that one. I mean it was just an outstanding wine. And so we dared to charge $2.75 a bottle for it.

Did you put that one through a different process?
Until that point, we were still using the casks and barrels that pretty much we had inherited in 1946. These are old, dirty, stinky casks. They develop what they call a winery character, which sometimes is good. Basically, it's bacterial spoilage. But it gives the wine a strange taste. Some strange tastes are good, but ours wasn't. It wasn't until I started tasting other peoples' wine that I realized, "Oh my God these wines taste a lot better." So, starting with the '68, I bought used barrels, but they were very good used barrels. And they were French.

In 1975 came White Zinfandel. From 1981 to 1986, sales of that wine went from 20,000 cases to 1.3 million. In a few years it doubled again. I know what it did for the winery. What did it do to you-to your life? That's an explosion.

The '80s for us were very tumultuous. It was hard work. I developed high blood pressure. I may have anyway, who knows? I've been on medication ever since. It just was a bear.

Did you continue to make wine, or did your role have to change?
The last year I made the wine was 1985. Hands-on. Now I don't even get anywhere near there.

Do you miss that?
Oh, sure. That was the fun part. You know what's funny, though? We were doing things back then out of necessity, and now we have fancy names for it. I cannot believe how the industry has changed. Some of the buzz words today are like "rack and return." We were doing it back then but we didn't know we were doing "rack and return."

Success on a White Zinfandel scale must have meant a lot of changes for a small family-run organization. Seems like you had to bring in lots of new people very quickly. What was that like?
Well, we made sure they were breathing and they were warm, and they got a job. A lot of it came back to bite us, frankly, because you can't just hire somebody and find out later that he's a flake. It causes you all kinds of problems when you try to get rid of him. Now of course, we're very button-down, we have a human resources director and a staff. I mean, you have to do it, but back then it was, "Hey! Need a job? Get in there and start doing this."

As for being a family-run business, there must be some things that are really great about it.There must be some challenges.
You mean getting along with your brother and sister? No, no, no. There's never been any problem. Ever. First of all, if you accept the philosophy that you put the family first, that means the winery comes second. My dad said, "A man needs some place to go when he gets up in the morning." It loses something in the Italian translation. But basically, you need some place to go, some place to work, some place to express yourself, to make a difference. That's all the winery is. And so I can get up in the morning and have the greatest idea since sliced bread. I'll come in here, I'll say "Rog, [Roger Trinchero, President, Trinchero Family Estates] you gotta listen to this." He listens to me. "I don't like it." Oh. Well then of course I pull out all the bells and whistles and try to convince him. "I still don't like it." Guess what? I go back in my office and I stick the file away. I may bring it up later sometime. But I'm not going to tell him, "Oh yeah? Well I demand -!" Why? He's my brother. He's more important than the winery.

My sister [Vera Trinchero Torres is Secretary of the company] same thing. My sister takes a more passive role, except on certain things. And then my brother and I sit back and "Okay let her do it." She has certain hot buttons.

Your wall here is full of awards and certificates. How do you take that? All the honors that've come your way.
You remember George Blanda, the kicker for the Oakland Raiders? The guy was like 50 years old and still kicking. Still on the team. And he's been there forever and somebody asked him, "Geez, George, you hold all these records and honors and stuff. How do you attribute all this stuff?" And I just loved his answer. He said, "You know, if you hang around long enough, someone's bound to give you an award."

I've just been around a long time. That's all. People like giving awards. But who do you give them to? "Hey Bob's been around a long time. Let's give it to Bob." It's probably my turn.

Like jury duty.
It's like jury duty. "You've been here how many years? Fifty years? Oh yeah, it's about time you were citizen of the year. You're a nice guy."

What is next for you?
Retirement. In about 30 or 40 years. I don't know. We have a place in Hawaii; my wife wants to be there more often. We don't spend enough time there. We'll see.

Contributing Editor Andy Demsky's work appears in numerous publications including the San Francisco Chronicle and Better Homes and Gardens and Wine Business Monthly. He is a former weekend editor at the Napa Valley Register and has worked in public relations for the Napa Valley Vintners Association. He lives in Napa with his wife, Katy, one-year-old son, Willem, and their small brown dog, Harriet.