Wine country calls for Hall

WASILLA — Nancy Hall still has a year left in her term as a Wasilla city councilwoman, but said she has to say goodbye.

“In the spring of ‘09, my husband and I were visiting Chile and Peru and I came back up from Lima and he stayed on and I got one of those phone calls that said, ‘Honey, I bought a vineyard.’”

Wait. What?

“My husband went down in March [and] he’s been down there since,” Hall said, adding with a laugh, “In order to stay married and see my husband once in a while, I have decided to join him in Argentina.”

OK.

Hall said the grapes grown on the vineyard are sold to wineries. They’re red-wine grapes, which is somewhat ironic because she can’t drink the stuff. It gives her a headache.

Hall and her husband have made friends down there. It’s high desert country and there is a strong American expatriate community. Both she and her husband have retired once and are retiring again. They plan to be snowbirds, summering in Mat-Su and wintering in Argentina.

Of all the options one has for retirement, why a vineyard? Hall answered with a joke.

“My husband went to school in Berkeley and spent many weekends in the ‘70s up there in the Napa Valley,” she said. “I think he’s always wanted to go back to his childhood.”

And it’s not as if she’ll be spending her retirement picking grapes.

“We have people who manage it and work the vineyard; we don’t have to physically get out and do it,” she said.

Hall received a report from her husband the other day saying he’d been out trimming vines. He got to the end of a row and felt accomplished — until he surveyed the rest of the field.

“Only 286 more to go,” Hall recalled her husband’s quote.

Hall is also leaving her post as head of the Mat-Su office of the American Red Cross of Alaska. Her final day is today.

“I don’t mind retiring from work, but I really will miss city council,” she said.

She will also miss her work on various chambers of commerce and with the borough’s local emergency planning commission.

“For someone that’s been here for eight years, I’ve been pretty involved,” she said.

But Mat-Su hasn’t seen the last of the Halls, she said.

“We’re going to maintain our home,” she said. “Hopefully, the fish will come back next year.”

City council is set to accept Hall’s resignation at a special meeting tonight. The council will likely put the position on the Oct. 5 ballot and appoint someone to fill the seat until then.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.