Tracy Smith

Money is intoxicating, and when you mix money and wine, I think you get intoxicated to the second or third power.

How often does it happen that somebody comes in with a lot of money and not so much knowledge about wine, but just wants to be a part of this?

Every day.

Back in 2011, a guy named Robert Dahl was about to get drunk on all that money.

He decided to leave Minnesota, where he had an unglamorous mold removal business, and become a Napa Valley wine entrepreneur.

Just a big presence.

Miles Davis is an electrician who worked for Dahl almost from the beginning of his time in Napa.

You were friends with him initially when he was doing what business?

Selling and buying grapes.

Selling and buying grapes.

That's one way of saying Dahl was in the lower end of the wine business.

He wasn't making fine wines.

He was bottling no-name wine, making what they call shiners.

Was he a good salesman?

So the wine didn't even have to really be that good.

He could sell it.

And he talked a good game.

And you knew enough to know that he didn't know a lot.

It was part of his charm that he could BS?

Dahl had moved to wine country with his wife and three children.