Читать книгу A Vineyard in Napa - Doug Shafer - Страница 7

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Annette, the love of my life, who is my best friend, partner, and sounding board and who loves and supports me as we share this exciting adventure called life.

To my children, Katie, Kevin, Stephen, Tate, and Remington, your love and support sustain me and have made all of this worthwhile.

Thanks of course go to my dad, John Shafer, who has been a world-class companion on this journey—a parent, mentor, and friend. And to my mom, Bett, who had such a profound effect on my life and on the early years of this winery and whose spirit I feel here every day.

This project has involved much more than simply sitting down and outlining what I remember of the past forty years. It’s involved lengthy interviews, discussions, conversations, philosophical meanderings, and editing sessions between me and my collaborator, Andy Demsky, as well as interviews with Dad; Elias Fernandez, our winemaker; David Ilsley, our director of vineyard operations; and Mary Kay Schatz, our director of marketing and administration (which actually means she’s the ring-master who runs this three-ring circus). I’d like to offer enormous gratitude to: Danny Meyer, for his friendship and the beautiful foreword he wrote for this book; Heather John, who took time out of a packed professional and personal schedule to pore over early draft material and offer equal measures of encouragement and insight; Megan Kostecka, who assisted Andy with research; Katy Howard, who helped us edit early drafts; Nancy Bialek, director of the Stags Leap District Association, for preserving an invaluable archive of papers related to the formation of the district; and to my daughter, Katie, for showing a seventy-five-page Shafer history we self-published in 2004 to literary agent Kelly Sonnack at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, who saw the possibilities of this project. Kelly worked relentlessly playing matchmaker between us and our publisher, University of California Press. Many thanks also to our editor, Blake Edgar, for his support of this project.