WINE AS MEDICINE
Winemaking with a Medical Bent Rachel Friedman, MD
O
ops, sorry!” I apologize as a few drops of wine splash outside t he glass onto my guest’s hand. “This isn’t my day job.” It’s a Saturday afternoon, and after a busy week of seeing patients as a family physician, I am behind the bar at the winery my husband and I own, guiding guests in a wine tasting. When I explain that I not only own a winery but also spend my week as a physician, they seem impressed and say with a touch of envy, “Wow! You are really living the dream!” Am I? I never really dreamed of owning a winery or getting involved in winemaking. In fact, the sum total of my wine knowledge when I moved to Sonoma County was on the order of: Wine is made by fermenting grapes to produce alcohol. Some wine is red, some wine is white, and some wine is pink and called rosé. When I interviewed at the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency in 2007, my future professor Dr. Dave Schneider, a self-identified wine buff, offered Dr. Friedman, a Santa Rosa family physician, is a co-owner of Orpheus Wines in Kenwood.
Sonoma Medicine
Dr. Friedman and her husband, Marc Kraft.
a handout with recommendations for wine tasting. Other applicants seemed excited about the idea of living in wine country, but I didn’t take the handout and instead spent my post-interview afternoon finding a coffee shop and a running trail that would make me feel excited to call Sonoma County home. So how did I get from there to here? After matching at the residency and moving to Santa Rosa, I did feign a bit of interest in wine, and by the end of my intern year I’d learned that I enjoyed a good Merlot and had added words and phrases like Russian River Valley and Gewürztraminer to my still limited wine vocabulary. At the same time, I had concerns about living in wine country, as I saw plenty of patients suffering the ravages of alcoholism and end-stage liver disease.
And then, as the s t or y go e s, I m e t s ome one. He wa s a for mer hospit a l lab technician who had experienced a eureka moment in 2001 when he found himself serendipitously sitting next to an apprentice winemaker. He realized that winemaking was a way to bring creativity and lifelong learning to the logic of science. He moved across the country to Napa shortly thereafter to start a new career as an aspiring winemaker. On our first few dates, Marc wooed me with stories of running CBCs and erythrocyte sedimentation rates in hospital labs, along with promises of grape stomping, the obvious dream of anyone who grew up watching “I Love Lucy” reruns. As our relationship and my second year of residency intensified, I was bored to tears by Marc’s passionate monologues about rootstock and clonal selection during weekend drives along the vineyard-studded back roads of Sonoma County. Nonetheless, I was struck by his passion for his craft, and as a physician I could identify with his commitment to lifelong learning: the notion of diving Winter 2017 9