Hello BI Alumni Friends and Merry Christmas:

Oh time is going so fast, I forgot to write the customary Christmas letter. Sometimes regarded as the annual good news and brag sheet. (no one wants to talk about all the bad things that happened in the past year and with the state of our economy, that should fill up the bad news part of any letter.) I never thought we would see another DEPRESSION in our life time and I remember many stories that my parents told me about the big one and how good their lives were since they both had good jobs, bought a new house and car etc.. As my Dad said, well there were 25% unemployed and that meant 75% employed. That was more than half so things weren't so bad for more than half of the population.
Well now there is only 6-7% unemployment and that means that more than 90% are doing ok or better. JUST DON'T LISTEN TO THE NEWS and or look at your 401K or investment portfolio. Before you know it the market will be roaring up and our portfolios will be back to what they were a year ago. (maybe a year or two?)
This was a good year for our family overall. Except the crab season closed early due to the catch being down 85% and the salmon season was closed altogether. My son Matt is trying to make it now with Herring fishing in the bay. Matt's daughter, Malena made honor roll and scored the highest in all of the 4th grade classes in the Math exam. Her little sister Marisol is in Kindergarten and reading at the 4th grade level in both Spanish and English. Son Paul, was just promoted to Captain in the CDF and is staioned in Petaluma, bicycle distance from his home. Jim is still running the WINE HARDWARE chain, developing the web business and now investing in distressed real estate. While Elizabeth just moved back to the City and is an ICU nurse at SF General, engaged to Cooper, a Google engineer. Donna is at the Gym several times a week and looks fabulous, and with the grand daughters at the farm in Sonoma for a couple days per week.
The Vineyard had a very hard time of it this year, with production down 50% due to the very irregular cold Spring followed the the heatwave. But the quality was exceptional and we enjoyed top prices for our grapes from leading Napa wineries. I made only one barrel of Cab Franc for our own cellar. Our vintages from 2004 through 2007 are all exceptional and we are preparing to market early next year. I submitted 3 wines for the first time to a professional competition and received 2 Gold medals and 1 Bronze, (American Wine Society).
Our Publishing company p is going well. We received a Best Professional Wine book Award in London in April for the WINE MARKETING book and the Andre Simon Award for our NAPA WINE HISTORY book in Frankfurt in October.
2009 promises to be a challenging year for all business, so we plan on lots of time at Tahoe for the winter, a cruise to the Baltic in June, NYC Book expo in May, Canada in July and before we know it, will be time to pick grapes in September. Cheers! Elliott and Donna