Programming Archive

During her thirty-three year winemaking career, Merry has earned the universal respect of winemaking peers, grape growers and academicians. A self-described perfectionist, she has constantly refined her vineyard practices, wines and techniques.  Merry does not rest on her laurels; she grows.Food was Merry’s gateway to wine.  She recalls, “When I was a teenager my mother had cookbooks produced by the California Wine Advisory Board.  Wine was an ingredient in every recipe, so I started cooking with wine.”
Fascinated with food chemistry and fermentation in particular, Merry brewed beer as a simple extension of making bread and working with yeast.  Then she purchased a book on home winemaking and began to ferment fruit wines.  In 1970, when Merry earned her B. S. degree in Physiology from the University of California at Berkeley, her friends knew her as the accomplished amateur who made " The Merry Vintners" wines.
In 1971, while attending graduate school in nutrition at U. C. Berkeley, Merry met Andy Quady who was studying winemaking at the University of California at Davis.  “Looking through Andy’s books, I
became fascinated,” recalls Merry.  “I was surprised to learn one could study winemaking as a discipline.”  Within a month, Merry shifted her graduate studies to wine at U. C. Davis.  In the winter of 1973 she earned a masters degree in Food Science with an emphasis in Enology. Of the three women in the masters program, only Merry became a winemaker.

On tonight’s Inquiry, our guest is award winning writer, designer and novelist CHIP KIDD. In the 1960s, renown Japanese manga artist Jiro Kuwata turned out an amazing series of Batman comic stories, that until very recently were only known in Japan. Kidd has lovingly reproduced a set of these comics in a state of the art volume titled BAT MANGA that also includes some photographs of the distinctly Japanese merchandise that was sold at the time. Tune in and find out what the Japanese thought of this American superhero and what kind of unique villains the Japanese Batman fought. On-line, we also talk about Kidd’s latest novel THE LEARNERS, which begins, with the quote: “An idea ahead of its time, no matter what it is, is not a good idea.”

Inquiry speaks with noted children’s book author MELISSA STEWART about her latest book A PLACE FOR BIRDS, a companion volume to her A PLACE FOR BUTTERFLIES. Ms Stewart specializes in writing books about the natural sciences for young readers. In A PLACE FOR BIRDS, Melissa describes how children and adults have helped a number of endangered species survive. Tonight Melissa Stewart talks about how the Westover Air Reserve Base put aside a large parcel of grasslands so the diminutive Grasshopper Sparrow could breed. In Florida, school children helped save the breeding habitat for the local Florida Scrub Jay. While in Hawaii, local residents are controlling the introduced pig population to save the stunning Crested Honeycreeper. In each case there was something simple people could do to create a “place for birds.”

Freeman Vineyard & Winery is the fruition of a 20-year dream shared by Ken and Akiko Freeman to craft elegant cool climate California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in a sophisticated, Burgundian
style. With a passion for fine wine and contemporary cooking’s wealth of exotic flavors, the Freemans strive to create wines with the depth and character to pair seamlessly with the abundance of modern, global cuisine.

Believing in the vast potential of the Sonoma Coast to produce wines of complexity and refinement, after years of searching for the ideal site, the Freemans discovered a beautiful small winery in the
picturesque Russian River Valley town of Sebastopol. Guided by the old winemaking adage that "wine is made in the vineyard,” the Freemans researched and visited over 200 individual vineyards, searching for hillside locations with coastal fog, Goldridge soil, proper clonal
selection and stressed vines producing extremely low yields of nuanced fruit. The end result was Freeman Vineyard & Winery’s small portfolio of partner vineyards, including such renowned growers as Ted Klopp of Klopp Ranch, Marcy Keefer of Keefer Ranch, Charlie Heintz of Heintz Ranch and Dennis and Mary Black of Black Emerald Vineyard.