“God's country.” David had heard people refer to Howell Mountain as such in the 1980s. Biking through Las Posadas forest over the years, he came to understand. So, when the property he'd been eyeing on Cold Springs Road came up for auction in 2000, he jumped. Later, a parcel higher up the hill, across from the airport. All above the fog line, all on that red Aiken soil. It took him 15 years to develop the property—selectively, meticulously. A vineyard framed by perfectly symmetrical end posts, bordered by roads lain with gravel he'd pulled from the earth as boulders. All surrounded by pine and fir, a forest preserved as wilderness.