Of your ventures in cooking, winemaking, and NapaStyle, is there one that allows you to express
yourself the most creatively?
They’re all done in concert. I strive to help people discover the difference between taste and flavor. If it’s a
dish of food or a glass of wine—you can taste it in your mouth, you can taste the merits and the qualities of
the grapes. Say, if my grandmother taught me this recipe, every time I make it, I'm sharing the story of my
grandmother's heritage with my family, with my children, with everyone else.

You obviously continue to draw inspiration from Napa Valley. Who or what, specifically, continues
to inspire you?
It's hard not to be inspired by the vista, the effort of each farmer for each glass of wine that they create and
the great food that they allow to come together. I've watched, over the years, people come to the Napa
Valley. They talk about each experience. It really inspired me to broaden this, to see if I could share this
experience with people through products that drive their inspirations from the Napa Valley. It's what you
see in your mind's eye. If I'm thinking of Picasso, I see him outside of a rubble stone building, painting a
simple landscape with a young lady in it. You see the whole thing, right? Well, in my mind's eye, the same
thing happens with Napa.

Look at the phenomenal Mexican culture we have that crops up in California … much to the chagrin of
Washington. (Laughs) With my family, we have a spine of flavor as Southern Italians. A taco truck comes to
our office and a Mexican supplier, the other day, was showing me some tamales, and I thought: "Now, what
if I did this with polenta?” and “What if I had a braised short rib and a slow-roasted tomato inside there,
wrapped in a corn husk? Wouldn't that be great?" So, if your eyes are open, you can get inspiration from
everywhere. It's not just this quintessential "Napa Valley Experience” of having a goat-cheese salad.

You own award-winning vineyards that are almost 100 years old. In your book Napa Stories you say
"The wines I like best ... have some essence of the winemaker in them." Do you strive to do that
with your own wine?
I do. We have a winemaker, but I handle the vineyards. He handles the barrels. It's kind of nice; it's very
stimulating. He and I were in the vineyards this morning. And this block, that block, what he sees, how sees
it ... you can taste some of that experience in every glass of wine. And it tastes twice as good.

What drove you to purchase and run your own vineyard?
I tend to go a million miles a minute. (Laughs) It's really a forced reflection on my life and what I like to do.
You know, I like to talk about organics—I can tell you firsthand what happens in my little twenty acres.

As a TV personality, chef, vintner, author, and artisan, is it difficult for you to stay creative or
inspired?
Do I want out of it? (Laughs) You have to do things, you have to keep creating experiences that water your
"well." And that's all I can do. In my job of designing products, of being an artisan, of serving food and
wine, I'll have a great glass of prosecco in Italy next week and then I'll go, "Hey, how come I don't make
prosecco-style wine in California? Why can't we do that?" (Laughs) It's just about having your eyes open, I
think.

You once said that the prosciutto bits on your menu at Tra Vigne were a happy accident. Have you
had any other “happy accidents” in winemaking or with NapaStyle?
Yeah, there’s tons of happy accidents. I do a smoked short-rib dish that I had at Tra Vigne when I was a
younger chef. We always brine our chicken, but we’d never brined our beef before. The thought was that
you put the chicken in the brine. Instead, I put one hundred orders of short ribs in the brine. About two
hours later, we didn’t have enough guts or experience to throw them out. I finished smoking them. I didn’t
want to hot-smoke and have them get any saltier so I cold-smoked them. In the end, I had a dish that stayed
on the menu for about a dozen years.

How much time do you spend in the kitchen at home now?
We cook every night, my wife and I. Every other weekend, we have a group over. There’s lots of cooking
[for other people]. We had a lunch last Saturday that somebody paid a million dollars for. It’s great to do
things for charities like that and when we do charities, we are not just trying to leverage some philosophical
ideas at the same time. We love to cook. We cook up three or four big parties—two hundred, three hundred
people—at the house. With the winery, we do two large [wine release] parties—one in the spring, one in the
fall. So, during the week, I’d better wear my belt. I cook my ass off; I’d have nothing to hold up my pants.
(Laughs) You can’t keep me out of the kitchen that easy.

If someone's going to put together a menu for a family reunion, what advice would you give to
make the dinner more special and memorable?
That’s a good question. First off, I’d pick dishes that are significant to the heritage of your
family—something that you want to teach the children that they might not know already. There might be
dishes that celebrate each kid—it was their favorite [dish] growing up—and you pull it together. We were
talking about family before. Food’s an important part of the relationship between mother and child, father
and child. In writing a menu, you could have a story—you don’t have to dream up conversations. Maybe
your family went to the Outer Banks and had some oysters Rockefeller, oysters on the beach. Or maybe
po’boys in New Orleans. You should pick [dishes] that represent things that are meaningful to the stories of
your lives together.

For more about Michael Chiarello, visit his site.