Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show February 24 2011

They say “A day without wine is like a day without sunshine.” On a slightly rainy Thursday, the Los Altos Rotary Club had the wine, so we managed to do without the sunshine.
 
Pres. DENNIS YOUNG was missing in action (rumors abound that he arrived early to make sure that the wine was up to his impeccable standards, and found it so delightful that he had to retire for the afternoon), so past president TRACIE MURRAY stood in, and woke up the club with her vintage greeting of “Welcome to Los Altos Rotary!”
 
LONNIE GARY led us in the Pledge of Allegiance and BOB ADAMS stepped up to give the thought for the day. Bob brought the book, “The Ultimate Gift,” which had been given to him by a friend, and he had a few thoughts from the book. First, “It is a wealthy person who calculates his riches not in gold but in friends."  And “Love is a treasure we can never pay, the only way to keep it is to give it away.” TRACIE then called on STEVE ANDERSON to lead us in a song. STEVE notified us that the baseball season had officially begun at spring training, so he led the club in “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.”
 
VP MONA ARMISTEAD stepped up to introduce all the visiting Rotarians, but found to her surprise that this week we had no visiting Rotarians. MONA then called upon members with guests. JEAN MORDO introduced his guest Jarrett Fishpaw; STEVE SHEPHERD introduced his guest and our speaker for the day, Michael Mondavi, DAVE SMITH introduced Kevin Schick, a guest of the club; Jack Kelly introduced another guest of the club, (and a another winemaker), Sam Grinnells.  MONA then introduced yet another guest of the club, Steve Leland.

PROCLAMATION HONORING ROTARY
 
TRACIE then announced that Los Altos Mayor (and Rotarian) RON PACKARD and the Los Altos town Council of Los Altos had issued a proclamation honoring 106 years of Rotary, and 100 years of the Rotary Foundation.
 
 
CLUB ANNOUNCEMENTS
 
JEAN MORDO, currently heading up the Los Altos Rotary Endowment Fund, announced that the spring grants are being planned. Everyone in the club is welcome to be a member of the grant committee, and members are also encouraged to suggest worthy local charities for consideration for grants.
 
LONNIE GARY announced that the Relay For Life is kicking off on March 3, and invited members to begin participation in the this annual event.
 
MARLENE COWAN announced that the Rotary leadership training, STARS, would be taking place on March 12th, and that the club sponsors members who attend this leadership training.
 
BEVERLY TUCKER, our Sunshine director, announced that DUDE ANGIUS had recently undergone shoulder surgery, and was recovering at El Camino Hospital. BEVERLY circulated a card for members to send their best wishes to Dude.
 
STUART BOWEN announced that the Cioppino Feed and  Silent Auction is taking place on March 4, and that we are still looking for people to donate auction items. STUART also announced that the Rotary Fine Art Show is still seeking additional sponsors and people are welcome to join at any sponsorship level.
 
STEVE POMEROY, in charge of the Art Show work assignments, announced a modified procedure for sign-ups for this year. Each member can be grandfathered into the job that they did last year, but the member must confirm to STEVE that the member will be available and doing that same job this year. STEVE will be sending out an e-mail in the upcoming week, and when you receive the e-mail you must respond to STEVE to reserve your same assignment from last year.
 
CINDY LUEDTKE announced that the special program that allows online donations to the Rotary Foundation to count double, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Rotary Foundation, is being extended from the end date of February 23 to the new end date of March 1.  Every contribution will earn double points towards the Paul Harris levels, so act quickly.
 
MARY PROCHNOW announced that in memory of our dear departed friend JOANNE BYRNE, a fund has been established at the Community Foundation to support women with cancer. JOANNE found it extremely helpful that she had the support of so many people to help her through her cancer treatment. Envelopes are available at our Rotary meetings to make the donations to the Los Altos Community Foundation in honor of JOANNE.
 
TRACIE, perhaps thinking that the Rotator writer had fallen asleep, decided to quickly rattle off a series of important dates that we should all remember. The District Assembly will be taking place on April 9 and 10th at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose. The District Celebration will be taking place on May 6-8, with on opening golf tournament on May 5. The annual walk to eradicate polio will take place on March 20.
 

 
TUTORIAL ON THE WEB SITE
 
The rotator writer was able to doze off again as we dimmed the lights for MATT CABOT to make a presentation on the current state of our club website.  MATT explained how we had shifted the website to using ClubRunner, a program provided by Rotary. MATT explained the many of the new features of the improved website. These include, calendaring, online sign-ups, national and district reporting, membership management (go and update your personal profile on the website), and a photo directory.  A few long-time members commented how valuable the photo directory is, given all of the new members who joined over this past year. MATT also pointed out the improved layout and other features of the new ClubRunner 2.0 system.
 
 

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCES OF THE FINEMASTER BE FORGOT?
 
DAN O'DONNELL, who proudly announced that he had just turned 80, stepped up to the microphone to dish out a few fines. The theme for Dan's session would be “aging.”
 
First however, a few members volunteered fines. PAT GRAY announced that sadly, a dear friend had lost her 12-year-old daughter, and PAT was making a donation in honor of the young girl. DON HULL had a happier announcement; his granddaughter had obtained a soccer scholarship to attend the University of Utah. LARRY MADSEN, reported on the Cal swim team events at the Pac 10 Championship. Larry thanked BOB ADAMS for the plug Bob put in last week, and LARRY contributed additional funds in honor of his granddaughter’s work in winning several events in anchoring the relay swim team.
 
Turning to his theme of aging, Dan called on a youngster, MARV PATTERSON to try to determine where certain quotes about aging came from.  MARV was fined only $10, because he correctly guessed that it was DICK HENNING who had cleverly hid his age by the quote “I'm close to 70, but not as close as I'd like to be.” BUD OLIVER was going to be fined $20 for not knowing Bob Hope’s quote about sex at the age of 86, but BUD trumped that fine by putting in $55 in honor of his 55th wedding anniversary.  Another youngster, BOO BUE, paid only $10 because he recognized a Joan Rivers quote about aging.  DICK DUHRING had to pay $20 because he did not know that it was Rita Ruddner who gave the intriguing quote, “I have no intention of aging gracefully, I plan on getting facelifts until my ears meet."  BOB FARRELL was fined $20 for missing a quote by Woody Allen about death (all Woody Allen quotes are about death). LARRY MADSEN, bum knee and all, was forced to stand up again and was fined another $20 for missing a quote. Then DAN began working his way further up the calendar. CLYDE NOEL who is turning 90 this year, trumped Dan's fine by paying $90 for his 90 years. Finally, Dan reached the top of the pyramid with BILL PALMER paying $20 for missing the Andy Rooney quote, “Life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”
 
 

THE WEEKLY PROGRAM: MICHAEL MONDAVI, “The Evolution of the California Wine Business.”
 
STEVE SHEPHERD introduced our speaker for the week, Michael Mondavi, who had brought the lovely red and white wine on our tables today.  Michael Mondavi is currently the head of Folio Wine Partners, a organization that imports and produces fine wines involving small independent wineries owned by 23 separate families worldwide.
 
In 1966, Michael Mondavi founded the Mondavi winery with his father, Robert Mondavi. Today, after 45 years in the wine business, Mr. Mondavi took us on a tour of the history of the California wine business. To put our California winery history in perspective, he mentioned the partnership with the Frescobaldi Family, which has been making wine in Italy for 31 generations over 700 years. When Mr. Mondavi met with the patriarch of the Frescobaldi family to discuss the tragedy of the economic collapse in 2009, Mr. Frescobaldi stated that this was not a “tragedy.” “When Napoleon conquered Italy, that was a tragedy. World War I and World War II with were tragedies.” This is the long-term perspective of 700 years of winemaking.
 
Mr. Mondavi pointed out that the first California winery was the Buena Vista winery established in 1857, soon followed by Charles Krug winery. The wine business grew rapidly and by the year 1900 there were 260 wineries in California. Then a particular pest began eating the roots of all of the wine vines. It turned out that the only resistant root strain was a particular native American rootstock and so today all of the wine vines in the world have to be grafted onto this Native American rootstock to survive. This pest pushed the wine business back, but the big blow to the business was the enactment of Prohibition in 1919.  By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the number of Napa wineries had shrunk to just 12. And that number remained 12 until the mid-1960s. In 1965, as he completed his senior year at college, Mr. Mondavi was informed by his father that they had been tossed out of the family business, operating the Charles Krug winery, so Robert Mondavi and his son formed the 13th winery in Napa Valley, the Robert Mondavi winery. Now there are over 800 wineries in California.
 
Right after Prohibition, the standard procedure for most wineries was to make the wine and sell it in large tank cars to regional bottlers throughout the country. But in 1940, as World War II loomed on the horizon, the government froze wine prices at 12 cents a gallon. However, this applied only to the bulk wine and the Mondavi family figured out that if they bottled the wine and sold it as a private label, the wine was outside of the price controls. So the family bought the Charles Krug winery in 1942 and began bottling the wine and selling it for 25 cents a bottle, equating to over $1.25 a gallon (compared with the 12 cent bulk price). Pretty soon, in order to survive, all of the wineries converted from selling wine in bulk, to selling branded wine in bottles.
 
Since the 1960’s interest in wine has grown dramatically, and it a currently grows at 12% to 15% per year. Most significantly, as wine became more affordable, it was no longer just for special events, but became a regular meal beverage.  On the other hand, during the same time, the overseas consumption of wine dropped.  Up to the 1960’s, each European consumed up to 300 gallons of wine per year.  One of the main reasons for this was the impure water throughout Europe. The untreated water contained many bacteria and potential infections. The population found that by mixing a concoction of 20% wine and 80% water, they purified the water and had a pleasant beverage for their meals. Ironically, as water purification spread throughout Europe, wine consumption dropped.
 
Also in the 1990s, the wineries started becoming consolidated, as big corporations bought many of the smaller regional wineries. The Mondavi’s sold the Robert Mondavi winery in 1996. At that time, Michael Mondavi moved to Folio Wine Partners. His thinking was that with all of the consolidation and generalizing of wines, this would open a window for small independent wineries to produce an eclectic product. However, in the United States, sale of wine and other liquors is governed by separate regulations in each of the 50 separate states, plus the District of Columbia. So it is extremely difficult for one winery to navigate the regulatory jungle to be able to sell nationwide. The solution came from the Frescobaldi family in Italy. The idea was to form a group similar to the old European Guilds that cooperated among many groups for common sales. Folio Wine Partners now includes 29 families that are selling their wine in the U. S. and overseas directly through the Folio Wine Partners. This allows each of the small independent wineries to use a common distribution system to connect with the regional distributors, and comply with all of the various state regulations.
 
Mr. Mondavi then opened up the floor to questions, and the first question was from MARLENE COWAN who wondered, as virtually everybody does, how the Charles Shaw wines can be produced and sold for two dollars at Trader Joe’s, given just the cost of basic wine, the bottles and corks. Mr. Mondavi pointed out that the business is owned by the Franzia family, the champion low-cost producer, who puts together the entire operation and sells directly to Trader Joe's.  The producer makes only four dollars per case, but they sell 10 million cases, and that makes it work.  So we came to the end of the meeting with the perspective of both the large mass produced bulk wine, and the new model of Folio Wine Partners; the nationwide and international distribution of small independent wine labels from family wineries.
 
TRACIE chimed the meeting to a close at 1:32 PM.

THIS THURSDAY'S PROGRAM:  March 3rd