Larry Brooks – Life after Baggins End
Once I’d completed my master’s degree in 1975 and decided that a PhD was not in my stars, I left Davis and the domes for SF. I spend a few years doing shitty jobs there where I had tons of fun and learned to finally be an adult. At the time I didn’t realize that in terms of real income this would be the wealthiest period of my life.
In 1979 I was lucky enough to meet someone at a dinner party who offered me a job at a startup winery in Napa, and there I found my vocation. Within a few weeks of beginning to make wine I knew that I would do this until I dropped. And this has proven to be true. I’m now in the midst my 44th harvest.
Better than any wine I ever made was the son that Alexis and I produced in 1983. Being a father was the only thing in my life that I felt I was a “natural” at. Everything else I had to practice till I got it right, but fatherhood suited me deeply. Curiously he ended up as a winemaker as well, which surprised the hell out of me. We are very close.
In the early aughts I began to chaff against the restraints of my life in Napa. I abandoned my lucrative corporate position, my marriage, and my many local friends to take up a new life with a new wife in San Luis Obispo. I do not regret it. I now live in quiet semi-retirement – making wine, reading books, playing the banjo, and riding my bikes.
