The Word from Wine Country

Edward Humes & Barbara Banke (seated)

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat has a great feature about A Man and His Mountain, wine magnate Barbara Banke, and the rise of the Kendall-Jackson wine empire from humble beginnings: "Humes recreates scenes from when Jackson, a San Francisco lawyer, was looking for a vineyard retreat. He drove around Wine Country in a Cadillac nicknamed the “yellow banana” — given to him by a client who couldn’t pay cash for his legal services — with his first wife, Jane, and children Jenny and Laura in tow, knocking on the doors of esteemed winemakers to learn about the trade."

Next take a look at this great rundown on the best wine books of the season, which I'm happy to say includes A Man and His Mountain. Reviewer Virginie Boone calls it "the kind of story movie directors covet. It starts with a 'street-smart farm boy' buying his first vineyard and ends with a self-made billionaire owning some 14,000 acres of vineyard land and the most popular Chardonnay brand in the world."

P.S. Join me Saturday December 7 at 3 p.m. at Apostrophe Books in Long Beach for a book chat, signing and a glass of wine.

5 Surprising Facts About Jess Jackson

Jess Stonestreet Jackson was the only lumberjack turned cop turned lawyer turned winemaker to work his way onto the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans — with his greatest accomplishments all coming after age 50.

Jackson, founder of Kendall-Jackson Wines and a pioneer in the rise of California wine country, is the subject of my new book, A Man and His Mountain. Here are five surprising facts about Jess Jackson:

1. If not for Jackson, Chardonnay might still be unpopular and called “White Burgundy.” Kendall-Jacksons’s first-ever wine persuaded American consumers — most famously the Reagan White House — to start guzzling Chardonnay.

2. Jess Jackson never intended to get into the wine business. He bought a small mountain retreat and planted grapes as a diversion from a busy law career. He sold the fruit to local winemakers. One year a glut left his harvest unsellable, so he launched his own winery as a last resort. It nearly broke him.

3. Jackson married the woman who set fire to his house on their first date. Barbara Banke's plan to impress Jackson with a home-cooked meal nearly gutted his home, but the relationship ignited anyway.

4. Jackson owned the first filly to win the Preakness in nearly a century. He defied the odds, genetics and the horse-racing establishment with Rachel Alexandra’s last-minute entry in the Preakness Stakes. She won the prestigious second leg of the Triple Crown starting from the 13th post position — from which no horse, male or female, has ever won the race.

5. Jackson inspired multiple Pixar movie scenes and characters. Pixar founder John Lassiter credits his friend Jess’s poetic waxings on the origins of winemaking with inspiring him to include historical backstories in Cars, Up and other films. He also draws on their adventures together, such as Jackson’s spur-of-the-moment helicopter drop-off of Lassiter at Pixar Headquarters, which has no helipad. “Can we land here?” the filmmaker asked, gaping at the parking lot where the chopper alighted. Grinning, Jackson replied, “You can land anywhere. Once.”

Introducing A Man and His Mountain

My new book, A Man and His Mountain, will be published in a few weeks. It's a bit of a departure for me -- my first biography. I could not have asked for a more compelling subject than Jess Jackson, the self-made billionaire entrepreneur who put Chardonnay on America's tables.

Here's what Booklist has to say in one of the book's early reviews:

"Whatever Jess Jackson touched seemed to turn to profit, whether lawsuits, grapes, or horses...  Passionate and even ruthless, Jackson sought out the best talents and finest vineyards in California’s emerging wine business and made Chardonnay a household word in America. Then he turned to owning winning racehorses. Triumph came not without personal costs—a shattered marriage and agonizing brushes with business failure. Humes makes his charismatic subject’s every venture vividly and intensely dramatic. This book will attract readers of diverse interests, from the law to wine-making to business to horse-racing."

I'll be posting regular updates and upcoming events on Facebook.

One Book, One Peninsula: Garbology Days

I had one of the coolest and and most rewarding experiences an author can have this weekend: an entire community read Garbology, then invited me to speak and lead discussions about our trashy ways (and the way back from them). Los Angeles' Palos Verdes Peninsula had chosen Garbology as its One Book, One City (or in this case, One Book, One Peninsula) community read, and they didn't hold back.

The venues for our trash talk included two high schools, the Marymount California University campus, the newly renovated Palos Verdes Art Center, and the rooftop of the Palos Verdes Library with seating for 500. And however much my book may have inspired or served as a catalyst , the Peninsula communities ended up inspiring me far more. These folks are writing their own Garbology story, going beyond reading and talking. They are making real and original changes in education and community, from bans on foam plastic to convenient and clean alternatives to the endless waste of plastic bottled water.

Left: Sophomore Michaelanne Butler worked to ban foam plastic at Marymount U. Right: Sustainability Officer Kathleen Talbot and the reusable water bottle fountain

The Peninsula is a sprawling region long dedicated to the preservation of open space and habitat (following a successful campaign in the 1970s to stave off wildland-leveling construction of thousands of condos). That may be why the tidal wave of waste we generate, its impact on coastlines and ocean habitats, and ways in which more sustainable choices can benefit both the environment and the economy -- some of Garbology's main themes -- generated such enthusiasm here.

One of the simplest ideas that came out of a discussion of our 102-trash legacy, the plasticization of our oceans, and the fate of L.A.'s Garbage Mountain revolved around simple incentives to encourage less wasteful choices. At Marymount's campus, a thousand students were going through 1,800 foam plastic carryout containers every week, an immense plastic refuse pile. Now students can choose a compostable clamshell for a quarter, or put a deposit down on a reusable container that gets fully refunded at the end of the school year. And the campus is now foam free.

At Peninsula High School, one young woman proposed an even simpler incentive to persuade kids to recycle more: reward them with a free cookie. At first people laughed, but she was serious: In a world where we subsidize such wasteful products as junk mail with billions of dollars, is a cookie too much to ask? I call that original thinking -- the sort of thinking that accomplishes things by showing how even big problems respond to commonsense and simple solutions.

Posing with the Gar-Ball trash art project

Do Green Schools Work?

After decades of making ecology central to curriculum, campus, and culture, America's greenest universities are starting to ask a seemingly simple question: Is it working?

My latest article for Sierra Magazine examines how colleges with strong focuses on the environment are trying to measure the footprint of a green education.

Photo from Sierra and courtesy of Dan Hamerman/Green Mountain College

The Garbology Response

The response to Garbology has been overwhelming. Communities and campuses are using the book for discussion, debate and all manner of digging into our dirty love affair with trash. Best of all, people are going beyond the printed (or digital) page to hunt down senseless waste in their own daily lives, to create fantastic trashy events and web resources, and to come up with their own unique solutions to our 102-ton legacy.

BTW, 102 tons is the average amount of trash each American is on track to make in his or her lifetime. That means if you piled all your trash on the front lawn, you'd find that each person in the average American household generates 1.3 tons of trash a year. That's twice what the average person threw out in 1960, which makes today's Americans the most wasteful people on the planet, with grave consequences for nature and the economy.

It is not a pretty picture, but my goal in writing Garbology was not merely to throw light on the often invisible waste embedded in our consumer society, but also to show the individuals, cities and businesses that are finding a way back from our disposable economy, and who are discovering that waste is the one big social and environmental problem that everyone can do something about. That's exactly what the communities embracing Garbology are doing in a big way right now.

Here's a sampling: Palos Verdes and the One Book, One Peninsula program in Los Angles County are sponsoring a series of events, contests, displays, fairs and discussions about trash, recycling and the reuse economy. A trash art piece, Gar-Bal, has been making the rounds to get the discussions rolling, most recently at the the Rolling Hills Estates branch of the Malaga Bank. The Book Frog Book Store is also joining in.

Marymount University, meanwhile, is making Garbology its campus read, is staging an event around the theme of Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and has come up with its own readers guide and discussion points. Cal State Northridge has also made Garbology is freshman read and making waste its convocation theme in September and its Sustainability Day in October.

I'll be at Cal State Northridge on September 12. On September 27, I'll be joining the Garbology discussion at Palos Verdes High School, Peninsula High School and Marymount University, followed by a discussion at the Palos Verdes Public Library on September 28.