lance cutler

Dennis Patterson was president of Ben Franklin Press which started as a small Napa print shop in 1983 and grew into one of Wine Country’s major wine label printers. They also printed the majority of our posters, but I hadn’t seen or heard from him in over 30 years. When I decided to write about the posters, I finally tracked him down living on a boat near Punta Mita in Mexico.

“Working with Chuck House was great,” he said. “So many designers at that time were desktop publishers using the different fonts and they would design things without any idea about what they were doing. I had to explain that printing was a whole different thing from what they saw on their screen when they wanted to print 100,000 of them and put them on bottles. It had to work on the bottle. Chuck understood all that stuff, and if he had questions, he would ask me. I appreciated that interaction and creativity.”

Chuck House liked working with the people at Ben Franklin Press, so when we came up with the poster idea, he suggested them for the job. Dennis told me, “Producing the posters was one of the best times I had working in the business. Working with you and Chuck and Ron Zak, the creativity and interaction was really enjoyable. It wasn’t like working with all those egos in the wine industry, instead it was people who were collaborating to produce something unique. I still think “Valley of the Moon” is funny.

“Valley of the Moon” was the first Cutler Cellar poster. Inspired by a famous poster entitled “Expose Yourself to Art” by M. Ryerson. It features classic two-shot photography, printed seamlessly by photographer Ron Zak. Using crisp shadow and light effects, it has an Ansel Adams feel to it. 

“The Cutler Cellar, the newest great winery from the Valley of the Moon simply needs exposure.”

The model with his pants down was Bill Klegg, who was 6’6” or taller. We needed that for proper perspective. He stopped by my house to pick up copies of the poster hot off the press. He sat on our couch with feet on the floor, his knees poking up in the air and bouncing with his uncontrolled laughter.

Chuck explained, “Lance was my first introduction to the wine business. I’ll always be super grateful for that. That led to Gundlach Bundschu, where I was really learning on the job. I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved it. As for the posters, they weren’t coming from me. It was more of a problem solving mission, because the work had already been done. The photos had been taken, the concept was clear, and then it was just a matter of communicating that and disappearing myself in the process. Once we started, I loved it. I loved working with Lance, Ron, and Dennis.”

Chuck said his participation with the posters was more of a liaison with Dennis making sure that the prints were the right size, and the right color with the right paper. He was very much involved with Dennis and getting the printing aspect of it working. Dennis had one of the old school printing presses that had a lot of flexibility.

“I wasn’t part of creating that imagery,” Chuck explained. “It was more like here is our idea and here’s the photo. I was just trying to find a way in. It was a good challenge to do something different, but a lot of it was working with the press operators and the ink and the color, because I wasn’t very experienced with that. Labels go onto a bottle of wine. These posters had to stand on their own, so there was more pressure. It was more difficult in that sense to do the posters than to do labels. The posters I like the most are the ones where there is the least of me involved. That Valley of the Moon poster was pretty cool. I was using a sans serif font for that and put it off to the side, so it looked rustic and modern. I was learning on the job, I wanted to find something that I was interested in. You have to be interested in what you are doing in order to be successful.”

Chuck felt the posters were more problem solving, trying to get the idea to the public in the least objectionable format possible. There’s a lot that goes into developing a proper framework for a successful poster. It’s problem solving, not blue sky imagination, but those are all the things you need to learn. “It was more like a laboratory of learning how to do that stuff that was exciting to me,” Chuck explained. “It was not I’m going to imagine something brilliant and creative here. It was more like OK, I can do this.

“For me, the real benefit was the hands on work in the print shop, which many designers now have no idea about. Even at the top level, they will just be sending off files that make no sense whatsoever other than looking good on the screen. To me, being at that right place with Lance at the right time was very instrumental, and I’ve been using that knowledge ever since. Those were really formative years for me, and it was a great experience to be able to work on those. My job was just not to mess it up too much.”

This is classic Chuck House deniability. It seems to me that his design contributions turned our pedestrian ideas into art. Compared to the pressure and drudgery of making wine, the posters were like playtime for me. It always seemed like a joint product to me. We all contributed, and that took a lot of pressure off.

Because of our relationship with Jerry and Catherine Henry, New Orleans has become our second home. In the past 40 years, close to four years of our time has been spent in the Big Easy. I had done hundreds of winemaker dinners at various restaurants in the city and throughout the state. I worked fundraisers for the local opera and sponsored a four-day trip to Sonoma for the Jazz and Heritage Youth Band. We provided lodging and food, got them a gig at Sea World in exchange for their getting to spend a day in the park, and finished with a concert at Gundlach Bundschu Winery for more than 300 people. In 1990, the City Council made me an honorary citizen of New Orleans because of all the work I had done in the community. It’s an honor I don’t take lightly. Along with Jerry and Catherine, we sponsored an annual party for New Orleans waitstaff called the Waitstaff Ball.

This poster was my thank you to all the waitstaff who had turned New Orleans into the single largest market in the United States for The Cutler Cellar wines. Most waiters are nocturnal creatures. That we were able to draw so many to our morning photo shoot, some dressed in costumes and others in work dress still amazes me. Not only that, but the entire sales staff from our distributor showed up just to be in the poster. The morning exuded a true sense of camaraderie. We all realized we had worked together to create something unique in the wine business, and we had fun doing it.

Ron Zak managed the unruly crowd until he got a great shot. Chuck House added a Mardi Gras mask and beads with a hint of color, which made the entire poster and project undeniably New Orleans.

The last Cutler Cellar poster features me in my famous wine cellar. It’s in the same location as my daughter’s poster, but the feeling is completely different. The wine bottles scattered around, crumbled saltine crackers, the winter hat with the Russian star, and the wine stained shirt; there’s just something about the picture that makes me laugh.

Chuck was unavailable for this poster, so I went to another talented local artist, Bob Johnson, the exceptional wine cartoonist, and illustrator. The caption was a quote I had often used, “There’s only one rule in The Cutler Cellar, in case of emergency . . . start with the oldest vintages first.” Bob surrounded the photo with dozens of newspaper headlines declaring various disasters. My favorite is the one about Willie Mays getting injured.

The posters were an enormous success and great fun. Compared to the pressure and sometime drudgery of making wine, the posters were like playtime for me. I worked with enthusiastic, talented artists and we bounced ideas off each other from start to finish, looking for ways to improve each poster, to make it funnier or better. We all contributed, and that took a lot of pressure off.

The posters and our humorous approach to wine marketing were so successful and popular that Sonoma Valley adopted it for their annual wine auction, even hiring Ron Zak to do the photography for posters. I helped coordinate the first couple of shoots and dealt with Dennis at the printers, but soon I was out of the wine business and more focused on my writing.

After I left, the Bundschus produced two or three more posters, but eventually decided to move away from outrageous humor and skirmishes to focus on their earned place in history as one of the storied, longest enduring wine families in California.

Looking back, I wish I had done this sooner while my memory was sharper and the details were clearer. At least I got this part of the story told and documented, and most of the posters are now displayed in one place for all to see. Otherwise, no one would believe it.

Controversy

In 1992, prohibitionist sentiments were making the news. Led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) people were calling for bars to close earlier, restricting alcohol at public events, raising the drinking age from 18 to 21, and lowering BAC levels for what qualifies as drunk driving. I was certainly opposed to drunk driving, but these people had taken things too far. A poster idea popped into my head. I pitched it to Jim Bundschu, but he felt it was too controversial for Gundlach Bundschu, so I went ahead with it as a Cutler Cellar Poster.

This is the poster that sits on my office wall and finally got me to start writing again. My landlord, Bob Bonino is in the left fore-corner. Dr. Wayne Price sits to his left. The lady with her back to us is Rena Lehnert of the Cherry Tree Juice stand. To her left Edward “Ski” Krensjewski. Ski was a legend in Sonoma. Bartender at the old El Dorado Hotel, Ski served Ernest and Julio Gallo when they made their annual trips to Sonoma. He was exclusive bartender for all of Hap Arnold’s private parties, and one of the genuinely exceptional story tellers ever. Claude Berthoud is my defense attorney. Good friend Herb Lane sits asleep in the audience section. Dennis Patterson, the gentleman who printed all our posters, takes notes near the American flag. (Only Dennis and I remain alive today.)

The poster depicts a courtroom scene. A group of elderly, hostile judicial types question me. I am defended by my unflappable attorney, Claude Berthoud. The caption reads, “Are you now, or have you ever drunk a bottle of wine? The answer is “Absolutely, and I’ll name names.”

It was a great, fun-filled shoot with lots of energy and good humor. After the shoot, I took the cast out for lunch at the Depot Hotel Restaurant. It turned into one of those unforgettable afternoons. We had plenty of Chef Mike Ghilarducci’s great food and sucked down several bottles of fine wine. There was laughter and good cheer. One of Claude’s lines became an anthem for the afternoon. When we ordered the second bottle of wine early in the afternoon, Claude said, “Just two bottles a day, that’s all we ask.”

We roared. Every time we ordered another bottle we would all say “Just two bottles a day . . .” By the end of the meal, we could order a bottle of wine by just saying, “Two.” We all went home, but another poster idea was festering in my mind.

A few months later, Gundlach Bundschu hosted a luncheon for 150 locals in the Community Center. We explained we were enlisting them as models for a new poster and marched them to Sonoma’s historic City Hall for a photo. Zak was at his best, exhorting us in his overly exuberant way. All the people held bottles of wine. Our kids were there dressed for Little League or dance recital. People were shouting “Two!” and waving their arms, holding up two fingers. The caption for the poster read “Just two bottles a day, that’s all we ask.”

It was great fun, involved a huge part of the community, and for weeks people commented on how much they had enjoyed the afternoon. We couldn’t wait to distribute the poster so our friends and neighbors could have a copy.

On October 9, 1992, the Sonoma Police Professionals Association issued a letter. This letter was sent to the media, to City Hall and to various regulatory agencies. The letter said, in part:

“Should city property and young children be used to advertise the use of alcoholic beverages? We have seen a very disturbing poster, which does this very thing. Is this what we want our children to believe? Every day, we see the tragic results of the abuses of drugs and alcohol in our city and our society. We support the educational efforts by schools and other agencies in an effort to inform our children of the horrible dangers of overindulgence in the consumption of alcohol. Do we want our children to see us standing on the balcony of City Hall with jugs of wine trying to tell everyone it is OK to overindulge?”

On October 16, 1992, Tim Tesconi published a front page story for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The story included a picture of the poster and reported that Donald Rowe, president of the Association was asking that the posters be destroyed.

Representing the winery, Jim Bundschu said that he couldn’t believe anyone would take the poster seriously. He said the poster was a joke. “Don’t people read political cartoons in newspapers?”

Monday, October 19, 1992. Again, the poster finds its way into the press, this time in a story in The Wall Street Journal that discusses the clash of wineries and government over health claims attributed to drinking wine. It quotes Jim Bundschu as saying he believes the industry should let the entire health issue fall by the wayside. Jim said, “To promote wine as healthful or detract from it because it’s unhealthy misses the point. Wine is good for the human spirit and the soul . . . now let them take that away.”

Tuesday, October 20, 1992. Sonoma’s local paper, the Index Tribune, comes out with a front page story. Again, the poster is printed. Now, Association representatives claim that groups such as MADD and Social Advocates for Youth are applauding the Association’s stand. Bundschu requested that no one in the winery make any statements to the press except him. He says he doesn’t want to make a big issue out of this, because it is a local brouhaha, and he thinks it best not to split the community.

Wine writer Jerry Mead and others are writing to support the winery. Supporters point out that less than 2 percent of drunk drivers nationally are arrested under the influence of wine, and the incidence of drunk driving in Wine Country is no greater than in other areas of comparable population density. Gundlach Bundschu receives a few very antagonistic calls, but the majority support the winery and “just don’t understand all the fuss.”

My immediate reaction was to make a couple of new posters. One would depict the Bundschu clan dressed like 1920s gangsters in front of a wall of our wine. In their arms are giant corkscrews, held like tommy guns. The caption reads, “Come and get us, coppers.”

The other poster idea was to reconvene the same 150 people in front of City Hall. This time each would raise just a single middle digit, and the caption would read, “Okay, just one bottle a day.”

Instead of posters, I ended up writing a long explanation of how this all came about. It ended with this, “For those of us in the wine business, wine is our life. Our lives proceed one vintage at a time. You can tell when our children were born by looking in our wine cellars. We mark their births by harvest conditions: Jack was born in ’89, the vintage from hell; Jill was born in ’85, a perfect growing season. We track the notable events in their lives through the growing season: he started school when we had that incredible frost in the ‘90s; she starred in the school play when we had early bud break in ’87.

“For those of us who make wine, it is impossible to separate our lives from our produce, because when we drink the wine we make, it starts memories of our very lives flowing through our veins.

“When the government tells me I’ve got to put warning labels on my wine, I comply and counter with a humorous poster. When people tell me that wine at my table is a sure sign that I am an alcoholic, I laugh and go about my business. But when my children come home from school to report their teacher says wine is a drug like cocaine or heroin, then I am righteous in my indignation, because the very survival of my family is at stake.

“For the past several years, those of us who enjoy wine have been under attack. We conceived the poster as a humorous way of defending ourselves and reminding all of us how much we love wine and appreciate the life it provides each and every one of us.

“I sincerely apologize to anyone who participated in this project for any pain or embarrassment caused by the reaction to this poster, but if doubts cross your mind for even a second, just look at the poster and think back to that day. You will smile remembering the excitement of your children and grin at the poses of your dogs. You’ll enjoy seeing your friends and neighbors, and you’ll remember the sense of fun and community we shared. Finally, you’ll laugh at the thought that anyone could take this seriously.

“Sonoma was the birthplace of wine in California. The vineyards around us are our last line of defense against runaway growth. Winemaking stands at the heart of the Sonoma lifestyle and economy. The Sonoma way of life is a gift, directly attributable to winemaking and grape growing. It is a gift those of us in the industry gladly share with everyone.

“All we ask is that they understand from whence the gift comes. It is no less than our very lives and the lives of our children. That’s the magic in the bottle. That’s the treasure we hope to share.”

The poster series happened close to 40 years ago, but most of it is lost to history. I thought it was important to document how the posters came to pass, acknowledge the people who participated, and share the good humor and sense of joy that infused the project. Every poster idea surfaced from our lives making wine in Sonoma Valley. All the models were our neighbors and friends. It was a time before cell phones and the internet. The photos were shot by a talented photographer using a real camera filled with actual film. Photo proofs were printed, pictures got selected, and we developed the prints in a dark room.

Lately, after recently being locked into my home because of COVID, listening to resurfacing prohibitionists talk about how bad wine is for you, seeing grapes go unpicked, and watching vineyards being ripped out, I could use a funny poster right about now. I always thought laughing in the face of adversity was a healthy response. Couple that with friends, a bottle of wine, and a delicious meal and I think we will have a chance of getting through these dark times unscathed.

What do you get your daughter for her 21^st birthday?

I got my daughter, Dawn, her very own poster.

We moved to Sonoma in 1977. For the next 23 years we lived in a tiny 864 square foot house on two acres of land. Bob and Mary Bonino were our landlords, and they lived on the property with Mary’s mother, Josephine. We moved in when Dawn was seven and they quickly treated her like the granddaughter they never had.

The house was so small, we couldn’t fit beds into it, so we were forced to use futons, which could be folded up into couches when we weren’t sleeping. Despite its size, that house saw more than its share of entertaining. We would either crowd our guests into the tiny kitchen for a multi-course dinner or, if the weather permitted, we would dine outside on the porch. Underneath the house was an old root cellar, which created a perfect space for my wine cellar. Bob Bonino helped me make the racks, and I quickly filled them with hundreds of bottles.

Because I was often busy at the stove preparing the meal, I would ask our guests to go down to the cellar and pick out a few bottles of wine. Nothing was sacred. They could select whatever struck their fancy, so long as they didn’t lose themselves in indecision, depriving those of us waiting in the house for some wine. That tradition led to the poster idea, “Every time a friend comes to visit . . . he wants to play in Daddy’s cellar.”

Dawn and I went to a fancy women’s clothing store in town where she selected a dress. We set up a little table, placed flowers, candles, a corkscrew, and a bottle of Cutler Cellar on it, and Ron Zak started taking pictures. It was not an easy shoot because it was freaking cold. Every 10 minutes or so, Dawn and Ron would run up into the house to warm themselves by the heater. It was so cold that the melted wax we used to keep the candles straight kept freezing, and the candles constantly tilted over.

Ron took dozens of photos capturing Dawn in dramatic poses and with a wide series of expressions. He made 8x10s of several selections, and it became difficult to select one for the poster. Here are three shots that didn’t make the cut. On the far left, the candles are almost straight. The other two shots, not so much.

Once we selected the photo, we got Chuck House involved. He created a sophisticated effect by using gold print and borders around the photo and the poster, but it still wasn’t working, until he placed the script “E” to start the caption. Suddenly, as if by magic, everything fell into place and we had a beautiful poster.

My Goddaughter, Naiomi Kaufman got her poster when she was three. Her father, Ray Kaufman and I have been friends for 60 years. We met in college where we were very politically active. After several arrests, court trials, and graduation, we couldn’t wait to leave Los Angeles. Ray ended up in Asia for seven years. I ended up in Wine Country.

Ray returned from his sojourn with a Japanese wife. He tried living in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t to his liking. I invited him to come visit us in Sonoma. He liked the area, was fascinated with the wine business, and eventually moved here. Ray went on to become co-winemaker at Laurel Glen Vineyard, working alongside Patrick Campbell. He started a wine export company which placed virtually every well-known California winery into Europe and Asia, and he purchased a 60-year-old Malbec vineyard in Argentina using it to create his Adelante brand.

Meanwhile, at Gundlach Bundschu, in addition to all the varietal wines we made, we introduced two blends: Sonoma Red and Sonoma White. Grapes from our youngest plantings, vines growing in our weakest soils, barrels that didn’t fit into our varietal program, and plain extra wine went into those blends. The wines were delicious and verry inexpensive.

I believe Jim Bundschu had become fond of looking up famous quotes from well-known people. He would regale us with sayings from Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg or Ben Franklin. McCullough said we should put the sayings on our corks, so we did, but only on the Sonoma Red and Sonoma White wines. It was great fun.

We selected ten different quotes every year, and we called the corks “Fortune Corks.” We invited everyone to come up with quotes we could put on the corks. Year after year, we were flooded with celebrated quotes from waiters, salespeople, and wine shop owners. It made them feel connected to the winery, especially if one of their quotes was printed on an actual cork.

• Leave the kids the land and the money. Drink the wine yourself.
• Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
• A woman drove me to drink. I never had the courtesy to thank her.
• If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.
• If you want your place in the sun, expect a few blisters.

After a couple of years, we realized that many people drank our Sonoma Red and White without noticing the fortunes on the cork. We needed to let them know. Perfect excuse for another poster. I glued hundreds of fortune corks onto a sheet of plywood, then we enlisted Naiomi to be our model. She sits, dressed in full kimono, in front of the wall of fortune corks. She holds a gigantic fortune cookie.

Children seek fortune in cookie. Wise adult look elsewhere.

Sonoma Red and Sonoma White

A fortune on every cork. Great wine in every glass.

I got Naiomi to autograph and date several posters as soon as she learned to write. I saved those posters and presented them to her upon her graduation from high school. Naiomi is now an attorney collaborating with a small private clientele living in San Diego, but she still visits for Thanksgiving, Turkey Taco Day, and Christmas.

The first territory that McCullough assigned me was Denver and the state of Colorado. Because he had lived and worked there for years, I walked into a large group of his friends, all of whom loved wine. Footers Restaurant was one of the top wine accounts in Denver. It was owned by Jimmy Lambatos, who went on to start Quiznos sandwich shop. Running the bar and serving as prime wine buyer was Lisa Weber. Lisa loved Gundlach Bundschu wines, enjoyed our humorous approach, and appreciated my doing winemaker dinners at the restaurant.

Lisa wanted to learn more about how wine was made. She worked out a deal to stay with Andy Cutter at Duxoup Wine Works in the Dry Creek Valley to experience harvest. She stopped by the house to visit and told me that something had come up. Andy Cutter wouldn’t be able to host her. I invited her to stay with us and learn about harvest at Gundlach Bundschu. She accepted the invitation, even though our small house required her to sleep on the couch.

Dawn was still living at home. She and Lisa hit it off and became good friends. I told Dawn it was like having an older sister. After a few weeks staying and helping during crush, Lisa returned to Denver and Footers. Just to show how our posters had infiltrated the thinking of our customers, for Gundlach Bundschu’s 130 anniversary, Lisa and Jimmy Lambatos sent a photo with a caption that could have been a great poster. Jimmy is lying flat on a bar with a funnel in his mouth. Lisa is pouring our wine into the funnel. The caption reads. “Even after 130 years, Gundlach Bundschu can still lay you out on the bar!”

Lisa eventually moved out to California and became a sort of surrogate daughter. She would come for all holidays and major social occasions. She’d help pick and produce Guerrilla Vino wine, and most importantly she agreed to edit all my writing from the Tequila Lover’s Guide through all the Jake Lorenzo books and most anything else I chose to tackle.

Eventually, Lisa moved to Washington State, near Dawn, and has recently retired from work. She spends her days walking in forests and along trails photographing anything of interest and sharing it with friends on Facebook.

A boom of fine dining restaurants coincided with the explosion of interest concerning California wine. Chefs who had immigrated from Europe were opening fancy restaurants without liquor licenses. Their customers back home were happy just drinking wine with their meals, they figured Americans should be content as well. There was no need to provide alcoholic cocktails and pay the exorbitant license fees for hard liquor. These restaurants provided a great untapped market for California wines, and our posters had helped us get entrenched on restaurant wine lists.

Distributors across the country who had focused on hard liquor sales realized that wine was a growing market. To risk being left at the station in the face of a wine boom, they had to bring California wine into their portfolios, train their salespeople, and reap the benefits of wine’s growing popularity. Distributors would come to Wine Country with their entire sales staff, visit wineries that they represented, and make pitches to new wineries they hoped to bring into the fold.

The sales teams would arrive at a winery, listen to a speech from a principal or owner and then suffer through an elaborate tasting of the winery’s entire lineup of wines. Since more than 70 percent of the salespeople were long-time hard liquor salesmen and had no interest in selling wine, they were often inattentive and bored out of their skulls. They sold established liquor brands, and the flavor of those brands never changed.

A sales staff visiting Gundlach Bundschu discovered a very informal affair. Music would be blasting, and giant Weber barbecues would cook delicious sausages from Sonoma Sausage Factory. Both red and white wine would be poured, but ice chests filled with local micro brews dotted the premises. We’d explain, “It takes a lot of good beer to make great wine.” McCullough was convinced that liquor salespeople were dinosaurs and would be of no help to us. He taught us to recognize the few salespeople interested in wine. The concept of learning grape varieties, vintage differences, and the varying flavors imparted by the different barrels used fascinated them.

The more information we gave them, the more rivetted they became. Instead of boring formal tastings, we herded them into our cave and let them taste directly from the barrels. We’d put them on the bottling line, show them how to operate the press, and let them help clean the lees filter. During harvest we’d drag them into the vineyard, hand them grape harvesting knives and let them pick grapes. They loved it. They related to our humorous approach, saw we were different from most other wineries, and they became our ambassadors into the markets across America.

We decided to pay tribute to the salespeople doing the best job selling our wine. We also felt the time was right to enter the Cabernet Sauvignon fray. We created a two-shot poster showing a taxi on a busy, generic downtown street next to a hand holding a bottle of Gundlach Bundschu Cabernet Sauvignon. We did eight different posters for eight separate cities. The photos remained the same, but the captions changed. You can take a cab from Moisant Airport to the French Quarter became a cab from Sea Tac to the Space Needle or a cab from Logan Airport to Faneuil Hall. Take a Gundlach Bundschu Cab all the way home really resonated, especially for just $11, and the locals respected that we knew the iconic destinations of each city.

McCullough worked the markets tirelessly. He insisted that Bundschu and I help him by visiting various markets. “They could care less about the sales manager,” he said. “They want to spend time with the owner and winemaker.” Bundschu was more reluctant, but I discovered I loved visiting people and working the markets, and I was good at it. Over time, we had identified key salespeople in every market. Visiting them on their home territory, working with them in their accounts, and having them visit us in Sonoma forged dynamic friendships.

We felt that we were part of a secret adjunct of the wine business, one of quality, value, fun and good humor. Our key wine salespeople became good friends. We spent lots of time together, created the Wine Patrol trips to thank them, and encouraged them to participate in our sales and marketing whenever they could. Ron Paradise was our key salesperson in Kansas City, Missouri. He’d take us to the best barbecue restaurants, introduce us to legendary jazz locations, and get us tickets for baseball games. One day, while at a Kansas City Royals game, he came up with the line, “If you pour it, they will come.”

Returning home, I contacted the Oakland A’s seeking permission to take a photo of their stadium for our poster. They denied the request. We sent Ron Zak to the Oakland stadium to take a photo anyway, but either Ron was nervous about not having permission, or didn’t understand baseball. We felt none of the photos would work for a poster.

I rented a camera equipped with an 180 degree lens aperture. The camera was noisy and heavy. You’d click the button to take a picture, and the shutter would swing across the lens in an arc. McCullough and I went to Oakland Stadium early for batting practice. I found it was impossible to keep the camera steady throughout the entire shot. Finally, I rested the camera on a short concrete wall above an exit stairway. It gave us a steady platform to get the picture.

Once we had the photo, we turned it over to Chuck House. He really went to town on it. The center field scoreboard has a picture of a bottle of Gundlach Bundschu wine flanked by Bundschu logos and a Gundlach Bundschu banner on the bottom. The scoreboard to the right is bracketed by Cutler Cellar logos with a banner showing “gun, lock, bun, shoe.” The scoreboard to the left touts Sonoma Valley Vineyards, where great wines are born. Sonoma Valley Wine Patrol logos flank the score which shows Vineburg beating St. Helena 8 to 0. All the advertising signs have been reimagined. The more you look the more you see.

At the bottom, we credit Ron Paradise with the concept, attributing it to Cow Town Wine Patrol. Because we had been denied permission to use the image, McCullough and I used pseudonyms of Diego Sonoma and Jake Lorenzo on the photo credit. Finally, McCullough came up with the classic line, “Gundlach Bundschu. As old as baseball itself.”

Months later, we were contacted by a couple of Oakland A’s players. They had seen the poster and loved it. They sent free tickets to a game and asked us to bring copies of the poster. We got there early, went to the club house, gave them a stack of posters and left with a pile of A’s gear. Never had any repercussions from Oakland Stadium for using an unauthorized photo.

We felt bad about not using Ron Zak’s photos for the baseball poster. We were able to make it up to him with our next project. Ron landed some sort of mentorship in Yugoslavia teaching photography. He told us the whole time he was in Yugoslavia, he couldn’t stop thinking of ideas for posters. He came back with a terrific photo which we turned into the “Crisis or Reform” poster. All the models in the poster were students in Ron’s class.

Chuck House made things entertaining and interesting with a really unique font, letters turned backwards and a lightly colored sepia ink printing lending the whole photo a dusty Eastern European sensibility. “Either way Gundlach Bundschu is the life of the party.”

Once again, I am reminded how long ago this all happened. Yugoslavia is no longer a country. Moisant Airport is gone from New Orleans, replaced by Louis Armstrong International Airport. Ron Paradise is no longer with us. The baseball stadium is deserted and the A’s play in Sacramento at a minor league park on their way to Las Vegas. And $11 Cabernet . . . come on.

It’s enough to make you drink. At least I have a cellar full of good wine.

In the 1980s and 90s the wine boom was driven primarily by two varietals: cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. Retail stores would often carry other varietals, but restaurants focused on cabernet and chardonnay. McCullough insisted that placements on restaurant wine lists were the key to success. Having your wine on a wine list gave your wine that verifiable third party endorsement guaranteeing the wine was good and worthy of the customer’s attention. The problem was that almost every winery in California was fighting to place their cabernet and chardonnay on those lists. The competition was intense, and if you got your wine placed, it would appear among a lengthy list of wineries.

McCullough reasoned that if we could place alternative red and white wines on restaurant wine lists, there would be less competition, and our wines would stand out. The poster series had taught people, especially waiters and wine salespeople, to pronounce our winery’s name. We figured if we could get wines on wine lists, waiters would happily sell them. We opted to focus on merlot as our red wine.

Merlot was an easy drinking red wine, more easily accessible than cabernet because it had less tannin. Most merlot producers blended cabernet into their merlot just to add some tannic backbone. Rhinefarm merlot was unique, because it had plenty of tannin, which gave the wine added weight and a long finish. Instead of blending with cabernet sauvignon, we’d mix different blocks of grapes from within the Rhinefarm to achieve more complexity while still producing a wine that was 100 percent merlot.

We needed a poster to launch our assault for space on restaurant wine lists. We decided to feature Chateau Petrus, arguably the most famous merlot in the world. An elegantly dressed couple has just been presented with the bill at the end of their meal. They are shocked at the price. “We could have had Gundlach Bundschu!” The poster aligned our wine with the finest merlot in the world and then emphasized that it was a bargain for similar quality.

James Patrick plays the gentleman. James wanted to learn about winemaking and would often come to the winery to help me with late night press loads. Kristin Anneker is his date. Kristin had dreams of making costumes for Hollywood movies. She created and produced the black velvet capes we all wore when we hijacked the Napa Valley Wine Train, and she ended up in Hollywood working as a successful costume designer for years.

Gundlach Bundschu Merlot found its way onto hundreds of wine lists. Often, the only other merlot offered on the list was from Duckhorn Vineyards, and the two of us became recognized as the two finest producers of merlot in California.

The merlot assault for space on wine lists was a tremendous success. We needed a white wine as well. Gundlach Bundschu was one of the few wineries to produce gewürztraminer, and most of the other producers made their wine sweet. Ours was bone dry, which made it a worthy compliment to all kinds of food. gewürztraminer is a strange grape to grow. The clusters tend to bunch up around the center of the vine making it hard to harvest. As the grapes ripen, the skins turn pink, and all at once (around 21 to 22° Brix) the acid drops out of the grapes overnight. We’d pick at those low sugars (something no one else was doing in those days) to retain what acidity we could. The resulting wine was clean and crisp with sparkling aromas of lychee and spice.

Maybe we were a bit cocky and overconfident, but we were on a roll. We decided to make gewürztraminer our white wine entrée to restaurant wine lists. We reprinted more of the Sobriety Test posters and took them with us when we called upon restaurant buyers. Our restaurant calls were unusual to say the least. We’d walk in with our local sales rep, get introduced to the wine buyer and bring out our bottles of merlot and gewürztraminer. Since almost every other wine rep was trying to place cabernet and chardonnay, we stood out from the crowd immediately.

We’d taste the wines and buyers would immediately relate to the quality of the merlot, but they’d also be stunned by the versatility of our dry gewürztraminer. When possible, I’d have them bring something from their menu and have them taste it paired with the gewürtz. The smoked soft shell crab at Christian’s Restaurant in New Orleans was the perfect pairing, so much so that at least four restaurant reviewers mentioned the pairing when writing about the restaurant.

It was an amazing thing to be sitting in a restaurant and hear a table burst into laughter when the waiter told them, “If you can’t say Gundlach Bundschu Gewürztraminer, you shouldn’t be driving.” In New Orleans, we hosted our first Waitstaff Ball on a Thursday night. The free event, exclusively for waiters, started at 10 PM, after dinner service. We had chefs from around town cook food, Charmaine Neville’s Band played, Gundlach Bundschu wines were served, and 300 waiters attended. The Waitstaff Ball ignited sales of Gundlach Bundschu in New Orleans. Mr. B’s restaurant sold three cases of Gewürztraminer the following weekend alone. Our sales soared from a respectable 1,000 cases a year to 3,000 cases per year, and they stayed there for seven years.

As a reward for our success with gewürztraminer on restaurant wine lists and to thank our New Orleans friends for their unwavering support, we created a second poster for gewürtz. We show our New Orleans friends at a crawfish boil, “When your food bites . . . Bite Back.” The scene is in Jerry and Catherine Henry’s garage. Depicted guests include family members, restaurant owners, and even two wine salesmen from a rival company. Chuck House came up with the idea of adding crawfish he had drawn all over the poster and using red for some color emphasis, making this unique among the entire poster series.

Once we had a foothold on restaurant wine lists with our merlot and gewürztraminer, and restaurant customers were buying the wines consistently, it became much easier to get those restaurants to add our other wines to their list. Gundlach Bundschu became synonymous with excellent, good value Merlot. Our merlot was so popular that we had to put it on allocation to protect our wine list placements.

We wanted to bring another red wine to the game. Cabernet franc was one of the newer plantings on Rhinefarm. I had hoped it would add some complexity to our cabernet sauvignon while taming the tannins. Instead, we found we had a very tannic cabernet franc. Still wary of entering the overly competitive cabernet sauvignon fray, we went with cab franc. The firm tannic backbone provided by the soils of Rhinefarm, made Gundlach Bundschu Cabernet Franc a delicious alternative.

A waiter and waitress from the extremely popular Piatti’s restaurant in Sonoma agreed to be our models. Poking fun at our precarious merlot supply, we riffed off a Gone with the Wind line, “Francly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Unique to this poster is the newly revamped Gundlach Bundschu label adorning the bottle. McCullough and I loved this new label, but the Bundschu family decided to return to the more staid old format.

The poster program turned out to be an unqualified success. Our first two posters focused on teaching people how to pronounce the name of our winery. The third threw down the gauntlet declaring we were serious about making wine but had a sense of humor about it. We discussed how to continue with the series and decided we should introduce some of the key players.

Using Grant Wood’s American Gothic as an inspiration, we introduced the entire 1985 Gundlach Bundschu winemaking crew posed around a tank and in the process of shoveling fermented grape must to the press. We are using a Ministrine peristaltic pump. This thing had an augur in the back which would feed must into the pump and then force it through the ridiculously oversized six-inch hose all the way to the press. It was critical to keep enough wine dribbling into the must to keep it from plugging the hose.

We captioned the photo “Vineburg Gothic, 1985 Crush Crew.” Marcelo Hernandez Jr. holds the shovel. His father was our vineyard manager. Holding the bent pitchfork, is Jane Leach (now Milligan) who had come to America from England. She helped Ann Noble create the Wine Aroma Wheel while studying at UC Davis. She went on to head sensory and experimental wine production at Beringer Winery, before returning to England and marrying her high school sweetheart. Jerry Chong is scooping grapes with his hand into the hopper. Jerry left winemaking for vineyard management. Katie Quinn is operating the on/off buttons. She married Ben Zeitman and together they ran Amador Foothill Winery where she served as winemaker/partner. They retired from the wine business after selling the winery in 2014. Jim Farnkopf, our Cellar Master, is holding the hose dripping wine back into the pump. Bill (whose last name I cannot remember, even after years of working together, which I find frightening) is holding the black pump hose, and my head is sticking through the tank door. Sadly, Marcelo Hernandez Jr. and Jim Farnkopf are no longer with us.

“Como se dice vino en Baja Sonoma?” is one of my favorite posters. I always felt it was critical that we remind people of the incredible contribution Mexicanos made to the success of the California wine boom. I worked alongside Marcelo Hernandez my first Crush in 1978. He taught me the ropes, trained me to operate the equipment, and laughed at my jokes. He bestowed upon me one of the greatest compliments I have ever received when he told me, “Lance, you work like a Mexican.” We worked together in the winery for just that one harvest. The next year Jim Bundschu promoted him to Vineyard manager, a position he kept for more than 20 years.

We believe this to be the first Spanish language advertisement in the California wine business. It features Marcelo sitting on his tractor in the midst of Rhinefarm Vineyards. We set up to do this shoot on three different days before we actually shot photos, because Ron Zak insisted we wait for an afternoon with clouds on the horizon. It was worth the wait. Always trust the artist. Marcelo was understandably proud of starring in this photo.

Marcelo was able to purchase property about a mile from Rhinefarm. He planted two acres of merlot grapes and did all the work on the vineyard from disking, pruning, and harvesting the grapes. Wind blowing through a row of Eucalyptus trees to the west of his property seemed to flavor the grapes with a distinctive minty character. For years, I made small batches of wine from Marcelo’s grapes for my home brand called Guerrilla Vino. When Rusty Staub, the famous baseball player and my longtime friend, enticed me to make wine for him to help raise money for his various charities, we launched Relentless Wines using those unique merlot grapes from Marcelo’s Vineyard.

Marcelo passed earlier this year.

McCullough insisted it was time for Bundschu and I to appear in a poster. I stacked a bunch of Gundlach Bundschu cases until we had a wall seven feet high to serve as a backdrop. We shot dozens of photos with Jim and I toasting one another. I had the idea of “blind tastings and your last request,” so we shot a few photos of us in blindfolds. After looking at the photos, Jim decided to go conservative. He chose a simple photo of the two of us sitting on Gundlach Bundschu cases toasting one another. We even printed those posters, which I thought were boring.

I enlisted Ron Zak and Chuck House to help me produce the “Blind Tastings” poster. Chuck did a brilliant job with the bullet holes. I paid for the poster production myself. At the bottom we added, “Unauthorized, Unapproved Collector’s Edition.” Once I had the posters in hand, we passed them out letting people know that Bundschu was unaware of their existence and enlisting recipients to keep the secret as long as possible. If my recollection serves, we were able to go two months before the secret got out, making the poster a true collector’s treasure.

Jim McCullough had this great idea to create posters that would teach people how to pronounce Gundlach Bundschu. The thing was, none of us had a clue how to produce a poster, so they gave the production task to me. My wife is a weaver, and she was in the Sonoma Arts Guild. I knew the Guild had photographers as members. I asked some of the artists and they recommended Bob Nixon. Nixon’s forte was landscape photos, but he listened as I explained that we needed something that showed the words “gun, lock, bun and shoe.” Even though it was not his primary focus, he said he’d give it a shot.

I contacted him every few days to see if he was making progress. He got a little pissed and said I should stop bothering him. He’d let me know when he had a photo to show me. I hadn’t heard from him for a couple of weeks, when he finally called and said he had something for me to look at. He had composed a scene with a bottle of Gundlach Bundschu wine, a clown doll holding our logo, a couple glasses of wine and children’s alphabet blocks spelling out the words. It did the job. He had come up with the entire thing on his own and didn’t seem keen on collaboration.

I had him make a print so I could show it to McCullough and Bundschu. They thought the picture was well composed and clearly showed the four words to pronounce the winery, so we moved forward with the project. We had already decided on black and white production to keep the cost down. We kept the poster simple. It read, “It’s elementary,” at the top, with the name of the winery below the picture stacked as it appears on the label. We added “Sonoma Valley Winery” so they’d know where we were and we added “since 1858” for historical perspective.

I took the photo to Chuck House, told him what we wanted to say on the poster. I asked if he could work on it and then suggest a printer. Typical of Chuck, he brilliantly chose to angle the photo having the corners of the photo break through the border line of the poster. It made it look as if the photo were lying on top of the poster and it heightened the sense of whimsy. He chose the fonts, and the whole thing came together.

Chuck suggested a printer, worked out the production details, and got a run date. Chuck insisted that I accompany him to the print run. That’s when I saw how great Chuck House was. He spoke to the press operator in his own language. They’d print a poster, look at it, talk about it, and then tweak the black or punch up the greys. Finally, when Chuck thought it was perfect, we printed the run.

Whenever one of us went on the road to work a market, we’d send several dozen posters ahead of our arrival. Once there, we’d take them with us on account calls. We gave them away free to salespeople and to any accounts that purchased Gundlach Bundschu wines for their stores or restaurants. The response to the poster was extraordinary. People found them amusing and playful, a distinct counterpoint to the overly serious attitude adopted by most of the wine industry. The poster also did its job extremely well: it taught people how to pronounce our name. We saw sales increase everywhere we introduced the posters.

We ran through our supply of that first poster in just a few months. Instead of reprinting, McCullough suggested we do a new poster. Back when I worked as a cellar rat, people would ask how I got into the wine business. I’d tell them, “I used to be a schoolteacher. Teaching got me into drinking, and drinking led to the wine business.” Using that as a theme, we created a poster featuring a school Marm. Bundschu suggested we invite Susie Scarborough to be the star. Susie was a neighbor, originally from Texas, who worked as a stewardess. She was personable, fun and in the local vernacular, “A real hoot.” She agreed.

I reached out to Bob Nixon again, told him our new idea, and he agreed to shoot the photos. This time we took four separate photos with Susie as a teacher in front of a blackboard holding flashcards showing how to pronounce the winery’s name. Ever meticulous, Nixon’s attention to detail was incredible; Susie put her hair up into a bun, donned glasses, a sweater over a simple blouse. Each flash card had a word printed on it along with an illustration. The blackboard even had the alphabet listed in both upper and lower case letters. Underneath the photos, again teasing the difficulty pronouncing our name, we printed “A challenge to pronounce . . . a pleasure to enjoy.”

The plan was to then shift to a big shot of Susie, the school Marm, transformed into a beautiful woman letting her hair down with a glass of wine. Unfortunately, after shooting the first four photos, Bob Nixon decided this was not photography he enjoyed doing. He suggested we contact another photographer named Ron Zak to shoot the final picture. Bob Nixon was an accomplished photographer. He was introspective and serious about his photography. He preferred working alone. He questioned whether doing commercial work for a winery might diminish the real focus of his art.

Ron Zak was completely different. He was high energy, boisterous and continually animated. For Ron, the more people involved the merrier. He was also an exceptionally talented photographer. We brought him in for the photoshoot. The set was elaborate. We had an antique school desk with a school bell, a vintage lamp, and flowers. Susie’s hair was down, her glasses and shoes off, and she was in a sensuous pose. On the wall behind her were reminders of Gundlach Bundschu’s historical importance, ancient posters, family portraits of the founders, and historic paintings. The caption read, “When it’s time for wine . . . say Gundlach Bundschu.”

There were loads of elements in this poster. Four shots depicting the four words and the master shot full of clues and historical elements. Chuck House felt the best idea was to be straightforward and let the amazing background details in the photos slowly draw in the viewer. Because there was an old-time, old world feel to the photos. He suggested we print in sepia tones, which were no more expensive than black and white, but created a much different feel.

Once again, we took the posters out into the market. They were a hit. In a time when fine wine was serious business, here was a very historical winery having fun, and they had a sense of humor. People were intrigued by our lighthearted approach. They were learning how to pronounce the name of our winery. Once a person learned pronunciation, they’d teach it to others. Attracted by the humor, learning to say the name, they’d taste the wines and discover they were delicious, especially for the price.

Not only that, but this was an underground exercise. We had decided not to publicize the posters until we saw the response they generated. Only people in the business, wine salespeople, waiters, and buyers for stores and restaurants and had seen the posters. These were the real movers and shakers of the wine business. Sales were increasing. Gundlach Bundschu was becoming hip.

I started at Gundlach Bundschu running their tasting room. The tasting room was only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 4 PM., and I was the only employee. One of our first white wine releases was Gewürztraminer. It was hard enough teaching people how to pronounce the winery’s name. Throw Gewürztraminer into the mix and you’ve got a real problem. I would tell tourists that if Sonoma Valley police stopped them, they could simply say, “Gundlach Bundschu Gewüztraminer,” and the cops would let them go.

After two posters teaching people how to pronounce our name, we decided it was time to go all in on our humor campaign. For years, Jim Bundschu had been storing an old Kaiser automobile in the barn. It was rusting with fading paint. We dragged the car out to the road leading through our Rhinefarm Vineyard. We got a local, retired CHP officer to put on his uniform and show up on a motorcycle. He even brought a ticket book. In an inspired bit of casting, McCullough, Bundschu and I were able to convince Jim’s mom, Mary Bundschu, to be behind the wheel. Zak captured the shot perfectly.

SONOMA VALLEY SOBRIETY TEST #1

If you can’t say

Gundlach Bundschu Gewürztraminer

you shouldn’t be driving!

The poster was a huge hit. Everybody loved it. Local people clamored for copies. Restaurants and wine shops hung it on their walls. Reporters would see it and show up to write stories about the winery poking fun at the staid fine wine business. We reprinted the poster multiple times. We were off and running.

Over the next ten years, we produced almost two dozen Gundlach Bundschu (and Cutler Cellar) posters. Each one related to something important and true to our winemaking experience. All the featured models were local people happy to help us out. In a time when full color advertising was in vogue, our black and white posters were deemed imaginative and artistic. The release of a new poster was a cause for celebration.

Somehow, in the 30 plus years since the last Gundlach Bundschu poster, the posters and their importance to Wine Country history have been forgotten. For the most part, they were produced and circulated before cell phones and the internet, so they are hard to find. The photos comprising the posters were shot on film, using real cameras and required darkroom development and printing.

Working with McCullough and Bundschu, collaborating with artists like Chuck House, Bob Johnson, and Ron Zak, then bringing ideas to life with gifted printers like Dennis Patterson was thrilling. We respected one another and all contributed to make a product that we were proud to claim our own. Compared to the pressure and sometimes drudgery of making wine, the posters were like playtime for me.

Years ago, I had intended to write about the magic of those glory years st Gundlach Bundschu, but life intruded. Years passed. I found I had forgotten many of the details along with the sequence of events, so I pushed it aside, assuming I would never do it.

One of my Cutler Cellar posters sits on the wall next to my desk. I see it every day. Of the eight people in the photo, only two of us are alive. More than half of the local models appearing in the GB posters, the people contributing ideas, and the salespeople who sold our wine have died or retired. Ben Franklin Press, the company that printed our posters, was sold. It occurred to me that someone needed to tell the story, to honor the people who contributed to this special, historic wine industry moment. I don’t know anyone else who can. That’s why I’m trying to do it now.

Wish me luck.

Russ Koehler owned the first record shop in Sonoma. It was small but had a great selection of music. I was there one day in 1981 looking through bins of albums. I selected two or three promising African artists and brought them to the counter for purchase. Russ laughed as he rang me up. “You should get to know Chuck,” he said, pointing to a tall thin gentleman up on a ladder painting the store logo onto the wall. “You’re the only two customers who ever buy African music in my store.”

I went over and introduced myself to Chuck House. Russ told him that I was the guy who performed his wedding ceremony when he married his wife, Carolyn, and that I was the new winemaker at Gundlach Bundschu. When I asked Chuck if he’d like to take a quick run up to the winery to check it out, he jumped at the chance.

Chuck was great fun. He was enthusiastic, excited by design and he had a unique perspective on art and how it related to a wine bottle. I found out that Chuck was hoping to get into label design for wineries and that he was in fact working for his brother-in-law at Colonna and Farrell in the hope that it would lead to something.

“I don’t know if anything will come of this,” I said, but I know a couple guys who are starting a winery and they need to design a label. Would you like me to introduce you?” At that time, Larry Turley worked as an emergency room doctor in Santa Rosa. My youngest brother Scott, recently out of the navy where he served as a corpsman, worked with Larry as he prepared to enter medical school. Scott introduced us and we became friends. Larry was a tall giant of a man with a loud, raucous laugh and great enthusiasm for life. Chuck realized he had nothing to lose, so I ended up introducing him to Larry Turley and John Williams who were starting up their Frog’s Leap Winery.

Chuck House met with Larry and John. They told him about their Frog’s Leap project and asked him to come up with some ideas. A few hours before Chuck went to make his presentation, he stopped by my house to show me what he had devised. Chuck House had created several fully formed, hand colored Frog’s Leap labels.

They were incredible, each one better than the last. One looked like something out of Beatrix Potter, another was very realistic, yet another was modern. They went from serious to playful, from rustic to polished. I did not envy the choice Larry and John had to make. By the time things were said and done, Frog’s Leap had their label.

That Frog’s Leap label won a national design award, and Chuck House was on his way to a very successful career as a professional label designer. It also occurred to me that I would try to involve Chuck on any design projects I was working on in the future.

I first met Jim McCullough in 1984. He was imposing, well over six feet tall, and had a deep sonorous voice that rumbled out of his Irish physique with a somber vibration that belied his wonderful sense of humor. Raised in Philadelphia, his family lived across the street from the Catholic Church where his mother cared for the priests. His sister became a nun and Jim even thought of joining a seminary. Alas, his love of ladies and the good life seduced him away from heavenly pursuits. Influenced by his upbringing, Jim McCullough was a twentieth-century man with nineteenth-century sensibilities.

In 1984 I was sent to Los Angeles to work the market for Gundlach Bundschu. Our sales in Southern California were abysmal, and I had been dispatched to find out why. McCullough, I discovered, had left the radio business in 1976 to become the first wine salesman to brave the Rocky Mountains. In those days Aspen, Vail, Telluride, and Steamboat were barely known for their skiing, and certainly no one there knew anything about fine wine. Jim McCullough taught them. He set up tastings, organized staff trainings and regaled them with eloquent histories of famous chateaus. At a time when French First Growths sold for $15 a bottle, his bosses were stunned when this strange, tall Irishman broke one million dollars in annual sales and then continued to do it year after year.

Inevitably McCullough had a falling out with his employers and secured a job as Western Regional Sales Manager for the Spanish wine company Torres. Almost single-handedly he increased their sales to one hundred thousand cases. So stunning were their sales that by 1984 the illustrious Chateau and Estates Wines Company had taken over the brand and McCullough with it. It was not a good match. McCullough was a bit too unpredictable for the staid Chateau and Estates management, so they stuck him in Los Angeles to focus on their one California winery (Gundlach Bundschu) and Torres but refused to let him represent his beloved Bordeaux wines.

After a particularly horrific day of riding around with a typical Los Angeles wine salesman, being insulted by various wine buyers and dealing with interminable traffic jams as we travelled from one account to the next, I could take no more. I called for an end to the day and insisted the wine salesman drop us back at our car. We were in Manhattan Beach. I took McCullough to a liquor store where we bought a bottle of Mt. Veeder Cabernet. I grabbed two plastic cups, and we made our way down to the beach. With the pounding surf in front of us, I opened that bottle of wine and poured it into the cups. We toasted each other and took a sip. That bottle of wine was deader than the Dead Sea.

I insisted McCullough stay at the beach while I went back to the store to exchange the bottle. When I realized the store had no air-conditioning, I figured there might be more problem bottles, so I traded our dead bottle for a bottle of Hornitos tequila and two limes. Armed with fresh cups I returned to the beach where we looked at the gorgeous sunset and drank most of that bottle of tequila. I talked to him about selling wine, distribution, and marketing. His answers showed insight, knowledge, and creativity. I returned to Sonoma and told Jim Bundschu that if he had any sense, he would hire Jim McCullough to be our sales manager.

It came to pass. Jim McCullough was hired as sales manager for Gundlach Bundschu Winery. The year was 1985 and our venerable winery was making some very dynamic wines, but sales were dragging. McCullough took some time to get the lay of the land. He spent time with Jim Bundschu and lots of time with me. He determined that the biggest single problem with the wine was its name: no one could pronounce it. He proposed we break it down to four simple, one-syllable words: Gun-lock-bun-shoe. He had even sketched pictures of a gun, a padlock, a bread bun, and a shoe.

Realizing that there was no advertising budget, McCullough suggested creating a poster that would teach people to pronounce the name. The poster was made at minimal cost. McCullough hit the road and sales started to pick up. Upon his return, McCullough regaled us with details of his trip. Once people learned to say Gundlach Bundschu, they insisted on buying it and teaching others how to say it. He dotted his narrative with historical details and personality assessments as incisive as a Rorschach test. And he was funny, hilariously funny, fall-out-of-your-chair funny.

From that point on and for the next 15 years, Jim McCullough sold every bottle of Gundlach Bundschu wine ever produced. Together, we created dozens of posters that have become eminent artifacts of wine history. He helped create “Fortune Corks” which printed a great quote on every cork. One of the quotes was from McCullough’s grandmother. She often said of her grandson, “Ye were cut out to be a gentleman, but the devil ran away with the pattern.” When the Bundschu clan hijacked the Napa Wine Train, it was McCullough who insisted we wear black velvet capes and masks.

As time went on, and the winery’s sales skyrocketed, McCullough and I convinced Bundschu that we needed to acknowledge and thank the friends we had made on the road. We created the Sonoma Valley Wine Patrol and highlighted each year with a four-day party that took 80 invited celebrants into a region in ways no tourist could duplicate. McCullough sought out historic buildings in downtown areas and would somehow arrange for elaborate wine dinners to be held in their lobbies. He could find fiddle champions in Missouri and entice them to perform. He would lead tours of mansions, farmer’s markets, and tiny neighborhood parks known only to locals… and Jim McCullough. The wine patrollers would eat nothing but great food, but they could find themselves at a dive full of personality just as easily as an elegant restaurant.

McCullough certainly was successful. Without him, there might not be a Gundlach Bundschu Winery, and we certainly would not have gained the reputation as the legendary “Joy Boys” accorded us by history. McCullough was a complicated man. Salesmen would cringe when he came to town. They knew they would sell a lot of wine, but they also knew a couple of accounts would throw them out based on some of McCullough’s insensitive comments. He was one of the greatest speakers on wine I have ever heard, but he could kill a happy crowd in an instant with a morose comment.

McCullough was gone from Gundlach Bundschu by 2000. He worked in New Mexico, then Oregon before returning to Sonoma. He worked in tasting rooms where he sold tons of wine but eventually was let go for various slights. A twentieth-century man with nineteenth-century sensibilities doesn’t do well in the twenty-first century wine business. Eventually, he returned to his native Philadelphia, ostensibly to live out the rest of his life in the bosom of his large family. His health was not good, and he spent the last few years of his life receiving dialysis treatments three times a week and enduring repeated hospital visits. He passed in 2019.

With Jim McCullough you got the good, the bad and the ugly. He was one of the seminal characters in California wine history, but he is largely unknown and forgotten. I loved him like a brother. Before he died, had you turned up in Philadelphia, he would have found you the best cheesesteak, the finest cheap seat at the Philharmonic, and given you an historical perspective as clear as the liberty bell. Of course, he’d probably have pissed somebody off as well.

Tales from the Reawakened Wine Patrol

by Lance Cutler

Sometimes life is all about timing. Being in the right place at the right time makes all the difference. I didn’t plan on being there. I just knew I had to get out of Los Angeles. I had to escape with my family to some other place. I yearned for a more rural existence, one far removed from the despair of inner-city Los Angeles and the hassles with police and the intense, passionate pleadings of political true believers.

So, in 1977 I found myself in Sonoma, California, a small rural community steeped in history and populated primarily by elderly retirees. The center of town circled around a lovely park with mature trees and a duck pond. The northern-most mission of the Spanish conquest anchored one corner, the hardware store another. In the middle of First Street East, locals would shop at the market taking time to sit at the lunch counter for a cup of coffee and gossip.

A poor farming town in a gorgeous setting, Sonoma survived by growing apples, pears, prunes, and some wine grapes. Restaurants were family style and inexpensive. If the food was not exciting, at least it was plentiful. The bars did big business, mostly on-the-rocks drinks, martinis and Manhattans.

I landed a job as director of a small, private elementary school. The pay was $600 per month, nine months a year, with free tuition for my daughter. We lived in an 864-square foot house on two acres of land, which we shared with our landlords, the Boninos. Our rent was $165 per month; $150 if we kept the leaves raked.

In the summer of 1978, with no salary coming in from the school, I signed on for a job in the Gundlach Bundschu tasting room. A small family winery dating back to 1858, Gundlach Bundschu had been revived by Jim Bundschu and his two brothers-in-law. I worked the tasting room Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 4. Often, no one would show up for hours at a time. I earned $3.00 per hour. The Merlot and Zinfandel sold for $5.00 per bottle; the Cabernet Sauvignon was $5.50.

I returned to the school in September, working from 9 to 3 and then working at the winery from 3:30 until midnight to help with harvest. In February of 1979, the Bundschus asked me to work full-time at the winery. They offered $3.50 per hour. I accepted the offer.

I worked at Gundlach Bundschu for 18 years. I became winemaker, then general manager and won the Winemaker of the Year Award in 1983. Along with Jim Bundschu and Jim McCullough, I helped turn Gundlach Bundschu Winery into one of the most respected and revered wineries in all of California.  We made wonderful wines which sold at very fair prices.

We honored the Hispanic contribution to winemaking and grape growing. We started the first humorous marketing program in the fine wine business. We invented the Sonoma Valley Wine Patrol. We hijacked the Napa Wine Train, kidnapped Richard Branson, and trained many of the best winemakers of California. We rode the tidal wave of the fine wine boom as it grew from a simple, local business to become one of California’s most important industries, accounting for more than $84.5 billion in annual economic output.

The three of us, working together, created a magical kingdom that welcomed anyone willing to work hard and laugh at themselves. Hundreds and eventually thousands of people discovered this special place and signed on to be a part of it. There was no other winery like it. There likely will never be another.

This is the story of how that magical place started, developed, and eventually withered away. It is a story filled with creativity, a brutal work schedule and laughter, lots of laughter. It is also a story of death and murder. In the end, this is the story of the California wine business.

For those of us in the wine business in those days, life was hard, but it was fun, and no place was more fun than Gundlach Bundschu. It was a magical place spreading joy and wonder everywhere.

Is it all true? I can’t say for sure. Memory twists the truth, and what’s true for one person is not always true for another, but I was there. These are things that I did. This is how I remember it.

People say you must record the history. You must pass on the truth. We cannot leave the story to private equity firms, billionaire serial buyers and large wine conglomerates like E.J. Gallo and Constellation.

I was in the right place at the right time, and this is my story, so I’m going to try to tell it.