The College Board of Governors
Jim & Judy Barrett
Profile -- (Summer 1998 Newsletter)
Jim and Judy Barrett are owners of Chateau Montelena in Calistoga,
California. Jim opened the winery in 1972, after having founded
a successful law firm in Los Angeles. Although the winery
had been established in 1882, it had long since abandoned
commercial wine production when Barrett took it over.
But Barrett shortly brought the winery to international prominence.
In 1976, nine of the most respected wine judges in Paris,
France, tasted 20 wines from unmarked glasses. They picked
Barrett's 1973 chardonnay as "best" over the white
Burgandies (along with a fellow Napa Valley winemaker whose
Cabernet Sauvignon bested the Bordeauxs. This marked the first
time in history that California wines had bested acknowledged
world-class wines. As a Time Magazine feature declared: ".
. .the unthinkable happened: California beat all Gaul."
Barrett was quoted world-wide as saying: "Not bad for
kids from the sticks."
Barrett's wines have gone on to receive high international
praise since then, and his winery is consistently rated among
California's best wineries for overall quality. Robert Parker
of The Wine Advocate says, "What one gets from Chateau
Montelena is textbook, quintessential Napa Chardonnay and
Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a splendid winery at the top of
its game." Barrett's vineyards also produce a top-rated
Zinfandel. Tours and tasting are available year-round.
Barrett was elected to the College's Board of Governors in
1992, and was recently inducted, with his wife Judy, into
the Order of St. Albert the Great.
Q. Jim, you practiced law for a few years, can you tell
us a bit about what your practice was like?
Jim: I graduated from UCLA [the University of California
at Los Angeles] in 1946, and subsequently from Loyola University
Law School in 1949. This was right at the beginning of the
Korean War, and so I was recalled into active duty with the
Navy for two years where I served on a submarine [the USS
Sea Devil] in the Pacific Theatre. When I left the Navy in
1951, I started practicing law in Los Angeles. It was a modest
general practice which developed into the specialized practice
of shopping center development. In 1959, we formed a law firm
known as Barrett, Stearns, Collins, Gleason & Kinney,
which at its peak had 26 lawyers plus support staff. It was
a dynamic time and a great time to be a lawyer.
Q. But, that's only the start of the story, isn't it?
Jim: I decided I wanted to do something different. I think
it was my guardian angel that pointed me in the right direction.
(Laughing). I started thinking about possibly getting into
the wine business. So in about 1969, I started looking around
the Wine Country in Northern California, checking out old
wineries and plots of land. In 1972, I bought Chateau Montelena
and decided to give it a go.
I stayed with the law firm for about eight years and commuted
back and forth between Southern and Northern California because
I wanted a place to punch a notary seal if the winery went
flop. By 1980, I was satisfied I was going to make it, so
I said "Adios" to the law firm. I then went into
the wine business full-time and never looked back. We've been
blessed with tremendous success.
Q. The two of you there work as a team, don't you?
Jim: Yes, absolutely. She makes all the decisions and I do
the grunt work. It's worked out very well.
Judy: I'm glad he likes to see it that way!
Q. Judy, you are a lawyer, too. Have you been using those
skills in the wine business?
Judy: Not really. I graduated form Loyola Law School much
later than Jim, and passed the bar in 1979, but never practiced.
But I did get to use that education serving as the Respect
Life Coordinator for the Santa Rosa Diocese for about six
years. I found my background in Constitutional Law tremendously
helpful.
Q. What sort of activities were you involved in?
Judy: Generally running the diocese-wide program, working
with parishes to help promote Respect for Life and covering
all of the life issues, from abortion to euthanasia. I also
set up various educational programs, as well as the Project
Rachel post-abortion and reconciliation programs, and did
presentations, talks, and legislative alerts.
Q. Owning a winery seems like everyone's dream. Has the
wine business been a dream for you?
Jim: Well, anyone who goes into the wine business with their
heart and not their head gets in big trouble real quick. It's
an extremely complicated activity -- the most highly regulated
business in the country. Most people don't realize that wine
has been part of our civilization for at least 8,000 years,
but that doesn't stop bureaucrats from trying to regulate
it and tax it to death.
Moreover, wineries have all of the normal problems associated
with any business -- and then some after all. Wine-making
is an agricultural enterprise, which means that things are
always interesting. Disaster lurks a-waiting any year. Also,
the competition is incredible. Wine is produced world-wide
-- in France, Italy, Germany, you name it -- and they all
consider the United States as their major market. However,
our winery has a very narrow high-end market niche, so if
we don't make too many mistakes, we should be okay. It's such
a highly complicated business, I wouldn't advise anybody to
get into it -- unless they have very deep pockets.
Judy: God has been very good to us.
Q. How so?
Jim: Well, to give you an example, when I first saw Chateau
Montelena, the only thing here was a beautiful old winery
building, mostly occupied by ghosts and spiders. The vineyards
were run down with about fourteen different varieties of pedestrian
grapes, none of which would make very good wine. So we started
over growing grapes from scratch. It turns out that the piece
of ground we have here is a special, rare, and unique piece
of land for growing Cabernet grapes -- rare even for the Napa
Valley, which itself is recognized as a special place to grow
exceptional grapes.
I didn't plan that. I had no idea that our vineyard would
be as extraordinary as it is. I'd love to say that I had figured
it out from the start, but I didn't. Others might call it
fortuity or serendipity, but I know it was God who was good
to us. Like I said, my guardian angels took care of us. Everything
has gone wonderfully here. The explosion of fine wines occurred
and we just happened to be at the right place at the right
time.
Q. Tell me how you got involved with Thomas Aquinas College.
Jim: I had been on the Board of Regents at Loyola Law School
and on the Alumni Board at UCLA, where I was its General Counsel
for a couple of years. This gave me a lot of exposure to what
Loyola and UCLA were doing after I'd been in school there.
I saw some very bright technocrats being produced, but not
much else. And UCLA, of course, was turning out wonderfully-educated
people as specialists, but for philosophy and theology --
forget it. So, Judy and I were looking around for some way
we could become active and helpful because we had come to
realize that our Church and Society are in deep trouble, and
we didn't want to roll over and play dead in our own little
comfortable shell. We could either carpe diem or give it up.
Judy: One of the things that was really a turning point was
when we started evaluating Catholic schools and seeing the
sort of things they were promoting. We would be astounded
to see some Catholic colleges giving awards to people who
were notoriously pro-abortion, just because they had excelled
for some other reason. And we would see them establishing
Chairs for something like "Feminist Hebrew Studies,"
while at the same time actively turning away Chairs for Catholic
subject-themes, such as on Natural Law.
Jim: About that time, we saw a little ad in National Review
about the College. Judy said, "Let's call them and get
some information." We did just that.
Judy: I called and talked to [Admissions Director] Tom Susanka
on the phone, and said, "Gee, we're kind of interested
in knowing about your school." I had a nice chat with
him and he sent us information about the College. The rest
is history.
Q: Tell us a bit more of that history.
Jim: The College offered its first Summer Weekend Great Books
Program, and we decided to attend. We were hooked. We thought,
"This is exactly what we've been looking for!" We
came to see that this College could be a "lever to move
the world." For us, TAC is a spiritual, cultural, and
intellectual oasis in a cultural wilderness. I believe we
are living in what I call the American "Dark Ages."
For Judy and me, this College is a small bright beacon in
a sea of ignorance and neo-barbarism. Judy and I could go
on and on about this, because we have tremendous confidence
in the bright, articulate young men and women that are, and
will be, graduating from here. These are young men and women
committed, morally and spiritually, to fighting for the good
of our society and a sound Catholic Church in America. We
believe Thomas Aquinas College is vitally important to the
future of our society and the Church.
Q. What do you think are some of the greatest challenges
the College is going to face over the years?
Jim: The battle is an ongoing one. I think these are perilous
times we live in -- dangerous to the extreme. But stop and
think about it -- what's new? The battle for the minds and
souls of men has been going on ever since Adam and Eve --
and will go on to the end of time. So through the ages the
good guys in this ongoing warfare have needed leaders, defenders.
Champions. And God provides. In the darkest times throughout
history, these champions have appeared. The College simply
has to stay true to its founding, and champions will appear
- indeed, they are appearing already. I truly believe that
the College affects profoundly all those who come in contact
with it and its alumni, and that its graduates will be a powerful
force to change people's minds, attitudes and lives for the
better in our society.
Q. What books have you read lately that you'd recommend?
Judy: Jim and I are avid readers and big fans of Ignatius
Press. I think we probably buy enough books to help pay one-quarter
of his [Fr. Joseph Fessio's] rent there! Lately, I've really
enjoyed two of Louis DeWohl's books, his historical novels
on St. Catherine of Sienna [Lay Siege to Heaven] and on St.
Augustine.
Jim: I'm reading The Eclipse of the Sun by Michael O'Brien
and The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri De Lubac. Also,
we were both very much taken by Michael O'Brien's Father Elijah.
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