Paul Dolan’s roots are planted firmly in biodynamic practices, trailblazing in sustainable farming.

After 27 years with Fetzer Vineyards, Winemaker and later President, Paul Dolan, devotes his time to working 70 acres of biodynamic grapes at Dark Horse Ranch near Ukiah. Paul with his son Jason helps manage the vineyards.

“Biodynamic is just good farming” Dolan said. “We lost the art of farming”. It became totally technical. Any type of mechanization or new system or chemical, we were immediately attracted to and thought it was going to improve productivity and improve quality. “What was lost there was the exploration, the discovery”.

It was over the years that he began to sense the importance of sustainablility. From the growing of the grapes to the building of the business and the nurturing of employees. He thought about it enough to lay out a blueprint in book form: “True to Our Roots: Fermenting a Business Revolution” came out in 2003. Dolan wrote, his entire way of thinking about grape growing was about to change, with huge ramifications for him personally. He concluded that the wine industry wouldn’t have a future under standard operating procedures. There had to be a better, more sustainable way.

Dolan also introduced the Code of Sustainable Wine Growing to members of the Wine Institute, a public policy advocacy group for California wineries formed in 1934. His code become a workbook laying out the ecological, economic and social criteria for becoming sustainable. Dolan later served as chairman of the Wine Institute which had 928 members in 2006-07.

Dolans’s message and methods resonated not only because of what he was saying but because of who he was — a winemaker and businessman not only talking the talk but walking the walk.

When Dolan bought the Dark Horse Ranch in 1998, Vines were dying, fences had fallen into disrepair, and the buildings needed reconstruction. Paul Dolan with sons Heath and Jason rebuilt and replanted, focusing on grenach noir, syrah, petite sirah and zinfandel with smaller amounts of cabernet sauvignon and mourvedre.

But in going biodynamic, even Dolan had some convincing to do. When he said biodynamic the first time to his sons, there reaction was no way. But when he said its not really about that, it’s about listening, opening up your awareness and exploring new ways of farming, that’s how I got my boys involved.

Biodynamics is a form of farming that attempts to be self-sustained, self-contained and harmonious with nature. There is an international certifying body called Demeter whose standards are said to exceed those of the National Organic Program.

In the vineyard, Dolan tries to create the best possible environment for his grapes to grow in, putting in different cover crops that have different blooms to attract different insects and also absorb nitrogen out of the air. Ultimately it comes down to the soil Dolan figures, so he feeds the soil with compost, with biodynamic preparations — instead of feeding the plant. His methods are attracting a host of interested grape buyers from St. Helena to Anderson Valley.

In 2004, Dolan started making his own wines from some of the grapes under the label Paul Dolan Vineyards, wines he crafts over at Parducci.

By 2006 he felt the quality of what was coming off Dark Horse Ranch was starting to exceed even his own expectations. The perception of biodynamic grapes is high Dolan says but not everybody’s willing to do it themselves, but they know it’s good, and there is something unique going on.

As Mendocino and Fort Bragg are getting ready for the upcoming whale Festivals on March 1 & 2 and March 15 & 16, 2008, little is known about how the whale wars before the Whale Festivals were started.

Thirty-two years ago in 1976, the cause was saving the remaining great whales from slaughter from Japanese and Russian commercial whale fleets.

The inspiration started in June, 1975, when a Greenpeace Foundation patrol boat located a Russian whaling fleet killing sperm whales off Cape Mendocino. They captured dramatic film footage of a canon-fired explosive harpoon flying over their heads and striking a whale. When the film was broadcast on national TV news, some Mendocino locals were inspired to get involved in stopping the whale slaughter off our shores.

Byrd Baker, a local wood sculptur, was probably the one who came up with the name “Mendocino Whale War”. Byrd and friends began campaigning to save whales, and many other locals joined in on the effort. The California Gray Whales swim past Mendocino twice a year on their migration between the Bering Sea and Lagoons of Baja Califorinia. Whale watching from the coastal headlands of Mendocino has long been a popular pastime.

Byrd with other locals formed the Mendocino Whale War Association in December 1975, with Byrd as one of the founding trustees. Byrd looked the part of an old-time sea captain with a lot of charm. With the help of media-savvy locals like John Baer, an advertising man who was the first president of the Mendocino Whale War Association, and magazine writer Jules Siegel, and the media soon picked up the story. Major coverage began early in 1976 with a big feature in the Detroit Free Press which hyped the idea of Mendocino, a small coastal town in California declaring war on Japan and the Soviet Union. This was especially impotant since this was the height of the Cold War.

The Mendocino Whale War Association organized the 1st Whale Festival in Mendocino in March 1976. The goal was to make the public aware that the whales were still being hunted. The festival was also a fundraiser for an ocean voyage to challenge the whalers off the Mendocino Coast, as Greenpeace had done the previous summer.

Byrd traveled to Vancouver, and with the help from Greenpeace he was able to charter the same boat Greenpeace used in 1975, the Phyllis Cormack. Greenpeace had acquired a former Canadian Navy mine-sweeper named the James Bay, and they would be using the bigger, faster ship in 1976.

In late June, the Phyllis Cormack went heading down the coast to San Francisco, where the Mendocino Whale War’s save the whales patrol voyage would be launched. The Four Mendocino people aboard the Phyllis Cormack was Byrd Baker, J.D. Mayhew, John Griffith and Nicholas Wilson the official photographer, who after thirty years is the only one of the four left to tell the story.

After a few days at sea, on July 1, the Mendocino Whale War boat and the Greenpeaces’s James Bay boat were about 100 miles off Cape Mendocino, near where they had found the Russian whalers the year before.

They didn’t spot any whalers off the coast, but they did find a large fleet of big 300 foot Soviet trawlers scraping the ocean bottom with huge nets. They also saw and photographed a 150 foot Korean crabber just outside the 12 mile limit.

The photos taken of the Russian and Korean fishing boats were bought and used by the San Francisco papers, U.P.I. Wire Service, and Oceans Magazine, helping add to political pressure that brought about the 200 mile limit.

The Mendocino Whale War voyage ended with a brief courtesy call to Mendocino the morning of the July 4, 1976, the Bicentennial Day, and then returned to San Francisco the next morning.

After a few days dealing photos to media outlets, another chapter ended with the Mendocino Whale War. Byrd located an old school bus and converted it into a Mendocino Whale War tour bus. Byrd Campaigned around the country, talking at schools and civic organization meetings for some time after that, spreading his message to “save God’s whales”.

 In 1977 “The Boy Who Talks to Whales” starring Byrd Baker, Victor Jory, Andy Gordon, and “Gigi” the whale, brought more attention to the whales.

In 1986 the International Whaling Commission finally yielded to growing public pressure and diminishing numbers of whales and passed a moratorium on commercial whaling that continues today.

In the summer of 2005, Ellen Findley Herdegen, a kindergarten teacher then and now, who was Secretary of the Mendocino Whale War Association turned over the group’s archives to the Kelley House historical museum in Mendocino. Ellen provided five ring binders of carefully organized media clippings, photos, flyers, meeting minutes and other documents. They are now on public exhibit.

Scandalous Whale hunt has resumed: (February 6, 2008) Japanese whaling fleet has again defied world opinion and resumed whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

The Australian Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, reports that the Fisheries Agency of Japan’s whaling fleet has killed at least five whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

In celebration of the year of the Rat on the Chinese Calendar makes it the year 4706. The Temple of Kwan Tai at Mendocino, California is dedicated to the Chinese god of war. A Taoist symbol of Integrity and loyalty, the Temple of Kwan Tai offers living evidence of Mendocino’s 19th century chinese community.

This original Taoist Temple, a site now recognized as California Registered Historic Landmark # 927. The Temple of Kwan Tai was restored and rededicated in October 2001 through the efforts of the Hee Family, the Temple Trustees, Mendocino youth involved in the North Coast Rural Challenge Network, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the California Coastal Resources Agency. Visitors may view Temple of Kwan Tai at 45160 Albion Street, in the National Historic District of Mendocino.

Founders of the Temple: It was about 1850 when the gold rush was just beginning in California. With starvation and insurrection at home (China), immigration was a natural choice for residents of the Canton district, the capitol of Guangdong Province in southern china. The first chinese are believed to have reached the north coast of Mendocino in the early 1850’s. The north coast chinese population grew quickly, particularly in the redwood logging camps where men served as cooks, launderers, and water slingers.

By the 1860’s Mendocino was home to 500 to 700 chinese. Among the early chinese settlers were Lee Sing John and his wife Fung Sun Choy, both born in the village of Lee Ook Bin, Guangdong Province. Lee Sing John worked for a time as a cook in the woods. Later he worked in the Caspar Mill cookhouse. Their granddaughter, Grace Hee Yee was provided much of the oral history anecdotal family information that dates construction of the Temple of Kwan Tai to 1852.

Temple History: Official records report the sale of the temple’s Albion Street site to the Chinese in 1867. A Mendocino Beacon article describes formal opening ceremonies held on November 4, 1882. Since 1871, when the deed was recorded to Lee Sing John, successive generations of the Hee Family have held and preserved the Temple, which was awarded California Registered Historic Landmark status in 1979. In support of anecdotal dating of the Temple construction as 1852, a report by the California State Architect dates construction to the early 1850’s based on materials used in the structure. If accurate, this report establishes Temple of Kwan Tai as the oldest “original” Chinese Joss House in rural California. In 1995, Hee family members deeded the temple property concerning Chinese immigrant history and to the celebration of community and diversity.

 The Temple Features: The Temple of Kwan Tai is on a south facing hillside above Albion Street overlooking Mendocino Bay. A simple structure, reportedly built with $12.00 worth of virgin redwood, it survived remarkably intact for nearly 150 years prior to its restoration and rededication in October of 2001.

Freshly painted in its original red with green trim. The brilliant red of the simple shiplap siding signifies the essence of joy and good luck. When entering the building, one walks under a sign in gold Chinese characters on a red painted background. Read from right to left, the symbols proclaim Do Dai Miu, which means, roughly, “Military God-King Temple.

 While the exterior of the building is not a rare architectural gem, the interior is an invaluable resource of ethnic history. Entering the main room, you will find a small table in front of the altar that holds three place settings of chopsticks, and small bowls of various sizes. Centrally located in the mainroom is a small table with a bamboo mat in front where the worshipper may kneel and pray. There is also a small stove in the southwest corner of the room which was used for the burning of prayer papers. Behind the small table is the shrine containing an image of Kwan Tai, the deity to whom the temple is dedicated.

The fortune sticks flanking the portrait of Kwan Tai were formerly used by the priest who lived in the tiny lanteroom during the 1870’s. Other furnishings are sparse; two simple wood benches line the side walls and two ornate lanterns hang over the prayer table. Except for the portrait and one lantern, interior furnishings are said to be original.

Rare Historic Building: The Temple of Kwan Tai underwent a thorough Historic Building Assessment by Architect Laura Culberson of the San Fransisco architectural firm of Carey and Company. Miss Culberson concluded in her report with the following assessment of the significance of Temple of Kwan Tai:

“The Mendocino Joss House is and invaluable resource to the State of California. It is the only surviving physical document (made more significant by its continued use from the early 1850’s), which retains its original integrity and marks the now mostly lost history of the Chinese in Mendocino. Mendocino was one of the few communities along the Pacific North coast that housed a substantial chinese community. Although Mendocino’s Chinatown burned in 1910, the knowledge of its existence and the cultural and historical relationship between the Joss House and the Chinese community are significant aspects of local and state history”.

This is a luxury B&B in the redwood trees of the Mendocino Coast. We liked the wooded grounds, luxury room accommodations and the proximity to the ocean, the village of Mendocino and Ft. Bragg. Email inquiries were answered immediately, and detailed confirmation information was sent to us. We stayed during a bad winter storm when the power went out, and they made every accommodation to make sure our trip was still great. The on-site restaurant is wonderful, with a full gourmet breakfast menu included in the room rate. We ate at the restaurant the first night, and liked it so much we went there the next night also. We would recommend this B&B as a luxury accommodation to see the ocean and redwoods.

The new chef (trained at Gary Danko) made a delicious dinner. Chef’s course of pumkin gnocchi with white asparagus and sage brown butter was other worldly. The mushroom risotto was heavenly and the lamb entree was cooked perfectly. The service was great and I would say this place deserves a 24 food rating (definitely higher than the current rating of 20). The dining room is modern, elegant, and cozy with a fire place. 

Reviewed by JaneC0595 on 01/27/2008

A team of Franklin & Marshall geologists has discovered a new active fault in Northern California which was announced at an annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America in San Francisco.

The new fault is located between the towns of Fort Bragg and Westport. This new fault, dubbed the Pacific Star Fault, is part of the San Andreas fault system. The newly discovered fault was revealed after Dr. Merritt and her team analyzed several abandoned paleo stream channels using GPS ground surveying of marine terraces, fieldwork, and large scale aerial photos of the area.

When the geologists came by the Pacific Star Winery and asked if they could look around for evidence of a fault, a geology major in college, Robert Zimmer had noticed what he thought was a fault (albeit and old, inactive one) on the western edge of the property. When he showed it to them, “their eyes grew as big as saucers”. It was not an old inactive fault, but a striking cross section of the fault they’d guessed might be here.

Three visible sections run parallel to the San Andreas Fault, which is located some 8 miles west of the winery under the Pacific Ocean. According to Dr. Merritt, the Pacific Star Fault has moved and average of 10mm per year, or about half an inch. No major movement has taken place though for a number of years.

Dr. Merritt and her team plan to continue their research of the Pacific Star Fault in the coming year in order to better understand the hazards associated with the fault system.