End of Tape 1, Side A

CE: You were married then, October 5, 1942. Where?

FR: In San Rafael.

CE: San Rafael.

FR: Yes. All arrangements we made were all put aside. First of all, Herb couldn't come to Salt Lake and my aunt, who had moved to Oakland -- She and my mother had made arrangements; we were going to be married from my aunt's house in Oakland. Then Herb and I had taken out our marriage license in Marin County and it wasn't valid in Oakland. We didn't know that, you know!

CE: Who knows those things.

FR: No, no!

CE: You'd only gone to law school at Stanford, but let that slip.

FR: So we were married at Judge Ciocca house.

CE: How do you spell that?

FR: Ciocca.

CE: Do you know Mrs. Martinelli?

GM: Very well.

CE: Then you had a reception?

FR: Yes, at the Mark Hopkins.

CE: At the Mark Hopkins. Oh gosh.

FR: But, you know, all of a sudden we didn't have any place to have it and at that point they lived on -- Wasn't it Grand Avenue they lived on?

GM: Yes, Grand Avenue.

FR: And she was just darling. She's a friend of mine now and I --

GM: She's very happily married.

FR: And when she -- She went to sea for a long time, too.

GM: Oh yes, she did.

CE: The wife?

FR: Yes. He died very suddenly. And so she went to sea. She was in the gift shops.

GM: That’s right, she was in the gift shops.

FR: And she came into the antique shop with some of her things that she wanted to dispose of.

CE: At the Marin Art & Garden Center?

FR: Yes. And I looked at her and I thought, “It has to be.” So I said, "Aren't you Edith? Edith Ciocca?" And she said, "Yes". And I said, "You know, I was married in your home."

CE: And that was the Judge's wife, or daughter?

FR: Wife. The judge and Herb had been friends they were of an age. And they had known one another, so that’s --

CE: Alright. then where did you live? Did you live in Marin?

FR: We lived in San Francisco. And immediately American President Lines decided to send Herb right back to sea.

CE: Oh, no.

FR: Well he wanted to join the Army Air Corps and I thought, “That's all I need!”

CE: “I just married you; I don't want to lose you!.”

FR: So he had taken the exams, the physical exams, and was going to be sworn in and they abandoned that program of training people to become pilots. So his alternative was to get in the Navy or to go with more shipping administration. And the judge -- Who was the man who was head of the American President Line? The President of the American President Lines told him that if he cared to go back to sea on President Line ships, with the shipping administration, that they would see to it that I could know where he was. And with the Navy, heaven only knows where he would be.

CE: Never know.
FR And Ken Varcoe was the vice-president and he told me that he would let me know where Herb was and when he would be coming back to the United States. And on his voyages he came in all the way from Seattle to Port W. But Mr. Varcoe would let me know so that I could be there. So we would have five or six days together, and then he'd be gone for six months.

CE: Did he do this during the entire war?

FR: Yes.

CE: Well hard as it was, your physical separation, you knew where he was and that was --

FR: Sometimes it was not so comforting.

CE: Why, because he had be --

FR: I knew that he was in India and on the war news they said that the Japanese were bombing the port and I knew that his ship was there.

CE: Did he have any, any effects, though, during the war?

FR: No he was extremely fortunate.

CE: Other than that incarceration in Hong Kong. The war’s over, then. What happened? Did you come --

FR: Well, he came back home. At this point I bought a little house in Oakland and they said, “Well, we're sending you to Korea.”

CE: Korea?

FR: Yes. With the War Shipping Administration you can go to Inchon. And Herb said, “Let me see what it's like. I don't like anything about Korea and I don't think they will let you come over anyway but, you know, I will let you know and I will get out of there as quickly as I can because you can come to Japan.” By this time we had a baby daughter.

CE: Ann is your oldest?

FR: Yes. So he went to Inchon and it was just as bad as he thought it would be. He said the Koreans were incredible. With an occupation-persons house, an army officer and his wife, the Korean's moved in and while they were at the commissary shopping they took absolutely everything out of the house. Everything. He said, “You slept with your wallet and your watch under your pillow. You'd wake up in the morning and they'd both be gone and you'd never have felt a thing.”

GM: Oh no, what a way to live.

FR: Why were we there?

FR: To protect Korea.

CE: Instead of protecting yourself from the Koreans. Well what did he have, a short tenure, then, Frances?

FR: Yes, very. He was transferred to Kobe :
CE: That's when you went to Japan and lived there for seven years. Did you enjoyed that experience?

FR: Not to begin with; it was terrible. I mean, you know, Japan had been destroyed and it was the most dreadful sight you had ever seen.

CE: What year would that have been after the war?

FR: This was 1947.

CE: Oh, Lord, to Japan. Oh, Lord.

FR: No it was ‘46.

CE: And their attitude. Was MacArthur there doing his thing?

FR: Oh yes.

CE: Of course the Army of occupation was there?

FR: Oh yes.

CE: The resentment --

FR: Yes, of course it was very --

CE: Was he still with War Shipping Administration or was he back with the Steamship Company?

FR: No, no. He was under American President Lines auspices but he was with War Shipping Administration. They were the only people. You know, you had to be with some type of air service to get in at all. So we had all the army privileges.

CE: Did this affect your children in any way? Or was your son born at that time?

FR: No, no, Herbie was born in ’50.

CE: You did have your daughter there?

FR: Yes.

CE: Did she go to an American schools? Was there a colony?

FR: There was a large military population and we lived with all the military.

CE: Did you stay more or less within the compound of the military?

FR: Oh yes.

CE: Did you find that a restrictive life?

FR: I was terrified when I arrived out there, you know. I'd never been that far away from home. Of course, my mother went with us, went with Ann to see that we got over there. The devastation -- You had to see it to believe it. You know Japan is not long on building big houses. Everything burned or was knocked absolutely flat. And you would travel for miles and see nothing but foundations. Absolutely flat but you could see foundations or maybe a chimney. So you knew that this had been heavily populated at one time.

CE: Yours has been a very rare experience. You know, as an American, knowing what the Japanese had done to our country, Pearl Harbor, and having that earlier experience in China --

FR: I was amazed that Herb could take it as well as he did.

CE: Wasn't there a great conflict in your psyche over this? I mean you certainly see this devastation done by our bombers and --

FR: It was very difficult, it really was, and of course I was more concerned about how Herb was going to handle it and --

CE: Because look at his experiences.

FR: Yes. And he was incredible; he really was, he way he handled it. He said, “Well, you know, they were working under orders and you cannot blame the individual Japanese for what happened to me.” And his attitude, of course, was what made my mother and me, you know, who were quite belligerent, but it was his attitude that made us look at it from a different viewpoint.

CE: It's hard to be as generously philosophical as he was.

FR: He was wonderful. He had an amazing disposition.

CE: Capacity to forgive and to understand.

FR: Yes.

CE: I caught that in the softness of the man when I met him that one and only time; there was a softness in him, a man who had experienced much and seen much and could have the capacity to forgive.

FR: Yes. And we lived there -- Obviously when you're in a place that long it became much easier. We were on home leave twice during those seven years.

CE: Oh good. Were you in Kobe all this time?

FR: Yes.

CE: How far is that, say, from Hiroshima or Nagasaki where the --

FR: Well Herb flew over Hiroshima on his way from Inchon and he said that, you know, the things that we say around Kobe and Nagoya were bad enough but he said, “You should have seen that.” He said there was just no describing it at all. It was about, oh, I guess about seventy five or a hundred miles by the road but we didn't choose to go down. We could have finagled it but we didn’t want to.

CE: Does your daughter Ann recall those years at all?

FR: She was seven when we came home and --

CE: Does she ever feel deprived or denied something by being in that atmosphere?

FR: No, really. We were not deprived. We had all of the --

CE: Well I was -- Children think -- Of course she had her little classmates. There were other families there with children.

FR: Yes, yes. We didn't go to -- She was too little, for one thing, but she didn't go to the army school. But we lived in an area called Chioya and the compound was owned by Sir Ernest James who was a Canadian. And it was a marvelous area in that we were all foreign nationals. There were a lot of them military, a lot of them Americans, but we had all the consuls, the Swedish consul, the Norwegian consul, all the British shipping people, the French --

CE: Wonderful experience, in a way.

FR: The Turks, the Portuguese, and they all lived in this wonderful compound. And we had a country club and we had swimming pools, lawn bowls, tennis courts galore.

CE: This is a, an aura, to me it reminds me of people who have lived in the far east before the war, that wonderful colonial life, and you had sort of a taste of it there in the military --

FR: Yes.

CE: Do you think those years are over forever?

FR: Oh yes.

CE: They're gone.

FR: Oh absolutely.

CE: And would you say rightly so in a way, or not?

FR: Probably, probably rightly so.

CE: It's hard to give them up.

FR: It’ll never -- The world will never be like that again. We had four servants. We had four servants and a chauffeur and a company car. You know, I mean we were young and we didn't have that kind of money.

CE: And all those little niceties of life.

FR: The Officers Club was Sir Ernest James’ home and the military had taken it over and it was a magnificent place, with tennis courts and Olympic size swimming pools.

CE: Conventional American buildings or was this Japanese architecture?

FR: No, all of these buildings in his compound were American or European type.

CE: Or European design. Was it a large area? I mean, you didn't feel confined?

FR: Oh, yes. We were about ten miles out of Kobe and no because --

CE: That was an extraordinary unique experience you've had. What happened after your seven years there? Was Herbert called back to the States?

FR: Yes, yes.

CE: Thank heavens, right?

FR: We came on home leave and he was offered a position in the main office, the head office, and he felt that it was time that we should take it.

CE: So then did you live back in Marin?

FR: Yes, we lived in Marin. When the Korean War broke out, we wrote our mothers and said go and buy us a house and they did. They bought a house in Larkspur and so we had that. We rented it out when we were over there and so we had that to come home to and it was wonderful and we were all set.

CE: Great. And is that where your son was born, when you were living there?

FR: No, he was born in Salt Lake City and I took him out to Japan when he was two months old.

CE: Oh you did?

FR: Yes. We didn't come home until ‘53. He was very little when we came back, of course, but -- And he didn't speak much English; it was mostly Japanese.

CE: Just mimicked what he heard.

FR: Yes.

GM: Does he still speak Japanese?

FR: No.

CE: In quickly, out quickly.

FR: Yes, you know, not using it, not hearing it, it went immediately.

CE: Well then did you reside in Larkspur until you moved here?

FR: Yes.
CE Where was your home there?

FR: In Chevy Chase Park. And both children went to Larkspur-Corte Madera Schools, LCM, and Ann went to Redwood High School and graduated. Then we moved to Loch Lomond and Herbie went to San Rafael High School and then in 1967 we moved out here.

CE: Now tell us a little bit -- That occurred when Herbert's mother died?

FR: Yes.

CE: And then he wanted to come back here?

FR: Yes.

CE: Wonderful. 1967. Did you find this quite a contrast in your life? Of course you'd been here, visited here, had holidays here, and your mother had, and so in a sense it was sort of like part of your tap roots too, since your married life wasn't it?

FR: Yes, yes it was, it was. You know the Pacheco Family never divided anything out. Each heir held a percentage of the whole but no one specific thing. Herbert's mother owned all personal items. Her mother had left her all her personal belongings, but the house and everything else was percentaged out among all the sisters-in-law.

CE: Oh my goodness, there were a lot of descendants, weren't there?

FR: Well there were three. So before we moved out here my legal training said, before we live there we own it outright or we don't go.

CE: So you bought them out.

FR: We bought them out.

CE: Were they agreeable to that?

FR: None of them wanted it at all.

CE: There were three people. Who would that be? Herbert's -- He didn't have any brothers, did he?

FR: No he was an only child. The in-laws, the sister-in-laws -- There was Tom's wife Marie and Joe's wife Margaret and then Paul's widow -- Well we don't want to get into that; that goes on forever. But anyway we bought their interest and owned it outright before we moved out.

CE: Now this is your property?

FR: Yes. We sold the house in Loch Lomond. Of course it took us a year and that was a little touchy. We were trying to remodel this place and still own that one but we made it.

CE: Oh, it looks lovely. I know that it is been kept up but I know that you have done a lot too, haven't you?

FR: Well, we changed the windows mainly for the view and the light. They were the double hung and you know how difficult they are to drape and they cut your view and they cut your light. So in this room we changed the windows in the parlors; we left them in the TV room and the dining room.

CE: Alright, you had ten years with Mr. Rowland before his demise in this house.

FR: Yes.

CE: Had he retired by that time?

FR: Because of his heart operation, yes.

CE: When was that again?

FR: ’71 he had the aorta valve transplant.

CE: And your mother was living with you?

FR: Yes.

CE: What did Mr. Rowland enjoy most about the ranch, other than his dear family or course?

FR: Well he had been raised here, you see, he lived here as a little boy, and as a young man and --

CE: This was home.

FR: Oh yes, yes.

CE: He impressed me as a man who was a traditionalist and this was his family home.

FR: Yes. The background he felt very strongly about. Hanging over to whatever we could. And that's one reason, you see, we put the vineyard in.

CE: Let's get to the vineyard. How did that come about? There had been a small vineyard always in some of these ranch properties. There would be a garden and there would be vegetables and there would be plants but always vineyard. I remember Mrs. Kent talking about that at the Kent home.

FR: Well they made their own wine and it was small; the vineyard was a small area but in the same -- The upper vineyard is in the same place that the original family vineyard used to be.

CE: Well what you see on the road here, that's just part of the vineyard?

FR: Yes. We have it on this side, too, and it goes up a little.

CE: Several acres?

FR: Yes.

CE: And your husband felt that it would be nice to have that?

FR: Well, it was more than that. It was that he wanted to try and hang onto what was left and do something that would enable our children to also keep it. And development was coming so rapidly approaching in all directions and in order to keep it agricultural you had to have some sort of crop. And the Williamson Act was in effect then, and if you had an agricultural business going, it gave you a tax break. And if the land that was left at that point had been taxed for sub-dividing purposes, we could never pay the taxes. We could not begin to afford it. So we thought -- Well we talked to the agricultural advisor and Herb went into it very thoroughly. And first of all we thought maybe berries; the blackberries do so well, even wild. And then he came up with the idea that grapes would be fine and of course they tell you that there's not much work to grapes. That is a fallacy.

GM: They don't take care of themselves.

FR: No they don't take care of themselves.

CE: Beside, wine is fun.

FR: Well that’s the other thing.

CE: It's a happy sort of product.

FR: So we were looking around for something that would help us with the taxes and then the wine seemed like a very great idea.

CE: And I see from your folder here, "Pacheco Ranch Winery," that your specialty is the Cabernet Sauvignon.

FR: Yes. We planted Cabernet for two reasons: one we greatly preferred red wine but even more important it ripened at a time when it didn't interfere with our fishing in Idaho.

CE: You go to Idaho? That's a love of yours, too?

FR: Yes, we have a summer home there that was my family's.

CE: Is that the Big Sky Country, isn’t it?

FR: Well yes, we're very close to the Big Sky Country; we're in that corner of Idaho where Idaho, Wyoming, Montana corner.

CE: Beautiful.

FR: North fork of the Snake River.

CE: Oh, gosh. Well the vineyard has been producing since when?

FR: 1970. We put the first vines in ‘70, it takes you three years before you get --

CE: So 1973 you had your first --

FR: ’73, ‘74 was our first vintage. And we combined the two years.

CE: How many bottles are you able to -- or barrels -- How do you count it a year?

FR: Now we -- This last harvest we bottled seven hundred cases.

CE: Seven hundred cases in the ’83, ’84.

FR: ’83.

CE: Oh, ’83.

FR: Yes. And that's the most that we have had.

CE: Isn't that twelve to a case?

FR: Yes. This year, of course there is no telling what it will be but that was our greatest tonnage last year.

CE: I'm hoping later you'll let me see the vineyards.

FR: Oh yes, yes.

CE: I read somewhere -- I think I saw a photograph from the local press that you were really out working in the vineyard

FR: Oh yes, oh yes we do.

CE: Well what do you do?

FR: Everything.

CE: Alright, your son is mainly responsible for the running of it now? Is that correct or is that a partnership?

FR: It's a partnership.

CE: You have a winemaster, your daughter's husband.

FR: Yes. My daughter and her husband and my daughter-in-law and my son and Fritz and Jan Schulty. They aren't directly related to us but I was born and raised in Salt Lake City with Dr. John Schulty and they spend their summers in Idaho where we do and their two children are Ann and Herbie's age and they were raised together. And John and Barbara died within a year of one another, and so we adopted Fritz.

CE: Great, great, great. So you have this little corporation.

FR: There are seven of us. We do all of our own pruning. We have work parties on the weekend and we alert everyone and say this weekend we're doing thinning; this weekend we're disbudding; this weekend -- And of course you prune in the wintertime when it's raining and cold and you hands ache. Pruning is very hard, very difficult, very important. You can't hire anybody to do that for you; you must do it yourself.

CE: To be sure that you’re doing it correctly? Is that what you're saying?

FR: Yes. You prune two years ahead. You prune for the coming year and you prune for the following year, so you have to do it properly or you won't have any grapes.

CE: Now the harvesting -- The grapes are on the vine now and they will remain there until what, another six weeks?

FR: I hope so. If it spoils my vacation I'll be crushed

CE: You're going away?

FR: Yes, I'm leaving on the 11th to go to Idaho to fish.

CE: Okay, but you will be back and they'll be ready?

FR: Yes, to harvest.

CE: Now do you do this with additional help you have to harvest, don't you?

FR: Yes. Really, it seems incredible but we have to limit the people that ask to come to harvest. They think it's such fun. And we have a huge barbecue. We started out barbecuing a half a lamb and then it was a whole lamb and then it was a lamb and a half and then it was two lambs. And we have a pit out here.

CE: So you don't need that much help?
FR; Oh we don't mind that, that's fine. But, we have Spanish beans. We use Herb's mother’s recipe and we make pots of Spanish beans and green salad and barbecued lamb and French bread.

CE: Oh it sounds divine.

FR: And we sample our own wine.

CE: Now where is the wine? What happens next to the crushed grapes? Is the process right here?

FR: Yes, everything is done right here.

CE: All right we'll see that later. And bottled here? Everything labeled?

FR: Yes.

CE: You're self-contained then, in a sense.

FR: Well yes, we are in a way. There's a marvelous arrangement called The Bottling Wine, which you set a date when your wine is ready to be bottled and they bring you this enormous trailer. And everything is on this trailer, forty foot trailer, and everything is contained in that trailer, sterile. And they drive it in.

CE: It's got one of those moving whatever you call it inside, the bottles go round it and they --

FR: Yes.

CE: That saves you an expense; you don't have to have that piece of gear.

FR: The equipment if you bought it yourself would cost a half a million dollars.

CE: That's a wonderful thing.

FR: So all the small wineries are using this. They are so booked that if we hadn't taken the date, which was the 22nd of June, this year, the next date they could have given us to come in and bottle was the 13 of October. So we took the 22nd; it was not a weekend so we were afraid. You staff the bottling line; you man it. They have two trouble shooters for breakdowns and if the corker is putting two corks in, that's their problem. If the labels go on upside down, that's their problem. But you have to stand there and put the foils an the bottles as they're going around this little wizzer and you have to grab them as they come off, look at them and make sure they're corked, foiled, labeled and filled properly. And you have to do this as they're coming at you. You grab them and put them in the case and shove the case down.

CE: Days in the cannery when you were kids to earn extra money.

FR: Exactly. But it’s a wonderful invention for small wineries and as I say they are all using it.

CE: That was June?

FR: 22nd. We bottled our ‘83.

CE: I was going to say, that was the ’83 bottling. Then what do you do between harvests?

FR: Well actually we bottled our 1982 cabernet and our 1983 chardonnay.

CE: Oh, because prior to that it's in these big oak barrels or whatever we're going to see.

FR: Yes, we leave it in the oak for a full year.

CE: Where do the oak barrels -- Are they made locally or come from Europe.

FR: Half of our cooperage is from French oak and half of it is American oak. And we find that that combination does the right thing for our grapes. It turns out the --

CE: Are there any other wine makers in Marin?

FR: There are winemakers but we are the only one that can say "estate" bottled, there are no other vineyards.

CE: That's what I thought; this is the uniqueness of it.

FR: There are a couple of places or people who buy grapes and --

End of Tape 1, Side B

CE: Now we are at the winery building itself, Pacheco Ranch Winery. Tell me, Frances, is this an old building?

FR: Yes. This was on the ranch and it was the carriage house originally. And then I had my horses for awhile and the upstairs was the hay loft.

CE: It smells so great!

FR: Its smells like a winery!

CE: Now, are these fifty-gallon barrels?

FR: Well the American is fifty-four and the French is sixty. And these are the large French barrels. We have about half and half.

CE: You have about twenty of these barrels here.

FR: Yes and then we have the oak upright; that's American oak obviously.

CE: Now what are in these barrels? Last year’s or the year before?

FR: This is the ‘83 wine in the barrels, the cabernet.

CE: And that will be bottled, when, next year?

FR: Yes. Next spring sometime.

CE: What is the big, big, vat that's so huge?

FR: Well that's the rest of the wine. We have more than this so we rack it. Racking it means that you take it out of this with a little pump, which is in the back of us here, and put it into the outside tank and you mix it altogether. And you're taking off the lees, the settling, and then you mix it altogether and put it back in. So that it's all melded together and that keeps the French and the American oak balanced out in the wine.

CE: I notice you have the temperature controlled in here. It's what, about sixty?

FR: Yes. That's happenstance. We insulated this from its original usage. We took everything out, dug a new foundation, and put the cement floor and all of the drainage and all the proper equipment that you need and then we insulated and insulated and insulated. And it holds; there's no cooling system in here at all. It just holds.

CE: Isn't that wonderful?

FR: Well it was a beautiful building to begin with.

CE: What is the wood in the barrels?

FR: Oak.

CE: And what is this stainless steel cylinder?

FR: This we use in our fermentation period. We -- It takes about seven to eight days for our cabernet to ferment all the sugar into alcohol. And we do that in the outside tanks. When the sugar is all out and your reading is zero, no sugar, then you have to pump it off the lees again so we pump it into here and then you press and --

CE: I'd like to ask you, maybe it's a naive question, but in interviewing dairymen and they're having to take care of cattle twice a day, holidays, every day, regardless of what. Are there any demands similar to the wine making? Are there certain things that you have to do at certain time?

FR: Yes.

CE: Now you mentioned you'd like to go on a holiday and get back before harvesting but this is all cool and contained and quiet right now but something going to have to happen here.

FR: Yes. Every week you must check your barrels and you must fill them. You have to maintain the wine in each barrel at full level; you can't let air get in there or it will spoil your wine. So you have -- See this batch of bottles and jugs? Well that's what you use to keep it filled. And Jamie does this for us, Ann's husband.

CE: In other words, you all have, at certain times, specific assignments and responsibilities?

FR: Yes.

CE: And if you can't do it you assign someone else to do it.

FR: Yes. You call one of the other seven and say, “Will you check the wine and check the barrel house and make sure they're all filled properly?”

CE: Who keeps the books for this organization? Do you?

FR: Jamie and Debbie. Jamie purchased a computer.

CE: Oh, we've got the computer in the wine business!

FR: We have the computer, for billing mostly. Well almost entirely, inventory and billing.

CE: Well what is this stainless steel contraption that --

FR: This is our filter.

CE: It looks formidable.

FR: Well it's an extremely -- For white wine you must have a filter red wine you can get by without it. You can produce red wine that is unfiltered and unfined, but if you do you will have tartrates or settling in the bottom. For white wine you must have a filter. You have to get all these --

CE: You do this added refinement. That's your choice, because you only do red wines. Isn't that right?

FR: No we do white wine now. We do a chardonnay.

CE: Oh you do!

FR: Yes. That's another family affair, they have a lovely vineyard in Dry Creek area out from Healdsberg and it's a young woman and her husband and she inherited this vineyard, so we buy their chardonnay grapes. And we process it here.

CE: Do you bottle it under your label?

FR: Oh yes, yes.

GM: When do you do that?

FR: The chardonnay comes much earlier than the cabernet, a full month earlier, and the barrels for the chardonnay are upstairs.

CE: In the same building? This is the winery, right here?

FR: Yes.

CE: These other outbuildings have no relation to it?

FR: No, this is the winery where everything is -- Now when it's bottled and cased we built the warehouse and we keep the case lot up there. We did an awful lot in these buildings. We really built this from the inside out here and that one we helped pour the cement. We had several other people who knew about cement for the foundation and then we helped them frame it up, but we did have a contractor frame it up and then we finished it ourselves. We've learned a lot.

CE: Do you distribute to everyone, or if people order, do they order directly from you?

FR: Then they buy anything we have for sale through us here, but we do have a distributor in San Francisco.

CE: How does one make arrangements to purchase from you? You can't be answering the gate every day.

FR: I have an answering phone and I leave it on and we do ask --

CE: So they pick up here?

FR: Yes. And I deliver wine by the pallet, forty eight cases.

CE: You do?

FR: I had to buy a truck.

CE: You've got to do all sorts of things. Did you ever think when you were going to law school and you would be doing the things you're doing?

FR: No.

CE: Well, let alone going to Japan. Life is an adventure,

FR: They wanted this wine delivered in San Francisco at the warehouse during the Democratic Convention and I said "Look I'm terribly sorry but there's no way I'm going to take a truck load of wine into San Francisco, down Moscone Center to the warehouse." I said, "The traffic and all the one way streets," I said, "You're going to have to wait for a week."

GM: Is your wine in the markets in San Francisco?

FR: Yes, it is.

GM: Under the name of Pacheco?

FR: Pacheco Ranch Winery.

GM: I've never seen it, have you?

FR: You have to look for it, but it's there.

CE: Does Guasco sell it?

FR: I don't know about Guasco's. They should have it. Marin Wine & Spirits have it; Colonial Liquors has it. I think all liquor stores in Novato do have it. And we have found that the way we like our wine to go is to the restaurants, because that is ongoing.

CE: Yes.

FR: Now Andalou in San Rafael is using our chardonnay as their house wine, and that's wonderful.

CE: That's great.
GM Yes, I have.

FR: That's our chardonnay.

GM: Oh I didn't know it was yours. They didn't say where it was from. They said our house wine is chardonnay and I said I'll have the chardonnay, then. But it was very good, excellent, excellent. Is there delivery in any other restaurants?

FR: Yes, Charles Bolton's in Novato and of course Frank Galli has it. He's one of our great boosters. And Scoma's in – Well, we're bargaining with them. They have a new man in charge of their wine and he's very unsure of himself and he's afraid to make a great decision but --

GM: I'll have to tell Bob because Scoma's a great deal. At Larkspur Landing?

FR: Yes.

GM: I'll have to tell him.

CE: We'll have to tell Guasco's; you buy there.

GM: Oh surely.

FR: Right from the first bottle, they're wonderful

GM: United Market?

FR: No we haven't had it in there. Safeway does have it and Bon Appetite has it. And Liquor Barn has it.

CE: How has the response been? Gratifying to you?

FR: I think so, yes. Of course we'd like to move a little faster but it, we’re --

CE: You don't sell all you make at present then?

FR: Oh yes, our ‘79 cabernet is sold out. We are keeping a few cases for that they call the library and that's, you know, for to keep and see how it ages and for us to try and taste, but for our own use. And our chardonnay is almost sold out.

CE: How long do you keep it before you sell it? I'm confused.

FR: Well, on the 20th of August we're introducing our 1980 cabernet.

CE: So four years you keep your wine before you release it.

FR: Yes, we want it properly aged. And a cabernet is a big strong wine; ours is particularly a big strong robust wine, and we feel that four years you should keep your red wine.

CE: Well how could you -- If you had more outlets, how could you produce more?

FR: You see last year we had seven hundred cases, the year before we had -- Well, of our 1980 we only had between three and four hundred cases. So, seven hundred is a nice boost.

CE: Yes.

FR: You know it's in the laps of God what we get this year.

CE: Does it look pretty good, promising for this year? Or can you tell by looking at the grapes?

FR: You can't tell yet; you really can't tell yet.

CE: You have to wait close to harvesting?

FR: Right. The heavy -- That extended heat is no good. It brought them in too quickly before the bunches had had a chance to fill out. It's not good.

CE: How do you irrigate the vineyard?

FR: We don't.

CE: Oh, you're like may vitners that let nature do it?

FR: Right. We have no problem with that. We have a system, a watering system in, but it was primarily for frost protection. It could be used to irrigate or to cool down the vineyard, but we have never used it for that.

CE: It's always been surprising to me to go to some of the other vineyards in the Napa Valley where there's almost stone in the earth, you know, very stony ground.

FR: Well they say the more the vine has to struggle the better the quality. Maybe that's a vineyardist’s tale. I don't know, but that's what they say.

CE: Well this is fascinating. Shall we go outdoors?

FR: Yes.

CE: What's in the warehouse? There are cases after cases? Are these from ‘79?

FR: From seventy nine on through the latest vintage. Well actually, we have some '75 left over back there. That's our problem wine.

CE: Didn't turn out so good?

FR: No, no, no, we didn't do it and it didn't turn out quite right. So we've got a lot of that left.

CE: Do you ever sell an individual bottle for just we gals?

FR: Oh, of course.

CE: What would your pleasure be? What would you like?

GM: A white wine is what I like.

CE: I'll have one of the white and one of the cabernet.

FR: All right.

CE: Now I see you have your own label, which is lovely. It shows the house. Genevieve, see that lovely drawing of the house?

GM: Oh isn't that a lovely label. Oh, I'll have to look for this.

FR: Our old label I like too. See it over there? That was our original label. We had to come out with one in a great hurry and that was an old --

CE: It has a nice vintage look to it.

FR: That was an old photograph taken, we figure, about 1910, and so my daughter produced that one for us.

CE: She did, your daughter?

FR: Yes.

CE: Oh, that is lovely!

FR: Yes, I like it

CE: I like that too.

FR: We had this distributor who said it wasn't spectacular enough.

CE: They've got to get color in everything.

FR: Yes, that's what they said. So we --

CE: Mrs. Martinelli has just taken the lid off a huge box. How big is that bottle?

FR: That's a jeroboam.

CE: It is a jeroboam. Now, do you get involved with packaging companies like fiberboard or somebody? You have to order these boxes?

FR: It comes from a glass company and you settle on the one you find gives you the best service. And you know, the best glass and the best price. And when your bottles arrive they are all sterilized; they're clean. So then you put them on the bottling line and fill it. The only thing you have to do is you have to blow the case dust out of them and that's done automatically. A sparger is what the name of the equipment that blows case dust out.

CE: Well you've all these pallets stacked to the ceiling, almost fifty foot high here. Do you have a forklift and all the equipment that you can do this?

FR: Yes we have a forklift. I gave that to my son for a birthday present.

GM: I imagine he was delighted.

FR: He wanted that thing; he wanted it, so we bought him a forklift for the tractor. We have all kinds of equipment that we had to buy, two tractors and --

CE: I just pulled a bottle out of a carton here. This is your 1978 Marin County Cabernet Sauvignon Pacheco Ranch Winery.

FR: Now this one is unfiltered and unfined, and so it has sediment.

CE: What do you have in this carton here? Oh, we have the new label. This is 1982 Pacheco Ranch Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, ‘82. Are you selling that already?

FR: No. That bottle is aging.

CE: Where would the 1979s be, then?

FR: Well the ‘79s are here and the ‘80s should be over there.

CE: We're walking around this huge warehouse here.

FR: Here's the ‘80s

CE: You got some open?

FR: Yes. And that's the eighty -one. And next should be either the chardonnay -- Let's see, next is the ‘82 and the chardonnay is --

CE: And we don't have any open?

FR: I have some down at the house. There has to be some chardonnay around here some place.

CE: We can't tell here, can we?

FR: I'm sure this is an ‘80.

CE: That's an eighty. Well, I will take one of those there for surely. You don't want any cabernet sauvignon? That's the red dinner wine. She has some down at the house.

FR: This is the chardonnay.

GM: What year is this?

CE: Okay, now we have found the chardonnay.

FR: This is all that's left of the chardonnay.

GM: I'll take a case of that.

FR: Oh, all right.

GM: This is eighty what?

FR: ‘82.

GM: ’82, all right.

CE: We're back at the Pacheco house. We've just been at the vineyard, and you made a statement earlier regarding -- When you enlarged your vineyard, Mrs. Martinelli asked you if you could make cuttings from that, and you said no. Why?

FR: You have to have certified grapevines in order to avoid all the dire grape diseases.

CE: Is that a state requirement?

FR: Oh, no it's for your own benefit, it’s for your own benefit. If you take cuttings you're not quite sure whether or not it has been heat treated and you know the phylloxera is in California and there could be some of those old vines around or the disease could be in the soil. But if you had a certified heat-treated vine that you plant it's free of that disease; it would not ever get that disease, or many others that they have found. So it's to your advantage to buy proper vines to start with.

CE: Now if you don't mind, would you repeat that, what you told us a little earlier about that instrument that tests the sugar content of the --

FR: Refractometer. It looks like a spy glass and you look through one end of it and you hold it up to the light and it reflects back and gives you the sugar content reading.

CE: Do you actually take a syringe and take come of the --

FR: Get a glop of the juice and put it right on the reflecting part of the refractometer and hold it up to the light and it gives you the sugar reading.

CE: Now we are back at the house and Mrs. Martinelli was commenting on the great variety of trees. You mentioned Gumesindo planted most of these. This ahead of us is a huge Norfolk.

FR: Norfolk Pine. And the Loquat trees are original. All of these trees you see are well over a hundred years old.

CE: And the orange trees in front of the house?

FR: The orange trees in front of the house; they're naval and I never can remember the other one. Lemon trees, we have breadfruit trees. We have grapefruit trees; they don't do very well but he planted them, he tried. We have guava and it almost produced fruit every year.

CE: And then just holds back.

FR: Well it produces the fruit but it never quite ripens.

CE: Well most of the Pacheco sons of Ignacio were educated at Santa Clara, were they not?

FR: Santa Clara University, yes.

CE: I'd be most interested to see a breadfruit tree, I have never seen one. Can you point that out? Your mother was from Scotland? What happened?

FR: When she came here to visit she just couldn't believe they let all the fruit fall on the ground. So she went out and she picked the grapefruit and she was at least going to squeeze the grapefruit juice. When you cut them open, there's an area an inch in diameter that has flesh and the rest is peel. But Herb’s mother used to buy
oranges.

CE: No.

FR: Yes, we couldn't believe it. But, you know, perhaps it was just too difficult for her to pick them. The lemons have always been noteworthy. And Davis, UC Davis, has come down five or six times to get a start from it and we've always said, “You're very welcome.”

CE: Where is the lemon tree, right here?

FR: Right there, yes. A very funny old relic with the most wonderful lemons. We said, “You may have all the starts that you want, but when you get it established bring us back one.” We've never heard a word from them. So Big Herb did it and we have three trees up there that are the started from this tree and they're now, fifteen years later, producing lemons.

GM: Well now all of the fruit we've seen on the ground there are oranges. Are those edible?

FR: Not when they fall. They would have been. But up on the top, top, of this big tree there's no way to get them down. You know I suppose you could climb, but I'll try a lot of things but I'm not climbing that tree.

CE: This is the tree that you're talking about. Look at the trunk; it's got all kind of trunks --

FR: Yes. Oh, it's weird, it's got a dead piece in the middle. Oh, the lemons are gorgeous, just gorgeous. They smell and there's no seeds and the rind is thin but --

CE: Here's one right here. And that's also a very old tree.

FR: Oh, it's over a hundred years old, it's nearly a hundred and fifty years old.

CE: All right, now we're walking in front of the house where you have several orange trees. We've just passed a norfolk pine. And I love the trumpet vine or whatever it’s called.

FR: It's a Trumpet Vine but it takes over the world, you know, really does. This is the breadfruit tree. They get to be this big, you know like a basketball.

CE: Well I keep thinking of Captain Bligh and the Bounty and that famous story of going to the South Sea to get the breadfruit trees. And this is what they look
like?

FR: But when they're ripe, they are this big. But it's nothing but skin, the skin is so thick. There they are.

CE: Why were they grown? What can you --

FR: He was experimenting, I'm sure. He wanted to try ---

CE: He was just interested in anything, and everything. Might I take this?

FR: Of course.

CE: And might I have just a leaf?

FR: Oh, yes.

CE: To see what the leaf is like. Here's one that's wrinkled.

FR: Very similar to grapefruit and the orange.

CE: I notice here you have a rose garden.

FR: My pride and joy

CE: This your hobby?

FR: Yes, yes, yes. I -- And fortunately for me my daughter-in-law inherited Aunt Marie's rose garden but she adores it and that is mine.

CE: And where is hers?

FR: Right back by the little house there.

CE: Oh, look at this. Oh, no wonder you opened those windows up

FR: Yes, yes. Of course we sort of landscaped this if you could give it such a grandiose name. There is nothing here because of the deer; she couldn't grow anything but oleanders.

CE: This is just the result of ten years effort? The rose garden?

FR: Yes. And the lawns. She couldn't even have lawns. The ivy was there and the deer ate it down to where it cleared the ground.

CE: Isn't that an unusual rose, right there, the second bush over?

FR: Yes, it's called circus. And the pretty pink one down in front is called cherish.

CE: This is a beautiful, beautiful spot. Frances, we can't thank you enough for letting us come to your beautiful home and let us see your lovely place today. It has been a great pleasure to me and --

FR: And to me also.

CE: And we will make copies of this available to your children. Now you are in the archives. Thank you.