462: David Hirsch and the Hirsch Vineyards Lighthouse

I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk

Levi Dalton

Sonoma, Levi Dalton, Australia, Napa Valley, Austria, Author, Piemonte, Tuscany, Winemaker, Germany, Loire Valley, Food, Portugal, Hobbies, Champagne, Spain, White Wine, Bordeaux, Red Wine, Vineyard, Journalist, Personal Journals, Arts, Leisure, Society & Culture, Feedpodcast, Restaurant, Grape, Burgundy, Terroir, Interview, Sicilia, Conversation, Sommelier, Wine, Wine Business

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2019

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Hirsch is the owner of Hirsch Vineyards, located in the Sonoma Coast of California.

David opens up about his travels across the United States and across the world in the 1960s and 1970s, and about what led him eventually to the outer reaches of the Sonoma Coast to plant a vineyard. He also reveals what he has learned about the farming of grapevines over the years. And he talks about some of the key people who shaped his thoughts as he became the owner of a vineyard, and then subsequently a winery. Famous names from both Burgundy and California winemaking make an appearance within this conversation, and David is both frank and funny in the reminiscences about his life.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.
0:05.1	I'm Levy Dalton.
0:06.1	I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, David Hirsch, the founder and owner of Hirsch Vineyards in the Sonoma Coast of California.
0:28.7	Hello, sir, how are you?
0:29.8	I'm fine today.
0:31.8	Nice to be here. So your dad used to sell books. That's right. I grew up in a
0:38.2	house with 30,000 books. Originally we were in the Bronx and my father sold to scholars and libraries.
0:50.0	These are all used books. They weren't rare, but they were difficult to find.
1:00.0	And of course, this is back in the 40s and 50s before the internet and search engines.
1:07.0	So he would go down to 4th Avenue in Manhattan and sometimes I trek along with him and Fourth
1:16.7	Avenue at that time had many secondhand bookstores and he would go to England. I remember the first time we took
1:30.4	him out to Ida Wild, it was before the airport was known as JFK.
1:38.1	Standing there in the terminal watching that early 7.07 take off, that was interesting.
1:44.0	He had his contacts in the United Kingdom and a months later
1:52.0	trunks of books would show up and
1:55.0	of course that was my job was to unpack them and alphabetize them.
2:00.0	And he would send out a book that had any markings in it, some of which were in pen.
2:07.0	So I had to stand there for hours diligently erasing the markings.
2:12.0	To this day even reading a cheap
2:15.8	paperback I find it difficult to turn back the edge of the page to mark where I am
2:21.0	because a love and respect for the printed word was branded into me.
2:28.9	Your dad had been through the Great Depression.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Levi Dalton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Levi Dalton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.