The Principals (according to Mary Fox)

With humble origins in the coastal swamps of Costa Rica, John Munch enjoys a modest reputation locally for his fine work as founder of several questionable wine ventures, with the earliest established in 1980. This kind of experience is obviously irreplaceable. Couple that with a stint in Geneva working for IOS just prior to the Vesco scandal, a degree in medieval studies, several cross country jaunts via motorcycle, and a prior business as a restorer of Victorian houses in San Francisco, and you begin to appreciate the crooked path that led John to Paso Robles and his unique vision of winemaking. His methods have much to do with serendipity and his habit of leaving the process of winemaking to the wild beasties is a good example, relying as it does on a practical level of irresponsibility and on a firm dedication to the mysteries of wild yeasts.

Mary Fox, on the other hand, departed the Central Coast in 1971 and spent the next thirty years in peripatetic travel. Raised in the deserts of California and Washington State, she undertook a pilgrimage to the east in search of adventure and education visiting Colorado, Indiana, and Connecticut, before finally lighting on a high, west facing ridge in the small town of Harvard, Massachusetts. Her interest in all things psychological led her along the way to traverse the time worn steps of Thorndike Hall and the hallowed halls and tunnels (tunnels reeking of chlorine from the basement pool and of stale nervous sweat from the generations of graduate students who had passed before her) underlying Columbia’s Teacher’s College in the City of New York, in pursuit of the degree of doctor of philosophy in social and organizational psychology. Once and finally degreed, she set out to change the world as an HPC, (high powered consultant) all the while telling her clients and students that even though she was in the business of planning and managing change, she retained a healthy measure of skepticism concerning hers or anyone else’s ability to plan or to manage change.

To whit, the unfolding of her association with Le Cuvier and John Munch relied on a series of personal life events and global economic forces that could not have been predicted and certainly were not planned by either one….but have proven to be serendipitous for both.

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