I met Walter Cronkite’s wife in 1982. I was standing in the middle of the desert on a November day with my good friend Kim Neufeld and his father, Quent. Quent was a producer for CBS News for a number of years and he was one of the finest men I knew. My dad was very fond of him and his son, Kim, and I were very close. Heck, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time with Kim.

I met Cronkite’s wife standing next to what was essentially an RV upon the roof of which sat Mrs. Cronkite’s husband and other CBS news folks, including Mr. Neufeld. We were there for the second landing of the Space Shuttle Columbia at Edwards Air Force Base, November 16, 1982.

Mrs. Cronkite was the epitome of “down to earth.” It was cold in the desert that morning, very cold, actually. Mrs. Cronkite wasn’t worried, she said, because Walter was wearing his longjohns. It was a moment of candor that I realized then, at 17, I was privy to and it was also a moment that was powerful for me.

Aside from a deep and abiding fascination with aviation, that continues to this day, I also had a deep and abiding fascination for journalism which is the one I followed into a career. Walter Cronkite had a deep personal impact on me.

I remember hearing him every night in my home throughout my childhood as my father watched the news each evening. I remember reading Skywalking by Dale Pollock, a book about George Lucas, another personal hero of mine, and how Lucas during the 70’s, watched the CBS evening news every night. He loved watching Cronkite. I think most Americans did.

When I heard tonight that Mr. Cronkite had died, I was a-flood with emotions. From my fascination with the man and what he represented in honesty, sincerity and focus—to his retirement and final admission of his liberal bias that, regardless of what TV networks claim, really opened the flood gates of the bias in American media, Cronkite was an American icon; indeed, he was America for a time.

He lived a full and good life and I have no doubt that he was a good man. What I know for sure is that as a member of the “new media,” I owe much to Mr. Cronkite on both a personal and professional level. From his true and serious attempt to be impartial to his being honored with “the most trusted man in America” moniker, Walter Cronkite was America, for better, worse and everything in between. I’m just honored that, while I never met him personally, I got a chance to see him work up close and when his wife told me he was wearing longjohns, I was made aware that he was a human being. “He was a man, all in all. I shall never look on his like again…”

The wine industry is not immune from this crisis and this is the story of one crisis that is in a crisis. Midlife Crisis, a Paso Robles winery begun by Kevin and Jill Mittan in 2004, is closing their doors forever on July 26.

I first met Kevin and Jill at the 2005 Paso Robles Wine Festival where I, along with thousands of my closest friends, gathered in the downtown park to taste the locals’ creations. Kevin and Jill had begun their winery hardly a year before. The Hollywood television writers leveraged a bit of property income and some good wages and bought some land in Paso Robles as well as a couple tons of grapes. It was here they were going to turn their “Midlife Crisis” into a dream—the dream of a winery that the two of them would work together, along with their friends and their dogs—and slowly make the transition from downtown Hollywood to the rolling hills of Paso Robles.

Weekends were long slogs of 3 hour drives as the couple left their L.A. County home and made it up to their new venture, dogs in tow, and a heart for serving customers.

They did these things well and their wines were quite good. I still remember their Sangiovese with great satisfaction and I still have the fun little trinket rubber car (a Porsche, I think) that they gave us as part of their opening celebration. My daughter played with the car as a toddler and it’s still in our playroom along with a lot of other forgotten and broken things.

“For those of you looking for a quick fix of wine or a great time, leave the website now,” the couple wrote on their web page. “We began on a dream and a shoestring budget and will end the dream because of nightmares not of our creation.”

Therein lies the real sadness. As a country, many of us are fighting battles that we are not choosing and we are giving up because of overwhelming odds. But that just doesn’t feel American, does it? And yet, it’s happening. Who am I to say whether Midlife Crisis should have survived as a winery? I understand business and I know that if MLC had been selling buckets of wine out the door, they wouldn’t be closing and while, that’s really the bottom line, it may not be the real point.

The real point is that Kevin and Jill have lived the dream and now are watching the dream die. “Tis better to have loved and lost…” and all that. But, in the end, the death of a dream is a hard thing to watch. And when hard times claim good businesses for bad reasons, it is good to pause and to reflect.

Kevin and Jill, I hope that Phoenix-like, your dream can rise one day, if it’s really what you want. Your wines deserve a wider audience and the memory of Midlife Crisis Winery is one I know I will carry with me.

Mike Sinor, Ancient Peaks Winery’s winemaker, is passionate about the place that has become his palette as he creates art for other people’s palates. “The vineyards here are incredible.” Sinor knows of what he speaks.

These vineyards were planted by the Mondavi family just north and east of San Luis Obispo, CA directly off the 101 Freeway in a town called Rancho Santa Margarita in the 1990’s. But that’s not the beginning. The beginning goes well back to the beginnings of California’s Mission heritage.

Mike Sinor inspects Oyster Ridge's 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon. Photo by Brian Davis.

Junipero Serra came through Santa Margarita establishing something called an “asistencia” here. An “asistencia” was a place to rest or replace horses, get water and food, and relax in between the Missions along California’s coast. The good Father planted several varieties of what are now known as “Mission grapes” in some of these places and Santa Margarita was one of these.

By the time the Mondavis planted the vineyards, it was apparent that the place was special. The calcareous soils, enriched by ancient oyster shells and other sea bed materials, provided a perfect environment for excellent drainage and abundant minerality.

Geologically, the vineyard sits at around 1100 feet and is, according to Ancient Peaks co-owner Karl Wittstrom, located at a spot where the tectonic plates meet and millions of years ago, one plate pushed the other up from under the ocean, leaving the soil now aptly named Oyster Ridge.

In these hills near the Santa Lucia Mountains, bisected by Trout Creek and whispered over by Pacific Coast winds, Karl Wittstrom and Doug Filipponi purchased 14,000 acres of the ranch that quite literally surrounds the town of Rancho Santa Margarita. With 966 acres under vines in various spots throughout this former Spanish land grant, Wittstrom is as passionate as his winemaker about the place.

“We’re working at keeping the vineyards as pristine as we can,” said Wittstrom. “We’ve included a lot of things that just make common sense. Doug and I are farmers by trade, that’s what we bring to this, a farmer’s way of doing things.” Some of those common sense things include an organic spray compound of citrus to keep mildew off the grapes. Wittstrom placed bat habitats all around the vineyard, too. “Their diet is 100 percent insects. We created habitat for them and so they live here throughout the vineyard and they keep the insect populations down,” he said. There are also predator habitats for owls and scarecrows are moved frequently throughout the fields. When all else fails, a vineyard hand can be seen occasionally driving around the vineyard with a shotgun to frighten off starlings and other grape eaters.

Ancient Peaks' Oyster Ridge Vineyard in Rancho Santa Margarita. Photo by Brian Davis.

Farming is at the heart of wine growing, of course. With good practices come great grapes. Sinor, a self-taught wine maker, has learned his craft by simply plying it. “He’s not doing anything special or different,” said Wittstrom of Sinor. “But the wines he’s making are phenomenal.”

Indeed, the taste profiles are beautiful and even unique. I’ve got a fairly good palate, but I wouldn’t dare to attempt a “review” of the wines as I don’t have that kind of expertise. I will say that I interview wine makers and winery owners on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. It’s quite rare that I will purchase wine from those I interview. But, I did here. And quite a bit of it, too. The Sauvignon Blanc that Sinor makes is one of the best examples of New World Sauvignon Blanc I’ve ever had. Recently, Sinor began crafting a lovely Malbec as well.

“We’re based on our history, on our experiences,” said Sinor. “But, I’m in love with the day to day process. There ain’t no plan B in my life. I want to make wine,” he said. Considering further on his comment about history and experience, Sinor commented, “It’s about listening to the wine, letting the wine make itself. When you force your opinions on the wine, you impose an experience in it. I try to approach the wine humbly and let them express what they are.”

The wine world is synthesized into taste profiles and market shares. Nothing wrong with that, it’s how one sells wine. But Mike Sinor, Karl Wittstrom and Doug Filipponi are allowing nature to take its course. That’s their business plan. And that’s not only a great story, it’s great wine as well.

I am going to assume that if you’re reading this, you like to drink wine and you purchase it more than just occasionally. If that is so, please tell me what you look for when you buy a bottle?  Are you looking solely at price?  Do you consider where the wine comes from, whether Europe, Australia, South America, North America, South Africa or points in between? Do you consider whether the vineyard is sustainable, etc?  I’d like to get a sense for what folks look for when buying wine.

Please comment freely…

So, when I find a hip website that purports to give little tidbits about wine, food, tasting, the wine world, etc. all in bite sized portions, I sit up and take notice. And notice I took of Gretchen Roberts’ Vinobite.

This little corner of the revolution won’t make you an overnight sommelier, but what it will do is give you the opportunity to learn about, think about, talk about, give feedback (called “bite back”) and focus on wine and the wine world.

I interviewed Roberts via e-mail and we talked about the idea of a site which seeks to take the story of wine and condense it a little.

“It’s true that wine can be an endless study, which is exactly what so many other wine lovers find so fascinating about it,” said Roberts. “That said, you don’t need to know everything about wine to enjoy drinking it. I only know the bare bones of music theory, but I love music and wouldn’t consider not listening because I couldn’t dissect it properly.”

She has a point there, too. As one who “geeks out over it,” I am fully aware that not everyone gets excited by an Alsatian Pinot Gris and its many charms and how there are stories that the Alsatian farmers hire Eastern Europeans, Slavs mostly, who harvest the grapes on these very steep hillsides and some fall to their deaths each year.  Actually, my wife finds herself telling me to shut up quite a bit, but I digress.

“I deliberately made Vinobite into short notes because there’s a whole world of people out there who like wine and want to learn a little more, but don’t want to geek out over it,” Roberts added.

The site is very user friendly and full of great bits of information and even insight on wine offerings from various places. There’s a current post up about a wine themed hotel in Lodi, California’s wine country (Zinfandel Mecca for many) and Roberts keeps the posts short and sweet. “I decided scoring (wines) wasn’t right for me,” she said. “Vinobite is like talking to a friend instead: “Hey, you won’t believe the amazing wine I had last night,” and simply describe it and why it’s so delicious and worth the price.”

With a new post each weekday, Roberts, a freelance wine and food writer whose work can be found in The Wine Enthusiast and myrecipes.com among others, is pushing the boundaries of the “revolution” in new directions and allowing everyone access to a little insider information.

Good wine tells a good story, of course and sometimes, all the consumer needs is the first few paragraphs so that they can make up their own minds. Certainly, Vinobite is a step toward such liberty.

Look, natural wine—organic, Bio-dynamic wine and food are not some kind of flash in the pan. It’s true that BioD is pretty close to a religion as Alice Feiring has told me. There are those who follow it whole, and those who take the bits and parts they like, sort of a “cafeteria plan” for foodies and winos.

But I think it worth the while to pay a visit to Cory’s site if for no other reason than you want to learn something about natural wine. Every wine, great or not, has a story behind it and that’s what makes it interesting. Inside each bottle of wine is a story. The same cannot really be said for each bottle of vodka or gin. Noble spirits though they are, they haven’t got the heart and nuance that drives a wine story.

I’m convinced that there need be no revolution or political movement to bring people around to natural and wholesome food and wine. I think putting it in those terms is so arcane, so “60’s” if you will.

No, what’s required is something at which America has always thrived and that is advocating education and change. Those are not revolutionary things. Education and change are what we have always done—sometimes painfully, sometimes slowly, granted. But we have done it nevertheless.

So I want to invite you to take that first step. Drinking a glass of wine while surfing the web just now? Go check out saignee. Learn a little bit more—and educate yourself so that, over time, you can make a change—just a small one—for the better.

It’s rather too bad, actually. If you know someone who says this, or if you say it, you’re missing out on some wonderful wines and, what’s worse, you’re speaking out of real ignorance (I say this with love, of course).

Of course, popping a cork on a bottle of wine is now more than just the act of opening and accessing the product. It’s a cultural sound, it means celebration and it means relaxation. For some, it’s a chance to explore something new and to experience tastes and aromas they’ve never had before. That’s a pretty powerful pull. Richard Sanford, founder of Sanford Winery and now founder and proprietor of Alama Rosa, said that he’s learned to “appreciate the snap of the bottle cap, rather than the pop of the cork.”

But the cork is nothing more than the thing that stops the wine from coming out of the bottle while you carry it. Its most important job is to provide something called micro-oxygenation to bottles of wine, which once purchased, are going to remain unopened for more than a year. Micro-oxygenation is simply small bits of oxygen, very small, that over long periods of time seep into the bottle. Of course, too much oxygen will literally kill the wine, but the micro amounts are what help the wine age better.

And if you’re fortunate enough or simply focused enough to purchase good, expensive bottles of wine that you are going to “lay down” for a while in a wine cellar or wine cooler, then by all means, make sure that there is a good, sound cork in the bottle.

But, if you’ve just purchased a bottle of California Pinot Noir, no matter how good it is, it probably isn’t something you’re going to lay down for any more than the time it takes you to find the corkscrew. So, the screw cap is a simple and convenient device, which is useful, less expensive, thereby lowering the cost of the wine by the way, and ultimately, nothing that should keep us from buying a bottle of wine. The fact is, more than 99 percent of wines purchased in the United States are consumed within 48 hours of their purchase. Since this is the fact, there really isn’t any need for a cork.

To be sure, there are bad bottles of wine underneath screw caps. But then, there are also some underneath corks, too, yes? Don’t let the bottle closure make the decision for you. It’s what’s in the bottle that counts.

Some of my favorite bottles of wine capped by a screw cap are:

Alma Rosa Santa Rita Hills (Central California Coast) Pinot Noir
Bonny Doon Ca’ del Solo Albarino, Santa Cruz, CA
Plumpjack Oakville Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

There are many others, of course. But since I’m in California, I thought we’d start there. Enjoy

Much of the work I do is on California’s Central Coast where an ever-expanding number of wine growers are using sustainable methods. But sustainable isn’t a term that truly defines what is happening in farming today. Ultimately, it’s not a big enough term because the fact is that one can practice sustainable farming and still use man-made products.

Organic farming and grape growing as well as bio-dynamic farming have become more popular and many wine makers are now touting these two processes in their wines. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Organic and bio-dynamic are not new terms.

It was Rudolph Steiner in the 1920’s who brought about the ideas that most farmers now refer to as bio-dynamics. An Austrian philosopher and educator, farmers in Europe came to him in 1924 concerned about the future of agriculture on the continent. Steiner obliged and lectured on a philosophy of farming whereby the farm is as much a closed system as possible.  He extended his ideas about the importance of the individual in society to the importance of the individual farm, the farm as a self-supporting entity and the idea began to include as few outside materials on the farm as possible.

These days, certifying a farm for organic or bio-dynamic labeling is handled largely by a group called the Demeter Association based in Portland, Oregon. “Biodynamic agriculture is an organic farming system that focuses on soil health, the integration of plants and animals, and biodiversity,” said Elizabeth Candelario, Marketing Director for Demeter. “I have heard some say that the promise of organic is delivered in Biodynamic.”

Candelario and the Demeter Association don’t just focus on wine. However, grape growing has become such a pervasive part of farming in the United States (there are wine vineyards in every state in the U.S.), that it occupies a lot of their time.

And while Candelario says that bio-dynamic is the ultimate expression of organic, even those two terms are not mutually compatible. Bio-dynamic farming practices encompass the entire farm from the soil up. “Its strict guidelines go far beyond organic requirements to include biodiversity set-asides, insectaries, livestock integration, closed nutrient loops and the use of homeopathic preparations for vineyards and compost.”

But since wine is, at the end of the day, a pleasure delivery vehicle, the question for the consumer is simple: Do organic and bio-dynamic wines taste better? Taste is subjective after all, and price points will always be a measure of whether or not a wine sells. There is still a market, and it is probably the largest consumer wine market, for wine that doesn’t exceed $10.00 a bottle. Very few of those bottles are going to be from organic or bio-dynamic farms.

The inestimable Alice Feiring, one of the most well respected voices in the wine media told me via e-mail, “On a purely aesthetic level, many wine drinkers get sucked into wine’s romantic vortex because of the way they see the soil’s expression in the glass. If the soil is dead–as it is with conventional farming–there is nothing to express. To many of us, wine grown from organic soils just taste better!”

Wine is after all an organic product itself. It is farming and any good glass of wine begins in the vineyard.

So, here’s a little experiment that I have recently tried myself and it has changed my life entirely. If you have not yet availed yourself of organic vegetables and fruits or even bio-dynamic ones, give it a try. Most major super-market chains now carry a wide variety of organic vegetables. Wines might be harder to come by in a large grocery store, but if you care about drinking wine, you’ll probably want to find a good “bottle shop” or wine store and ask the owner whether he or she carries organic and bio-dynamic wines. Do a comparison side by side. Get a bio-dynamic Pinot Noir and taste it next to a non- bio-dynamic Pinot Noir.

The same can be said for your food choices. The revelation for me was when I cooked an organic free-range chicken on the grill right next to a non-organic chicken. Both were whole chickens and I prepared them both the same way, the ubiquitous and, may I add, manly “beer can chicken.” But when I ate a piece from each chicken, there simply was no comparison. Eating the organic chicken prompted me to say, “oh-that’s what chicken is supposed to taste like.”

Whether or not you’ll have the same experience with your wine I don’t know. But I have certainly found that organic and bio-dynamically grown wines exceed their counterparts in taste, structure, mouth-feel and in every other way.