First time logging into our new site? You may need to reset your password. To fully appreciate the ambitious goal to create a home an ocean away, in a place with free air and a pleasing climate to raise a family and start a business in an industry where most doubted we would succeed, we start with a look at history. I was neither a winemaker nor a viticulturalist, but I had a firm grasp on both and the business acumen to persist.
Like all of us, I was shaped by events that happened well before my birth, a history that dates back to What he saw as a year-old soldier, the stories he relayed to my brother and me about a fractured society give me perspective to life in the modern day, which is not quite as bad as what some of the members of my family lived through.
The events that shaped them shaped me, a boy born in Brussels, Belgium in wartime Europe. Many today would consider the world my family grew up in as primitive. Forget computers. My father and I remember a world with faces pressed against storefront glass watching pictures on a screen — the first televisions. The best communication is eye to eye, face to face. We do that best outside in the fresh air or indoors over good food and a glass of wine.
From an early age, I learned that family and family time are precious, worth preserving. That set of lessons ingrained in me, I came to the United States as a student finishing high school my senior year followed by the opportunity to study economics and finance at the University of Rochester.
I was hungry to achieve in a country where I saw freedom and opportunity. I worked in marketing for an international division of Eastman Kodak while still in college. The rest of my professional history has been well documented — a move to Switzerland to work at Philip Morris and subsequently head up the creation of the inaugural Marlboro Formula One Racing team.
