(In where our authoress goes rambling) *** I have a difficult time accepting the reality of California's new world---the industrial approach to winemaking, the surrogate mother approach to winemaking, the disconnected approach to winemaking. And so I was on a mini-mission to find more like Hank, people who grow their own grapes, till (or no til) their own soil, prune their own vines (or most of them) and then make their one wines. To hell with local and industrial, if it's local and hand tended, I'm interested. So that's how I happened on Gideon Bienstock a few years back. Over the years we corresponded. When I wrote theirrigation story for the SF Chronicle he and I had a very interesting dialogue and I find myself always using the below passage. **The very best fruits I have ever tasted were found in a deserted experimental farm established by the Russians in the Sinai desert. The trees (apricots, peaches, apples) were left unirrigated and unattended for years in the desert dunes. They were stunted, crippled, more like half-dwarfed bushes than like the trees we know, but the fruits, cherry- size apples and peaches - were so incredibly intense and concentrated in flavors,...