Chateau Montelena Part III

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Name is Keith Bevers and this home studio is experiencing a tree removal across the street.

So it's Chipper, Talk, Chipper, Record, Chipper, Record, Chipper, Record, Chipper, Record.

The United States has always been a draw.

The American experience is an alluring prospect.

And it has been for a very long time.

It has been since the colonies.

It has been since the Gold Rush.

And it has been since post-World War II.

And like many immigrants, because this land is a land of immigrants,

they were fleeing something.

You know, they were leaving a place that had no prospects.

Or they were fleeing something they thought was dangerous.

In the case of Mike Gurgich, he was fleeing something dangerous.

Mike Miliego Gurgich was born in 1923 and was the youngest of 11 children.

He was born to a family of peasants that lived off the land.

They were substance farmers.

They farmed grain.

They tended livestock.

In typical European fashion, as a child, he went...

Well, he joked actually that he went from breast milk to half water, half wine.

That's very European.

Actually, my mother being half Italian and my mother actually,

that's what she drank as a child in upstate New York.

There's also a really interesting story where he remembers actually crushing grapes by foot.

And the vessel they used to crush the grapes was also a makeshift crib.

For him when he was a baby or something like that.

But what I'm trying to get here is you're seeing you see what's happening here.

This is very humble beginnings.

And Mike Gurgich wanted to go to school, of course.

And he had to move away to go to school.

I don't know if it's because his parents were couldn't afford it or what,

but he had to go with his father's sister.

But his father told him something.

Had it like a mantra.

That is just awesome.

Every day you do your best,

every day you learn something new and make a friend.

Awesome.

So that was Mike's life.

Millenko.

Millenko's life.

Actually, it's funny that the name,

Millenko, the story is, it's wild.

The story goes that like, it had been a while since there was a male in the family.

So they didn't know it's a name him.

And apparently they named him after the male man.

I don't know, but it doesn't matter.

His life before World War II was your typical peasant life of a European family.

European peasant family.

And then World War II happened.

And communism came to this place.

And when communism came to town,

the first thing and the only thing Mike wanted to do was get away from what was happening.

There's a very telling quote in his autobiography.

The coming communism created a life that normal Americans can't understand.

If you owned a business, they would take everything you own and then kill you.

When the communists came to Desna, they loaded everything from my store.

Luckily, I was warned they were looking for me.

That I was on there to be killed list.

I escaped to Meckovich and survived the first blow of the post-war world.

There's really no need to go in the detail of life under communism at that time in the world.

But what I will say is as Mike Gurgich was finishing up his studies in 1954, post-World War II,

he was granted an internship, but it was beyond what was now called the Iron Curtain.

The thing is the way life was going in communist Yugoslavia is that Mike was worried if he actually

graduated, he would go into the system and would never be able to leave.

So he didn't want to graduate.

He sold $32 into his shoe and he left.

You see, at the University of Zagreb, which is where he was studying, there was a professor

who had traveled to the United States and had gone to California.

And the professor described California as an agricultural paradise.

Imagine that.

Here's this kid who grew up in an unagrarian family, working the land.

He's under communist rule.

He has memories of just coming up.

And there's just that thought, America.

And then he hears these stories about self-made Americans becoming icons like Henry Ford,

an Andrew Carnegie.

He wants to get to America.

So in 1958, he sets out.

And this would begin his four-year journey to California via West Germany.

I mean, this man has $32, sewn into his shoe.

Just one guy making his way to the United States in an extremely dangerous world.

He ends up in an internment camp at one point and then is released by his host

because his host family helped him.

I'm not sure how that went down.

But after this, he hears there's a need for lumberjacks in the Yukon of Canada.

So he starts heading to the Yukon, which is kind of, there's not a lot out there.

And this could have been what Mike Gurgers did.

But on the way, he got a job as a dishwasher in Vancouver and never became a lumberjack.

Here we have this guy, Mike Gurgers.

He's a dishwasher in Vancouver with a dream of making wine in America.

You see, as Zagreb, he studied viticulture and inology.

And his father was, you know, a farmer.

And with the American icon story and everything, Mike Gurgers had an idea.

He wanted to make wine professionally in America.

So as he was a dishwasher in Vancouver,

he put an ad out in a California wine trade magazine.

And this is when Mike Gurgers enters into the mix of Napa.

Because Lee Stewart of Sovereign Sellers, who we've talked about before,

answers the ad, hires Mike and writes the letter Mike needs to get his visa.

Mike Gurgers, made his way from communist Yugoslavia to California.

When he was at the University of Zagreb, one morning, he was on a street car.

And he left us, it was a rainy day.

And he left his umbrella on the street car.

So he bought a very cheap French beret and he wore it

and realized it was a really good tool.

He had it all the way.

He carried this beret all the way to California.

To him, it was very practical.

It could fold in his pocket.

All this stuff, very practical guy.

So what does he do?

Him and his French beret and a suitcase make their way to Napa to work at Sovereign Sellers.

And we know what happens next.

He ends up at Robert Mundavi.

And then he lasts a couple harvests.

And then Jim Barrett gives him a call.

Let's talk next week.

This episode of Y-101 is brought to you by Miami.

For the perfect finish to any occasion, visit meyomi.com and find a bottle near you today.