Sunday E-dition: Scoop!

By Sasha Paulsen

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — “Some things never get old, do they?” a friend remarked last week as we drove onto the fog-draped Golden Gate Bridge. We were heading home from San Francisco.

I thought about this again last weekend when I was in Yosemite’s High Country. Anywhere you look in the mountains their magic is there. And that first glimpse of Half Dome never loses its thrill, either.

Half Dome - Tim Carl Photo

And the thought came up again on Tuesday morning, in an entirely different way, when I was still in bed and my phone pinged with a message from Tim Carl.

To back up a bit, last week Tim’s daughter was getting married with “three — no, four — celebrations” he had told Dave Stoneberg and me. These included one in Oklahoma. He was going to take the week off. But there he was on Tuesday of his week away, worrying about a story.

“Steve Matthiasson just texted me that he is bringing in grapes to Bin to Bottle,” his message read, Bin to Bottle being the custom-crush facility in south Napa. “9:30 a.m. First crush. I don’t think I can be there.”

“Go to your wedding,” Dave and I told him. “We’ll figure it out.”

We made a plan. I, being the closest in Napa, would go see what I could find out. Dave, in the north, would await news at Base Camp.

Tim Carl Photo

The front doors at Bin to Bottle were locked, the offices dark. I felt like a 20-something reporter again as I tried to find a way into the facility. Climb a fence? Drop in from a tree? I had not done these things in a long time, if ever. Actually I only went around a few bushes beyond a parking lot in the back to find an entrance. Eventually I came to the back site where, yes, grapes had come in for this year’s late-starting harvest. They were from Yolo County, but there they were, bins of them, waiting to become wine.

I apologized for not being Tim Carl with his cameras. Everyone was gracious. I took photos with my iPhone and texted Tim. “Got it.”

“Please send me five lines and a photo for Instagram,” he replied. I hoped he was not in the middle of one of the four weddings.

I called Dave.

“Get me five graphs,” he barked just like an old-time editor. I dashed home and sent him 10 graphs, and the remarkable Glenda Winders, our copyeditor in the Midwest, read them. Dave posted the story. Tim waited till it was up to file on Instagram so no one could scoop him. In two and a half hours the story was out in the world.

“Gads, that was fun,” Dave wrote in a new message, “although I almost said ‘just phone in the story,’ like the old days, which might have been faster.”

Yes, we might have done it two hours and 15 minutes. Nonetheless, it reminded us all that even though we might be getting older, the thrill of the chase never does.

When Tim came up with the idea of Napa Valley Features, he stressed that he just wanted everyone to have fun, the writers telling stories as well as the readers who receive them. It seems to be working. Some 1,500 subscribers have signed on since he launched the service in May.

Then he sent me another message from the road — this time from an airport on the way to Oklahoma — asking me if, when I wrote this Sunday summary for him, I could mention that of these subscribers only 31 percent have opted to change from free to paid subscriptions. Napa Valley Features was created in the model of NPR and the great classical music station KDFC. The content is there for everyone, but it certainly helps when people who enjoy it pitch in to make it happen. As Dave Stoneberg sagely pointed out a few weeks back, a subscription at $5 per month is about the cost of one coffee at any of our favorite stops.

Among last week’s highlights (in addition to our scoop on harvest, with St. Supéry following up and harvesting Napa fruit on Aug. 16), Dave Stoneberg wrote an excellent piece on Monday, reporting on a town meeting in St. Helena, hosted by Napa Valley Community Foundation and Highway 29 Media, on a subject that seems to be on a lot of people’s minds: What’s happening to local journalism and what can be done about it? The focus was on the much-loved St. Helena Star, where the valiant and brilliant Jesse Duarte continues his solo effort to produce a weekly paper. Hopes are high that Highway 29 Media, which saved the Calistoga Tribune and the Yountville Sun, is going to be able to accomplish another miracle in St. Helena.

Dave also wrote Thursday’s wine story, a look at how a fourth generation of winemaking Mondavis is carrying on their family legacy. Paul Franson filed a report on the planning for next year’s countywide Mustard Celebration, unfolding under the leadership of Jessel Miller. And Dave Layland, a Napa County master gardener, shared a fascinating, evocative story about the First People of Napa County.

Coming up next week, Anne Ward Ernst will be reporting about PG&E’s tree-trimming plans, and Tim Carl has two stories, one about the Valley Players and another about a winery whose story he wants to tell. Evy Warshawski will preview the upcoming L’Chaim Festival at Copia, among the other surprises in the works. You never know. Stay tuned.

For the record, Tim made it to all four wedding celebrations.

Sasha Paulsen is a journalist and novelist who lives in Napa.