A California Couple Returns from Alaska to Pursue Pinot Perfection

by Torrey Douglass

“I was a bird born without wings,” muses Dean Carrell as he leans back in his dining room chair while scratching his grey beard. “I always wanted to fly.”

Born in Bakersfield in 1940, Dean grew up in Tivy Valley in the Sierra Foothills, right at the mouth of the Kings River. He liked to sit on the riverbank and study the red-tailed hawks, pondering how a creature heavier than air could stay aloft. He says, “I was the worst student in the world—I always wanted to be outdoors.” As a result, he left school early and worked as a heavy equipment operator, always wondering how he could join those hawks up in the sky.

At first, Dean thought becoming an airline pilot was the purview of the well-educated and well-to-do. Then one day he found a magazine article about a prospector named McClintock who was exploring Venuzuela. He discovered gold in a remote mountain crevice—so remote that returning on foot to retrieve more of the bounty was unthinkable. Instead McClintock hired a pilot by the name of James Angel—an adventurer who was credited with “discovering” the world’s highest waterfall, also in Venezuela. Angel pushed the limits of his tiny plane to return McClintock to the cache of gold. He skillfully landed on a high plateau, and the first payload they brought home allowed him to purchase a bigger and more powerful plane. Reading about the pair’s adventure sparked Dean’s determination to learn to fly.

Newly inspired, Dean was careful with his money and saved up for a Cessna 180, hiring a pilot to teach him how to fly as soon as he’d purchased it. At the time, a minimum of 40 hours of flight time was required to earn a pilot’s license, but Dean’s instructor recommended him to the FAA with just 30 hours under his belt—possibly because Dean used his own plane for the lessons, depriving the instructor of plane rental income that usually boosted the lesson fees.

So it came to be that in 1967, Dean took to the California skies and headed to Alaska, a mythic place where there was plenty of outdoors to go around. Once there, he flew folks out into the wilds to hunt and fish, gained air experience, earned additional certifications, and ultimately started his own charter business, Alaska Travel Air. It was situated off of Lake Hood on the Anchorage International Airport—the only seaplane base with a control tower in existence.

There were other guide services in the area, including one which Suzi Arago and her then-husband owned and operated. Whenever clients wanted to cross the mountain range by small plane rather than taking the more standard route by commercial airline, there was only one man in the area “crazy enough to do it”—Dean Carrell of Alaska Travel Air. He landed planes on land, water, and glaciers; he threaded them through narrow mountain passes that required sideways maneuvering to come through unscathed; and he had too many close calls to count. He claims it was a combination of luck, God’s grace, and expertise that allowed him, time after time, to “save the bacon.”

Dean and Suzi were friends for years until a time came when they were each unattached and could become closer. They opened a fishing lodge in 1982, welcoming guests who sought the trout and salmon that blessed Alaska’s lakes and rivers. Two years later, they married and sold the charter business, though Dean continued to fly lodge guests into the bush.

The lodge was a family affair, with Dean’s mother Roma in the kitchen cooking for guests. Before long, Dean and Suzi welcomed a daughter, Jeri, and later a baby boy, Ben, into the world. On nights Dean was expected home, Suzi would wait anxiously for the growl of his plane in the sky, not able to rest easy until he was back on the ground. The lodge was the epicenter of their lives for seven years, and Dean’s plane allowed them to introduce guests to the stunning Alaskan wilderness, be they hunters, fish catchers, photographers, or thrill seekers. What was for many a once-in-a-lifetime adventure was their daily bread-and-butter.

But eventually the time came when a change was needed. Between their two little ones, Suzi’s anxiety, and Dean’s understanding that “the nine lives of a bush pilot get lived up after a while,” they decided to move back to California. In 1989 they left the lodge in the capable hands of family members and moved to Suzi’s childhood town, Mill Valley, to figure out what would come next.

Part of the appeal of Mill Valley was the opportunity to live near Suzi’s family. They socialized frequently, gatherings enlivened by Napa Valley wines—wines that were still somewhat new on the wider wine scene and thus still seen as irreverent upstarts. Dean and Suzi were instantly enamored with the variety, depth, and subtleties of California wines, and Pinot Noir topped the list of their favorites. Dean had found his new calling and, with Suzi’s support, they decided to devote their next chapter to the farming and making of Pinot Noir.

The years that followed saw Dean and Suzi combing the Northern California region for the right property to grow Pinot Noir. Besides Mill Valley, they lived in Calistoga and Dry Creek, but until a friend introduced them to Anderson Valley, they had never found a consistently excellent Pinot. In 1990, they purchased 120 acres of Anderson Valley ridgetop, a property that boasted 50 acres of prime vineyard land.

They planted grapes and named the vineyard after Dean’s mother, Roma. The vineyard grows Pinot Noir grapes exclusively, fruit that becomes Roma’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, Rosé, and Mistelle. Mistelle is a port-style wine made from Pinot grapes that stay on the vine past ripeness and into raisining, a phase also called noble rot. “I let it go as long as possible before the bears take them,” shares Dean. The fermentation phase ceases when the wine is moved to stainless steel tanks, at which point they add a premium high alcohol grape distillate from Wine Secrets in Sebastopol. This distillate adds special aromatics and minerality, and is the last step before bottling. The result is a sweet, intense, fruity dessert wine that is the perfect finale to an enticing meal.

Dean subscribes to a couple of truisms common among winemakers. One is “A good wine is made in the vineyard.” As such, he heartily eschews winemaking shortcuts like chaptalization (adding sugar during winemaking to boost fermentation of low-sugar grapes) or “watering back” (adding water to reduce alcohol levels and increase volume). He also agrees with the idea that the best wine is made from grapes that suffer. Dean dry farms their vines to force the roots deep into the ground to find water. This practice builds resistance to disease and allows the fruit to pick up nuance from the soil.

Ultimately, Dean wants low yield, high quality harvests that have more concentrated flavors. He uses 100% new French oak barrels, scoffing at wine enthusiasts who deride wines that are “too oaky.” Dean notes that the most expensive wines available are fermented in 100% new French oak barrels. At up to $1,000 each, those barrels “take the profit out of the process,” and he believes those who deride their use are looking at budgets rather than product quality. And for Dean, quality always wins.

So while this second career probably won’t fill their wallet, it most definitely fills their hearts. “Our profit is our way of life,” he concludes, and, looking around, it’s hard to disagree. Their home sits high above Anderson Valley, with expansive views that encompass meadows, vineyards, and forests stretching below them into the valley, then rising again on the far side where layers of distant ridges cradle the ocean fog. To get any higher would require Dean to renew his pilot’s license.

The opposite side of their Spanish-style home looks out over Roma’s Vineyard and the smaller, densely forested Indian Creek valley behind that. Suzi shares, “I wake up in the morning and I look out, and this is what I see. Even a rainy day is a good day. The wine is just the frosting on the cake. It enhances our life.”

“We like to make a wine we know people will enjoy drinking and will enjoy with us,” adds Dean. These days he manages his six acres of grapes with very little outside help. “Producing a top wine takes all of my ambition and all of my interest. Some pilots fly until their very last day. I had so much flying in Alaska, I fulfilled every dream I had: glacier landings, float landings—I became a master of them all. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I wanted to master every aspect of bush flying so I could do it with confidence.” After 25 years in the cockpit, his itch to take to the skies is well and truly scratched. He’s happy to keep his feet on the ground where he can devote his time and energy into grape growing and winemaking.

Future plans include welcoming small groups up to the property one Sunday afternoon a month, where guests can taste wines, walk in the vineyard, and take in the views. In the meantime, Dean works on a new winemaking building and tends the vineyard. Pilots can be a hard-headed bunch, refusing to comply with gravity’s mandates. Dean applies the same stubborn determination to making exceptional wines—living, working, and toasting the good life up on the ridgetop where he’s closest to the sky.

Purchase wine from Roma’s Vineyard and learn about upcoming events at RomasVineyard.com.

Photos courtesy of Roma’s Vineyard