Bill Harlan

Harlan was raised in Southern California, in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, with two younger brothers and strict Christian parents. His father, who worked his way up from slaughterhouse floor to director of marketing at a meatpacking company, pushed his boys to be self-sufficient. After World War II, young Bill earned cash tending neighbors' victory gardens. In the late '50s, after spending his teenage years surfing, lifeguarding and riding girls around on the back of his motorbike, Harlan attended UC Berkeley and became an Olympic hopeful on the Inland Empire water-polo team. He supported himself by playing in a regular card game and parking cars at Trader Vic's. In five years, he graduated with a bachelor's degree. By 1968, Harlan had taken a job aboard a Stanford University marine-research vessel, where he fixed engines, taught diving and, in a very short period, he says, worked his way up to bosun. He decided to become a stockbroker. A short stint selling stocks had given way to a career in real-estate development. In the mid-1970s he launched his own firm, Pacific Union, with a former competitor, converting condominiums at first. Its success paid for the extravagant houseboat in Sausalito where Deborah, a New York actress visiting her parents in the East Bay, arrived for a blind date along with the couple who'd insisted they meet. The couple had a long-distance relationship for a year before marrying while on vacation in Italy. It was the mid-1980s. Bill Harlan's priorities were changing. He'd begun to think seriously about slowing down. His first wines, produced under the Merryvale label (named for the Pacific Union headquarters building in downtown San Francisco), were more business than passion. Harlan Estate is now open to visitors by invitation only. Harlan acquired the place in 1984. In 2005 Harlan added the Napa Valley Reserve to his holdings, a members-only club where oenophiles—paying $150,000 and up to join—blend their own varietals, guided by Harlan's team. In 2000 Harlan and his partner unloaded Pacific Union's lucrative mortgage and brokerage arms to GMAC. The company's remaining assets, farmed out to lieutenants, pretty much run themselves these days, allowing him to focus almost all of his energy on his true calling—his Napa Valley domain.