“I’m looking for a hard headed woman
One who will make me do my best
And if I find my hard headed woman
I know the rest of my life will be blessed
Yes, yes, yes”
Yusuf/Cat Stevens

Happy International Women’s Day! Yusuf/Cat Stevens said it oh so well back in 1970! Naturally, International Women’s Day has me reflecting on the many women in my life and at the top of that list is my best half.

On a July day in 1973 my life was changed, actually saved, by a woman I met in the midst of a humdrum summer job. I learned quickly she was an incredibly strong woman, but it would take decades until I’d realize the full extent of her strengths. Day in day out, through good and terrible, she never wavered in sharing her strength with her children and me.

Since this is a wine blog, I also got to thinking about what a significant impact women have had on our own wine cellar.

Several of our favorite wines come from wineries owned/operated by terrific women like Amy Grable, Bev Sodhani, Shirley Roy, and Lisa Redmon.

Winemakers, too, of course! Some of our favorite cellar dwellers are crafted by amazing female winemakers. We love Heidi Barrett’s La Sirena and Barrett & Barrett wines, just as we do the wines of Marsha McClellan of Levy & McClellan and Checkerboard,  Stacy Clark of Charles Krug, Kelly Woods at Burgess Cellars, Celia Welsh at Scarecrow, and the Mondavi sisters especially with their Aloft, Dark Matter, and Fourth Leaf.

Not to shortchange any of the males in the business, I have to acknowledge several of our favorite winery staff members are female, too. You can’t beat Sylvie at Melka Estates, Amber at CONSTANT Diamond Mountain, and Emily at William Cole.

Of course I need to include our daughter and daughter-in-law here too! Their passion for fine wines might even exceed my own and they add a desperately needed counterpoint to my thoughts on what our cellar ‘must add’.

Certainly our cellar would never even have happened, let alone evolve into what it is today, without my wife – the D’Aquila half of DP Wine Cellar. After all, it was her grandparents, Mario and Helen, who were friends with Cesare and Rosa Mondavi from their early days in America up north in Virginia, Minnesota. Mario even made our wedding wine in his basement from grapes sent to him by Cesare! Nothing introduced a beer drinking kid from Cleveland to wine quite like marrying into an Italian family!

My wife was the one who, while in the midst of our love affair with vodka gimlets, said to me one evening in the early 1980s, “Here, try this wine. Don’t take your coat off though, because I know you’ll like it so much you’ll go right out and buy us a case.” She was right. I did go buy a case (the first of many) and that night our years’ long relationship with Merlot began! She was also the one who asked me to keep the family history going by telling me I needed to return to Napa Valley. Without her asking me that, I may never have gone back out.

Of course, her impact went far beyond our slice of the world of wine. She taught our children how to be strong, but caring. She taught us all, by example, our lives are meant to be experienced, not just lived. From creating her chain of children’s clothing stores to being a published chef, and from an amazing designer to a world-class entertainer, she always dove in the deep end, laughed, and gave 100% to her life.

Even once her brain cancer struck, her 100% never wavered. She fought that beast for over 14 years and never, ever took a day off or even a day lightly. Her war was unrelenting as well as physically and emotionally demanding, cruel, and brutal. Yes, in the end it devastated an amazing woman, but not due to her lack of fighting against it. I still cannot find it within myself to speak of what those final months did to her and what she endured. Perhaps it will never rest anywhere other than steeled away in a remote reach of my memory. I only wish more people could have known the pre-cancer MK. They couldn’t help but benefit from the experience.

I can only close with a huge thank you to all the strong women who fight daily to make our world a better place!