WHAT do you get when you mix nine exquisite wines and a top winemaker from the Napa Valley with a local group of wine "connoisseurs"? Answer: One unforgettable evening!

Michael Robinson, of Burrows Lightbourn, this week organised the "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? event at Fourways Inn hosted by California winemaster Ed Sbragia.

Senior vice-president at Beringer Vineyards, Mr. Sbragia has been responsible for many great wines in his 31-year career at Napa Valley's Beringer Vineyards, has won countless awards — including The Chronicle Winemaker of the Year in 2001 — and has bottled Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays that have been ranked No. 1 in the world.

However, his deepest roots lie on the Sonoma side of Wine Country, in Healdsburg, California, where his late father Gino grew grapes and made wine and where the young Mr. Sbragia helped tend grapes until he left school.

It was here, he said, that he learned about wine from his father and even after going on to produce some of Napa's more monumental wines over the past three decades, Mr. Sbragia still has a thing for Sonoma County wines.

So much so, that he launched Sbragia Family Vineyards in 2002, a side project to make wines from both his native and adopted "terroir".

In fact, he mulled over the idea of leaving Beringer to do it, but the company convinced him to stay, allowing him to make the wine at Beringer's facility and even helped him market his brand.

"I've always had one foot in Sonoma and the other in Napa," he says. "Both areas mean a lot to me emotionally. I'm more attached to Dry Creek because it's where I grew up and where I raised my kids, but the wines that I've made at Beringer are like children to me, so Napa is also a very special place to me personally."

Rather than trying out a different style from Beringer, a big part of the appeal of doing his own label, Mr. Sbragia said, was working with his family, including his son Adam.

Adam has logged time in the cellars of St. Clement and Chateau Souverain, and has been helping out around harvest and with the blends and will take on a larger role as the label grows.

In the future the family hope to build their own winery on the Home Ranch.

We asked the vintner: "What is your passion and what drives you in the winemaking business?"

With a smile, Mr. Sbragia replied that for him it was finding something he enjoyed doing.

"Being able to watch the process from where you plant the fruit and grow grapes to the point where it sits on the table and you watch someone's response when they taste it and hopefully smile. You get accolades for it before you die, it's a great way to make a living."

He said making wines under his family name with family vineyards was like coming home, and in a way it paid tribute to his father, who died in 1995.

"My father wanted to do this in the '30s, and then the depression hit. It is my father's legacy to me and my children. I love this land and making wine from it, and bottling it under the family name affirms all the work my father did for me. It's something I had to do to say thank you to him," he said with obvious emotion.

As for his career and how it all started, Mr. Sbragia explained that he left the family ranch to earn a chemistry degree at UC Davis. After adding an enology degree at Fresno State and working at what he termed, with a laugh, as "a small family winery" — he is, in fact, referring to E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto — the 28-year-old Mr. Sbragia returned to the Napa Valley and joined Beringer as winemaker during its centenary year in 1976.

His mentor at Beringer was legendary chief winemaker Myron Nightingale and when Mr. Nightingale retired in 1984, Mr. Sbragia became winemaker and the rest, as they say, is history.

A very likeable, down-to-earth guy, Mr. Sbragia is true to his goal of allowing the grape to dictate the winemaking and said without the best fruit, he could never make the best wine.

This is where he gives credit to his colleague at Beringer, Bob Steinhauer, who oversees vineyard operations. The two men are considered the keystone to Beringer's Private Reserve program.

As for Beringer Vineyards, it is the oldest continuously operating winery in the Napa Valley and with its present use of state-of-the-art technology applied to age-old traditions, Beringer wines continue to reflect a single-minded dedication to the making of memorable wines from great Napa Valley vineyards.

The entire range of Beringer wines, including the rare 1995 Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, is distributed by Burrows Lightbourn.

The "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" — the first such event this year — was held earlier this week at Fourways Inn.

Organiser Mr. Robinson said following the success of this weeks' event, he and his wife Gay hoped to host more in the near future and would feature wine personalities from across the globe.