Wish you could move to wine country? These Minnesotans made the leap

I came to Napa Valley with good news for Cindy Pawlcyn. The temperature had been above zero in the Twin Cities a few days prior — it was safe for her to phone home.

"If it's negative, I can't even call," she said. Pawlcyn traded Golden Valley for Napa Valley more than 40 years ago, and the midwinter sunshine envy from her relatives remained very real.

"Now that we've talked about the weather ... " Pawlcyn said, knowing that Minnesotans can't meet up in the world and not talk about the temperature back home. But we were here to talk food and wine, two of the things Napa Valley does best.

Pawlcyn would know. She decamped for San Francisco as a young chef, and in 1983, she established one of Napa Valley's first foodie destinations, Mustards Grill.

Four decades later, she was sitting at a tree-slab table in the dining room of a Victorian just off the main drag of St. Helena, surrounded by light jazz and wine bottles. We were in the handsome tasting salon at Lang & Reed, a wine company founded by her friend John Skupny, another Minnesotan.

That their paths would cross here was both accidental and endearing. Between now and their meeting on the bus to elementary school was her pathbreaking culinary career and his achievements as a respected maker of cabernet franc and chenin blanc. Now, in one of Napa Valley's most fetching small towns, they live two blocks apart.

A fruitful landing spot

With blossoming magnolia trees, towns that ooze charm and some of the finest food and wine in the country, it's easy to understand why some Minnesotans left home to make a life in Napa. The area has been fruitful for many of those who took the plunge. In the culinary world, Pawlcyn is legendary. In wine, almost two dozen Napa Valley wineries have Minnesota connections, including one of the most famous, Robert Mondavi, who was a Virginia, Minn., native.

"When you want to make wine, where do you go?" said Adam McClary, a Minnesotan who moved to Napa to learn winemaking in 2008 with his business partner Gabrielle Shaffer. Together, they launched Gamling & McDuck, an edgy brand that lines the walls of its downtown Napa tasting room with comic strips, and puts McClary's cat drawings on bottles of rose.

McClary and Shaffer met in Minneapolis in 2006. He had been a bartender and general manager at restaurants such as the Craftsman and Origami, and she worked in wine distribution. They both loved wine, and were inspired on a trip to France's Loire Valley to learn the trade. Eight months after a "kitchen table conversation" about their future, they enrolled in a winemaking program at University of California, Davis, and made the move.

"It seems very exotic, but it's not," he said. "We showed up with $1,200 in our bank account and a maybe on a rental house." By the end of their first year, they had produced 200 cases of wine. It took another 10 years to open a tasting room.

"Napa is incredibly, incredibly impressive, but it was never our style," said McClary, who has a tattoo on his arm of the state of Minnesota with a mouth saying "MN nice."

"We used to get the question of why not somewhere else. This is where all the cooperages are. This is where all the cork places are. This is where all the kids that go to school come and work for some incredible house," McClary said. "At the end of the day, it's because Napa is Napa."

The valley's wine credentials convinced a young study abroad student to make the move, too.

"It doesn't get old," said Kate Mallam, as she took in the view from her workplace. A Maple Grove native, she works on the hospitality team for Porter Family Vineyards, another Minnesotan-owned winery. (The founders are retirees from Rochester.)

While a student at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., Mallam spent a semester studying in Cannes, France.

"I was 20, so it was cool to drink legally," she said. "I got back to Minnesota and was like, where's my wine?" In 2006, she drove out to Napa and found her first job in a wine bar as a server. On a staff of 10, three were from her home state.

A friendship for the ages

That many Minnesota expats know one another here is a given, and friendship goes a long way. But the longevity of Pawlcyn and Skupny's friendship is unmatched. Once the weather talk ends, the reminiscing begins, as it did when I visited Lang & Reed a few months back. They traded stories about Golden Valley High School, playing in Theodore Wirth Park, canoeing in Minneapolis' lakes and troublemaking at a 10th-grade dance.

Pawlcyn's restaurant, on the side of the St. Helena Highway, resides in the Napa long-timers' club alongside icons like the original French Laundry, which opened in 1978 and inspired Pawlcyn to become a restaurateur, and Meadowood, where she was the opening chef.

But Mustards is a different beast, with refined homestyle cooking, checkerboard floors and quirky contemporary art. Both locals and travelers still seek it out for Pawlcyn's beloved sweet-and-sour pork chop and onion strings, and a drinks menu boasting "way too many wines." Tell anyone in Napa Valley that you're planning to eat there, as I did, and they'll respond with affection.

It's a fixture here, as is the formidable Pawlcyn, who retains her Minnesotan humility when discussing what an absolute powerhouse she was to forge the career she did when she did.

"Everyone told me that I couldn't be a chef. I was too little and I was a woman," she said. But she'd read a magazine profile of French Laundry co-founder Sally Schmitt and was convinced there was a place for her in fine dining. (Schmitt, who died in March at age 90, became a mentor.)

After studying business at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Pawlcyn worked in kitchens in Chicago until a friend persuaded her to move to San Francisco for a job as a sous chef. By 1980, she'd been courted to work at Meadowood, a groundbreaking farm-to-table restaurant in Napa Valley.

In 1983, she took over a spot that had previously been a cheese place, a bistro and a dive bar for a veterans' home and turned it into the venerable Mustards Grill. It was the first of a dozen enterprises Pawlcyn opened over the years, and by far her most recognized. Julia Child dined at Mustards. A million of those pork chops have been sold.

"It's really interesting how your restaurant, when you live for that long, has memories for people."

One of the restaurant's regulars is Skupny, a wine marketer and consultant who moved to Napa Valley around the same time as Pawlcyn, and launched the now-acclaimed Lang & Reed with his wife, Tracey, in 1993.

"From the first year we were here, I made homemade wine, and it was some pretty dreadful stuff," Skupny said. "Eventually I kind of got the grip, having worked with so many wineries. Even though there's a whole lot of mystery to all this, it's easier to make it than to sell it."

But one place it always sells is at Mustards Grill. On the rotating list of wines by the glass, the only one with a permanent spot is a delicious cabernet franc from Lang & Reed.

"People have said, 'Skupny's been on there a long time,' " Pawlcyn said. "Yup, I've known him a long time."

Gamling & McDuck: Adam McClary and Gabrielle Shaffer moved from Minneapolis to Napa in 2008 to study winemaking and bottled their first wines shortly after that. The tasting room came along in 2018. gamlingandmcduck.com

Lang & Reed: Minnesota native John Skupny and his wife, Tracey, were sommeliers before moving to California in 1983. They started the winery in 1993, wanting to craft wines that are "both expressive and enjoyable to drink." Named after their two sons, it's family-owned and -operated. langandreed.com

Porter Family Vineyards: Tom and Beverly Porter lived in Rochester, where Tom was a longtime engineer, before moving to Napa and founding the winery in 2005. Their business is a family affair, too; their children also work at the vineyard. porterfamilyvineyards.com

Mustards Grill: Named for the wild mustard flowers that bloom each spring, Cindy Pawlcyn opened her groundbreaking restaurant in 1983 along with an organic garden that helps feed her creativity and her customers. mustardsgrill.com