Breaking My Silence
The Backstories
I could not yet fathom how I could walk away after I sacrificed thousands of invaluable moments missed with my babies, in favor of supporting my business. I could not reconcile how I would never have those precious moments NOR the reason I missed them.
My first W2 paycheck was received for cutting lemons at the Golden Corral Restaurant. I am a public school and university educated Generation X child from a loving lower middle class family. My parents sacrificed to afford me a chance to take our next generation further. My mother instilled a determination and conviction in my young self that has driven my entire life. My work ethic is undeniable, yet I have no safety net.
I have a 30 year career that spans from Strategic Communications and Brand Strategy to Manufacturing and Supply Chain to Regenerative Agriculture & Winemaking to Changemaking and Community Building. In 2004 I founded a small winery business with my new husband, as an LLC managed by the Board of Managers, which is the two of us. I took classes from the SBA, found a mentor and founded a second business, with a former boss from my tech career, which afforded my new company a two year incubation period that was fundamental to our success.
#MOMSTOO
For 19 years I worked exclusively for my company while birthing and raising two children without maternity leave, and under extraordinary traumatic circumstances not addressed, or even understood, during the first 16 years of marriage. My second child arrived early and her father missed her birth due to being in New York, where his lover of many years lived. We separated for the first time after I discovered that non-consensual affair, but with an 8 and 3 year old, little belief in myself, and sizable unresolved shame stemming from my ugly truth, I failed to ask for divorce and allowed him to return home four months later. My ugly truth, that I am no longer ashamed of, is that I was his mistress. He was my married boss when we became romantically involved when I was 29 years old.
Allowing him to move back home in 2014 nearly cost my oldest daughter’s life. She attempted suicide five years later, at the end of her 8th grade year, for many reasons, but top of the list was to arrest the toxic energy pervasive in her home life.
My imagination in early 2020, less than a year following my daughter’s suicide attempt, was not capable of conceiving the horrific acts of sabotage and destruction and moral turpitude the father of my children would perform over the next 46 months and still counting.
Her father never worked full time at our business. He maintained his technology career that later focused on the lucrative FinTech industry. The business we co-own was my figurative third child and represented my identity beyond being a wife and mother. I received deeply meaningful joy from that identity. During the four months of our separation in 2014 we explored options for divorce, which included dealing with community property like our business and our home. I had no basis for imagining who I would be without my identity as the head of my business and part of the larger community I had helped co-create.
Me and John Siletto, my last
new grower project before leaving.
Me and Jill Matthiasson, at my last
public tasting, WINeFare 2023.
Me and Steve Williams, and Isabel Brandt
in my 8 month pregnant tummy, January 2005.
Learn by doing, including the mistakes!
Reading the Chardonnay Lees
Tasting samples for blending trials
Steaming barrels before filling
I Lost My “We”
Today I know that my believed identity was not real because it was dependent on my context, as the owner/operator, who was celebrated in the press and around the globe for being a creative and innovative visionary leader. My error was believing my identity could not exist outside of the context of my being the Proprietor Operator at my business. I now see that my identity included that context, but was not defined by, or dependent upon, its existence.
For decades I suffered devastating psychological abuse yet I could not imagine how I would leave my spouse or my business, which we founded in 2004, after the tech company I worked for closed following 9/11. In 2002 I found an opportunity in France, studying under a regenerative winemaker legend, and upon our return to the U.S. we married and I founded 2 winemaking businesses in 2004, ours, and one to give life to ours, without requiring huge capital. Rather, it just required that I work for bartered services, to support our new business for 2 years, until we had a mailing list, revenue and distribution in key markets.
Our first child was born in 2005 and in 2006 I moved our business to Berkeley. I built out my second winery facility, at 2323-B 4th Street, with my 1 year old, while my husband maintained his career in Tech. Five years later, in 2011, an unforeseen situation while 7 months pregnant with our second daughter, required that I find us a new home and again moved our winery facility, managing the build out of my 3rd winery, where Donkey & Goat Winery & Tasting Room remains today, with a newborn in tow. 2011 was also the year my very pregnant self was in the San Francisco Chronicle after being named a Winemaker to Watch.
Me and Isabelle Legeron, RAW WINE LA 2023.
Amy Atwood, me and Lou Amdur, at
Lou Wine Shop, 2015.
Jono and me pouring
at Paperback Western Dinner, Spring 2022.
Me and Pamela Busch, WINeFare 2023.
Laurence & Eric Texier and me at La Dive, 2018.
Me and Gabriela Davogustto, at
my last winemaker dinner at her Clay Restaurant
February 2022.
My Legacy
There are 4 wineries in Berkeley’s Gilman Wine Block, which I founded a year ago this month, after scribbling my idea on a scrap piece of paper that Josh Hammerling’s brother (neighboring Hammerling Wines) turned into a logo, so we could advertise on Berkeley’s new digital Kiosks, in advance of our upcoming First Friday event happening inside our wine block for the first time.
I left that enormously successful inaugural event, with hundreds from our community celebrating the joys of communing with food, wine, music and happy humans, to go home and record presenting my investor pitch. From November 2022 until March 2023, I worked hundreds of hours to find a way to continue leading my company. I could not yet fathom how I could walk away after I sacrificed thousands of invaluable moments missed with my babies, in favor of supporting my business. I could not reconcile how I would never have those precious moments NOR the reason I missed them.
First Friday Nov 2021 with the Lobster Truck!
First Friday March 2023, the 1st event held
inside the wine block AS The Gilman Wine Block!
My sketch for the Gilman Wine Block logo.
The Gilman Wine Block logo.
My Long Road To Freedom
In May 2023, I opted to leave my Operational role after he canceled the long past due partial payment I issued to Filigreen Farm. With that action he also locked me out of our financial systems, including the one I had used to pay myself. This final blow was at least his 4th hostile takeover attempt and it has eliminated my income, savings, retirement, community and identity while completing his many year battle to remove me from Donkey & Goat Winery. Sadly my removal does not appear to have satisfied his drive for my destruction.
I now refer to the years up to this moment as, “The Road to Freedom Part 1.” For most of our 16 years living under the same roof, I failed to recall the facts just shared about how I manifested Donkey & Goat Winery. I was not paid until 2011. I WAS the Marketing department until my first hire in 2016. I also led winemaking for 19 years and will proudly proclaim the superiority of my palate to my husband’s.
March 2020 is when many mark the shift from the before times to the after times given it was the first shelter in place order they experienced, as humanity grappled with a novel Coronavirus. But my after times began ten months prior, in May 2019, following my first born daughter attempting suicide at the end of her 8th grade year, which tipped off the long overdue unravelling of my 16 year marriage.
We separated the first time in 2014, following my discovery of his many year, non-consensual affair with wine personality (in those days) Melissa Sutherland. Until my brief awakening in 2014, I mostly believed his warped version of reality where I had “stolen” my husband’s dream by virtue of having the privilege to work insane hours for our small winery which I founded and built and operated for 19 years, at great sacrifice to my children. I forgot everything I had done to create the internship with Eric Texier, and the formation and growth and evolution of Donkey & Goat. In fact, I would purposely shy from the limelight in preference to allowing him to feel the praise he needed for his fragile ego, for much of the first 10 years. After 2014, my deference to his needs in this regard ended and I began to claim my rightful position in the press and our larger community.
When my daughters were 9 and 3 years old, I discovered the affair with Melissa, who lived in NYC. Their relationship dated prior to my younger daughter’s birth, which her father missed, due to being in New York. There were many atrocities from this period but this one especially illustrates his illness. Mother’s Day 2013, we hosted the annual Chez Panisse staff party at the winery, which was always a treat. Unbeknownst to me my husband and business partner invited his mistress, who sat across the table from me and later, due to a missed flight out of SFO, and evidently no hotels in the Bay Area, this woman spent Mother’s Day evening sleeping in my home and took my child to school the next day, after sitting at my kitchen counter. I share this to also illustrate how manipulated and brainwashed I was after suffering 11 years of psychological abuse, gaslighting, manipulation, love bombing, alienation and more.
I learned of this event and many more during the months we were separated in 2014, yet he moved back in and I convinced myself it was best for our family. My older daughter’s attempted suicide 5 years later, illustrates how poor of a decision that was. I do not think I fully recognized the degree to which I was abused until earlier this year, and to this day he can still gaslight me into questioning my reality. I am still synthesizing the myriad of emotions stemming from being systematically destroyed in full view of the entire world. Sadly, I am far from the only human suffering public destruction without rescue.
Many peers would later say, “Tracey IS Donkey & Goat.” In addition to the myriad of skills I had to learn for founding and operating a small business, I also mastered the nuances for a food manufacturing business for a regulated substance where the raw agricultural input only harvests once every twelve months, and in my case, was typically the only ingredient, save an additive for stability. Over the years I explored numerous methods for communicating our winemaking philosophy and practices and here are several (click on the image to see it in detail).
From 2011, around the time our wine bottle was on
the wall at the SF MOMA’s “How Wine Became Modern,
Design + Wine 1976 to Now” exhibit!
In 2018 I worked with the Lara Peso to
illustrate our winemaking and practices.
Also from 2018, Chris Scanlan made this incredible
illustration of the complexity of making wine in
general, and highlighting natural winemaking practices, to share with an event featuring our wines.
Building Resiliency
For decades I slept next to a man suffering “alleged” mental illness that included (in my “expert” opinion as his wife) narcissism and sociopathy, with masterful gaslighting skills that often left me questioning my sanity and in a state of depression, from wicked psychological abuse. It took my oldest daughter attempting suicide at the end of her 8th grade year, to begin my deprogramming and awakening, to rediscover my spirit and to fall back in love with myself.
I have yet to escape the shackles of my estranged husband’s sabotage and destruction, but feel I am closer than ever before, and that is what led me to finally speak about my abuse publicly. “The Road to Freedom Part 2,” begins with my breaking my silence, and with your help I can win Part 2 AND achieve my freedom!
I now realize how distorted my reality was for decades. It is not healthy to regularly pretend to shower to mask uncontrollable sobbing. It is not healthy to fear moving the placement of the coffee maker by a few inches. It is not healthy to live for 16 years afraid to tell the closest of friends what is happening. It is not okay to be thrown against a wall so hard you are bruised and a prized necklace destroyed. It is not okay to purposely destroy my career and livelihood and then also sabotage my efforts to rebuild a new one.
When my child attempted suicide in May 2019, I lost my rights as her mother once the Kaiser Emergency Room declared a 5150. For those not familiar, 5150 is the number of a section in California’s Welfare and Institutions Code, that when declared, allows a person who is experiencing a mental health crisis, to be involuntarily detained for a 72- hour psychiatric hospitalization if evaluated to be a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or gravely disabled.
My fourteen year old daughter was removed from our custody and sent via a for profit ambulance third party provider, 56 miles north to a FOR PROFIT psychiatric hospital that was the nearest available bed. I was not allowed to drive her, or ride with her, or even visit her upon arrival. While one of the most terrorizing 72 hour periods of my life, it was not as bad as a 5250 code would have been, which I learned is sometimes the preferred outcome with for profit Psychiatric Hospitals in this country. A 5250 code is a 14-day involuntary treatment hold, in a hospital or mental health facility, and an extension of a 5150 that can be declared by the FOR PROFIT Psychiatric Hospital.
After a complete breakdown outside the ER as the ambulance drove away, I immediately went to work on freeing my daughter. Her father had to be convinced to support my plan to liberate her before the weekend, and to support my refusal to allow them to drug her. I learned the typical stay at this facility was 7 days and the standard operating practice was to drug the patients immediately following their intake. My daughter was admitted around noon on a Tuesday and I became a force of nature that freed my daughter 3 days later, which I understood was unheard of. I visited my baby girl in that miserable place once. I recall peering through a slit of a glass window, in the locked door separating me from my daughter’s floor, to see young girls sliding across the floor while screaming as caregivers administered their meds. Later images of Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder in the 1999 movie Girl Interrupted became tangled in my mind with these images and together generated vivid nightmares.
I sent an email to the parents of my daughter’s 8th grade class to create conditions for her to return to school on Monday. The prior Monday she had attempted suicide. On Tuesday at noon she was transported to Santa Rosa via ambulance. Her intake was not complete until the following day on Wednesday, which means I had no contact with the facility or my daughter until Wednesday. On Thursday we visited the facility. Friday we picked her up at about noon and then I shared my idea to take the air out of the balloon for her. With her blessing and her father’s concern noted, I sent an email in hopes of creating options for her on Monday and to reduce stigma and hushed voices and knowing stares.
My daughter did return to school on Monday and she did graduate with her class from the school she had attended since kindergarten. We were privileged to have her at a small independent (private) school who collaborated with us for her return and care. I also gave the school the gift of transparency when I emailed the community. I removed the privacy issues and the school held sessions with students and parents to discuss the teenage mental illness crisis in May of 2019, less than a year before these children would leave school during the spring of their freshman year and not return until junior year. This also began my passion for Mental Wellness and the desperate need to shed a gigantic spotlight on the stigma of mental illness in our country. I imagine a day when humanity’s birth rights include wellness care benefits for mind, body and spirit and illness care is also available as needed, for mind, body and spirit, but wellness care and illness care are decoupled forever, just like the fossil fuel industry needs to be decoupled from being foundational to the human economy.
Allow me to digress in hopes of giving notions of possibility for any readers feeling trapped. My husband of 16 years, who had an affair that lasted years back in the 2011-2014 time period, had to sit in a fluorescent lit room for two hours each week for Family Group therapy with our then 14 year old daughter. The group sessions were hosted by two Psychologists who hosted caregivers and their suffering teen, following a suicide attempt, for a discussion of painful inquiry and reflection. One of the Psychologists seemed to see right through our charade, and on several occasions asked my husband why his energy left her feeling like I was the scolded child, and his daughter was his wife. We went to that room each week for seven months and my sixteen year marriage to an “alleged” mentally ill person came crashing down. During those painful months I reverted to my life long coping skills and worked myself to the point of collapse each day. And my philandering husband reverted to past habits and seduced a woman he was supposed to mentor. My last four years alive have been more horribly painful than I wish on anyone, but the transformation I was gifted resulted in my finding myself again. Today I can see who I was meant to be, and I love the person I see in the mirror and reflected in the eyes of my remarkable daughters.
I can not overstate the degree to which I was a broken human February 26, 2020, following a save the marriage trip, that I planned and executed and contracted Covid on while in Europe. For my first night out after weeks in bed with this bizarre cold/flu, I had sushi with a friend. I returned to a sleeping husband so I caught up with my still tender and traumatized daughter before she went to walk her new puppy (which saved her life during the 1.5 years of high school from her bedroom). While I waited for her to loop the block I checked my email on my husband’s computer since it was out and open on the kitchen counter. I had done exactly the same thing in March of 2014, when an incoming slack alerted me to his infidelity. History does indeed repeat itself. However this time I managed to find my strength, keep my cool, and see my still recovering daughter off to bed, before I went for my own sobbing walk around the neighborhood on a Thursday night.
I managed to not say a word until the following Tuesday, when we were scheduled for our regular couples therapy. In that session, I read aloud my prepared speech which shared my discovery and advised I was leaving for a few days to consider my options. A dear friend lent her Sea Ranch home and there I made plans to set myself free. I spent four days alone with my thoughts and my writing when not sobbing on the dramatic beaches of the Pacific Northwest. I saw my husband for the first time after my soul searching in our therapist’s office. There I shared that I wished to separate, as I desperately needed space. I shared my hope of working with our therapist to finally answer the question we had been asking in therapy since 2014, which relationship must be sacrificed? Our marriage or our business partnership? That was early March 2020, and a few weeks later the entire world mirrored my own when it felt everything came crashing down from a novel Coronavirus.
The Day Everything Changed
August 22, 2020
August 22, 2020 in the afternoon, Lily and I were headed home after a marvelous day in Mendocino and the Anderson Valley which included time at the pristine pond at Filigreen Farm with a stop at the Mulberry tree since I needed a big carrot to support a nine year old spending 10 hours visiting vineyards! As we drove out of the Anderson Valley headed South into the Yorkville Highlands we began seeing smoke and my phone’s emergency response system soon began squawking alpha numeric codes for evacuation zones in Sonoma County, which we were entering while smelling and seeing more smoke enveloping Highway 128. Once on Highway 101 South headed home, I had reception for my cell phone (the Emergency Response System does not require cell coverage). I also quickly realized that all west bound lanes off California Highway 101 from the Cloverdale Exits to Healdsburg, were closed with emergency vehicles blocking access with flashing lights. On the horizon to my west I could see evidence of the raging fire on the other side of the ridge. Lily was panicked and screaming and refusing to calm down if I pulled over to examine maps and attempt to decode the hieroglyphics that were the Sonoma County Zone codes for evacuation orders.
I called my 16 year husband and her father, who had moved out of our home in April, yet we remained in weekly couples therapy. I called for help to determine if our route was safe given the many zones being evacuated. I vividly recalled the Tubbs fire, 3 years prior, and how California Highway 101 was no longer a safety break from the new age of wildfires. He claimed to be late on his way to his Uncles and not able to pause to help us figure out if we were safe to continue heading home.
Later I learned he was rushing to see our wine club member, whom he was having relations with. I will never understand how he could not find the gumption to just admit to dating, and thus ending our couples therapy discussion of possibility, as well as the thousands wasted paying the therapist who was never going to lead us to a peaceful resolution, that I had been chanting for months, should be focused on enabling two residences for one family. When the father of your child follows his libido over your child’s safety (and yours) the ground opens to swallow you whole. That is the moment I realized no one would come to my rescue. It was going to be up to me to protect my babies.
Fun was had by all at the Filigreen Farm pond in the Anderson Valley!
Smoke from the Walbridge Fire (LNU Complex) as we moved into Yorkville Highlands on HWY 128, visibility worsened as we descended into Sonoma County and onto HWY 101 South.
Lily and I suffered a horrendously terrifying drive down 128 with my phone’s emergency response system squawking, her crying, my trying to stay calm while driving curvy 128, with clear evidence of what was raging on the other side of the ridge. The alpha numeric codes for evacuation zones in Sonoma County meant nothing to me and with no service I was not able to find a legend to overlay to my location.
So following the father of my children refusing to pull over to ensure his youngest daughter had safe passage out of an area under emergency evacuation from raging wildfires across much of the area, our life forever changed. Six months following my discovery in February, I told my girls that both times we had separated was following the discovery of an infidelity event, and that my intentions were to divorce their father this time. My older daughter fell apart following this news, which I only understood later, when I learned her father had spent years manipulating her mind with his masterful gaslighting. Her reality exploded into shards when she learned these new facts, due to the manipulated stories her father had spun her whole life and intensely since 2014.
My estranged husband also fell apart in August 2020 when he effectively lost his connection to his first born child. She has never lived with him since he moved out of her home in April 2020. Her younger sister suffers disconnection due to her living with her father 50% of the time. The chasm my daughters must cross at times, to find each other, is sizable. My older daughter will feel abandoned by her father and often suffer when her sister arrives for a week with new clothes or other stories of her father’s lavish attention via gifts. My younger daughter often feels conflicted and in the middle which she is, and even with acknowledgement and thoughtfulness, her reality is hard for her to process at times.
The degree to which I wish I had understood the changes that would result from my telling my girls the truth, can not be overstated, as I would very likely have not lost my life to the degree I have. My oldest daughter has never resumed a healthy relationship with her father. In my opinion this is 100% on him as an adult and she bears zero responsibility even though he repeatedly behaves and articulates otherwise. It is not her fault. It is not my fault. He is the person that must reckon with his shame and guilt that led to her attempting suicide at the end of her 8th grade year, May 2019. My reckoning was excruciating and transformative.
Until he faces that brutal truth, and the 4 additional years of his shameless behavior that boggles minds, breaks hearts and meets every detail of moral turpitude definition, I suspect he will remain trapped in his unresolved and overwhelming emotion. And until he learns how to process hard emotion in a healthy manner, my ability to thrive in my life is severely compromised until I set myself free.
One of my proudest moments as a professional became my worst nightmare when I had to explain the ugly details of my divorce to Eric Asimov at The New York Times, whom I respected and had known for decades.
When climate change impacts viticulture, the entire vintage is at risk. Over 8 months I conceived, created, pitched and landed a feature in the New York Times that began Fall 2021, during the horrendous Caldor Fire vintage in El Dorado, and concluded with my feature running in print on April 13, 2022. The article highlighted a brand new wine style, (Skinny Dip Grenache) that I conceived in the middle of chaos from mega wildfires, that have ravaged the wine industry in Northern California regularly since the 2017 Tubbs fire, that scorched Napa, Sonoma and Lake Counties and laid waste to ~5% of the housing in the city of Santa Rosa California and took the lives of 22 humans and countless other life forms.
Tuesday August 17, 2021, the Pyro Cumulus Cloud from
the 2 day old Caldor Fire, that exploded the day prior
from 6,500 to 30,000 acres. Chuck Mansfield and I
were in the Barsotti Vineyard watching another
vintage literally go up in flames.
Monday August 23, 2021, after helplessly
watching U.S Forest Service do nothing as the
fire ravaged our livelihood, Chuck Mansfield
takes action resulting in this headline!
Monday August 23, 2021, a few hours following
the Tahoe Basin headline Chuck and I see this too!
Monday August 23, 2021, nine days after a
small fire began in Sly Park the raging Caldor Fire
begins receiving a full court press that included
flying the 747 to attack the fire. Chuck and I literally jumped
for joy and this picture is taken from Goldbud Farms.
Monday August 23, 2021, while Chuck’s actions
surely saved lives and devastation, it was too late
to salvage most of the vintage. Goldbud Farms and
Donkey & Goat Winery (and many more) suffered
the 2nd consecutive Wild Fire vintage.
During the 2021 vintage I washed ash off grapes which was one of the most miserable experiences of my winemaking career and deserves its own story of heartbreak and wasted effort. With zero support from my business partner, during this catastrophic vintage, I made the decision to try to beef up our devasted supply given a 65% loss would have severe impact to our Tasting Room and Wine Club over the next two years, which also meant impact to sustaining operations and staff. The last slide of my Growth Analysis of my 19 years clearly illustrates how my “panic buying” grapes from winemaker and grower friends was a mistake. I would not have provided him the leverage point he continues to exploit had I allowed production to drop by 65% or more.
My “Climate Driven Creative Wines” campaign was fundamental to my Marketing Plan to sell 15 never before made wines, with little marketing budget to support the new SKUs. I had spent months weaving a narrative story to connect these one hit wonder wines to support their release over the next year. This moment should have been a crowning achievement for my having made the tastiest of lemonade and persevered through incredible odds, that included acts of sabotage from my business partner the year before, that followed me well into 2022.
The year prior, during Spring of 2021, he reported to the Albany police, that I had slapped him. The Domestic Violence Wobbler laws that followed OJ Simpson murdering his wife Nicole, led to my 250+ lb husband having an automatic restraining order issued against me upon his reporting of the event. He then optionally extended that to an Emergency Protective Order (EPO), that resulted in my losing custody of my children for seven miserable days (my older daughter refused to stay with her father and opted to stay at her best friend’s home for the week).
A month later I found myself in a $10,000+ day of mediation with my estranged husband, our two attorneys and a mediator. My husband submitted documentation that stated I was mentally incompetent to continue operating my business. He cited my having lost custody of my children as evidence for my being mentally incompetent. This incident grew and resulted in my flipping 100% of my staff and more.
Back to Spring 2002, the NYT article failed to initially name my husband and business partner, who was on record disclaiming any accountability for the wines made since he left in early 2020, following my discovery of sexually harassing questions on his PWC slack channel posed to a younger woman he was mentoring. I had kept him informed of my strategy and plans as they developed over 8 months, and he even alerted me when the feature was live online, with no indication of what was to follow. A few days later, I received vague indications something is wrong via his obtuse texts and then was explicitly told to stay home from work to address his latest offer for settling our divorce, which I was not keen to accept. He threatened to expose me as a “green washer” if I did not accept his terms, which at the time I could not fathom what he was talking about, given he had seen every single thing we had done.
My framed feature is no longer hanging in the Winery Tasting Room and today hangs in my home, directly across from my desk. I find strength in the memory of my suffering massive loss from climate impact and the Caldor Fire, and how I took that experience and made beautiful wines and told a marvelous story the New York Times thought worthy of sharing.
On Wednesday April 13, 2022, I worked with dear friends to address the crisis PR needed for my winery, after my business partner sabotaged my 8 month plan to deal with having to introduce 15 never before made wines in one calendar, with no increase in marketing budget. I could never ever ever articulate the degree to which his actions eviscerated my soul and laid waste to months of effort by my staff and service providers. We had excitedly prepared to leverage the press hit for the rest of the year, and instead our deflated team had to deal with intense emotion from his actions and more.
STATEMENT REGARDING NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE
In the summer of 2021, following a difficult 2020 vintage due to wildfire impact I began considering how to approach the 2021 vintage in the event we faced another year of wildfire impact. This vintage was also an exciting one for me personally as it was the first year when I solely led the winemaking for Donkey & Goat after my partner Jared Brandt ended his role as co-winemaker.
When the Caldor Fire devastated the El Dorado region where over 50% of our grapes are grown I began making the new wines using the inspiration from my “Plan B Wine Plans.” Being able to create new wines, even if not the ones planned, was exciting and gave me hope. Climate change is affecting the California wine industry and we all have to learn to adapt to our new normal.
When Eric Asimov from the New York Times visited Donkey & Goat in September, I was excited to share the idea of our new Climate-Driven Creative Wines as a path for the future of California growers and winemakers. As I led Eric through the story of our 4 new wines over the next several months, I omitted the fact that the portion of the Gris Gris that came from Mendocino – not at all affected by wildfire – was discovered to have a flaw with very high levels of volatile acidity (VA) and to correct it we used a filtration technique known as reverse osmosis. Though a common industry practice for winemakers, this process is not a natural wine making practice, which we are committed to at Donkey & Goat. We have been a leader in natural winemaking in California for two decades and we are proud of our commitment to this vision, and it quite literally is at the roots of all our winemaking philosophy. I regret that I didn’t describe the details of this pivot for a portion of the Gris Gris blend with Eric. Transparency is a value I hold dear for our business and I fell short of living up to this value.
We will deepen our commitment to natural wines and the natural wine making community, and also redouble our commitment to our suppliers, and most importantly of all our customers that our belief in natural winemaking is unshakable.
Even in challenging times, when the American, and indeed the global winemaking community is so threatened by the specter of climate change, fire, and dangerously shifting by extreme weather patterns, D&G will continue to search for solutions in the way we advocate for climate stewardship, and the way we continue to produce our wines.
As the co-founder and now winemaker for our label, I have been blessed with decades of support from our trusted growers, our distribution partners, the thousands who serve our wine in restaurants and sell our wine in shops, our customers, our friends and lovers of our wines. I have learned from you, and you will always have my gratitude and my commitment to continually improve every facet of what we do. I regret that I was not as conscientious and consistent as you expect and deserve us to be with our 2021 Gris Gris. We aspire to do better with every new vintage, naturally. That is our promise.
Tracey Rogers Brandt
Proprietor/Winemaker/GM
I Love My Home
I am enormously frustrated to live in a world where I can work since the age of 15, lose my job due to my allegedly mentally ill spouse, and have no safety net. Our laws dictated I cease W2 income when I went to work for my LLC, which means I stopped paying into my Social Security. It also means that after working for 19 years, creating jobs and value in my community, when I am hostility removed from my company and income, I am not eligible for unemployment.
My estranged husband and his family are far wealthier than my family, and that gap has proved meaningful in my attempts to divorce without funds to hire professionals for offensive actions. In four years attempting to divorce, my only offensive legal action was filing for Temporary Guideline Child & Spousal support. I filed in January 2023, nearly 3 years after going to Sea Ranch and finding the strength to build a new reality. I paid for my attorney to show up at court twice, for this extremely straightforward matter. The first court date was set for May, five months after filing, due to the backlog in the courts from the pandemic. In May, my case was continued, due to my business partner playing a game that cost me thousands, delayed everything and ultimately got me nothing. My second court date was September 1, 2023, and days prior my business partner dismissed his bogus claim that my income from the company where he is Treasurer, was higher than I had submitted to the court. At my 2nd court appearance, I was awarded the requested support, but he also announced he had been “laid off” from his Fin Tech job, which meant I would receive back support via a payment plan over 8 months, but no current support until he regains employment. Eight months later he professes to remain unemployed.
Since the entire world turned upside down from the global pandemic, climate emergency, new wars and gross inequities in natural and social wealth, that have grown far worse during these years, our personal roller coaster ride through hell has provided me a unique perspective and perhaps clarity of vision. I deeply appreciate what millions will face when losing their identity or job, in the years ahead, when global industries and supply chains collapse. I have shared my story in hopes of liberating myself and my daughters. But I also hope my journey can inspire others to remove the context of the humans and organizations, prohibiting their liberation of life, and free themselves from their personal double bind. As I tell my children, I have no ability to change how I arrived at this moment, but I can change my conditions for my future, and I can focus on making this moment as joyful and peaceful as possible.
On that note, I want a chance. I desperately need stability in order to support my children in what is sure to be difficult years ahead. I am in no position financially or mentally to lose my home after all I’ve suffered. I found this home and convinced my mother-in-law to help us buy it, which she did. From 2004 – 2012, I moved our home four times as we suffered three owner evictions from divorce twice, and death of the owner the third time. I also moved our winery twice during those years. This is the first and likely only home I will purchase. When we closed in 2012, I said that I would die in this house before I moved us again.
I imagine any future place I consider to be a home, will be regenerative, and community & use based, rather than ownership based. I also have ideas on how to transform our neighborhood to become an urban eco-village over many years. I love my neighbors. After my husband moved out I realized I did not have adults to share my culinary creations with around a table full of lively conversation and plenty of love. During the global pandemic my pod was a three household, multi generational family who deeply appreciated my need to cook and feed and share joy with my community. My 86+ year old neighbors are each other’s 4th spouse, having reconnected at their 50th High School reunion. I love this couple and they give me hope that one day I will find a person to share my journey and co-create a future with who can SEE ME.
My estranged husband has been bullying me for years to accept his “terms” that would leave me without either asset. I have opted to not accept the reality he attempts to coerce me into believing is the only reality I have available, due to my limited financial means. While at times I question my sanity of risking so much, my intuition tells me to stay the course. My girls also need stability and after all that has happened, losing the only home they have ever known is not an outcome I’m prepared to embrace.
As I reflect on my decades of trauma that shaped the person I am today, I realize that my story should be shared to give hope to others. I am by no means the only single mom suffering at the hands of an alleged mentally ill partner, nor is my suffering greater or more worthy of assistance than others. But I do believe I managed to manifest my daily reality to stay focused on my areas of passion (leaning in to save humanity) and purpose (my service to my daughters). And while I’m in way over my head as far as my debt is concerned, and I have not yet found a new paying position, I am far healthier, happier and more peaceful than I ever was while living with someone who loathed me, I think, because my attributes landed as self loathing in his mind.
I could behave as the desperate, financially ruined and broken human that is part of who I am today. But I chose to ignore that version of my reality most of waking hours. Instead, I manifest a happy and loving home where my daughters feel strain, but do not live under constant strain. While I am up to my chin in bad news, I elect to not let that define me, or the home I manifest for my children. And incredibly, I often have a bounce in my step and love in my heart.
I now own the domain www.liberating3ladies.com from my plans to do this anonymously. I selected these letters and numbers, in this order, knowing I wish to help single moms like me, that need their mind, body & spirit liberated, their 3 ladies ;). I could write another 20,000 words about the slog of being a single mom, and how emotionally demanding while simultaneously rewarding, to depths previously not realized, my life now is. My home is now full of deeply nurturing love and joy and silliness and singing and dancing. When their father moved out a month following a global pandemic shutting down the world, we decorated our quarantine home with fairy lights and other girly delights. We also banned NPR in the morning in favor of our lady hero, the maestro of self determination and writing her own narrative, Taylor Swift. Her music brought song and dance to my girls morning routine as opposed to listening to the stats of death around the world from the novel Coronavirus. It was the perfect shot of sunshine needed before they went to their bedrooms for zoom school for 1.5 years.
I long for the day when I can announce I am divorced. I am giddy at the prospect of having the freedom to live my life to the fullest, without the weight of solving my basic needs for myself and my daughters. I am also enormously proud of the role model that I am for my girls, and with my breaking my silence and sharing my stories I hope to find new opportunities to co-create conditions for health, happiness, and peace for all life on Earth, including myself and my daughters.
Peace & Love,
Tracey Rogers Brandt
There will be no community
without first communing.
~Nora Bateson