Dedication
Every good book, and many good stories, begin with a Dedication. I believe it should be the same with every wine cellar in the world. However, I have to admit I’ve rarely seen any dedication plaques or notations in more than a rare few of the cellars I’ve visited. This being the case I’m pleased to say ours, the D’Aquila-Phillips Wine Cellar (DP Wine Cellar for short), has one and here it is!
The DP Wine Cellar is dedicated to Mary Kay D’Aquila Phillips, the most amazing woman who ever entered my life. She loved me, she loved life, and she loved wine. Though a boomer, she lived her life for the experiences it held and most importantly taught me more about what true strength is than anyone else.
I was from a small town in Ohio while she was from an equally small town on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota. There were far more reasons for us to never, ever even meet than for us to fall head-over-heels in love. We first encountered each other by chance. We were working summer jobs at the same bank during our collegiate years. We were both engaged when we met, just not to each other. She caught her hand in the bank’s vault door and had to come to my desk to fill out a job injury report. It was the ‘70s and our first lunch together consisted of splitting a chef’s salad while sipping vodka gimlets at a Minneapolis gin joint by the name of Buster’s (sadly now gone). We’d marry within 18 months.
In the early years we both worked, raised two children, and experienced the usual rocky road of ups and downs of marriage, family, careers, in-laws, etc. ‘Our’ song was, of all things, Muskrat Love, by Captain and Tennille. During those early years she also worked very hard to get me to realize there was more to drink in life than cheap beer and it was something called wine! She hooked me on an early ’80s Merlot and we went from there together into the world of fine wines!
Twenty-seven years into our marriage she would receive the devastating diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. Given 7 years, she fought her war for over 14. I was her primary caregiver for all those years, especially during her last 14 months when she made the choice of home hospice care. We made it to our 41st anniversary. There will never be a 42nd.
My wife was an amazing woman. She was 100% Italian and accepted me eventhough I was the first non-Italian, non-Catholic, non-wine drinker to ever marry into her family. She was intensely creative, driven, and a Type-A personality. She was an interior designer by training and also spent several years building a chain of 5 fabulous children’s clothing stores. She designed and built six homes for us in three states. In her spare time she was published for her achievements in design as well as a chef and entertainer. From the day we met I immediately knew she was a strong and capable woman. Added bonus: she was also drop dead gorgeous!
In her last years I came to realize MK was far more incredible than I had earlier realized. She fought through a multitude of surgeries, time in a coma, paralysis, and far more as she waged her daily war against her brain cancer. During her war she never took a day off to feel sorry for herself, never simply packed it in, nor stopped trying her best every minute of every day. Never! Not once in her 5,100+ days of being stricken.
In the last days before she passed away my best half asked me to make one of the few promises she asked me to keep after her death. She knew the important stuff was already be taken care of for our children, grandchildren, home, cabin, friends, family, even the details for her Celebration of Life service. But there was one thing undone. She asked if I would promise, sometime after she was gone, to go back out to Napa Valley in California in order to keep a generations-old family connection intact. As she explained “Scott, we are now the last in the family who actually lived our connection. Please don’t let it die with me.” She also asked me to extend our connection into the next generation of the Mondavi and D’Aquila-Phillips families. Naturally I promised and it has been wonderful keeping that promise!
With that promise kept and my wife’s spirit alive in our children, grandchildren and me, I know the D’Aquila-Phillips Wine Cellar will certainly flourish. As such it’s only fitting our cellar is dedicated to the loving memory of my best half, Mary Kay (D’Aquila) Phillips.
By the way, after her Celebration of Life, her 54 guests drained 62 bottles of Charles Krug 2012 Generations, which of course she personally chose.
