What's Laird Drinking Now?

We've owned our home in Santa Fe since 1989.  We moved here full time from SoCal in the Fall of 2003.  Carollee worked for Logicon until her retirement in June 1999.  I worked for TRW Systems until my retirement in September 2000.  We met while we were both working at Librascope in the early 60s.  We started dating shortly after I turned 21, in 1961.  We drank mostly Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Rhône wines at the beginning.  We were married on 11 April 1964.  When we started dating, she lived in the Los Feliz area.  In 1965 we moved to Torrance CA.  In 1975 we bought our home in the Valmonte area of Palos Verdes Estates CA.  We lived there until we sold it in the Fall of 2003 and moved full time to Santa Fe.

Our wine cellar in SoCal held around 3500 bottles, in a large number of varietals and regions. We kept our wine in Santa Fe in a closet at the bottom of the stairs on the way to the garage, until we got a 450 bottle Vinotheque in the mid-90s.  When we moved here full time, we had a 3300-bottle cellar built by David Spon installed in one side of the garage; giving us just a one car garage.

Eric Stapelman, a principal in Trattoria Nostrani and Shibumi Ramenya, helped me move the wine from Valmonte to Santa Fe, in early 2004.

We have a good life here in Santa Fe, lots of friends, more good restaurants within 15 minutes of our home here, than there were within an hour of our home in SoCal.