Quirky appeal
And then, with a friend at the wheel, I ride just out of town, driving along the lake and up onto a promontory that overlooks it, to the Hatch, where I think I enjoy the stories as much as the wine I'm tasting (both are excellent).
So-called "chief steward" Andrew Melville tells me that their raison d'etre is to showcase the individual vineyards from which their wines are sourced.
He also explains about the funny job titles.
"We wanted to be unlike other wineries, so it seemed redundant to have titles like 'manager' or 'assistant night janitor,'" he says. "For what I do, chief steward sounded great, had a ring to it, was weird but also fitting in a strange way."
He adds that all the quirk I encounter is intentional.
"We created 'the Hatch,' pun intended, as our hatching ground for various forms of art, wine, vineyards, stories and so on," he says, adding that he feels that their logo basically says everything we need to know about what they do.
"We had a 'bird' and 'egg' concept going, and then we found Paul and that painting just tied it all together, much like Lebowski's rug," he said.
Sounds about right -- for this fresh, fun, slightly funky part of the left coast.