Edible San Francisco

FROM MOONSHINE TO TOP-FLIGHT WINE

The Pinot Noir made by Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars has its roots in East Texas but matured at the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.
By Wayne Garcia

It was a rainy day in January, and Edward Lee McDonald had just returned from a trip through his old Texas stomping grounds. Although McDonald grew up in the Lone Star State, he wasn’t there to visit family, but to attend a series of restaurant dinners showcasing his limited production Vision Cellars wines. And if East Texas seems like an unlikely place for an African-American kid’s lifelong love affair with Pinot Noir to begin, well, that’s just a part of McDonald’s story.

“My daddy made bootleg corn whisky,” McDonald, who goes by “Mac,” explains. “He used high-quality grains, so his was considered the best around. Doctors and lawyers would visit, buy some whisky, and go hunting with my father and grandfather. You know, back then, if you drove a foreign car or drank French wine, you were considered a Communist. Well, one of these doctors liked red burgundy, and he gave us a bottle. It was a ’52, but I don’t recall the producer. We had no corkscrew, so I considered breaking off the neck and pouring the wine through a strainer.”

Anticipating my pained reaction with a toothy grin, Mac continues. “Instead, I got a pocket knife and dug out the cork. But there was a bit I couldn’t get at. So I shoved a stick in there and got juice all over me! I was 12 years old. That wine changed my life.”

McDonald never forgot that bottle, and he became determined to make a wine like it one day. His high-school athletics coach urged him move to California, and at 19 Mac got his opportunity when a friend moving to Oakland enlisted him as a second driver. McDonald found work at the Sherman-Williams paint store in Emeryville, before landing what turned into a 32-year stint with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company. While working at PG&E as an executive, McDonald volunteered for odd jobs at Caymus Vineyards, in order to absorb as much as possible about the winemaking process.

McDonald’s dream of making his own Pinot Noir was finally realized in 1996, when he purchased grapes from Marin’s Chileno Valley Vineyard. “I could kick myself now,” McDonald recalls, “because at first I didn’t think that wine was any good. It proved to be good after all. But ’97 was our first official vintage.”
From Moonshine to Top-flight Wine continues >