Day of the Mustard Wars

Spicey surprises await everywhere.

Despite the spring Saturday's overcast, the Mustard Festival event scheduled for Copia that afternoon displayed hundreds of people having a fine time sampling a myriad of products derived from the seed that brings forth the tiny yellow blossoms. Mustards by the hundreds seemed to be available, and vendors were more than happy to tell you everything you wanted to know about how things were made. We found it enlightening, for instance, to discover that many of the vendors did not, in fact, make mustard, but rather bought it in bulk and added different flavorings. But they started with only the finest mustards, we were assured, and we could not assume that this practice was in any way cheating.

We learned that extra virgin olive oil can be quantified, in that olive oil must have an acid level of less than one percent to be so designated. This nugget of trivia we owed to a completely ingenuous, perfectly pleasant woman in her thirties, a pretty, blonde farmer's wife from Oroville. She lived in the San Francisco Bay Area when she met her farmer more than a dozen years ago, and departed for the hinterlands for a more authentic, satisfying life. She seemed happy, and bubbled with enthusiasm, though betraying some annoyance at the fact that her family was among the first to begin manufacturing olive oil in California, and now there are many dozens of producers if not hundreds.

She liked this Mustard Festival in Napa, especially because she found the people so nice and down to earth. Her husband, she said sympathetically, had been obliged to attend a San Francisco event populated with wine and food snobs of various sorts. All very uptight.

Not very far away we encountered another insight into this whole olive thing which left us with a light heart and hope for the future, rather exaggerated emotions given the small, actual import of the information gleaned.

Yet another pleasant woman, but of more advanced years, told us about the non-profit olive foundation she served and the charming story behind it.

Just northeast of the Santa Barbara Mission is another, lesser known legacy of Father Serra and his colleagues, called La Purisima. Sometime in recent years, a woman explored the grounds of this out of the way place and came upon an ancient olive grove of which no one seemed to be aware. She investigated, and came to believe that it was possible that they'd been planted by the original missionaries in the 1700s. She helped herself to a sample of one of the trees, and arranged for DNA tests. We're ignorant of the details, but ultimately, she established that the olive trees at La Purisima matched up with trees in Spain.

So now this organization devotes its efforts to propagating cuttings from this grove, in order that descendents of the earliest European olive trees in the west--if not North America--can grow and blossom everywhere.

The tents housing the festival ranged from just outside the main building to across the street, where a music venue had been created and a jazz band performed. Display booths included sellers of high-end stoves, high-end kitchens, high-end floors. Spas offered for sale their specially made body lotions--made from mustard, too?--and resorts pushed glossy brochures of their exclusive establishments to passersby. We caught a snippet of a cooking demonstration, and learned from the chef at Silverado Country Club that the citrus in lemon and lime "cooks" meats or fish with an acidic reaction with protein.

And we mustn't forget the TaTa girls, as we will forever think of them. Not quite beautiful, they were stunning nonetheless as a result of cosmetic surgery and an impressive expertise at applying makeup. Their aftermarket breasts were wonders to behold regardless of your individual proclivities, and they wore tops to display them, strapless blouses that needed continual adjustment. The TaTas were up to the task, and their mobile displays turned heads, male and female, throughout the day. They seated themselves near us at one point in the afternoon, and we engaged them in conversation, inquiring, rather insensitively we now believe, as to what it was they did.

They all but hooted in derision, but politely restrained themselves; the permed blonde smiled wide and looked blankly, speechless; the brunette said, with hesitation and a knowing smirk, that she was a personal assistant. What they did, of course, was enjoy themselves, and we trust that they enjoy themselves often and extensively.

We met a pretty, young girl working the counter inside the main building--we needed something to lean on as we imbibed--who revealed that she liked working at Copia well enough, but felt rather overwhelmed at all the advice she received from her elders; everyone was her elder there, and the advice was incessant. At the same time, some of the managerial sort discussed the great issue of the moment: where to place the cow to best effect, presumably the mannequin cow, decorated as if by Hindus. A silver-haired gentleman in the preppy garb of his youth ruminated over this topic with a younger female in lavender satins, along with a cosmopolitan thirty-something garbed in the tight, brownish fashions of the day; they gestured with cell phones in hand. Having seen the resolution of this weighty matter, we felt we could depart.

Then we ran into an old acquaintance, whom we first became aware of a decade ago. It was at the Rutherford Grill, where we waited for a table with a friend. The friend knew the man in question, and after he left, our friend explained that the fellow had been some sort of maintenance person and was by then a winemaker. He seems now to be very successful, and he demonstrates a considerable gratitude at his good fortune. There is a downside, however, and a backstory to which I was privy.

Unbeknownst to us at the time of this initial meeting, his father-in-law "Ralph" was an old family friend we'd known for decades. Our family owned the mountain ridge opposite his, and after his wife died, our parents drew him into their rather extensive social network, providing him with a lifetime's worth of dinners, parties and shared drinks.

Ralph remarried a pretty divorcee with several children, and it was not too long before his old friends began to hear his complaints of feeling hen-pecked and exploited by the new wife. For decades this social circle alternately included Ralph and his wife, "Joanne," in all of the group events, while on the other hand clucking about the wife in her absence when Ralph stopped by for a drink.

One day, 20 years into this marriage, Joanne almost died--perhaps she was choking on something--and Ralph saved her life with quick thought and immediate action. His old friends laughed at and chided him good-naturedly afterward--What were you thinking, Ralph?--and he laughed along with the rest.

Meanwhile, despite this apparent unhappy mismatch, we could not help but observe that Joanne and her kids provided a family to Ralph, which he would not otherwise have had. He got along with the children, who were by then adults, and the marriage and its dysfunctionality seemed little different from that evident in many others we saw. Without his wife's family, Ralph would have been lonely as well as unhappy, and he would have been bereft of the many laughs provided by his wife's antics and shared with his separate friends.

Then the wine-making son-in-law convinced Ralph to construct a winery on the land down from the house, and the existing property seems to have been used as collaterol. We don't know the details, but Ralph's friends predicted disaster for him, speculating that he'd lose everything.

Instead, things worked out quite nicely. Ralph enjoyed the construction--he was that kind of man--and he revelled in the work with his son-in-law. Before long they were crushing grapes, making and tasting wine, entertaining on the property, and Ralph wallowed in his role as the paterfamilias of an incipient wine dynasty.

This state of affairs continued for a few years, allowing Ralph to develop a deep sense of satisfaction about his new situation; this was how things stood when he died rather unexpectedly, with a minimum amount of discomfort or bother.

We found the sizable wake a source of endless irony and amusement. The vast majority of attendees derived from the disdained wife's side; her kids and their friends told nostalgic Ralph stories, drank toasts to his memory and sent him off grandly. On several occasions at this gathering, we encountered the friends he knew through our family, who clucked as always about Ralph's exploitation at the hands of these people who had, in fact, provided him with an extensive and loving family for almost 30 years.

A couple of years passed, and we ran into one of Ralph's step-children by Joanne. We asked how things were going.

Not good, he said. I don't want to get involved, and I don't want to talk about it.

We had no idea what "it" was.

But oddly enough, things had worked out somehow as predicted by all the detractors of the winery idea.

It turns out that Joanne hadn't really understood that her house could be jeopardized by the winery's fortunes, and she became aware of this during her son's-in-law attempt to refinance for an expansion. She promptly ended up at war with her son-in-law and daughter, and we've heard of all manner of bad feelings and litigation.

We don't presume that anyone is clearly right or wrong in this; we certainly know nothing of the details. It just seems to be the product of catastrophic misunderstanding. We believe that the winery's doing fine, and Joanne is secure in her house and land.

But much of the family isn't talking, and the son-in-law purses his lips and speaks in low, deliberate tones when discussing the situation.

None of this would have happened if Ralph were still alive, he said. And I'm never talking to Joanne again.

The event was almost over for the day by this time, and the overcast had burned off. We walked toward the setting sun and the very hills where this sad story had taken place.

Ralph and his old friends were no doubt having a great laugh at the expense of the living. We felt fortunate to be in on the joke as few others.

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Copyright WineMerchant.com 2006