Crush Lunch in honor of a great friend.

When I worked at Kenwood Vineyards (1986-1998) during harvest they fed us Crush Lunch. Now this was a welcome break during the middle of the day which was usually a 12-16 hour day. When Mike Lee hired me he told me about lunch but I had no idea what an amazing experience it was. These lunches were not sandwiches ordered from the local deli or burritos from one of our local taco trucks. We were talking Pomegranate Chicken with Rice Pilaf, or spaghetti and Meatball the size of baseballs. There were always very nice wines and the conversation was always entertaining. I think it’s some thing we all loved and valued. And no one loved it more than our boss Mike Lee, he would hold court, always sat in the middle of the and coworkers, grape growers, sales reps and various other friends. Mike passed away on May 2nd on a golf course, oddly enough he was not playing but the caddy, none the less he was somewhere that he loved. Mike loved Kenwood Vineyards and we all loved Mike, he was alway quick to say hello, perhaps give you a hard time about something or ask you when you were going to buy him lunch. Of course it was a rare occasion that he let you buy lunch, you had to excuse yourself from the table to go slip the server a credit card.
Since I was not able to attend the memorial and wasn’t going to see so many people that we shared meals with there was only one thing to do. So a list was started, and no doubt I could have made a list of hundreds of people who contributed to what Kenwood Vineyard grew into from where it began in 1970. Put this was a group with in that amazing group, most of us were in production. This ment sometime in our careers we had stained cracked hands, overfilled a tank, was tasting wine at 7:00am, and took a break during a crazy day to have lunch.

So last Friday I invited about 30 people over for Crush Lunch, we had Caesar salad, Garlic bread, and Rigatoni with an amazing meat sauce. It truly was what I had hoped, a group of friends, colleagues and co-workers sharing stories and memories. The laughter was contagious and the stories remembered were priceless. Some still work at Kenwood Vineyards, most of us have moved on to other things. I could go on and on with a list of what people have done in their careers, but that’s not really important. What’s important is that the “rootstock” for the vine is Mike Lee, it has roots that go deep into the soil and the “canes” of this vine continue to grow and share their experiences.
Here’s a couple of pictures of some bottles that we had at lunch, it was a great day, it had rained all day but the sun came out when it was important.

I think I can speak for everyone that knew Mike in saying that he will be missed more than anyone can imagine. And I can’t thank him enough for giving me my start in the wine business. I learned so much from him that had nothing to do with making wine, and I hope that I can share those things in the future again with my friends from Kenwood Vineyards and all the people I meet in the future.

I’ll raise a glass of wine to Mike and I hope you will join me.

CHEERS!

If you knew or met Mike, I’d love to hear from you. Share a story or thought here…