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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.

Lineage: LIFE and Love and Six Generations in California Wine

by Steven Kent Mirassou (Author)
Hardcover – June 2021

THE LATEST

Ephemerality

2021-11-03

The mornings are cold now. And the bins don’t throw off heat anymore either. Fermentation is practically done; now it’s an exercise in revealing structure,

Harvest

2021-10-29

The purest day is a day without hands. Face clean, Numbers – reliquary abstraction. Blankness is blessed, and it unwinds to ancient time. Below the

The Best Day of the Week

2021-10-28

There are no real ends in wine (maybe when the bottle is finished…but that just leads to the beginning of another bottle being opened!), but

I Fucking Love My Work

2021-10-21

I’m headed back home to the winery after most of the week in Portland to take care of some family issues. God, how I have

The Connected Table Podcast from the Telluride Wine Festival

2021-10-16

I had the great pleasure to appear on my friends’, David Ransom and Melanie Young’s, podcast – The Connected Table. In this episode, we

Everything Up to the Press is Just Foreplay

2021-10-13

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

Bookended Balance

2021-10-11

Today was one of those perfect harvest days where there are way too many things to do in the number of hours available and yet

Harvest in the Santa Cruz Mountains

2021-09-17

This morning, 1300 feet above sea level on a mountain in Felton under a sky blue enough to be a painting, I loaded three tons

stevenkentmirassou

To a new and healthy year filled with great wine a

To a new and healthy year filled with great wine and compelling stories! #stevenkentmirassou #writer #winemaker

There are few challenges in life that cannot be ov

There are few challenges in life that cannot be overcome by espresso and sparkling wine. The sparkling is an imperfectly disgorged bottle of Pinot noir from the Santa Cruz Mountains that will be available in 2023. It is tasting beautifully right now. Espresso from @nespresso. #stevenkentmirassou

The end of the harvest season finishes much as it

The end of the harvest season finishes much as it begins…with cleaning stuff out. Here is your moment of Zen. #stevenkentmirassou #thelineagewinecollection #6thgenerationwinemaker #momentofzen

As the last few pages of this year‘s calendar fl

As the last few pages of this year‘s calendar flip over, I’d like to thank all Lineage Wine Collection supporters for their incredible generosity, friendship, and patronage this year.

The highest and best use of our hospitality energy is in sharing and in working to add just a little bit of joy and richness to people's lives. These last two years have certainly tested our mission and - given the multitude of Covid restrictions - our ability to consistently deliver, but it has also revealed to me that my amazing team will go many extra yards to try to ensure that each and every person who visits us feels well-taken care of.
On behalf of everyone at The Lineage Wine Collection, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a safe and healthy holiday season, and we look forward to being able to share more with you in 2022. #stevenkentmirassou #thelineagewinecollection #hospitality

This is what a leaky barrel looks like when it sto

This is what a leaky barrel looks like when it stops leaking. Thanks to @beth.refsnider and Antonio Salazar, cellar Manager extraordinare for their expertise!

Steven Kent Mirassou talks about why #cabernetfran

Steven Kent Mirassou talks about why #cabernetfranc is the future of his brands and of the #livermorevalley. #stevenkentmirassou #6thgrnerationwinemaker #thelineagewinecollection

“I can measure the amount of titratable acid the

“I can measure the amount of titratable acid there is in a wine, the pH level, the amount of alcohol by volume, and a bunch of other things. What I can’t measure, though, is how these things make you feel, how all of these individual planks combine in your mouth and your mind and your heart to create your individual sense of the wholeness of the thing. To know the details of a thing can be revelatory, but the details rarely capture the essence of it. The esthetic side of life (the wine side of life) is about creating emotional connections, about intuition. To know something on the wine side is to suppose and to assume and to guess. Facts are for another view of things; a view of life that does not welcome the heart, for me, is a view that is incompatible with everything for which wine is a symbol.”

Excerpt From: Steven Kent Mirassou. “Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine.” Check out links in bio to get more original #writing and to purchase a signed copy of my book. #stevenkentmirassou #writer #winemaker #6thgenerationwinemaker

“For the wine lover, it is that place and time t

“For the wine lover, it is that place and time that defines a lifetime’s personal search for comity and beauty and for a wine that strums a revelatory sequence of notes that cracks open our hedonistic and thirsty heart.”
Excerpt From: Steven Kent Mirassou. “Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine.” #stevenkentmirassou #batesranchvineyard #6thgenerationwinemaker #thelineagewinecollection

“Harvest is like a national holiday in this sens

“Harvest is like a national holiday in this sense. The clocks reset to our own special time zone and the more pedestrian concerns of the day get lost in the tumble of Cabernet tonnage. I love the fact that the grapes own the calendar from August to November. The grapes brook no argument, suffer no excuse; they quietly, and by their mere presence, persistently demand. They are nature’s perfect narcissists. There is something of the heroic in doing something, no matter how exhausting it might be because one must. Harvest is the only part of the business that does not resonate with an emotional timbre. Doing is all.”

Excerpt From: Steven Kent Mirassou. “Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine.” #stevenkentmirassou #lineagewinecollection #sixthgenerationwinemaker

Press Days are the Best Days! #winemaking #lineage

Press Days are the Best Days! #winemaking #lineagewines

#telluride gondola framed by clouds. Unbelievably

#telluride gondola framed by clouds. Unbelievably beautiful place! @travelingnancy and I at the @telluridewinefestival. #thelineagecollection

@batesranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains is one of

@batesranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains is one of those mythic places that just seems fated to produce absolutely singular, world-class, life-changing wines. 2021 marks our second harvest from this place, and we are one bunch of lucky winemakers to be able to add our interpretation of this mind-blowing vineyard to the wine loving world! #santacruzmountains #stevenkentmirassou #thelineagecollection #batesranch

@aidanjmirassou and @beth.refsnider at the top of

@aidanjmirassou and @beth.refsnider at the top of the amazing #zayantevineyard. Merlot from this own-rooted, dry- and organically-farmed site is now in fermenters. Will be a crucial piece of our Right Bank blend. #thelineagecollection #6thgenerationwinemaker #lautrecote

I’m thrilled to be able to join Michael and Cari

I’m thrilled to be able to join Michael and Cari, owners of @cellarsandwine in Walnut Creek where I will be pouring wine and doing a book signing on Saturday from 5pm-7pm! Wine Hardware is a gorgeous store that specializes in bespoke wine cellars as well as having a great selection of wine and wine books. I look forward to seeing you and pouring you some wine! #lineagebook #stevenkentmirassou #booksigning @lineagecollection @lautrecotecabernetfranc

It turns out that you can shove 13 picking bins in

It turns out that you can shove 13 picking bins in a 20-foot U-haul! #harvest #batesranch #zayantevineyard @beth.refsnider @aidanjmirassou #thelineagecollection

Barbera rosé bubbles in a press drain pan. This i

Barbera rosé bubbles in a press drain pan. This is the first step in our way to making gorgeous sparkling wine. #thelineagecollection #barbera #sparklingwine @lineagecollection

Today, my book Lineage: Life and Love and Six Gene

Today, my book Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine is officially birthed to the world and available on Amazon.com. What an amazing feeling!

I spent about 18 months before and during Covid writing this love letter to
Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine
cellars and vineyards, wine, and those crazy and wonderful people who work shepherding unruly nature into something beautiful and delicious.

The process of writing the book changed me in profound ways: it brought my older self in direct contact with the aspirations I had as a young man, helped me to prove to myself that I could actually finish a project like this, and gave me a lot of concentrated time to think deeply about why winemaking is one of the two greatest fields of endeavor that I can imagine.

As writing takes on a more consistent and important part of my professional life, I am fascinated and excited by all the possibilities. I'm working on a book on Cabernet Franc and a novel about a psychopathic circus performer/bounty hunter (she might even be the heroine of the story....?) as well as a variety of shorter work. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date with all the new projects.

I'm extremely proud of the way Lineage turned out. It is a beautiful book, designed by Connie Hwang and published by Paul Chutkow of Val de Grace press. Lineage is also a book that dives down deeply into one man's search for esthetic truth and one wine lover's story about the bottomless beauty of wine and its ability to transfigure time. If you haven't read it yet, you can find a link to my website in the bio or go to Amazon.com. #lineagebook #stevenkentmirassou #writer #winemaker #thelineagecollection @conniehwangdesign @valdegrace_books

I had the great pleasure to be a guest on Mary Orl

I had the great pleasure to be a guest on Mary Orlin and Mary Babbitt's podcast: @sipsiphooraypodcast to talk about family history, Livermore Valley, wine, and the publication of my book, Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine.

Both Marys are long-time wine industry experts and friends. It took 15 years from an appearance on their TV show In Wine Country to this episode of their podcast, but I don't think we missed a beat! #maryorlin #marybabbitt #thelineagecollection #stevenkentmirassou

"Lineage" is a book about one family’s history i

"Lineage" is a book about one family’s history in the wine business and a history of my winegrowing region. Mostly, though, it is a love letter to the glories of vineyards and cellars, to the craft of shepherding unruly nature into the bottomless beauty that is wine, and to all those here and gone who have lived and worked in the wine life. #lineagebook #stevenkentmirassou #writersofinstagram #winemaker

It is an amazing thrill to be on the verge of havi

It is an amazing thrill to be on the verge of having my first book, Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine, in the hands of interested readers. I’m always keen to try things I’ve never done before, and I got to tell you – being able to sign books for people is ridiculously cool! (Links in Bio) #stevenkentmirassou #bookstagram #lineagebook #writer #winemaker #thelineagecollection

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