On a frigid January morning, grim winter clouds threaten to burst over Larry Hyde's Carneros property. But he hardly notices before climbing into the worn leather seat of his rusted green tractor, and setting off to examine his 178-acre vineyard.

Nobody would ever accuse this man of neglecting his grapes.

Hyde's voice is barely audible over the rumbling engine, so he slows periodically to narrate the history of each vineyard plot, detailing, in equal measure, his successes and his failures.

"In 1979, I planted everything on an east-west orientation," he says of his first grapevines. "That's what the neighbors were doing, so I copied them. What did I know?"

The grapes didn't get the most ideal sun exposure, and after a bout of phylloxera - a vine disease caused by an aphid attacking the roots - he replanted everything north-south. read more