Costa De Oro Winery - New World Grapes, Old World Wine Making Techniques.

Gary Burk - Winemaker

[Gary in field] Though born into a farming family, Gary’s first love was music. So after earning his business degree from Cal Poly, SLO, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a musician. During his time in LA, Gary’s father Ron Burk and Bob Espinola planted their 30 acre Gold Coast Vineyard. That is when Gary’s interest in grape growing and wine took off. He began selling Gold Coast grapes to winemakers from his LA base.

In 1993 on a visit home to Santa Maria, Gary was fortunate enough to share a dinner with Au Bon Climat's Jim Clendenen and Dominique Lafon of Domaine des Comtes Lafon. After that evening, Gary was hooked ... funny what a great glass of Meursault will do! In 1994 he was invited to work harvest at the Au Bon Climat/Qupe facility and was hired full time in 1995. He worked in production and marketing for ABC/Qupe until August of 2002 when he left to devote all of his time and energy to Costa De Oro. He made one barrel each of Gold Coast Vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in 1994 and has increased production of the Costa de Oro label each year to the current level of 4,500 cases annually. He currently produces his wines at the Central Coast Wines Services facility in Santa Maria.

[2005 Pinot Noir label] Gary says, "The transition from music to wine making was easy. There are a lot of similarities in the two industries; both rely on a blending of technique, artistry and feel." His goal is to produce wines with balance, elegance and texture, reflecting Old World Style and Terrior of the vineyard.

Gary has received critical acclaim, receiving 90 point scores or higher from Robert Parker, James Laube/Wine Spectator, and Wine and Spirits Magazine. He has also had wines named in the Top 100 Wines of the Year by Wines and Spirits Magazine (2000), the San Francisco Chronicle (2001), Wine Country Living (2003), and most recently Winner of Best in Show at both the Orange and Santa Barbara County Fairs.

Wine Quotes...

"Great news!"

she said after speaking to our doctor.

"I have it on the highest medical authority that you will still be alive in 10 years! You know what this means?"

she asked.

"Of course I know what it means,"

I replied.

"It means we don’t have to drink up all our 1985 and 1986 Château Latour at supper tonight for fear I might die with several outrageously priced wines undrunk. For the first time in years, we can go to bed sober."

--- based on Russell Baker, New York Times, 12 May 1990.

"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste."

--- Count Mippipopolous in The Sun Also Rises, 1926, by Ernest Hemingway

NOTE:

Javascript is disabled. If you wish to see many more great quotes about wine, please enable Javascript.

"Here's to the corkscrew - a useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly."

--- W.E.P. French (From the wine list of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, LA)

"If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink:
Good wine;
A friend;
Or being dry;
Or lest we should be, by and by;
Or any other reason why!"

--- Henry Aldrich 1647-1710

"Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy."

--- Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), the Scottish bacteriologist credited with discovering Penicillin in 1928.

"Wine is the most civilized thing in the world."

--- Ernest Hemingway.

"Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it."

--- Anonymous

"Compromises are for relationships, not wine."

--- Sir Robert Scott Caywood

"Beer is made by men, wine by God!"

--- Martin Luther

"Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life's most civilized pleasures."

--- Michael Broadbent

"Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance."

--- Benjamin Franklin

[at his first sip of champagne] "Come quickly! I am tasting stars!"

--- Dom Perignon

"Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age."

--- Pope John XXIII

"Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that 'age appears to be best in four things - old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.'"

--- Francis Bacon, 1624

"I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food."

--- W. C. Fields

"Wine is life."

--- Petronius, Roman writer

"He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret." (claret is the British term for red Bordeaux)

--- Samuel Johnson

"Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin."

--- Napoleon

"No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage."

--- Thomas Jefferson

"Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne."

--- Paul Claudel

"Life is too short to drink bad wine."

--- Anonymous

"Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living."

--- Napoleon

"Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil."

--- Lord Byron

"I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine."

--- Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

"Wine offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased."

--- Ernest Hemingway

"My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne."

--- John Maynard Keynes

[Making wine] "is like having children; you love them all, but boy, are they different."

--- Bunny Finkelstein (co-owner of Judd’s Hill Winery)

"Wine... the intellectual part of the meal."

--- Alexandre Dumas, 1873

"Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul, gives being to our hopes, bids the coward flight, drives dull care away, and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes."

--- Horace

"And wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile."

--- Alexander Pope

"A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover."

--- Clifton Fadiman

"When it comes to wine, I tell people to throw away the vintage charts and invest in a corkscrew. The best way to learn about wine is the drinking."

--- Alexis Lichine

"If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul."

--- Clifton Fadiman

"And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard."

--- Genesis 9:20

"So life’s year begins and closes;
Days though shortening still can shine;
What though youth gave love and roses;
Age still leaves us friends and wine."

---Thomas Moore

"A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect"

--- Robert Louis Stevenson

The first written reference to Champagne was English, not French! In 1676, Etherege wrote in praise of sparkling Champagne which Quickly recovers:

"Poor laughing lovers,
Makes us frolic and gay,
and drowns all our sorrows."

The use of the adjective sparkling implies that some time prior to this the wines of the Champagne district were not necessarily sparkling.

"I have enjoyed great health at a great age because everyday since I can remember, I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles."

--- Attributed to a Bishop of Seville

"The wine-cup is the little silver well,
Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell."

-- William Shakespeare

"It takes a lot of beer to make good wine."

--- Lou Preston, Preston Vineyards

"Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized."

--- André Simon

"I serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself."

--- Voltaire

When asked whether he ever confused a Bordeaux with a Burgundy in a blind tasting, British wine legend Harry Waugh replied:

"Not since lunch."

"Within the bottle’s depths, the wine’s soul sang one night."

--- Charles Baudelaire, French poet and critic

"My dear girl, there are some things that are just not done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ‘53 above the temperature of 38° Fahrenheit."

--- James Bond in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger

"Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues"

--- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1771

"Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary."

--- Babylonian Talmud: Baba Bathra

"Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure."

--- Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 9:10

"During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days."

--- Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields) in My Little Chickadee, 1940

A man, fallen on hard times, sold his art collection but kept his wine cellar. When asked why he did not sell his wine, he said,

"A man can live without art, but not without culture."

--- Anonymous

"I can certainly see you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret."

--- Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) in Fawlty Towers (Claret is an English term for red Bordeaux.)

"We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good."

--- Thomas Jefferson

"Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance."

--- Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

"In the order named, these are the hardest to control: Wine, Women, and Song."

--- Franklin P. Adams, The Ancient Three. Dictionary of Quotations, Bergen Evans, 1968.

Bessie Braddock, a well-known socialist in England, attended a dinner party at which she was seated next to Winston Churchill who had had quite a bit to drink. She said to him,

"Winston, you are drunk!"

He replied,

"Madame, I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I will be sober."

"Never buy the cheapest wine in any category, as its taste may discourage you from going on. The glass, corks, cartons, and labor are about the same for any wine, as are the ocean freight and taxes for imported wines. Consequently, if you spend a little more, you are likely to get a better wine, because the other costs remain fixed. Cheap wine will always be too expensive."

--- Alex Bespaloff, New Signet Book of Wine, 1986

Before leaving home to serve a one year jail sentence, a white collar criminal was quoted as saying,

"I’m not worried about the reds; they’ll keep OK. But I am worried about the whites."

--- Anonymous.

"The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine."

--- Thucydides, Greek Historian, 5th century BCE.

"The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours later, the Germans marched into France."

--- Sam Diamond in Murder by Death (1976)

The importance of wine shows up early in the Bible:

"And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard."

--- Genesis 9:20

"I made a mental note to watch which bottle became empty soonest, sometimes a more telling evaluation system than any other."

--- Gerald Asher, On Wine, 1982

"Anyone who tries to make you believe that he knows all about wines is obviously a fake."

--- Leon Adams, The Commonsense Book of Wine

Premier Cru vineyards in Burgundy are those that are considered significantly better than the basic village wines. These vineyards are generally better situated in terms of slope, direction, and soil. Their wines get riper and give wines of greater character and depth.

"No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better."

--- Luke 5:39

"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste."

--- Count Mippipopolous in The Sun Also Rises, 1926, by Ernest Hemingway

"What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?"

--- Larson E. Whipsnade (W.C. Fields), You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939)

"Great news!"

she said after speaking to our doctor.

"I have it on the highest medical authority that you will still be alive in 10 years! You know what this means?"

she asked.

"Of course I know what it means,"

I replied.

"It means we don’t have to drink up all our 1985 and 1986 Château Latour at supper tonight for fear I might die with several outrageously priced wines undrunk. For the first time in years, we can go to bed sober."

--- based on Russell Baker, New York Times, 12 May 1990.

"Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die."

--- Attributed to the late Julia Child.

Filmmaker and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola says,

"The two professions are almost the same. Each depends on source material and takes a lot of time to perfect. The big difference is that today’s winemakers still worry about quality."

"Hardly did it appear, than from my mouth it passed into my heart."

-- Abbe de Challieu, 1715, upon first tasting Champagne.

"Between 5/22/85 and 5/4/88, the French writer Jean-Paul Kauffmann was held chained and often blindfolded in a Beirut basement. A lover of Bordeaux, Mr. Kauffmann recited daily the list of the 61 greatest chateaux drawn up in 1855. He strove to conjure up the aroma of a Chateau Margaux or a Leoville-Poyferre. Occasionally a small miracle would occur, and the scent of black currants and plum would permeate the dusty heat of Lebanon."

--- Roger Cohen, Ways of Doing Time, New York Times, 5/4/97.

"Wino Forever"

-- Johnny Depp (The tattoo once read 'Winona Forever')

"Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye. That’s all we shall know for truth before we grow old and die."

--- William Butler Yeats

""Salud, pesetas, amore, y tiempo para gustarlos." (Health, wealth, love, and time for us to enjoy them.)

--- Costa de Oro