The heartbeat of Italian life occurs around the dinner table. And though Francis Ford Coppola was born in Detroit, Mich., his grandparents emigrated from Italy, and young Francis grew up with traditional values, which included Sunday night dinners with family. Coppola’s vision was to create a dining experience reminiscent of his childhood at the winery’s restaurant, Rustic. Every Tuesday night, Rustic offers a tavola (pronounced a TAH-voh-la), which means “to the table.”

Did You Know? The word “Zo” is Japanese for elephant. Owner and Winemaker David Eckert, who spent most of his career in Asia in the finance industry, met his wife, a Japanese woman, in Tokyo. The two married in Japan and share a love of elephants. The ZO Wines’ logo is made up of a single line that creates the elephant image. “Elephants are interconnected to sustainability and the entire world,” Eckert says. And in this sense, ZO Wines wants to be the elephant in the room. The winery allocates 1 percent of net sales for elephant preservation and requires that 1 percent of all employees’ time be donated to working with local charity outreach.

Young girls and women hear they can achieve anything they want. The woman suffrage and Me Too movements strengthen this message. Prosperity and success are within reach, but women still have barriers to break.

Omotenashi is a word the Japanese use to describe their unique approach to hospitality. And it’s not just hospitality in the usual sense, but an elevated politeness that involves anticipating the needs of guests, which is at the heart of the concept.

If you’ve ever visited V. Sattui Winery in St. Helena, you’ve likely been wowed by the lengthy wine selection, artisan deli and quaint picnic grounds. What you might not know is V. Sattui Winery is celebrating 134 years in business, a milestone that all began with a bread maker, a breadwinner and delicious homemade wine.

The Culinary Institute of America, founded in 1946, has gained a reputation as the world’s premier culinary college. And the Restaurant at CIA Copia, which opened in the Oxbow District in 2016, offers a distinctive dining experience with seasonal dishes inspired by the bounty of the Napa Valley. This spring, the restaurant ventured into new territory, introducing the first 3D dining experience to the West Coast, created by Skullmapping and Tablemation.

Julie Atwood has made multiple careers out of riding horses, architectural design and event planning. Today, she’s a full-time community preparedness activist, as founder, as founder, chief executive officer and executive director of the HALTER Project, a Sonoma County grassroots initiative dedicated to facilitating training for first responders to safely handle animals in emergencies, and providing education resources for people and their animals.

Wine drinkers may soon be sipping wine from bottles made with sugar, with no label and delivered via drone, according to a report by Armit Wines and food futurologist, Morgaine Gaye. Here’s a look at what may be the next big trends in wine.

Travel agents haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, they can help save valuable time while adding panache to an excursion, according to Alyse Cori, owner and president of Travelwize, a home-based, virtuoso affiliate travel agency in Sonoma County since 2006. “The main difference with an online website is: you’re just a number,” Cori says. “But when you work with a travel consultant, not only do you get a confirmation number, but we call the hotel. We call the resort. We get you better seats. We VIP you for no extra charge.”

The cozy confines of the cubicle world aren’t considered an inherently dangerous environment, unless paper cuts and weekly deadlines are particularly menacing to you. However, all businesses are required to have certain safety items on site as a precautionary measure for their employees. First aid kits, fire extinguishers and safety alarms are a few of the items mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to meet minimum safety requirements.

What does one do with an empty cottage? Create a vacation rental.

It’s four months into the year and I have yet to wax on about women’s issues. For those who have enjoyed the reprieve, you may want to flip the page. For the rest of you, get ready to shake your lucky shamrocks. I’ve sat on my hands long enough and I am ready to roar. While strides have been made over the past few years to push women’s issues and gender equality to the forefront—we aren’t even close to cresting this Kilimanjaro. 

In a truly democratic system, all children are provided with equal opportunities, the most fundamental of which is educational equity. However, the U.S. Public School System has not achieved this yet, and may never, due to the inherent bureaucracy, under-funding, inequitable preparation, and structures which do not promote innovation.

So, let’s not waste time and resources on tricks, but rather the time-tested actions that lead to lasting relationships and translate to real business for you. After all, what is your end game? Getting in good with Google, or getting good business? Wil Reynolds, an SEO strategist who has been in the game since 1999, said it best: “SEOs need to stop driving clicks and start building cliques.”

According to Morningstar Research, BioMarin may have suitors that include Pfizer, Merck and Johnson & Johnson as the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors brace for a wave of mergers. Other possible merger partners include Gilead, AbbVie and Roche. Morningstar, a Wall Street-based research house, says Novato-based BioMarin’s stock is undervalued and it’s drug portfolio is “focused.”

Don’t get old. These are not the golden years. Growing old isn’t for sissies. This is the advice I frequently get from my patients. Aging is an art form that we can master with the right mindset. And over the years, I’ve had the privilege of observing many of my patients’ secrets to graceful aging. In the spirit of this month’s “Women Business Leaders” issue, I thought I’d write about a few of my female patients who’ve left a lasting impression on me. Their names have been changed for patient confidentiality.

My wife and I were fortunate enough to spend time in Paris last October. A friend of mine, who has traveled extensively in Europe, gave me some terrific advice: regardless of where you’re traveling, learn how to say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and excuse me in the local language. It will get you much more polite treatment, even if you have to lapse back into English, because you’re making an effort to speak their language.

When investors in the stock market become uncertain, they often switch to safer investments such as gold, silver and bonds.

Nordstrom, a key tenant at the upscale shopping center The Village at Corte Madera, is taking on the county of Marin once again.

Will there ever be equanimity between genders within the world of wine? Hopefully, but it won’t happen without a lot of change. I’ve been in the wine industry for years as both a writer and a vintner, and I’ve worked with both male and female winemakers, viticulturists, marketing and sales professionals, and a host of other roles.

Traveling can certainly influence perspective. I’ve rarely felt this more acutely than now, as I pen my thoughts for the May “Housing, Real Estate & Construction” issue.

I work. My spouse works. And both my adult kids work. I’m going to assume that you work, too. And chances are, we all go somewhere else to do it, at a not-inconsiderable expense when you consider time and money. At the same time, particularly here in the Bay Area, we read stories about how people can no longer afford to live where they work.

Finnish-born Gustave Niebaum purchased land in Napa Valley in 1879 for $48,000 and built a chateau on the property that served as the winery for 80 years before the construction of a modern facility.

Frances Reyes, a graduate of Petaluma High School and Santa Rosa Junior College and co-owner and co-founder of Nuda Tequila, has begun distributing his creation in Sonoma County.

Tara Jasper’s passion is in the culinary arts, but she didn’t become a chef, not in the traditional sense. Jasper distills gin with botanicals at Sipsong Spirits, which she founded in 2016.

Welcome to Northbay biz magazine’s Women in Business issue! This is an expansive topic our editorial team navigates with great skill each and every year. Traditionally, this issue focuses on how women and business meld here in Sonoma, Napa and Marin. And over the years, our topics have ranged from the misperceptions about a woman’s role in the business world, the challenges working moms face to profiling modern matriarchs and the women who stepped up during the 2017 firestorm.

Only three months into 2019 and the year is off to a banging start an as alternative taste and pot spots emerge. I’ve accepted that survival as a working gal and mom to toddling twins is largely dependent on easy access to nerve-reducing elixirs and stimulants to the nervous system—mainly wine and coffee.

When it comes to dogs, I’ve always been a mutt lover. Gravitating to those adoring mix-breed hounds with grateful eyes, perfect temperament and always-be-wagging tails. This choice has been an instinctual one, that was less about settling and more about one-of-a-kind originality. Decades of pet ownership later, my stance on blended breeds remains unchanged. As for my wine drinking preferences, the same tendency has not always applied.

Straus Family Creamery, the pioneering organic dairy based in West Marin, joins the ranks of businesses moving north in order to grow.

Whether it’s dry cleaning, toys, razors or shampoo, women pay more for gender-specific items than men. The Pink Tax, named because of the color of products directed towards females, refers to the price difference for female-specific products compared with gender-neutral items, or those marketed towards men. In a study by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, nearly 800 products from more than 90 brands were checked for price differences in items marketed to different genders. On average, products for women or girls cost 7 percent more than comparable products for men and boys.

Recently, I had a conversation with my cannabis-loving friend, a pot-smoking Silicon Valley entrepreneur whom I’ll call Bob. He’s preferred weed over wine for years. I mentioned how the world of wine is changing, including massive competition, a slowing of growth and shifting from the view that wine is healthy.

I just finished reading a thought-provoking book titled, The Power, by Naomi Alderman. Following its publication in 2016, it won the Baileys Women\'s Prize for Fiction in the UK, was named one of the 10 best books of 2017 by The New York Times and was also cited by former President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books that year. Yet two of my “smart friends” who read the book didn’t find it well written. So much for literary criticism.

Few businesses in Sonoma County can boast a family legacy quite like Peterson Mechanical. The leading mechanical contractor started as a plumbing and heating company in 1915 by founder Ed Peterson.

The desire to replace failing body parts with synthetic ones is part of what makes us human.

Throughout the U.S., there are many communities afflicted by what I call “planners’ blight” and “zoning disease.” Northern California is especially impacted by these negative influences on private property land-use restrictions.

Hospice by the Bay in Larkspur, Construction Trends, Pre-Fab Hotel breaks ground, Napa Courthouse reopens, Sonoma County homeless count.

Earik Beann was compelled to find a way to decompress after the enduring the harrowing chaos of the 2017 wildfires.

Do you ever wonder where fairies live? In Cloverdale, tiny handcrafted and hand-painted fairy doors, have been popping up around town since Mother’s Day in 2018.

KSRO’s Pat Kerrigan and her colleague, B Fernandez, creative director of Studio B, are at the helm of an exciting project: developing the framework for Women Empowerment 2020: WE-2020. According to Fernandez, the plan is to ring in the year of the woman like never before.

Companies with more than 100 employees must report to the U.S. government data about how much workers are paid broken down by sex, race and ethnicity, possibly as soon as this spring, according to a new court ruling. The pay disclosures were finalized by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the summer of 2016, but the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) froze the expanded requirements after President Trump took office.