This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, September 27, 2009

BY JON BONNE,
Chronicle Wine Writer

Dick Grace's office, in a meticulously restored 1881 Victorian just north of St. Helena, is a curious place to discuss the world's ills. On the wall is a Diane Arbus photo of two women, both with Down syndrome, beaming with wide smiles. Grace calls it his "daily meditation."

Grace is credited with creating California's first cult Cabernet _ expensive, rare, virtually impossible to buy. In 1981, the $25 per bottle for the first Grace bottling, under the Caymus winery label, was thought to be the highest in California. Now $225, that wine helps rebuild Tibetan schools and Nepali medical clinics.

So Grace, 71, views the current climate - the recession has hit the wine industry especially hard - as a teachable moment to focus on values that matter. As he puts it: "We don't often make good self-corrections when we're winning." It is not that he finds expensive wines to be wrong. lt's that, in his view, they must come with a higher purpose than fame - a notion he embraced after selling his Cabernet for record prices in the 1980s, an effort he now calls "an extension of my overblown ego."

A conversation with Grace is punctuated by the prayer beads rattling on his wrist. Not only is the former Smith Barney executive a follower of Buddhism with direct access to the Dalai Lama, but the profits of his winery - after expenses for what he calls "very comfortable lifestyle" - along with contributions from his customers go to his foundation, which distributes more than $250,000 a year to humanitarian projects throughout the United States, Mexico and Asia.

Rather than focus his foundation on a single cause or dabble in grant proposals, Grace seems to iind potential recipients of charity everywhere on his constant travels, such as the policeman in China's Chengdu province, severely burned rescuing a child in a school destroyed by last year's earthquake.

Born in Hawaii, Grace grew up in Piedmont, played football and served in the Marines. ln 1976, he bought a run-down property off Highway 29. Following suggestions to plant Cabernet vines densely for top quality, he put more than 1,100 vines on his 1.1 acres, twice as many as was then customary.

His first crop, in September 1978, so impressed Charlie Wagner, Caymus' owner, that it was made as a special lot. Soon, wine critics noticed the Grace Family Vineyard barrels in Caymus' cellar. When Grace bottled wine under his own label in 1983, it soon commanded more than $100 a bottle.

Grace's history reads like a roll of Napa royalty. His 2,500-square-foot chapel of a winery was designed by architect Jon Lail. Notable winemakers Randy Dunn and Heidi Peterson Barrett have helped coax dramatic wines from Grace's parcel.

Grace had hit on a rare formula: a tiny plot of exceptional fruit in a wondrous place to grow grapes, made with scarcity in mind and a price to match. But that lomiula has been so widely copied that the very concept of scarcity has shifted. There were perhaps fewer than 10 vineyard-designated wines in 1978, when Grace's grapes first went into barrel. Now there are hundreds.

ln 1986. after realizing he had become depressed and was drinking heavily. he acknowledged he was an alcoholic. He hasn't had a drink in more than 21 years. Yet he still smells every wine opened in front of him and socializes regularly with fellow winemakers.

"Dick loves being with people." says his wife. Ann. "So it's still apart of his life."

Grace threw himself into the charity wine circuit. trying to ensure his wine scored high bids at auctions around the country in order to raise significant funds for various charitable endeavors - a more benevolent version he now acknowledges of his ego issues.

Then a l99l meeting in Birmingham. Ala.. with a young cancer patient, Anthony Frazier. provided what Grace now refers to as his "epiphany" Grace and Frazier became friends. speaking on the phone once a week. Even now Grace refers to the boy as his "guru." Frazier died in 1992, but Grace had found his mission:

Take wine charity out ofthe banquet hall and into the field. ln his view. it's

"lt's an extended act of random kindness," says his longtime friend Robin Lail, a fellow vintner and Jon Lail's wife.

"He will basically tackle Buddhist lamas and say,'You have this fabulous temple here and no school. What's that about?" says actor Peter Coyote, himself an ordained Buddhist practitioner. "l think Dick's practice is a total immersion in compassion."

Through this prism. Grace wants to "carefully and lovingly make a couple of points" about the wine industry. He believes "the pendulum has swung too tar" on the sort of cult wines he pioneered. Though $225 is ambitious even for a wine with a three-decade track record. Grace now counts at least 34 Napa wines priced higher in their initial vintages.

"We have to get over what l call the trophy mentality." he says. That could describe some newer arrivals to Napa Valley whose interest might be, as Ann Grace says, more about "an address."

"What happens when you're 7l?" he asks. "You can become an angry old curmudgeon and sit back and criticize."

Or, he says. you can "offer your hand to the person below you and pull them tip to where you are."

Dick and Ann Grace in front of the winery.

Dick Grace, holding cabernet grapes, is credited with creating California's first cult wine.

Dick shows photographs of people aided by his foundation, which gives more than $250,000 a year to humanitarian projects throughout the United States, Mexico, and Asia.