Article and photo by Janene Roberts (Wine Girl)
“You’re a romantic,” Leon Santoro tells me as I sit across from him in his office at Orfila Winery in Escondido.
“It takes one to know one,” I respond. He smiles and says, “These other people, they’re just about the money.”
Leon starts telling me stories and there are a lot of them. He takes me with him on his life’s trails as he traces his index finger along a map from Italy to New York to Napa Valley and finally to San Diego. He tells me he was learning his winemaking skills in areas that weren’t known for their wines until after he had already left. “You know,” Leon’s saying, “I’m not going to be around forever. You’re going to have to tell this winery’s stories.”
“Oh stop it,” I say.
“No, it’s true.”
Little did I know these were words of a dying man. On Thursday, January 22, 2009, Leon Santoro the award winning winemaker at Orfila Winery died at the age of 58 while awaiting a lung transplant. I was shocked, as most people that did business with him were.
“You know we all went back to Italy last summer,” his brother Paul Santoro is telling me after Leon’s funeral at the table where they have pictures of Leon and Paul and their family in Italy. “Our dad died just one month before on the same day, “he continues. “Leon was still doing business with his Blackberry in the hospital.”
“You’ve had a lot of losses,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
I tried not to cry when the contemporary singers at Grace Lutheran Church sang Amazing Grace, but my efforts didn’t work. I wasn’t the only one there with tears in my eyes. Leon affected a lot of lives with his big heart. The church had to set up folding chairs in the back of the chapel to seat all the people that were there for him. There were people from his son’s soccer team, from the church and the wine community.
Leon leaves behind a wife, and a young son and daughter. He also leaves behind a huge hole in the San Diego winemaking scene.
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