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.
Cabernet Franc often thrives despite the interventions of the winemaker; it reaches its apotheosis, then, when the winemaker is only (at a distance) watchful, bridegroom to the fizz of fermentation; shepherd to the press, to the barrel, to the blend, to that final shape that twists the tongue, molds the
Barbera is like a clue, a cipher left in crabby, penciled writing on parchment grown brown and wrinkled. Like the iconic drifter who saves the town, no one is sure where Barbera came from. Its genetics indicate that it may have been introduced to Italy in the 1600s, but it
There are many factors that conspire to make California almost uniquely susceptible to fire. In the last several years, fires in Sonoma and Napa counties have severely affected the quality of the fruit coming off vineyards. The Livermore Valley has been lucky in that it isn’t surrounded by a lot
Never have we experienced so much uncertainty…the health of our family and friends, the long-term health of our business, the way the world will look after Covid. In the midst of all that we do not know comes the one thing that we can count on, the one thing that
Harvest snuck up on me again. I’ve been doing this long enough to know when the first grapes will come in, but each year I’m still surprised. Harvest is holy. Harvest is hard. Harvest is healing.
The senses are the winemaker’s greatest tools. The ability to smell and taste and remember what you’ve experienced from barrel to barrel are crucial in putting together consistent wines. Outside influences, like Brettanomyces, a spoilage yeast that lives everywhere in the winery, can get in the way of the true expression of
As the 2020 harvest fast approaches, we are busy in the cellar making our first official evaluations of the 2019 wines. We devote about an hour a day making detailed notes on each barrel in a specific lot, thinking about where that particular barrel may ultimately end up. The cellar
Lineage is our most complicated blend; it can comprise five different grapes (the classic Bordeaux varieties) and Cabernet Sauvignon from more than 10 blocks on six vineyards. Aidan, Beth, and I start each year with nearly 150 barrels of wine, and from these, we carve aspirants away until we are
Because it’s hard not to compare things, especially (for me) barrels of wine that will ultimately fit into one of a few different categories, I developed a full-proof, easily understood rating system composed of Negative ( – ), Neutral ( O ), and Positive ( + ). Now, of course,