I wrote this for our email subscribers back in July, on my father’s birthday. He is no longer with us, so instead of celebrating with him, let me indulge in a little story.
My late parents were amateur artists and blacksmiths. Making practical and decorative metal pieces, their studio was called Copper Rose. I’m sure you immediately get where this is going– we named our wine bar in San Antonio after my parents.
I had asked my dad for permission to use that name while he was still alive in 2023 as we were planning the bar. He enthusiastically agreed, and offered to make decorations for us. He didn’t live long enough to deliver on that offer, nor to see the bar open and flourish. If you look around the bar, though, you’ll find some of his copper roses decorating our little hometown wine bar.
Flashback another decade to 2012 and a new board game about winemaking titled Viticulture had just launched on Kickstarter. One of the perks for backers was to have their likeness used on one of the game cards. I backed the game and submitted my father’s photo for the artist to paint. Originally the card was supposed to be titled Carpenter, but when the designer saw the photo, he changed it to Blacksmith. The legendary Beth Sobel illustrated it. Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games lays out the process in his blog post from 2012.
That was a long time ago, and the wine industry rarely crossed my mind, especially as a profession. Long before I was a wine geek, I was a gamer nerd, just like my parents. More than a decade later, we are running two fabulous wine bars and crafting award-winning wines. Luckily for me, my dad’s card is the one that appears most clearly on the back of the package. So any time I go into a game store and flip over a copy of Viticulture, I can see a picture of my dad.
Sante,
Victor