Right now--as Lake, Sonoma, and Napa counties burn--I believe northern Californians should review an incredibly senseless policy instituted by the forest management company responsible for 438,000 square miles of forest mostly in Mendocino County, in order to prevent future disasters. A Santa Rosa Press Democrat article from last spring was entitled 'Fire officials decry timber management procedure as unsafe' (Glenda Anderson - The Press Democrat - April 19, 2015). The article pointed out how local fire authorities strongly considered the "hack and squirt" practice of the Mendocino Redwood Company as unsafe.
The company has slashed millions of unwanted nut oak trees and squirted chemicals into the gashes in order to kills them. Then they have just left all those dead trees standing. They have vehemently defended this policy as "safe"... insisting for years that leaving the dead trees is "good for the forest" (their words) in sessions of the local county board of supervisors. Now that this nightmare has unfolded, I believe it's time to utilize the arm of the law to compel them to fix the land that they have made so unsafe.
The primary owner of the Mendocino Redwood and Humboldt Redwood Companies is the Fisher family of San Francisco, which also owns The Gap, and whom owns an environmental tax write-off foundation called Pisces. This still-ongoing fire is one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of this area, if not the worst. This foundation appears to be more interested in United Nations initiatives, such as Agenda 21. Why can't we just take care of our own country? How about just making the land they are responsible for safe?
They've made it very clear that cutting and hauling away the dead trees is too expensive, and they have killed a staggering number of trees since 2001. Ignoring the urging of fire officials, sacrificing safety for money, may lead to a future tragedy unless something is done. What's more important, public safety or the Fisher family's profit margins??
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Recently my Mother received a fancy post card ad from LakeCountyWineries.com. It was in regard to their first big event of the year, the Lake County Wine Adventure 2015. It runs for three days (Fri-Sun) from May 15 to 17. The information is on the website. When we think of northern California wine, especially in regards to the history of the Cisalpine people, we think of Napa or Sonoma counties. However, Lake County is part of that history, and is emerging as an important center for the multi-billion dollar California wine industry.
Much of northern California looks so much like the "northern nations." Napa can look like Tuscany, Santa Cruz like the Apennine Mountains, Sonoma like Piemonte, and Lake County like the "Lakes region" of Lombardy. The self-determinist Cisalpine people and early northern California was a perfect match. Whenever I drive down 101 in Sonoma County at night, and I see the old farm properties with perhaps just a few lights on... as if a scene from a century ago with a few oil lamps on against a black surrounding landscape.
An ancient name
I recall, when I read the book 'History of the Lombards', the old Langobard names. Most often they were typical ancient Germanic names. However, one seems to be more rooted in the Cisalpine culture. According the the website BehindTheName.com, the name "Romilda" is "Italian" and "ancient Germanic." It means "famous battle" from the Germanic elements hrom ("fame") and hild ("battle"). Although once used as both feminine and masculine, naturally it would be feminine today unless altered with an "o" at the end. It's a name which became more well-known due to the Harry Potter character Romilda. The noteworthy nineteenth century opera singer Romilda Pantaleoni was from Udine.
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[Above: A view of the vineyard of the Ceago Vinegarden on Clear Lake]
With September being touted as "California Wine Month," a couple of weeks ago many Californians received an insert entitled 'California Wine' in their newspapers. This was courtesy of the Wine Institute, which is called "The Voice of California Wine." With the recent passing of Robert Montavi, who probably did more to put Napa and California wine on the map than anyone else, I thought this would be an interesting thing to take a peek at.
The first advertisement was from Gallo Family Vineyards, which is the third generation of the Gallo California winemakers. I believe the Gallo family is originally from Piemonte. On the first page, Wine editor Jon Bonne states "Wine is an enormous part of California's past, present, and future. And California has an undeniable love affair with the vine, buying 192 million cases of California wine each year. Another 50 million is shipped around the world, according to the Wine Institute. Yet those numbers barely define the success story. What's more amazing is how broad the wine industry's growth has been. Last year, California hosted 2,687 bonded wineries - more than triple the number in 1990."
There was one advertisement to promote wines from the Lodi area. "Lodi" is sister cities of Lodi in Lombardia, where it gets it's name. You might recall also, that the old Italian Swiss Colony winery was based in Asti, California, named after Asti in Piemonte. This advertisement was paid for by the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission. On their website is a list of the local wineries, which includes a number of families, whose origin is particularly from around the Liguria area. It would take a little too long to go into all of them here now. Hopefully we can focus on some of these in the future.
Naturally this insert focused mainly on Napa and had a number of articles on winemaking. One advertisement was from the Napa Valley Vintners, and they have a very informative website. Other links that I would like to add here are the the Russian River Wine Road, the Livermore Valley Wine Country, and the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance, which all had ads as well.
There are some newer up-and-coming wine regions. One such area is Lake County, which is a very picturesque area that surrounds Clear Lake, and is about 100 miles north of San Francisco. If Napa County has the perfect weather and conditions for winemaking, then Lake County is just north of it. I had visited a few of the wineries in the county several years ago. One of those was the Ployez Winery, I met the owner Gerald Ployez, who was hospitable enough to allow us to wine taste after hours. He is from France, so there must be some key reason that would bring him all the way to specifically Lake County to grow wine. The Lake County Winegrape Commission had a full-page ad in the insert.
Another winery in Lake County (among many) is the Rosa d'Oro Winery. It's owned by the Buttitta family, which apparently has long roots in winemaking, but without a label of their own until they moved to Lake County. Another winery, which caught my eye, was the Monte Lago Winery. Expecting to read about an Italian family, I saw where it is owned by a woman of Indian descent, who claims that winemaking goes back far in India. The first known production of wine seems to go back to Sumeria, Persia, and the Levant about 6,000 years ago, by ancient Sumerian, Persian, and Phoenician type peoples. However, it was really in ancient Greece that winemaking, in the form that we know today, got it's start.
