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 In January, William had the opportunity for a nine day trip to Rome and areas of Tuscany in Italy.  It was truly the trip of a lifetime…touring family vineyards and wineries, staying in small towns, pruning 50 year old vines, and drinking hand crafted wines.  He learned a lot about the Old World ways of growing grapes and making wine.  Every other day, he would call home to share his adventures…eating pasta and smoking a cigar with a restaurant owner about 30 yards from the Colessium, pruning grapevines with a 70 year old Italian while they shared what little English/Italian they each knew; touring one of the oldest synagogues in Europe, and drinking some of the best cianti wines in the world. 

At the same time, in Ramona where the winery and ranch were located, some of the most torrential rains and small tornados were landing across the Hacienda de las Rosas Winery property, with fallen oak limbs, uprooted trees, flooding in the living room, and a skylight blown out of the ceiling.  Literally, 12 inches of rain came down in 3 days.  In addition, Tammy was stuck on a business trip to Phoenix, where the airports were closed, so she had to drive across the desert through windstorms, dust storms, rain, snow and hail to be able to get home to the animals. 

As William and Tammy share their adventures during that week…William starts off talking about the wonderful hospitality, foods and sights of Italy, while Tammy will then interject “Meanwhile…back at the ranch….” story.  Nice contrast on each person’s adventures for that week!

Each year, on Labor Day, our family winery hosts an old-fashioned grape stomp in Old Town, San Diego.  It includes music by a local band, grape stomping in a 120 year old California redwood tank, grape stomping contests throughout the day, and good wine and food.  And each year, I keep the tradition of dressing as “Lucille Ball” from her famous grape stomping episode.  This is one of my favorite of all her shows, with her wide open mouth agap as she stomped the grapes next to a eurupean grape stomping woman who just didn’t see the humor in the situation.  It was a classic.  Being a tall redhead, it isn’t much of a stretch for me to pull off the physical appearance, with my dress that looks like a bavarian pretzel girl outfit.  But the most fun is playing the part of Lucy…on that day, I can BE Lucy…full of energy, making mistakes and laughing at myself, having fun with others…it is completely liberating!  I run around doing the chicken dance, jump in the tanks, conjole people in the audience to join the competitions, and give the stompers some of the best moves that I can create…there is the “sweep the floor…sweep the floor” motions, the military stomp, the spanish flemenco moves, and my personal favorite - the disco duck.   People have a great time watching, and of course, everyone has to have a picture with Lucy.  If one put all the photos together that were taken of me that day, it could definitely serve as evidence that I was just a wee bit crazy!    Everyone should be able to play Lucy (or any other wild television character) for one day a year…it was great therapy and fun!

The phone rang one afternoon, and the man on the other end was stating “we heard about your family winery and horse ranch, and how your husband/wife team works together and would love to film you for an upcoming series on entrepreneurs who follow their dreams.”   As my husband and I do when any new opportunity presents itself…I found myself saying “sure, come on over”, and three weeks later, a film crew arrived to the Wine Tasting Room.  

The Actor Chris Field and his partners have developed a new show called “American Underdog” to highlight entrepreneurs who take their dreams and make it into a business.  His goal was to film us in the Wine Tasting Room, and in a vineyard that William planted, as well as our home and horse ranch, and hear the “secrets” of our success.  It was a lot of fun, with customers coming in, agreeing to be on the film and William and I answering questions on camera, while the host was just off the screen.  At the same time, we were serving wine in the Tasting room, running our newly opened Farmer’s Market in the plaza, and handling the details of taking care of the film crew’s needs and requests.  Most of the questions were easy, until they asked me, “so, how do you like working with your husband?”, and I answered…”do you mean today, or in general?” which had the director yell “Cut!”.

When they arrived at the ranch, it was fun taking these “city folk” around the ranch and to see the horses.  The host was hugging Princessa’s head…like a puppy, which is not generally how you handle a horse, but she was very good and patient.  Then William and I saddled the horses and rode toward the cameras at a fast clip to capture our love of Peruvian Paso horses!  The final scene was to be us in a Mercedes convertable with the top down and driving down the driveway…like it was the end of the show and we are driving away into the sunset.   Except the top wouldn’t go down…and then it wouldn’t go up…it was literally stuck halfway!!!  So much for our Hollywood debut!  

The show is to air in the fall and we are excited to see the film footage when it is complete.  Whenever we say yes to a new opportunity, we never know which way it will lead us, but that’s part of the adventure!