- What is your favorite Biale wine? Valsecchi, because it is unique in the world of Zinfandel in so many ways. Where it is grown, how Ron Mick cares for the vines, how Tres and his team treat it and care for it, how limited and rare it is, and most of all, it just kicks a**.
- What is your favorite food? I cannot answer this in a simple way or with a single favorite. I can tell you that I have many favorite foods/food experiences. I can recall chefs, places, times, the people I shared dinners with when I have had a food item that has brought me to tears because of what I tasted and experienced. To boil it down my favorite food item is an egg, the egg can become so many things and helps in making so many things better.
The first time I cooked an egg for myself, by myself, I was 7, I lived at 1464 Norma drive; it was a Saturday morning in 1975 before cartoons started. I still have, and use daily, the cast iron skillet that I cooked it on. This skillet has been in my family since the early 1940s. - Where are you flying next, when the world returns to “normal”? I am not if I don’t have to, I live in Napa Valley, I live where people go, so I will just stay here unless I travel for work, then I will go where I am pointed.
- Besides drinking wine what is your second favorite hobby? Painting, I am an artist at heart, creating something that has never been seen by anyone until I create it brings me great satisfaction. Being able to get my vision out of my head and onto a canvas for others is quite intoxicating. I also love to cook, I cook for others, not myself, if I am cooking for myself, I just make a sandwich.
- What is your favorite memory while drinking Biale wine? Getting to taste the Black Chicken out of the barrel with Tres during his barrel trials. We tasted the 2016 vintage of Black Chicken from 20 different barrels, all the same wine, yet all so very different from one to the next.
- What is your favorite quote? I have many, my favorite quote for what I do for a living is this, “People will go where they are welcome and return where they are appreciated”. Charles Henning, was my boss and Director of the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone while I worked and did some teaching there in 2011 and 2012.
When asked if there was anything else he wanted to share, Pat said: “I am an open book; life is too short to spend our time building walls. As Shrek says “Ogres are like onions”.