A graduate from the University of California at Davis, Rachele developed a successful sales career in technology for RICOH U.S.A. for the past 22 years. During this time, she met and married Mitch Spaletta, the farmer she prayed she would one day meet. With a passion for people and talent for selling, the experience and knowledge gained through working for “Corporate America” would develop into a business she could call her own. “When you truly believe in something, and you are passionate about it, it’s not really selling!” - Rachele Spaletta

Early on in my glamorous (and painfully fast-paced) fashion career, I realized the way I worked was turning me into a tightly wound little ball of stress and tension. So before every business trip I conducted hours of research planning for self-care in my few precious hours of downtime. It changed my life!

Today, as a wellness travel expert and consultant, I lead travelers around the world on wellness tours with Pravassa. Creating group and individualized itineraries for the people and companies that are looking to restore productivity and creativity is my passion. Since having founded Pravassa, the first wellness travel company in 2009, I have been a winner of the prestigious British Airways Face of Opportunity contest. I contribute to columns in The Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen where I write about wellness travel and lifestyle. I am also a regular speaker at conferences around the country including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times travel shows and have participated in international conferences in Colombia, India, and Spain in order to bring wellness travel opportunities to these countries. When not is not traveling the world, I am based in New York City.

Catherine is an extraordinary wine aficionado with an exceptionally strong wine tasting palate. As a Master Sommelier, Catherine is a highly informed by wine scholars, expert wine judges, wine consultants. As a with passion of wine, she is highly personable, engaging for connecting with people and bringing overly complicated world of wine to an enjoyable level for everyone.

Catherine is the Master Sommelier at Planet Grape® LLC, a wine consulting firm providing content, reviews, corporate & private tastings, restaurant wine program development. She created her alter-ego, grape goddess®, to help bring wine down to earth for consumers as well as those entering the wine industry. She is one of a handful of female professional sabreurs (fencer) in the world, opening a bottle of Champagne with a sword in a dazzling theatrical performance.

Patrick Smith is an airline pilot, air travel blogger and author. Patrick has appeared on over 300 radio and television outlets, including CNN, PBS, the BBC and National Public Radio. He is regularly cited in print publications worldwide, and was voted one of the “25 Best Bloggers” by TIME magazine. His op-eds and articles have been published in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and several other newspapers.

Patrick took his first flying lesson at age  of fourteen and his first job is a copilot on 15-passenger turboprops earning $850 a month. He has since flown cargo and passenger jets on both domestic and intercontinental routes. He currently flies the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft.

The author’s self-published punk rock fanzines and poetry journals of the 1980s and 1990s are considered among the more curious works of literature ever produced by a native of Revere, Massachusetts.

Patrick travels extensively in his spare time and has visited more than eighty countries. He lives near Boston.

Lisa Niver is a travel expert, writer, artist, entrepreneur, and on-camera host who has explored 96 countries. Niver has established a following through her written and video content, garnering over one million video views on YouTube, Amazon Fire Tv and Roku.

Niver is the founder of a top 100 travel blog, We Said Go Travel, that reaches more than 200,000 annually and is in the top 1/8 of the top 1% of all sites in the United States. In her tri-annual international travel writing competitions, she has published nearly 2000 writers from 75 countries.

She was invited to the United Nations as a Champions of Humanity ambassador, to the red carpet at the Oscars with United Airlines and to New Orleans for a project with American Express and Starwood Hotels. Her recent stories include Dutch designer villas for Luxury Magazine, interviewing Fabien Cousteau for Delta Sky, skiing with the blind for Sierra and scuba diving in the Solomon Islands for Smithsonian.

She also contributes to USA Today, Wharton Business Magazine, the Jewish Journal and is verified on Twitter. Niver was a 2012 nominee for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching and a 2014 nominee for the Charles Bronfman Prize.

• SUMMARY: The wind and fire storms of October 8 changed my personal and professional life. Personally, the firestorm incinerated the forest surrounding my house, keeping my family out of our home for 7 months and creating years of work to repair the landscape I live in. Professionally, it immediately focused my work as an art curator and California environmental historian toward the new topic of environmental crisis that has resulted in a constant situation of California On Fire. 
• The night of October 8 is permanently etched in my mind as I watched dozens of fires eventually gather into three monster firestorms surrounding my ridgetop home above the Napa and Sonoma Valleys: At midnight from my forest-ensconced mountaintop home above the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, I saw the shocking sight of the huge Atlas Peak fire burning 20 miles away. Over the course of the night we learned that Santa Rosa, Calistoga, Kenwood and Glen Ellen had all been wracked by the firestorm and within 24 hours 100,000 people were evacuated and 300,000 affected.
•  My 9-year-old daughter, husband and I became long-term evacuees, living in a hotel for 7 months due to the catastrophic fire damage to the forest surrounding our home, and to our entire water and power system: The firestorm raged directly over my house and the dense forest surrounding my home, completely incinerating the forest that encircled my house, destroying all our water and electrical utility systems we ourselves build and maintain, including three huge water tanks, high voltage power poles, above-ground utilities that took 7 months to rebuild.
• Our home itself was saved by our local volunteer firefighters, the Mayacamas Volunteer Fire Department, all of whom are also our neighbors. Of over 130 homes on the mountaintop where I live close to 50 home were destroyed by fire. The effort to save those remaining by a cooperative joint firefighting effort, but local volunteer firefighters who know the rural area helped guide that effort. Nearly half of the firefighters also lost their homes in the fires as they were fighting to save ours.
• My personal experiences of the 2017 North Bay Firestorms immediately inspired my professional work with the two hats I wear. One hat I wear is as an art exhibition curator; the other hat I wear is as a California environmental historian, researcher and writer: As a trained historian, I am helping lead an oral history project in my local mountain community about the Mayacamas Volunteer Fire Department. I have interviewed all of the volunteer firefighters in my mountain area about their experiences. I plan to publish that story when we finish the interview project. My work as an art historian and exhibition curator inspired me to create an art exhibition and film screening event to show work by artists who immediately began creating art in response to the fires; 4 of the 11 artists in the show lost everything. We have worked hard to open this show in October for the anniversary of the 2017 fires. We thank Todd Zapolski for his generosity working collectively with us to provide a beautiful and accessible exhibition space in his shopping and dining development in downtown Napa, called First Street Napa. Our Art Responds project also includes an online public exhibition for anyone out there (adults, artists, kids, families) who has images inspired by California fires that you want to share online -- photographs, pictures from your phone, drawings, artwork, any image you can upload will be exhibited online. 
• CONCLUSION: My experiences from that terrifying night of October 8, 2017 to now a year later, have led me to seek creative ways to channel the grief, terror, sadness and deep empathy that we all feel as we collectively recall, tell and rebuild our stories from the 2017 Fires in California. But this is not only a story for people who lived it in the Wine Country in 2017, but for all people in all places affected by wildfire and firestorm. For me, art is what allows us to begin and continue having the conversations we need to remember, share, heal, rebuild and move forward.

Michael Long, son of Larry and Linda, and Head Winemaker, Michael graduated Magna Cum Laude from Fresno State University with a Bachelors of Science in Enology.

Michael was just 15 years old when his parents purchased the land that Amador Cellars now sits on.

His love and passion for grape growing and winemaking blossomed as he began to learn more about the process and gained an appreciation for what it takes to make a nice bottle of wine.  

Michael began working in the vineyard as a teenager and gradually became more involved in other aspects of the business, including working side by side with father and winemaker, Larry.  

Michael became the Assistant Winemaker in 2008 and held the position for 5 years prior to taking the reins from his father as Head Winemaker in 2013.  

Michael is also very involved with the grape growing and farming, and you may find him pouring in the tasting room and at events from time to time.

Sicilia was inspired by a 2005 visit to Italy. Our mission is to provide quality grapes for quality wine making through partnerships with winemakers committed to European wine styles.

We employ the best farming techniques possible in order to produce high quality grapes of the Italian variety to produce high quality wine. We want to utilize the terrior (ie temperature rainfall soil type wind and rain), to develop varietals that may not be immediately recognized by current wine drinkers but wine enthusiasts will be amazed with these varietals once exposed to them.

Eric Sklar is an entrepreneur, Napa Valley vineyard owner and public official.  He and his family have been growing grapes in Napa Valley for 40 years and he has recently planted his first licensed cannabis garden. Eric is CEO of Napa Valley Fume, LLC, a cannabis management/branding company based in St. Helena, CA. He is also the co-founder and a board member of the Napa Valley Cannabis Association. He is currently a member of the Policy Committee of the California Growers Association and Board Member of Bay Ecotarium (Bay.Org). Eric was appointed to the California Fish and Game Commission in June of 2015 by Governor Jerry Brown and confirmed by the Senate in 2016. He was elected President in 2016 and was re-appointed by Governor Brown to a full six-year term in January 2017.

Wine Access and I mentioned my cannabis client to you - Eaze, they're now operating in Napa and Sonoma so we thought it'd be perfect for your wine country radio show. Interested in having Eaze or their partner Fume (the cannabis company)

Carmel Mooney, Traveling Corespondent for "The Good Life" Show, talks to Mike about her recent visit to Sorensen's Resort in Hope Valley California... near Lake Tahoe. http://www.sorensensresort.com/