 I am delighted to be here. Thank you very much. I should tell you, or I should confess, right off my book is not about food and wine. I'm sorry to disappoint you. In fact, it probably has more to do with what's outside going on right now, Love Fest. Anybody walk through that? At least that's what was suggested in the Napa Register and the San Francisco Chronicle when they ran front page stories about my book the day it was published. But seriously, my book is about the very glamorous, very complicated family behind famous wine, mandavi. And some people have called them the Kennedys of the American wine industry. And I'd like to read a short section from the prologue of my book, The House of Mandavi, which describes the scene that I saw as a reporter at the 2004 Napa Valley wine auction. And that's a charity wine event that became famous when a single bottle of wine sold for half a million dollars. For charity, but still, that's a lot of money. In any case, at this point in time, when I am there as a reporter, the family is in crisis. Mr. Mandavi, the patriarch of the mandavis, is in his early 90s. And the empire, which then stretches across five continents, his wine empire, is on the verge of collapsing. Or I should be more specific. Their control, the family's control of this wine empire is about to disappear. And these are photographs from that auction. There's Mr. Mandavi in the center. And that's his wife, Margaret, on the upper right-hand side. Robert limped into the white tent, leaning heavily on his cane, as his wife, Margaret, gently guided him to his seat at the front. He was still an icon, but in the past year had come to seem physically smaller than he had been before, shrunken in his stylish clothes. The hearing aid in his left ear could not pierce the cocoon of deafness that surrounded him, and his once famous charisma had diminished. His mind had begun to slow in a way that alarmed some family members, as he was beset by a fog of mental confusion that seemed to be thickening each day. More worrisome, Robert seemed to have lost some of the optimistic spirit that had buoyed him for so many decades. Anticipating that her husband would tire easily after recent surgeries, Margaret stayed by his side. With her ageless, blonde effervescence, she offered friends a smile and a cheek to kiss as the couple waited for the bidding to begin. In her late 70s, she was a striking woman who carried her small frame with grace. She wore a drawstring linen pantsuit in the color of the Spanish moss that draped the valley's oaks. And although she had lived in Napa Valley for more than four decades, her English remained softly accented by her childhood in Switzerland. Auctioneer Fritz Hatten started the day's bidding. Fasten your seatbelts because here we go, whipped Hatten, shuffling sideways across the podium. With his gourmand's belly spilling out of his trousers and his hands sweeping rapidly back and forth as if he were playing arpeggios, Hatten kicked up his heels with a flourish. Below him, a group of ventners also took flamboyant measures to ramp up the excitement. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Birkenstock sandals, Roger Trinquero, whose family's Sutter Home winery first became famous for its easy to drink blush Zinfandel, whipped out a squirt gun in one hand and a can of silly string in the other. He incited bursts of laughter at his table as he began spraying guests. The air inside the white tent grew warm and then minutes into the auction some 2,000 wine lovers shifted their attention to the podium as Hatten started the bidding for Lot 11. Lot 11 is what the Mandavi family has donated to raise money for this auction. 5,000, there it is, 10,000. An awkward silence followed. The bidding had stalled and hushed tension gripped the crowd. After decades of serving as a global ambassador for Napa Valley wines, promoting them in countless tastings and events, Robert Mandavi had built up deep reservoirs of goodwill. No one wanted to see the old king humbled by a low sale price for his family's choices wines. Yet the most sophisticated wine buyers were no longer paying top dollar for Robert Mandavi Cabernet's. The Mandavi reputation had slid a few years earlier after his younger son, Timothy's winemaking style came under fire from such influential critics as Robert Parker and wine spectators James Lowby. By the late 1990s, wine connoisseurs had moved on to small production cult wines such as Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, and Dale of Vale Vineyards. They were wildly expensive. $500 a bottle was not unusual and hard to get. 15,020 volunteers with big foam index fingers, the types that fans wave around at football games pointed in the direction of bidders to draw Hatten's attention to rival paddles. Paddle 253 held by Jess Jackson, the 74-year-old proprietor of Kendall Jackson Wine Estates was bidding against Paddle 5 held by construction air Ron Kuhn. A sharp negotiator who had a legal run-in with the Mandavi family a few years earlier, Jackson wore a placidly earnest look on his face. 40,000, 55,000 Hatten looked around for more bidders. There were none. Robert seemed confused, shadows crossed his face. Would his family suffer further dishonor by such a low price? So, to Jess and Barbara Jackson, thank you very much, exalted Hatten. Excited volunteers known as the Hoopla committee surrounded Jackson, a towering man with a silver crown of hair. Some of them tossed up fluorescent green Napa Valley donor dollars with each bill in the denomination of $50 million bearing the slogan in wine we trust. Across the room, Robert Mandavi's bald dome and aquiline profile was unwavering amid the flutter of the play money. And that's it. Thank you.