But we’ll settle for people like Bryan Del Bondio.

Del Bondio, general manager of Markham Vineyards, is a wine man from a wine family. Unlike most of his counterparts in the Napa wine business, Del Bondio is very much a hometown boy.

His grandparents emigrated from Italy to the San Francisco area sometime around the turn of the century and made it to Napa in 1902. His father worked at the historic Inglenook winery for 46 years, “making everything work,” his son said. His mom also worked at the winery, running the office there, but her career spanned “only” 40 years, because she took time off to raise her children.

As a child, Del Bondio recalls riding his bike down Highway 29, now the very developed, very congested main artery through Napa wine country. “There weren’t any traffic lights,” he said.

Appropriate, then, that upon his graduation from the University of California in Davis, Del Bondio latched on with a winery whose roots extended farther back than even his family’s. At 22, he was hired by Bruce Markham to manage Markham Vineyards, which traces its winery to 1874, when Frenchman Jean Laurent gave up on finding gold in the northern California’s rivers and settled down to make wine.

Today, the 50-year-old Del Bondio spends 80 to 90 days a year on the road, promoting Markham’s wines, and his travels led him to Ohio’s Miami Valley last weekend for a well-attended dinner at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and a Saturday afternoon drop-in tasting at Arrow Wine’s Kettering store. Ohio, Del Bondio said, is a top-10 state for Markham’s sales, so we’ll likely see him swing through these parts again.

Unlike many of the winery’s neighbors, Markham’s bread-and-butter is not the chardonnay-cabernet duo, although it makes both varietals. Sauvignon Blanc is its strongest-selling white wine, and merlot has dominated its red-wine sales.

And indeed, the Markham 2003 Sauvignon Blanc is simply delicious, and a relative bargain at $12.99, given the wine’s pricey Napa zip code. The wine strikes just the right balance between the extremes of this varietal: the grapefruit-and-faintly-ammonia-scented New Zealand style, and the oak-infused, ripe California chardonnay-wannabees. The Markham sauvignon is crisp and refreshing, and it works well before dinner or with lighter late-summer fare.

The 2001 merlot ($23.99) contains 15 percent cabernet sauvignon and 5 percent cabernet franc, a blend that shows up in the flavors. It’s not one of those too-soft merlots, but is in fact a concentrated dry red with big flavors built for grilled meats or other hearty fare.

Good wines with a dollop of history on top. I bet the previous generations are smiling upon Bryan Del Bondio.

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