Understanding the structure of a massive agricultural operation was absorbed through familial osmosis, according to Adam, and through his brother Andrew’s undergrad work in Cal Poly’s ag program. The brothers, along with their younger sister Kelly, a Chez Panisse alum who oversees Scribe’s kitchen, are the fourth generation of a California farmer lineage that includes one of the largest nut companies in the world ( Mariani walnuts were served on my visit, crack-your-own, along with clementines). Vintner-brothers Andrew and Adam Mariani have been making low-intervention wine-along with cultivating an edible garden, raising bees and chickens, and throwing parties for an international community of hip food people who whirlpool around the Bay Area-from this southern plot of Sonoma Valley since 2007. Lingerers are gathering to watch from the Hacienda’s front steps. “California is a beautiful place,” says winemaker Andrew Mariani, as we rise from our lounge seats on the south patio, next to their edible garden. The vines, natural firebreaks that surround the winery on three sides, are dormant for the year, at peace. Baby green sprouts shoot up on the hill behind us. The Scribe team of two dozenish still have jobs. On this winter weekend, we’re luxuriating in their successes. They had completed their harvest the night before it all began, and thanks to Cal Fire, who helped conduct an equipped Scribe crew in rescue mode by digging fire lines and irrigating roofs, the winery remained unscathed. Disaster seemed imminent, but the magnitude, indeterminable. When news of the fires broke, a harrowing photo circulated online of the Hacienda at Scribe Winery surrounded by these colors, as flames pummeled towards Sonoma Valley. Smoke’s tragic haze has the same paint job. But after the wine country wildfires in 2017, this blazing sky is a reminder of incineration. This one, periwinkle and hot orange, foreshadowed tomorrow’s heavy rain, the begged-for kind that humbles Californians of any stratum. There’s a neon sunset, a showstopper, the kind that signals extreme weather to come. It’s dusk in early January-three months from the night in October when the deadliest California wildfires in history began, when flames churned by Diablo Winds spread through the Mayacamas and burned across Anderson Mountain in Sonoma, on whose Western slope we’re currently lounging while peeling clementines and drinking Scribe Sylvaner-and everyone at the Hacienda is suddenly gazing west.

Scribe winery map