Latest news with #Casto
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
A Subtle Change Is Reshaping Winemaking In Napa Valley
Ehlers Estate in St. Helena, Napa Valley, California. Alexander Rubin Photography In a converted 19th-century stone barn in northern Napa Valley, a white wine is taking shape that upends more than it preserves. It is 87% sauvignon blanc, 13% sémillon, fermented in concrete, aged 14 months on lees and filtered for stability. Its structure is saline, its edges softened by time and skin contact. It is labeled simply: Sylviane Estate Blanc. 'I almost never filter anything, including white wines,' says Adam Casto during a tasting session at Ehlers Estate in St. Helena, California. 'But I didn't want the first white wine release to have any risk of re-fermentation in the bottle. So I filtered this one.' Casto joined Ehlers Estate as head winemaker in 2023 and this upcoming harvest will be his third with the winery. He was hired not to maintain the house style, but to rebuild it. His approach favors slow fermentation, concrete vessels and extended lees aging. 'The sémillon brings a salty, sea spray character, especially from the crystal lees aging,' he says. 'The concrete adds a little more body.' The Sylviane is pressed after 24 hours of skin contact. It rests in a mix of neutral and new French oak, but not to impart flavor. 'That contact, combined with the concrete, helps turn the phenolic bitterness into a kind of structure,' Casto explains. The result is not a white wine modeled after tradition but something else: an engineered response to site and conditions. 'This was very much inspired by white wines I tasted in Hungary in 2019,' he says. 'They paired with food in a way that reminded me of red wines—so structured, so food-friendly.' This technical approach is now visible across the winery's small portfolio. The 2022 Portrait—a red blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot—was fermented in stainless steel and aged 21 months in French oak. So was the 2022 cabernet franc. But labeling now receives less attention than how each wine is built. Casto has begun stripping varietal names from the front of bottles, starting with cabernet franc. 'It's like killing off a main character in a story,' he says. 'It opens up new possibilities.' This philosophy now guides not only how the wines are made but how they are named and presented. The new flagship red, for instance, was initially named 'La Lande,' in honor of the president of the Leducq Foundation, which owns the estate. That plan was abandoned when the team learned the name was under copyright in Spain. They have since planned to rename the wine 'Perdrix,' the French term for partridge. It is traditionally associated with wine through the term 'œil de perdrix,' used to describe the pale, coppery hue of certain rosés. The word also evokes Burgundian traditions, lending a classic tone to wine naming. Perdrix blends cabernet franc and merlot, but its composition is only part of the point. The wine is designed to represent the entire estate, not a single variety. 'The wine becomes the portrait of the estate,' Casto says. 'Eventually, I'd love for this to be our flagship wine—our benchmark.' Future vineyard blocks will be planted with this in mind. Casto is training 200 vines on a high-wire system meant to handle rising temperatures. Half the estate—roughly 21 acres—is under evaluation for replanting. 'The idea is to plant a block with the intention that it will always be a blend,' he says. 'The composition of the blend will reflect the distribution of cultivars planted. And that can shift over time.' The pressures shaping Casto's work are not only philosophical. In 2024, California's wine grape harvest fell to its lowest volume in two decades, with a total crush of just 2.8 million tons—a 23% drop from the previous year. Napa Valley alone saw nearly 40 days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the growing season, a fourfold increase over 2023. At the same time, expectations for sustainability have become standard. More than 90% of California's wine now comes from Certified California Sustainable wineries, and over 65% of the state's vineyard acreage is certified under environmental programs. For Casto, these factors are inseparable from how wine is made. 'It has to work on multiple levels,' he says. 'It can't just solve one problem.' Quarterly reports will document the process. Soil pits, trellising design, canopy orientation and clonal selection will be shared with club members. 'My opinions will change. My mistakes will accumulate,' he says. 'That's part of it.' At Ehlers, he produces just 100 cases of Perdrix right now. But it serves as a test model. The smaller size offers control. It allows for extended aging, regular evaluation and immediate course correction. It avoids the forced consistency required in wines that must be replicated at scale. 'We need to do more, do it faster, and do it better,' Casto says. The goal is not rarity. It is refinement. Casto says he doesn't view winemaking as a search for perfection or permanence. Instead, it is process-driven, dependent on restraint, awareness and time. 'When someone asks why I take photos, I say, because I'm afraid I won't see it otherwise,' he says. 'That's how I feel about winemaking too.'
North Wales Chronicle
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Chronicle
Doctor Who superfan's homemade Daleks bring joy and support to UK charities
Mark Casto is 67 and retired, but has had an eclectic mix of jobs including as a cartoonist, chef, graphic designer and Baptist minister. Inspired by his daughter Amy who made a gingerbread version of the popular Doctor Who villain, Mr Casto now spends his days creating life-sized Dalek replicas to bring joy and publicity to charities supporting disabled and homeless people. 'A lot of people around here know me as the Dalek man,' Mr Casto, who lives in Ditchingham, Norfolk, told the PA news agency. 'I use them to raise money for a charity or help support a good cause. 'It's good to be able to take something that hates the whole human race and wants to destroy planet Earth, and turn it into a cause for something good.' He made his first Dalek roughly around the time the Covid pandemic began, which he called Dalek DL to pay homage to its head being made from a dustbin lid, which has since been deconstructed and revamped as Dalek Ernie. Since then, he has constructed five more, the majority of which stay in a room in his house when not entertaining people, and have been given names including Dalek Rad, Dalek Bert and Dalek Blisteron. They have taken Mr Casto between six to seven months to piece together and are roughly six feet high and four feet wide. He has used recycled timber and other items like Christmas baubles to create the sensor globes and knitting needles for the weapons, with materials including fibreglass, plywood and metal being welded together to create the support frames for the Daleks. Mr Casto has cited the website Project Dalek as being his go-to source for information on how to build the Doctor Who villains. So far, the Daleks have helped generate publicity for the work done by charities including Emmaus, which aims to end homelessness, and Waveney Enterprises, which provides a space for people with learning disabilities to express themselves through crafting and life skills, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. 'I work with a lot of people at Waveney Enterprises that have Down's syndrome and are very big Dr Who fans, and I started working there right after Covid struck,' Mr Casto said. 'I suggested we have a project where we create a Dalek of our own and it involved carpentry and electronics, and we recently completed that. 'It was a pleasure making Dalek Doom with them and they were really excited and all had a go using the voice modulator to do the Dalek voice, and it now lives in (the charity's) craft workshop in Beccles.' Two of the Daleks have mobility scooters inside them, so Mr Casto can often be seen whizzing around his local area disguised as his villainous alter-ego, which has led to some amusing interactions. 'I often get people walking their dogs past me and stay still like I'm a prop, and I wait until they come a bit closer and if the dog seems okay, one of my favourite lines to say in the Dalek voice is 'what is this creature on the lead?'' he said. 'If they say that's their dog, I then say: 'I was not talking to you'.' He also met Barbara Loft, who starred in Doctor Who television story The Mind Robber in her youth. 'One day, when I was in Dalek Rad, this lady came out of her cottage and looked at me and said: 'oh, a Dalek how random' and I told her: 'Daleks are not random, you will be exterminated',' Mr Casto explained. 'She came over and told me she acted alongside Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who in 1968. 'What were the chances of that? That was a highlight.' Despite thinking the Daleks were 'creepy' when he first saw them on his TV as a child in the 1960s, he said they had the biggest influence on him. 'When the Daleks first appeared on TV, they were so strange – we'd never really seen anything quite like them before,' he said. 'I was obsessed with them and when I got older, I wanted to build them and eventually had the skills and time to do it. 'They've changed a lot during the years as well and they're still so popular after so long, and it just goes to show that, like Spiderman and Batman, they've just got something special about them.' The former graphic designer said he has no plans to make any further Daleks – instead those he already has will be put to good use at events and organisations across the country. Mr Casto's Daleks are preparing for a busy summer, as two of them will be at a children's event at Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Doctor Who superfan's homemade Daleks bring joy and support to UK charities
A Doctor Who superfan who creates homemade Daleks to support charities said he has turned a character which 'wants to destroy planet Earth' into a 'cause for something good'. Mark Casto is 67 and retired, but has had an eclectic mix of jobs including as a cartoonist, chef, graphic designer and Baptist minister. Inspired by his daughter Amy who made a gingerbread version of the popular Doctor Who villain, Mr Casto now spends his days creating life-sized Dalek replicas to bring joy and publicity to charities supporting disabled and homeless people. 'A lot of people around here know me as the Dalek man,' Mr Casto, who lives in Ditchingham, Norfolk, told the PA news agency. 'I use them to raise money for a charity or help support a good cause. 'It's good to be able to take something that hates the whole human race and wants to destroy planet Earth, and turn it into a cause for something good.' He made his first Dalek roughly around the time the Covid pandemic began, which he called Dalek DL to pay homage to its head being made from a dustbin lid, which has since been deconstructed and revamped as Dalek Ernie. Since then, he has constructed five more, the majority of which stay in a room in his house when not entertaining people, and have been given names including Dalek Rad, Dalek Bert and Dalek Blisteron. They have taken Mr Casto between six to seven months to piece together and are roughly six feet high and four feet wide. He has used recycled timber and other items like Christmas baubles to create the sensor globes and knitting needles for the weapons, with materials including fibreglass, plywood and metal being welded together to create the support frames for the Daleks. Mr Casto has cited the website Project Dalek as being his go-to source for information on how to build the Doctor Who villains. So far, the Daleks have helped generate publicity for the work done by charities including Emmaus, which aims to end homelessness, and Waveney Enterprises, which provides a space for people with learning disabilities to express themselves through crafting and life skills, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. 'I work with a lot of people at Waveney Enterprises that have Down's syndrome and are very big Dr Who fans, and I started working there right after Covid struck,' Mr Casto said. 'I suggested we have a project where we create a Dalek of our own and it involved carpentry and electronics, and we recently completed that. 'It was a pleasure making Dalek Doom with them and they were really excited and all had a go using the voice modulator to do the Dalek voice, and it now lives in (the charity's) craft workshop in Beccles.' Two of the Daleks have mobility scooters inside them, so Mr Casto can often be seen whizzing around his local area disguised as his villainous alter-ego, which has led to some amusing interactions. 'I often get people walking their dogs past me and stay still like I'm a prop, and I wait until they come a bit closer and if the dog seems okay, one of my favourite lines to say in the Dalek voice is 'what is this creature on the lead?'' he said. 'If they say that's their dog, I then say: 'I was not talking to you'.' He also met Barbara Loft, who starred in Doctor Who television story The Mind Robber in her youth. 'One day, when I was in Dalek Rad, this lady came out of her cottage and looked at me and said: 'oh, a Dalek how random' and I told her: 'Daleks are not random, you will be exterminated',' Mr Casto explained. 'She came over and told me she acted alongside Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who in 1968. 'What were the chances of that? That was a highlight.' Despite thinking the Daleks were 'creepy' when he first saw them on his TV as a child in the 1960s, he said they had the biggest influence on him. 'When the Daleks first appeared on TV, they were so strange – we'd never really seen anything quite like them before,' he said. 'I was obsessed with them and when I got older, I wanted to build them and eventually had the skills and time to do it. 'They've changed a lot during the years as well and they're still so popular after so long, and it just goes to show that, like Spiderman and Batman, they've just got something special about them.' The former graphic designer said he has no plans to make any further Daleks – instead those he already has will be put to good use at events and organisations across the country. Mr Casto's Daleks are preparing for a busy summer, as two of them will be at a children's event at Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July.
Glasgow Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Doctor Who superfan's homemade Daleks bring joy and support to UK charities
Mark Casto is 67 and retired, but has had an eclectic mix of jobs including as a cartoonist, chef, graphic designer and Baptist minister. Inspired by his daughter Amy who made a gingerbread version of the popular Doctor Who villain, Mr Casto now spends his days creating life-sized Dalek replicas to bring joy and publicity to charities supporting disabled and homeless people. Mark Casto with Dalek Ernie, which he made (Mark Casto/PA) 'A lot of people around here know me as the Dalek man,' Mr Casto, who lives in Ditchingham, Norfolk, told the PA news agency. 'I use them to raise money for a charity or help support a good cause. 'It's good to be able to take something that hates the whole human race and wants to destroy planet Earth, and turn it into a cause for something good.' He made his first Dalek roughly around the time the Covid pandemic began, which he called Dalek DL to pay homage to its head being made from a dustbin lid, which has since been deconstructed and revamped as Dalek Ernie. Dalek Ernie taking a look at the treats on offer in a shop in Ditchingham (Mark Casto/PA) Since then, he has constructed five more, the majority of which stay in a room in his house when not entertaining people, and have been given names including Dalek Rad, Dalek Bert and Dalek Blisteron. They have taken Mr Casto between six to seven months to piece together and are roughly six feet high and four feet wide. He has used recycled timber and other items like Christmas baubles to create the sensor globes and knitting needles for the weapons, with materials including fibreglass, plywood and metal being welded together to create the support frames for the Daleks. Mr Casto has cited the website Project Dalek as being his go-to source for information on how to build the Doctor Who villains. Some of Mr Casto's Daleks (Mark Casto/PA) So far, the Daleks have helped generate publicity for the work done by charities including Emmaus, which aims to end homelessness, and Waveney Enterprises, which provides a space for people with learning disabilities to express themselves through crafting and life skills, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. 'I work with a lot of people at Waveney Enterprises that have Down's syndrome and are very big Dr Who fans, and I started working there right after Covid struck,' Mr Casto said. 'I suggested we have a project where we create a Dalek of our own and it involved carpentry and electronics, and we recently completed that. 'It was a pleasure making Dalek Doom with them and they were really excited and all had a go using the voice modulator to do the Dalek voice, and it now lives in (the charity's) craft workshop in Beccles.' Members of Waveney Enterprises with Dalek Doom (Mark Casto/PA) Two of the Daleks have mobility scooters inside them, so Mr Casto can often be seen whizzing around his local area disguised as his villainous alter-ego, which has led to some amusing interactions. 'I often get people walking their dogs past me and stay still like I'm a prop, and I wait until they come a bit closer and if the dog seems okay, one of my favourite lines to say in the Dalek voice is 'what is this creature on the lead?'' he said. 'If they say that's their dog, I then say: 'I was not talking to you'.' He also met Barbara Loft, who starred in Doctor Who television story The Mind Robber in her youth. Barbara Loft with some of Mr Casto's Daleks (Mark Casto/PA) 'One day, when I was in Dalek Rad, this lady came out of her cottage and looked at me and said: 'oh, a Dalek how random' and I told her: 'Daleks are not random, you will be exterminated',' Mr Casto explained. 'She came over and told me she acted alongside Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who in 1968. 'What were the chances of that? That was a highlight.' Despite thinking the Daleks were 'creepy' when he first saw them on his TV as a child in the 1960s, he said they had the biggest influence on him. 'When the Daleks first appeared on TV, they were so strange – we'd never really seen anything quite like them before,' he said. Mr Casto preparing to get inside Dalek Blisteron (Mark Casto/PA) 'I was obsessed with them and when I got older, I wanted to build them and eventually had the skills and time to do it. 'They've changed a lot during the years as well and they're still so popular after so long, and it just goes to show that, like Spiderman and Batman, they've just got something special about them.' The former graphic designer said he has no plans to make any further Daleks – instead those he already has will be put to good use at events and organisations across the country. Mr Casto's Daleks are preparing for a busy summer, as two of them will be at a children's event at Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July.
Leader Live
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Doctor Who superfan's homemade Daleks bring joy and support to UK charities
Mark Casto is 67 and retired, but has had an eclectic mix of jobs including as a cartoonist, chef, graphic designer and Baptist minister. Inspired by his daughter Amy who made a gingerbread version of the popular Doctor Who villain, Mr Casto now spends his days creating life-sized Dalek replicas to bring joy and publicity to charities supporting disabled and homeless people. 'A lot of people around here know me as the Dalek man,' Mr Casto, who lives in Ditchingham, Norfolk, told the PA news agency. 'I use them to raise money for a charity or help support a good cause. 'It's good to be able to take something that hates the whole human race and wants to destroy planet Earth, and turn it into a cause for something good.' He made his first Dalek roughly around the time the Covid pandemic began, which he called Dalek DL to pay homage to its head being made from a dustbin lid, which has since been deconstructed and revamped as Dalek Ernie. Since then, he has constructed five more, the majority of which stay in a room in his house when not entertaining people, and have been given names including Dalek Rad, Dalek Bert and Dalek Blisteron. They have taken Mr Casto between six to seven months to piece together and are roughly six feet high and four feet wide. He has used recycled timber and other items like Christmas baubles to create the sensor globes and knitting needles for the weapons, with materials including fibreglass, plywood and metal being welded together to create the support frames for the Daleks. Mr Casto has cited the website Project Dalek as being his go-to source for information on how to build the Doctor Who villains. So far, the Daleks have helped generate publicity for the work done by charities including Emmaus, which aims to end homelessness, and Waveney Enterprises, which provides a space for people with learning disabilities to express themselves through crafting and life skills, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. 'I work with a lot of people at Waveney Enterprises that have Down's syndrome and are very big Dr Who fans, and I started working there right after Covid struck,' Mr Casto said. 'I suggested we have a project where we create a Dalek of our own and it involved carpentry and electronics, and we recently completed that. 'It was a pleasure making Dalek Doom with them and they were really excited and all had a go using the voice modulator to do the Dalek voice, and it now lives in (the charity's) craft workshop in Beccles.' Two of the Daleks have mobility scooters inside them, so Mr Casto can often be seen whizzing around his local area disguised as his villainous alter-ego, which has led to some amusing interactions. 'I often get people walking their dogs past me and stay still like I'm a prop, and I wait until they come a bit closer and if the dog seems okay, one of my favourite lines to say in the Dalek voice is 'what is this creature on the lead?'' he said. 'If they say that's their dog, I then say: 'I was not talking to you'.' He also met Barbara Loft, who starred in Doctor Who television story The Mind Robber in her youth. 'One day, when I was in Dalek Rad, this lady came out of her cottage and looked at me and said: 'oh, a Dalek how random' and I told her: 'Daleks are not random, you will be exterminated',' Mr Casto explained. 'She came over and told me she acted alongside Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who in 1968. 'What were the chances of that? That was a highlight.' Despite thinking the Daleks were 'creepy' when he first saw them on his TV as a child in the 1960s, he said they had the biggest influence on him. 'When the Daleks first appeared on TV, they were so strange – we'd never really seen anything quite like them before,' he said. 'I was obsessed with them and when I got older, I wanted to build them and eventually had the skills and time to do it. 'They've changed a lot during the years as well and they're still so popular after so long, and it just goes to show that, like Spiderman and Batman, they've just got something special about them.' The former graphic designer said he has no plans to make any further Daleks – instead those he already has will be put to good use at events and organisations across the country. Mr Casto's Daleks are preparing for a busy summer, as two of them will be at a children's event at Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July.
