Wine Country Lunching

My office was for many years across the street from Francis Ford Coppola's film production company (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) in San Francisco, which has on its ground floor one of Coppola's minor ventures in the hospitality industry. Coppola has reinvested his movie earnings into an eclectic tourism empire that includes several restaurants, two wineries in Northern California, two small resorts in Belize, another across the water from the Mayan ruins at Tikal, a hotel in New Orleans and one in Buenos Aries. We visited one of the properties, the Francis Ford Coppola Winery, for lunch the other day.

In the photo I am seated in front of a glass of Viognier at Rustica, the winery's excellent restaurant that features Neapolitan style pizzas, steak Florentine and Roman style grilled chicken. The feeling of the place is very Mediterranean. In addition to the usual winery features an outdoor bar sits beside two interconnected swimming pools where changing rooms equipped with private showers are available to rent for afternoons in the sunshine. They sell out early on the weekends.

Black and white houndstooth tropical suit with an ecru linen shirt, navy knit necktie, dark red silk paisley pocket square and, out of the photo, a Panama hat.