What do you get when you cross the first Asian woman winemaker in Napa with a pediatric surgeon? Add in a dash of marketing professor, world traveler and a healthy dose of humanitarian? Well, you get Dr. Su Hua Newton, a smart, attractive, sassy, intellectually stimulating woman with a minimalist approach to winemaking — which just happens to be her third or fourth career. Newton was just a child when her parents sent her to England at the beginning of the Chinese countercultural revolution. She landed in the care of a politically connected British couple who insisted that Newton study math and science as a way to bridge the gap between her native Chinese language and English. And study she did. After stints in Paris with her adopted family — where she befriended legendary winemaker Jean-Pierre Moueix — Newton pursued a medical education and eventually became a pediatric surgeon.
She began her transformation into winemaker in 1972 when she met, and later married, British expatriate Peter Newton, then owner of Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga, Calif. They sold Sterling to the Coca-Cola Corp. in 1977 and were looking for something else to do when fate intervened.
