h o u s e + h o m e Article and photos by indra fortney creativeVictorianlivingFarmhouseinside a Twenty years ago, a woman in Redding stumbled ANovember day, Ifter a break inthe rain onegreat-grandmother as a baby in the front of aacross a black-and-white photo from 1868 of her two-story house with several other people (see travel down a long dirt road, photo below). Determined to locate her which is quintessentially Napa ancestors’ home, the woman contacted the Napa with vineyards on either side, geological society and traced the house to Big leading down to a traditional Ranch Road and its current owners marvin and Napa Victorian farmhouse, karin winograde. The house, with a long history gleaming in the afternoon of family and farm life, now enjoys an incarnation sun. Except for a modification as the winogrades’ home and studio. in the front veranda and a few missing shutters, the house looks pretty much the same as it did back in 1868. I pull in to the back, parking Antique bronze clock adorns the foyer in front of Karin’s pottery studio. Karin, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, comes out to meet me and we give each other a hug. We know one another from a dance class we took together years ago, but this is the first time I have visited her property. Karin gestures towards rows of grapes near the studio. “These are old vineyards. They were here when we bought the property in 1972,” she says. On an old shed hangs an assortment of vintage, rusted pruning tools they found on the land. We step inside a stone building used for cold storage, where it smells of fermented wine. Stacked above wooden barrels, alongside bottles of homemade Zinfandel, are jars of canned fruit. As we leave the storage building, heading down the hill towards one of two kilns on the property, a scattering of chickens cross our path and Karin scoops one of the speckled hens up in her arms. “Before it belonged to Beringer Vineyards, the land around us was a prune orchard, 3 6 w w w. N A PA V A L L E Y L I F E m A g A z I N E . c o m
NVLife Jan-Feb 2013
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