Message From the Chair

Bill Phelps reflects on the home ranch 35 years later

Almost exactly thirty five years ago as I write this, Joe Phelps bought the land in Spring Valley we call the Home Ranch. My recollection of coming here for the first time is vivid. In March, 1973 Joe brought his young family to St. Helena for the first time. The valley and its surrounding hills were a brilliant green, as they are today after a good winter’s rain.

We were raised in a small town in northern Colorado. While Greeley was a very nice place
to grow up, the winters were long and the landscape in March was predominately brown
and gray. I remember thinking that this is how Dorothy must have felt when she first arrived
in the land of Oz.

My sisters and I were convinced that we had arrived in an exotic and unique world. Our parents rented a home for the month of August so we could get to know the ranch and the Valley. Joe bought saddles so we could ride the horses that still lived on the ranch, alongside the cattle which had been raised here since at least the 1930s.

None of us – even Joe, I’m sure – could envision how the Napa Valley would evolve and prosper in the next few decades. But there is no doubt that we felt the magic and inexorable pull back then. Even more so, we all felt an immediate and visceral attraction to the special corner of the Napa Valley that we now could call home.