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Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine
by Steven Kent Mirassou
Hardcover – June 2021
Steven Kent Mirassou received his BA in American Literature from the George Washington University and his MA in Literature from NYU. He was born in the Salinas Valley and grew up in San Jose and Los Gatos before going east to college. Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine is his first book.
Mirassou started his wine career in sales but found his true passion after moving into the production side of the business in 1996. Steven has made the highest rated wines from the Livermore Valley, is a founder of the Mount Diablo Highlands Wine Quality Alliance, and the President of the Livermore Valley Wine Growers Association.
Steven has four adult children, April Coffey, Aidan Mirassou, Katherine Mirassou, and Sara Mirassou. He lives in Pleasanton, CA with his fiancée, Nancy Castro, and their three dogs.
Everything Up to the Press is Just Foreplay
Everything up to the press is just foreplay.
The grapes come in and are crushed and shunted off to their fermenters. It is there, whether in tank or plastic boxes, that they will polish and preen, showing off for the winemaker, pouting one day – ebullient and triumphant another.
Each day brings a new set of emotional complications. The winemaker pumps over and punches down, adorning the new wine with the gifts of new love. Each day the becoming-wine responds. Sometimes the response is loin-shaking; sometimes the response is obliteration.
The wine and the winemaker eventually make it to the press. Tumultuous – the time before may have been; easy and inevitable sometimes, too. The winemaker has, in the cool of morning and the stupor of afternoon taken the wine in and brought it to all parts of his mouth, gauging its readiness in its unctuous flowering, the sanding of its edges and recalcitrance.
The wine and the winemaker learn each other…the curves, the amplitude; the deep inhalations, and the final…exclamation.
It is pressed, the pact is made, and they are wedded. Once pressed, there is no undoing.
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