Regional Oral History Office University of California the Bancroft
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California LANE TANNER SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA WINEMAKER PINOT NOIR WITH A WOMAN'S TOUCH Interview Conducted by Susan Goldstein in 1994 Copyright © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Lane Tanner, dated February 4, 1994. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Lane Tanner, “Santa Barbara, California Winemaker—Pinot Noir With A Woman's Touch,” conducted by Susan Goldstein. 1994, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2007 Copy No. ____ [Interview #1 1994] Goldstein: [Tape cuts off introduction] Goldstein, and I’m interviewing Lane Tanner. When did you found your winery? 1-00:00:25 Tanner: Well, I founded my winery in 1989. Prior to that, I had a company, L.R. Consultants, a company which I started in 1984. I started making wine for one client—The Hitching Post restaurant. Basically, what I would do with them is I would make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and they would come, decide how much they wanted of it, and then they would have that much and whatever I had left I would sell to Ken Brown and he would put it in his wines. So, it was really a fun deal, I just didn’t make very much money at it! But it was no stress so that was real nice. But— 1-00:01:06 Goldstein: I think it’s right next to you. 1-00:01:08 Tanner: I know! Yeah, I knew I brought it up. So anyway, during that time I was married to the owner of the Hitching Post, so I didn’t really need the money. That wasn’t a big thing. Then we got a divorce and I actually had to get a full-time job and start [unintelligible] and stuff, so I thought, “Hell, I’m already making wine, I love doing it, so why don’t I just change the label and continue doing what I’m doing?” So that’s exactly what I did. My first year, ’89, I started out with about 400 cases. And that barely got me by, and then the next year I went up to 600, and then in ’91 I had a total of 800 cases. That would be—actually, yeah—it was 600 cases of my Santa Barbara County and 200 cases of my Sanford and Benedict, and then this year, ’82, I’m up to 1,000 cases. 1-00:02:01 Goldstein: Oh! 1-00:02:01 Tanner: So, hopefully—this is horrible seeing me like, “I did this so I could make money”. I haven’t yet. [Laughs] 1-00:02:07 Goldstein: Really? Even though you keep growing? 1-00:02:08 Tanner: Yeah, because I keep growing, what happens is all the money I make, I just reinvest so that I can do more the next year. My goal is to get to 1,500 cases, which is actually what I picked in 1993. Of course that won’t be on the market for two years so hopefully within the next year or so I’ll actually be getting an income out of this. As it is right now, what I do is I make my living on consulting and odd jobs like that. 1-00:02:32 Goldstein: Okay. 1-00:02:33 Tanner: Analysis, things like that. 1-00:02:34 Goldstein: What do you do for people? What does that mean when you do consulting? 1-00:02:37 Tanner: Well, each job is different. Right now I’m consulting for Sausalito Canyon. And what I do is I just go up there, I taste his wines, I make sure they’re sound. In their case, they’re really good winemakers, it’s just he and his wife kind of hassle back and forth, they always worry that there are problems when there aren’t. You know, they just get kind of blinded to it. So basically, in that case, I’m just more holding their hand than anything, because they’re really good winemakers already. Another consulting job I had that I quit this last year was actually making wine for somebody. Overseeing the actual making of the wine, picking the style, doing the whole thing, getting the contract set up, doing it all and then just handing it over to the client at the end. So, you know, every consulting job is a little different. 1-00:03:29 Goldstein: Is that—do a lot of people do that in this industry? Is that an unusual job, or— 1-00:03:33 Tanner: Ah…not that unusual. There are quite a few people who consult. 1-00:03:36 Goldstein: Yeah. What’s your history? I know this is in the history sheet— 1-00:03:42 Tanner: No, that’s okay. 1-00:03:43 Goldstein: I’ll make you go through it a little bit. How did you come to where you are now? 1-00:03:45 Tanner: Well, I graduated with a degree in Chemistry from San Jose State. I went to work, first I went to work with a small environmental company that monitored air quality. So basically I started off doing a minor water chemistry and tower [erection] which was real interesting [laughs]. 1-00:04:07 Goldstein: [Laughs]. 1-00:04:07 Tanner: And then, actually they were real fun years. I moved from that company to another larger environmental company, M.R.I. And over those years, it was real fun, I had a fully equipped airplane and a pilot and they would send me on jobs throughout the United States. For about a month I would check either, say, a pre-power site for the background or I’d check a power site that maybe was impinging on something. And fly around a lot and go home and crunch data. But I got to go to places, like I was on the North Slope for about a month, I was in a lot of different places in Alaska, real remote sites, one place where they actually float-planed you into this little island, dropped you off on a dock and then a helicopter came and picked you up off the dock and took you in, then. So I had some really fun times. But I got really tired of having no home life, having no boyfriends, you know, just being real unstable. It was just time, I wanted to do something in one spot. 1-00:05:13 Goldstein: Yeah. 1-00:05:14 Tanner: And especially when I ended up in Glendive, Montana. That was going to be like a four or five month job. I mean that just broke it [laughs]. The middle of winter, it was horrible. 1-00:05:22 Goldstein: Well, how did you get into wine? 1-00:05:23 Tanner: Well, what happened was I’m from Kelseyville, so my mom lives there still and when I quite air pollution I had no clue what I was going to do but I had a goodly amount of money, that was a nice thing, it was really lucrative. So I went up to Lake County and just started sleeping on mom’s couch and trying to think, “Well now what am I going to do?” And it was summer time so it was real fun. One day, the local winery, Konocti Winery, called her, wanted her to do some bottling, well she had gotten a full-time job. So I said, “Well you don’t know me but I’m Alice’s daughter and I’ll do bottling for a day, it sounds like fun.” So I went down there, did that, and it was fun. At that point, I had almost no background even in wine tasting.