Somewhere between the second and third bottle of wine tested during the wine tour of the Ceja vineyard, a TOCA member came up to me and said, “This is like no other meeting I attend all year. Thanks!”

One reason TOCA membership keeps growing is because of its most important asset… YOU. As clichéd as it sounds, you are the fuel for our clean-burning power plant. Our executive director, Den Gardner, has a wrap-up of the Napa meeting elsewhere in this missive, but one thing Den won’t be able to convey is the positive spirit of the gathering. If it was your first meeting or your 17th, your contribution was invaluable.

With apologies to Tommy James and the Shondells . . .

Come on everyone we gotta get together now
Oh yeah, love's the only thing that matters anyhow
And the beauty of TOCA, is we only can survive
If we love one another
Oh yeah yesterday my friends were traveling out to NAPA now
Oh yeah listen now we had a blast and learned somehow
That we ain't gonna fight, only we’ve got the right
To decide who's to live and sigh
They gave us sweet cherry wine, so very fine
Drink it right down, pass it all around
So stimulating, so inTOCAsating
Sweet cherry wine, to open your mind
And everybody's gonna feel so fine
Drinking sweet cherry wine

Watch the meeting turn to dust and go away
Oh Lord, you know that TOCA really is the only way
And the old masquerade is Larry and Bill in a parade
Singing Dylan through the ruins of time
To save us, TOCA gave us, sweet cherry wine
Sweet cherry wine, so very fine
Drink it right down, pass it all around
So stimulating, so inTOCAsating
Sweet cherry wine
Drink you TOCAites
Trust in one another, yeah, yeah
They gave us sweet cherry wine, sweet cherry wine
Drink it right down, pass it all around
TOCA knows the cup is running over now with
Sweet cherry wine, oh so fine!

Members of the Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association found “Sweet Cherry Wine” as the perfect metaphor of choice to describe a trip to the NAPA Valley for the 2006 annual meeting in early May.