My dad, Jim Barrett, for teamwork and commitment to quality; Justin Meyer for leadership and team building; John Rolleri and Bob Steinhauer for “making wine in the vineyard” viticulture approach.

I’d take Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Jefferson for a Napa Valley helicopter ride first; for the third, assuming my wife Heidi is there with my entourage, I’d invite our founder A.L. Tubbs to show him how great his visions for Chateau Montelena and the Napa Valley turned out.

Chateau Montelena is in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places for two periods of significance. In 1888, the stone Chateau was one of the first state-of-the-art wineries built in the first California wine movement to improve the quality of Napa Valley wines. The second event listed is for our Chardonnay’s win at the 1976 “Judgment of Paris.” This was a catalytic moment in Napa’s story.

I started in 1972, over 40 years.

We tell our employees and our growers that our customers are paying us for “The Best.” The bar we hold our team to is to strive to provide world class wines, world class hospitality and world class customer service.

Our job is to make people’s lives just a little bit better, one glass at a time. Working with the weather and the land, it’s a wonderful planet.

Probably flying fishermen and hunters on floatplanes in BC or Alaska or helicopter tours someplace cool, maybe the Big Island.

Worked summer and crush to make enough money to pay for my full time avocations of skiing, fishing and flying.

Name it, and we have been doing it since the 1970s. Solar power, recycling, composting, Napa Green – sustainability is a long-time part of what we do.

I like pickled herring... but I don’t like cheesecake.