Situated on 80 pristine acres in St. Helena, California, a town whose motto is “the heart of Napa Valley,” The Napa Valley Reserve may literally be just that: the very heart of the valley. It was founded in 2000 by a man who is well-known in the region—Bill Harlan, one of the most influential winemakers of our time. Lauded as a pioneer, a visionary, and a craftsman, Harlan has been making superior wines for more than 30 years, and has left an indelible mark on the Napa Valley vineyard legacy. He is a modern master.

To Harlan, winemaking is the “art of man and nature.” He has always worked closely with the natural surroundings, climate, and seasons to craft his vintages. “To me, it’s about family and friends, camaraderie, being close to nature in a beautiful environment, and creating something that can be shared with others,” Harlan said.

With this philosophy, Harlan and his winemaking team at the Harlan Estate garnered international respect for creating what Robert Parker of The Wine Advocate says, “might just be the single most profound red wine not just in California, but in the world.” This wine would be the cornerstone of Harlan’s quest: to create a club that honors the legacy and traditions of winemaking estates the world over, operates at the highest level of excellence, and provides an educational platform that members and their families can participate in year ’round, learning both the rewards of working the land and the intricacies with which fine wines are made.

We leave scars on the land that never quite go away. Some change the land for better and some for worse. Farmers plow, plant, and build. Miners peel back the layers. Subsistence peoples hunt and gather and record their passages inside caves and on rock walls. Their stories are found in the hunts that connect the past to the present, and, I suppose, the past to the future. In South Africa, they came from Holland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland. They were called the Boer, a word that means farmer, but it also means so much more.

On one South African farm we found an old British barracks hewn from native rock. Now the grass pushes up where the earthen floor once spread. This was on the first day of our safari with Wighardt van der Gryp. We were in the Orange Free State for a couple days of sport and adventure. This was not our first time in the country, at least not for my friend Brian Smith and me. But for Brian’s son, Mason, Sam Pyke from Oregon, and Jim Linder from North Carolina, this was a first safari. Mason, Jim, and I carried shotguns, while Sam and Brian shot with cameras. We had a companion with us, a gentle greyhound named Sissy—not the usual dog for a bird hunt.

Last winter brought more rain to South Africa than usual and everywhere the grass was taller and the cover was thicker than when I’d seen it last. We surprised a covey of francolin (a game fowl similar to partridge or quail in the U.S.) in the road and dismounted. Mason took the left flank and Jim the right. I turned to look for Wighardt. He has a sense for these things.

It all started in the early 1950s. Back then, English pointers were the preferred bird dogs south of the Mason-Dixon Line, English setters were the grouse dogs of the North Country, and both breeds were well established and the hunters’ choice for upland gamebirds in North America. Never having owned a pointing breed, it seemed to me at the time that the English setter would best fit my needs for hunting upland gamebirds in middle America. But that didn’t happen.

Before I could locate an English setter pup, an unfamiliar breed came into my life—the Brittany spaniel. Some hunting folks said these dogs were mutts and had no noble _field bloodlines. Little did they (or I) know what a great companion and bird-fi_nding machine this French import would be. Call the dogs what you like (as associations have juggled the breed’s name a bit over the decades), but they got in the way of my selection of a “classic” pointing dog.