A window into three wonderful women of wine

As I have written in my letter from the editor many times over the past nine years, I am grateful every single day for the work of editing and publishing Edible Marin & Wine Country. I am honored and humbled to have this platform from which to tell the tales of the extraordinary good food and drink producers in our area. These folks are my superheroes. Their stories are food for my soul, while the fruits of their labor nourish and delight my physical being.

Along the way, many of them have also become dear friends. For that I am especially grateful. So when I was deciding who would be the perfect writer to tell the stories of these three wonderful women in wine, I selfishly decided to keep this one for myself. I had lots of questions for Annie, Helen and Schatzi that had not come up in our social conversations, so I gathered them together over good food and wine (of course) at Annie’s historic home and winery in Napa’s Coombsville AVA, and fired away.

Having grown up in the South, where distilled spirits were king, my first taste of “wine” was Tickle Pink by Boone’s Farm, purchased by a high school friend with a fake ID. Let’s just say it was not imbibed for its taste… So I was very curious about how these three fellow non-natives to Wine Country had become so deeply connected to the fascinating world of wine.

Helen Keplinger is co-owner of Keplinger Wines and Vermillion Wine with her husband, DJ Warner, and the winemaker for Grace Family Vineyard, Carte Blanche, Kerr Cellars and Waterfall, among others. She says that when she was growing up in Ohio her parents never had water glasses on the dinner table—just wine glasses. Her parents had honeymooned in France, visiting Michelin-starred restaurants and wineries. Her father kept a wine cellar and her mother was an excellent cook, making homemade pastas and fresh-baked baguettes for weeknight dinners. As a kid, Helen collected rocks and wine bottles—an early hint of her truest interests.

Schatzi Throckmorton, business manager of Behrens Family Winery and co-owner with her husband, Michael Hirby, of Relic Wine Cellars, grew up in Iowa. Her parents also drank wine every night. Often Emerald Dry and Hearty Burgundy, but they also had a cellar stocked with special wines, Gaja being the most notable in Schatzi’s memories.

Annie Favia, viticulturalist and co-owner with her husband, Andy Erickson, of Favia Wines and Room wines, grew up at her mother’s hip, helping her tend the extensive vegetable gardens and fruit trees that graced their family property in Connecticut. A classical ballet dancer, Annie later studied French literature and art history in college. While living in France during her junior year, she decided that she wanted to pursue a career in wine. It was either that or teach. She went west for wine.

As luck would have it, one of her sisters-in-law, who was living in New York at the time, was friendly with Chef Charlie Palmer, and it was Chef Palmer who connected Annie to the legendary Su Hua Newton, the first Asian female winemaker in the U.S. Newton offered her an office job at her Newton Vineyards in the Napa Valley, and Annie made her way to California in 1993.

Also at Newton at the time was renowned winemaker John Kongs-gaard. Annie and Kongsgaard connected over their mutual love of classical music, and when she told him she did not think the business side of wine was her thing, he introduced her to Cathy Corison, who quickly became a mentor for Annie. The two worked harvests together in 1996 and 1997, while Cathy was building her winery in St. Helena.

One winter day, Cathy pulled Annie in to help prune the Kronos Vineyard, which surrounds the Corison Winery, and Annie was hooked. It was a beautiful, bluebird winter day in the valley, and in Annie’s mind the contrast between the wide open blue sky, the green mountains, the yellow mustard growing between the vines, and the dark, damp cellar could not have been more stark. The vines were her thing. Soon thereafter, Annie enrolled in the viticulture program at Napa Valley College, where she earned a degree with near-perfect marks.

One day during harvest, famed viticulturist David Abreu arrived on the crush pad, personally delivering grapes to Cathy. Annie was already familiar with David’s work, his Cabernet Franc from the neighboring Madrona Ranch being a wine that particularly spoke to her. David’s precision-driven style of viticulture also resonated with Annie’s “Virgo tendencies,” she says. The two bonded over their mutual affinity for plants and farming, and Annie ended up working as viticulturist at David Abreu Vineyard Management for 12 years.

With Abreu, she went on to help plant and manage some of Napa Valley’s most prestigious properties, including Harlan Estate, Bryant, Colgin, Araujo and Screaming Eagle. For support, she leaned on her female mentors, including Corison, Mary Maher (who now oversees vineyard operations at Harlan Estate) and Ann Kraemer, who went on to start Shake Ridge Vineyards, this time asking for Annie’s input. Annie’s hard work and diligence definitely paved the way and opened doors for many of the young female viticulturists who are in the industry today, and those who will be joining their ranks.

Looking back on her path, Annie notes how critical it was that she stayed curious, following her heart to help her make the right choices at the many forks in her road.

Schatzi says that she learned the appreciation of fine wines from her great-uncle, a surgeon she describes as a Renaissance man who also hybridized daffodils and raced cars. A wine connoisseur, he had persuaded a governor of Iowa to allow him to set up the Iowa Wine Advisory Board, essentially enabling himself and his buddies to import a lot of great wines that might have been prohibited by state alcohol regulations at the time. Back in the day (and still today), Iowa kids could get their drivers’ permits at 14, so sipping a little wine at the same age was a no brainer.

An African history major, she had been accepted into graduate school at Cambridge University to further pursue the subject (clearly she and Annie could have ended up as fellow college professors rather than women of wine) when her great-uncle suggested she spend the gap year between college graduation and matriculating at Cambridge in the California Wine Country. That was 1999, and, needless to say, graduate school enrollment is still being deferred.

Schatzi spent a year working at Folie À Deux Winery before being hired by Behrens & Hitchcock Winery (now Behrens Family Winery). Bob Hitchcock, the business partner at Behrens & Hitchcock, was looking to step back, and it wasn’t long before she was running the business. There were only a handful of female general managers in the wine industry at that point. Lacking role models, the learning curve was steep.

She recalls that almost immediately after she arrived, the winery received a score in the high 90s from wine critic Robert Parker for its 1999 To Kalon Cabernet, and a large part of her days were spent calming angry customers demanding more of the wine than was available. Nice work if you can get it.