"A Walk in the Vineyard" written by Dariusz Duma
Introduction by Michael Dierberg, Chairman of First BankIn November this past year, I was fortunate to host family businesses from around the world before joining them and others at an international family business conference in Miami. Getting to know these family businesses made me very appreciative of some of things that we sometimes take for granted here in the US. For example, here in the US, we don’t have to worry about the government confiscating our businesses, whereas that has been a real threat in other parts of the world and has influenced some of the choices these families have made. Furthermore, I spent time with a number of family businesses from Eastern Europe, all of which became family businesses after 1989 – the year the Wall came down and free enterprise became a reality in Eastern Europe.
While some things are very different across the globe, others are very much the same. This includes the importance of stewardship, which I have written about before. But nothing I wrote, or have read up until now, compares to the eloquence and thoughtfulness of the words shared by a Polish family business owner, Dariusz Duma, who visited our family’s winery and reflected on the 250-year vision my dad laid out for our winery. His thoughts on the value of taking the long view as a steward rather than the quickest route, are translated below:
Fate can be our friend, even though we know that true friends do not always stroke our heads. Sometimes they become demanding teachers. That is exactly what happened this time. In November, I wrote about closeness and how it does not require physical presence. And then the practical exam arrived very quickly. I found myself in California, which may spoil one with sun and warmth, yet it is twelve hours of flight and nine time zones away from Poland. Far. You can feel that distance. I felt it. I grew homesick.
I came to Santa Barbara for a meeting of family businesses. We visited a vineyard run by successive generations of winemakers. The California autumn is nothing like ours. The leaves still cling to the vines, their green slowly turning into sunlit yellows and warm browns. We listen to people who have worked with the vine for generations. This is a family devoted to their land. In their case, the company is not just a business. It is passion, care, continuity, life.
A vineyard cannot simply be owned. It must be tended. A vine bears fruit only several years after planting, and good wine matures for years. We hear that the owners have a plan stretching 250 years forward. In our unstable world? Madness? A joke? Foolishness? Or perhaps wisdom and humility before time? Maybe they have understood something essential about the vineyard and about life.
The earth serves the vines, the vines serve the grapes, the grapes serve the wine, and the wine serves all of us. Unless we use it wrongly. This order is fragile and delicate. It is easy to break it. Today we almost instinctively demand that the earth serve profit, that vines serve productivity, that wine serve sales and marketing. In a true family vineyard, the rhythm is set by life, not by a business plan. Responsible winemakers watch over this.
In conversations with them one word kept returning: “stewardship.” Care, vigilance, responsibility, commitment. A steward is a host, but not in the sense of an owner. It is someone who cares and serves. Someone who thinks not only of himself and not only of his own time. Someone who thinks in generations. Longer than a single human life can hold.
It is difficult not to reflect on this while walking among racks of vintages older than I am, waiting patiently and quietly for their moment. The word “stewardship” describes something that is increasingly difficult to grasp and increasingly rare to experience. One can have land without caring for it. One can have children without accompanying them in growing up. One can inherit a tradition without being its co-creator and guardian. Many things can be bought, given, or inherited. It is much harder to serve them.
Heraclitus was right: the nature of things loves to hide. What is most important does not shout. In the vineyard, even in December, when leaves fade and lose color, the coming year begins to awaken quietly: in the soil, in the old vine, in the bud not yet visible. The fruit we will drink in a few years already exists. Wine is a memory of time, not merely a product.
St. Augustine wrote that time is not something we possess but something we are filled with. Stewardship is the willingness to let time be a co-creator of us and of the work of our hands. We do not accelerate growth. We do not force fruit. We are witnesses and guests of a process that exceeds us.
The modern world thinks differently. It loves immediacy. It teaches that if something does not bring quick results, it is not worth the effort. Patience and calm seem like luxuries, responsibility like a risk. What matters is securing the present. What lies beyond is irrelevant. In such logic, there is no place for care whose fruit will appear only when we are gone.
Yet the best works of human hands are those that last beyond us. Family vineyards know this. They create for those who will come after us. Consider this in your own life: in relationships, in family, in friendships, in work. We receive something we did not begin, and something we will not finish. Our role is to enter into this continuity, to work out within it our place, role, and value.
December encourages such thoughts. Advent is a time of waiting. Not for a result, not for a solution. For a presence. God arrives slowly. Our loves, if they are real, do too. They are not defined by outcome but by fidelity. By presence. To the end. In good times and in hard ones.
I look at the leaves of the Californian vineyards, only now turning to gold, and I think that many things in our lives ripen in just this way. They need time. And care that does not rush. Perhaps this new year, it is worth asking not what I should do faster, but what I want to serve longer. What to nurture so that in a few years I may say: “I am glad I did not rush then.”
What serves, endures.
What endures, bears fruit.
Think of this on a future walk through your own vineyard.
I came to Santa Barbara for a meeting of family businesses. We visited a vineyard run by successive generations of winemakers. The California autumn is nothing like ours. The leaves still cling to the vines, their green slowly turning into sunlit yellows and warm browns. We listen to people who have worked with the vine for generations. This is a family devoted to their land. In their case, the company is not just a business. It is passion, care, continuity, life.
A vineyard cannot simply be owned. It must be tended. A vine bears fruit only several years after planting, and good wine matures for years. We hear that the owners have a plan stretching 250 years forward. In our unstable world? Madness? A joke? Foolishness? Or perhaps wisdom and humility before time? Maybe they have understood something essential about the vineyard and about life.
The earth serves the vines, the vines serve the grapes, the grapes serve the wine, and the wine serves all of us. Unless we use it wrongly. This order is fragile and delicate. It is easy to break it. Today we almost instinctively demand that the earth serve profit, that vines serve productivity, that wine serve sales and marketing. In a true family vineyard, the rhythm is set by life, not by a business plan. Responsible winemakers watch over this.
In conversations with them one word kept returning: “stewardship.” Care, vigilance, responsibility, commitment. A steward is a host, but not in the sense of an owner. It is someone who cares and serves. Someone who thinks not only of himself and not only of his own time. Someone who thinks in generations. Longer than a single human life can hold.
It is difficult not to reflect on this while walking among racks of vintages older than I am, waiting patiently and quietly for their moment. The word “stewardship” describes something that is increasingly difficult to grasp and increasingly rare to experience. One can have land without caring for it. One can have children without accompanying them in growing up. One can inherit a tradition without being its co-creator and guardian. Many things can be bought, given, or inherited. It is much harder to serve them.
Heraclitus was right: the nature of things loves to hide. What is most important does not shout. In the vineyard, even in December, when leaves fade and lose color, the coming year begins to awaken quietly: in the soil, in the old vine, in the bud not yet visible. The fruit we will drink in a few years already exists. Wine is a memory of time, not merely a product.
St. Augustine wrote that time is not something we possess but something we are filled with. Stewardship is the willingness to let time be a co-creator of us and of the work of our hands. We do not accelerate growth. We do not force fruit. We are witnesses and guests of a process that exceeds us.
The modern world thinks differently. It loves immediacy. It teaches that if something does not bring quick results, it is not worth the effort. Patience and calm seem like luxuries, responsibility like a risk. What matters is securing the present. What lies beyond is irrelevant. In such logic, there is no place for care whose fruit will appear only when we are gone.
Yet the best works of human hands are those that last beyond us. Family vineyards know this. They create for those who will come after us. Consider this in your own life: in relationships, in family, in friendships, in work. We receive something we did not begin, and something we will not finish. Our role is to enter into this continuity, to work out within it our place, role, and value.
December encourages such thoughts. Advent is a time of waiting. Not for a result, not for a solution. For a presence. God arrives slowly. Our loves, if they are real, do too. They are not defined by outcome but by fidelity. By presence. To the end. In good times and in hard ones.
I look at the leaves of the Californian vineyards, only now turning to gold, and I think that many things in our lives ripen in just this way. They need time. And care that does not rush. Perhaps this new year, it is worth asking not what I should do faster, but what I want to serve longer. What to nurture so that in a few years I may say: “I am glad I did not rush then.”
What serves, endures.
What endures, bears fruit.
Think of this on a future walk through your own vineyard.