By Jeff Cox

It all started with a simple toast. When social activist and former television reporter Heidi Kühn raised her glass before the landmine-removal activists gathered at her San Rafael, California, home, she planted the seed of an idea that would soon become a global humanitarian effort. A glass of wine in hand, she declared, "That the world can go from mines—to vines."

The reception included some of the demining movement's leading lights: Jerry White, co-founder and executive director of the Landmine Survivors Network (White lost part of his right leg from a mine explosion in Israel); U.S. Army General Robert Gard; Mary Wareham, director of the Vietnam Veteran's of America Foundation, and activist Caleb Rossiter. Kühn now considers the toast "an epiphany," the culmination of several seemingly unrelated aspects of her life that had finally come together.

There had been moments of living and working in California wine country that had struck a chord deep within her. When she interviewed Francis Ford Coppola, filmmaker cum vintner, for CNN, she had been moved by his response to the question of what makes for fine wine. He reached down and picked up a handful of vineyard soil. "That gesture showed respect for the earth, something my grandmother strongly instilled in me," she remembers.

Kühn, a cancer survivor eager to apply her considerable energy to a good cause, had been on the boards of several major non-governmental organizations, such as Freedom from Hunger, through which she came to know people at the New York-based United Nations Association.

So when she got the call to host the reception, there was no question that she would become involved. The issue took on a special resonance for another reason: It had been less than a month since the death of Princess Diana, who had lobbied hard for landmine removal.

Kühn remembered Coppola's handful of rich soil, and had enough Niebaum—Coppola wine delivered for all 100 guests. As she offered her toast, she conceived of blood turning to wine, and rooting out mines—seeds of destruction—and replacing them with vines-seeds of hope. "There was silence in that room," she says, "and I knew that what had rattled off my tongue needed to be brought to reality." So she went to work, cultivating her longtime contacts in the California wine business, including Eric Wente, CEO of Livermore Valley's Wente Vineyards; Tor Kenward, vice president of Napa Valley's Beringer Vineyards; and Robert Mondavi, chairman of the Napa-based Robert Mondavi Family of Wineries. Together they formed the core of what Kühn was to call "Roots of Peace," a nonprofit organization that would prove to be a catalyst for turning mine-infested killing fields into productive vineyards.

Momentum for the Roots of Peace campaign continued to build at the April 1998 International Women's Breakfast, held in San Francisco in honor of Nane Annan, the wife of Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations. Guest speaker Robert Muller, co-founder of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner, rallied the audience with his moving address, promising future support for Roots of Peace.

Kühn's core group of vintners soon grew to include Sonoma County's Judy Jordan of J Winery and Tom Klein of Rodney Strong Vineyards, and Napa Valley's Miljenko (Mike) Grgich (a transplanted Croat) and his daughter, Violet, of Grgich Hills Cellars, among others, who signed on to help by hosting fund-raising events. Soon the Napa Valley Vintners' Association came on board, bringing with it a total of more than 150 wineries.

Backing from the U.N. helped to cement these efforts. The United Nations' Kofi Annan issued this message on October 1, 1999: "The role of Roots of Peace, and the active participation of so many Napa and Sonoma vintners in this noble effort, is a testament to your commitment to making our one earth a place of life and nourishment, and not one of death and destruction.

A month later, Kühn, Jordan, and Violet Grgich were invited by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to attend a dinner in Washington, D.C., honoring 19 public and private partnerships devoted to ridding the world of mines by the year 2010. Soon after, Kühn organized a delegation for an official State Department visit to Croatia in January of 2000.

She returned from Croatia with an enhanced understanding of the problem.

"The Zadar region is called 'Little California' because it's the most beautiful, productive land imaginable," Kühn explains. "The largest apple orchard in Eastern Europe is in Croatia—and it's mined," she continues. "It's the breadbasket of the Balkans—the land of milk and honey. But the beautiful fields lure children into them…"

Kühn recounts a press conference in Dragalic where an elderly woman dressed in a simple black scarf approached, looking into her eyes. "She said the people there are losing patience and are going into their fields despite the mines," she remembers, "because they can't feed their families. One day, her husband was out in the field when she heard a boom. His tractor had run over an anti-tank mine. She looked at me and said she hoped nobody would ever have to do what she had to do—pick up her husband, [who had been] blown to pieces."

In spite of the horrors, the outcome of the delegation's visit exceeded its expectations, Kühn says. As a direct result of the trip, the U.S. government announced an additional contribution of $360,000 to support agricultural demining programs.

Rounding out the private support were the North Face company, which donated $45,000 worth of cold-weather outerwear, and FedEx Corporation, which underwrote the air freight to deliver the clothing. Kühn, Jordan, and Grgich will be in Croatia in May 2000 to witness the first phase of planting demined acres with grapevines.

"Vintners can offer expertise, not only in replanting land to vines, but in the business end, too," Jordan says. "There's no program to date to help the Croatians reclaim their heritage of farming and selling wines once the mines are gone. We can offer that."

Mike Grgich, the Croatian-born winemaker who made a name for himself with his finely crafted Napa Valley Chardonnays, agrees and intends to bring California know-how to the vintners of Croatia, who will be encouraged to grow grapes after their land is demined.

Which varieties might be used to replant mined land in Dragalic? Grgich observes that Dragalic is inland, where "it's mostly planted with white varieties like traminer, chardonnay, riesling, and maybe some sauvignon blanc. On the coast near Zadar and Dubrovnik they plant red varieties like cabernet sauvignon, merlot, babic, and plavac mali." (It's been determined that plavac mali is a relative of zinfandel, which almost certainly originated in Croatia.)

Kühn sees Roots of Peace as just the beginning. "I hope vintners around the world will take the lead in respecting the soil by ridding it of mines," she says. "We're creating a successful model for doing this."

Across from the United Nations headquarters in New York City, Kühn recalls seeing an alcove with steps leading up to the Tudor City apartments.

The stone faces of the alcove are chiseled with an inscription from Isaiah: "They will beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift sword against nation, and they will learn war no more."

"Through Roots of Peace," she says, "we're trying to make that prophecy come true."

Sonoma-based Contributing Editor Jeff Cox is the author of From Vines to Wines and the host of "Grow It!" on the Home & Garden TV Network.

Edited with permission from The Wine News, April/May 2000.