(e)State Lane [or Sestina for my Grandfather]
for Rollin L. Wilkinson (1936 – 2026)
We circle the perimeter of uprooted vineyard,
ribbits emanating from the cattails along the old
creek bed refurbished by spring. My grandfather
plans to plant this year. He’s worried about the roots. But the outer row
remains unscathed, molded over thirty years of pruning
canes, an arcane artistry archived in gnarled limbs.
Towering like lone fire lookouts, oaks stretch bare limbs
overhead, indexing years of life before vineyards,
dwarfing sixty years of planting, pruning,
tending, ripping, replanting. Dislodged old
husks give way to pea shoots that replenish fallow rows
while the oaks, like my grandfather,
preside over an aging property. At eighty-six, Grandpa,
with lumbering stride and six-foot-four frame, wields lengthy limbs
and an even temperament to ensure all his grapes are in a row.
The stakes of Napa Valley vineyard
politics have risen. New and old
money alike replaces small-scale viticulture with mechanized pruning,
and Silicone Valley sightseers prune
out farm folk like my grandparents
for unfettered access to Neo-Tuscany. Humble homes deemed obsolete are bulldozed like the
smoke-tainted limbs
of my grandfather’s former crop so that luxury estates now belie the vineyards,
demarcate swathes of land whose boundaries catalyze multi-million dollar legal rows.
But our label’s eponymous Outer Row,
stands guard as my grandfather relinquishes his pruning
shears. For years, he’s hired trabajadores to nurse his vines.
but his almanac-like memory remains undocumented. This feat my father
now seeks to undertake. For him, farming is a phantom limb,
the relic of a childhood spent clipping canes for quarters and crouching in the bed of the old
green pick-up on the way to the old
Christian Brothers Winery, where tourist-laden limousines have replaced clergymen-laden pews.
Today, cabernet is marketed, not as the ritualistic lifeblood of crucified limbs,
but the crux of farm-to-table culinary sensibility. Vintners stomp for sport until their toes, pruny
and pulpy shrivel like raisins in an August heat wave, predicted by my grandfather
with uncanny accuracy. His senses cannot be uprooted from the vineyards––
his veins are wound with the vines–invincible against the frosts of old
age. My grandfather, steady and silent, will nurture rows
long after his body is pruned from Earth: his legacy peels gentle as the blue heron’s limbs.
Editor’s note: Rollin Larry Wilkinson, 90, of Yountville, passed away on Sunday, June 28, 2026. He was among the first university-educated viticulturists to help transform the Napa Valley from a prune and dairy producer into a world-renowned grape-growing region. His viticultural knowledge was known through his long association with Christian Brothers. The author of this poem is one of his grandchildren.
