Merry Edwards admits she’s never been good at sitting still. “I’m always doing research,” she says. She’s currently conducting experiments on how lower alcohol levels in wines impact aroma and mouthfeel; she’s also partnering with the University of California at Davis and an Israeli company to record vine stress via Wi-Fi–enabled moisture readers implanted in vines. “These things are what keep you interested and moving forward.”

Edwards’ energy and curiosity have left an indelible imprint on the wine industry. Over her 45-year career, her experimentation has led not just to higher quality wines, but safer wines. Even as she steps away from her namesake winery, Edwards hopes to remain engaged in new things.

Last week, Edwards sold the winery and vineyards that she and her husband, Ken Coopersmith, built from the ground up to France’s Louis Roederer Champagne house. “It’s so unpredictable; I never thought I’d find a buyer I’d like,” Edwards jests. She adds that her philosophy has always been to do something because she felt like she should. “I didn’t have a long-term goal in mind when I started.”

Discovering Wine

“I didn’t come from a family with money; I grew up in a middle-class family in Pasadena,” says Edwards. “I had to create my own future, and my goals unfolded along the way.”

Edwards originally planned to study nursing in college, and graduated in 1970 from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in physiology. It was at Berkeley that she became enamored with wine, leading her to shift the focus of her graduate studies to enology at U.C. Davis.

Over the course of developing her master’s thesis, Edwards discovered that lead-based bottle capsules were leeching lead into wine. She conducted a comprehensive survey supported by a grant, testing hundreds of bottles. The study’s backers weren’t happy with her findings. “They suppressed my work for an entire year because they feared it would change capsules for the entire world,” says Edwards. Of course, she was right. Once her thesis was published, the production and use of lead capsules ceased.

Edwards earned her master’s degree in food science, with an emphasis in enology, in 1973. But she was confronted with more opposition, this time in the form of gender discrimination. At the time, women enologists were not being hired as winemakers, but Edwards, unwilling to accept a position in the lab, persisted. She found her first winemaking job a year later, at Mount Eden Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

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While there, Edwards sent Mount Eden Pinot Noir cuttings to Davis. A previously unidentified clone, the selection would be officially named UCD-37—what many know today as “Mount Eden,” or as the “Merry Edwards Clone.” Cuttings from those vines would later propagate her estate plantings.

Edwards spent three years at Mount Eden before moving north to Sonoma County, becoming the founding winemaker at Matanzas Creek Winery. While there, she continued her investigation into clones, studying Pinot Noir at the University of Dijon in Burgundy.

She was amazed by the diversity among the hundreds of clones she examined. “I tried to talk to people about it, but they thought I was crazy,” laughs Edwards, noting that there wasn’t much clonal diversity in California in the 1970s, and few understood how the clones performed. “Viticulture is a whole different field now, and I could talk about it for hours.”

Forging a New Path

In 1984, Edwards left Matanzas Creek to pursue consulting and start her own wine label, Merry Vintners. The label eventually failed, but in 1996 she purchased 24 acres that would become the site for her Meredith Estate Vineyard. The following year she met her future husband, Ken Coopersmith. They co-founded Merry Edwards Winery, and produced the first vintage of Merry Edwards Pinot Noir from purchased grapes.

As a young winemaker, Edwards admits to underestimating the importance of viticulture, but over time she developed an acute focus on the vineyards. “We recognized that we couldn’t make the kinds of wines we wanted to make without our own vineyards,” she says. Following the planting of Meredith Estate Vineyard in 1998, she developed five more sites, the last being a 10-acre parcel surrounding her home planted in 2015 and bringing her estate vineyard total to 79 acres.

Over the past two decades, Edwards’ wines have swelled in popularity. The 28,000-case brand focuses on terroir-driven Pinot Noirs, including single-vineyard wines from her estates, as well as from long-term leases. She also makes a small amount of Chardonnay and a barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc.

Looking back, Edwards says milestones have hit her in stages. “It wasn’t until the early 2000s, when the brand started getting recognized that things started to sink in,” she says. Her wines have been included in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the Year on six occasions, including a Top 10 spot for her 2007 Russian River Valley Sauvignon Blanc, and she is part of the Culinary Institute of America’s Vintners Hall of Fame. “I’ve always tried to not let anything go to my head,” Edwards says. “If you’re on top, you have to keep performing and make the next best wine.”

The Next Chapter

Last year, Edwards handed over winemaking duties to her assistant, Heidi von der Mehden, as part of her succession plans. “A decade ago, I started thinking about what I needed to do in my physical health so I could live until 90,” quips Edwards, now 71, noting a regimen of Bikram yoga, gardening and keeping up with two grandchildren.

Both Edwards and Coopersmith plan to stay on for at least the first year during the transition phase with Roederer. She says even though she won’t be making the wines and running the business, she won’t be sitting still. “We’re used to traveling a lot for business, but not enough for fun, and there are lots of places we’d like to go.”

Edwards credits her success to not getting too rigid about anything when it comes to big decisions. It’s her flexibility, after all, that lead to selling the winery and vineyards. “I [initially] hadn’t thought about what to do in the future,” she admits, noting that she also never thought she’d be able to afford to build a winery, or have vineyards. “And now I stop and go, ‘Wow, a lot has happened.’ We’ve made a lot happen, and put the money back into what we’ve made,” she says, pausing, “Not bad for a girl from Pasadena.”

Have you ever had a case of the Mondays? Or at least wanted to straight-up murder someone who asked you that question? Either way, you may be a fan of everyone’s favorite portrayal of office hell, Mike Judge‘s low-key cult comedy masterpiece, Office Space. 

The movie about scheming IT workers who embezzle from their employer launched a million jokes about TPS reports, flair, and red Swingline staplers in real offices around the world. It also premiered 20 years ago this week—February 19, 1999—and was an immediate flop.

Seriously, Office Space tanked out of the gate. Judge found its $12 million box office haul a disappointment and had already moved along when he learned people were quoting great lines from the movie, which is chock-full of them. 

Thanks to Comedy Central, which first aired the film in 2001, it had slowly become the iconic satire of life as a cubicle drone that it remains today.

Gary Cole’s Bill Lumbergh was one of the most memorably hateable bosses in movie history and he had too many hilarious and cringe-inducing moments to count. Like his ambush of Ron Livingston’s Peter Gibbons above. 

“Hello Peter, whats happening? Ummm, I’m gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmkay…” 

Today when you hear someone trot out “mmmkay,” you know a Lumbergh impression is afoot.

Nominally secondary roles in Office Space were responsible for some of its most memorable moments. Diedrich Bader—who also contributed a genius bit part to 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite with his sadistic sensei Rex, creator of Rex Kwan Do—was Peter’s mulleted redneck neighbor Lawrence. 

Lawrence was the kind of dreamer with whom we all could identify. One conversation between him and Peter proved it.

Peter: What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Lawrence: I’ll tell you what I’d do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.

Peter: That’s it? If you had a million dollars, you’d do two chicks at the same time?

Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; ’cause chicks dig dudes with money.

Peter: Well, not all chicks.

Lawrence: Well, the type of chicks that’d double up on a dude like me do.

A huge reason Peter Gibbons resonated with so many was he voiced a sense of boredom and emptiness that was everywhere at the end of the 90s. That was the thing about Office Space: everyone simply got it. His early monologue prior to his hypnotherapist’s death leaving Peter in a months-long carefree trance is entirely too relatable even 20 years later:

So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.

Ouch.

Then there’s Milton. With his coke-bottle glasses, mumbling delivery, and red Swingline Stapler obsession, Stephen Root turned Milton Waddams into the real star of the movie.

No offense to Ron Livingston, Ajay Nadu (Samir), David Herman (Michael Bolton), or Jennifer Aniston as Peter’s love interest and flouter of flair, Joanna, but often when people think about Office Space, they think of Milton.

Because at some point in life, if we’re honest, Milton is all of us—or at least many might fear that’s the case. The scene of him at Lumbergh’s birthday celebration (was there ever a more perfectly-rendered scene depicting the pro-forma office “celebration” that people only attend for the cake in the first place?) was Milton in a nutshell. Overlooked, disrespected, and a time bomb, just ticking away. 

(If you act before Feb. 28, 2019, you can get your own red stapler, too—just click the image above. Consider, though, that Milton burned it all down, which may not be the most positive signal to send to a boss in the know.) 

Jennifer Aniston’s role in Office Space was surprisingly small, really. 

However, her Joanna gets one of the greatest “I QUIT” moments in movie comedy history, and her nemesis is none other than Mike Judge in a toupee, doing a Lumbergh lite as her manager at Chotchkie’s. 

Joanna’s rejection of Flair Culture is epic. Actually imitating her might be a bad idea, but it’s damn satisfying to watch her go.

So those are 5 classic scenes, sure—but there are dozens that could just as easily be excerpted. 

As it is, there’s no way to pay tribute to Office Space without adding one of the greatest moments of all as a bonus. It’s done without a bit of dialogue, just the Geto Boys rapping “Still,” and it features Michael, Samir, and Peter obliterating the office printer Michael is seen struggling with throughout the first half of the movie. This scene is iconic for a reason, and it’s almost all found in David Herman’s face as his Michael becomes more and more enraged, finally battering the machine with his bare fists.

You’ve been there. Whether it was a copy machine, a computer, or a printer, every person who ever worked in an office with unfamiliar equipment has had that moment in their heads. 

The Matrix, another movie that begins with an office drone stuck in corporate hell and dreaming of a way out, premiered the same year as Office Space. 

It was an immediate hit. But it spun off into a wild cyber punk fantasy that spanned three films.

Sure, The Matrix is iconic in its own right, but that’s the thing about Office Space—in the end people don’t really want to soar off into space to enlighten the deadened and sleeping masses. 

Most of us just want to do work that satisfies, then sleep in and be left alone.

Duke’s Zion Williamson made an early exit from Wednesday’s game against rival UNC after injuring his right knee when his left Nike basketball shoe blew out.

Sweet, sweet redemption.

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The hotly-anticipated 2020 Supra returns after its years-long absence from Toyota’s lineup later this year, and Toyota Racing Development (TRD) already has some big plans for it in the form of race-worthy carbon fiber modifications.

As Motor Trend notes, TRD’s silver-painted concept features carbon fiber on the front and rear spoilers, side skirts, rear spats, and side door scoops. A set of 19-inch, murdered-out aluminum wheels tops the whole thing off. 

These eye-catching add-ons aren’t just for show. Their primary purpose is to improve airflow around the Supra’s already-aerodynamic body, thus increasing the sport coupe’s stability and performance at speed. 

The forthcoming Supra boasts BMW’s 335-horsepower, 3.0-liter straight-six and 8-speed automatic transmission. It’s unclear if and when TRD’s mods will be available on the U.S.-spec Supra, which is slated to hit dealer lots this summer. 

Fingers crossed. 

We look back at the stories that made Fine Dining Lovers – from Young Chefs to seasoned pros, Argentina to Switzerland. Here is a taste of the Week in Bites.

Saint Louis dominated the offensive glass in beating Dayton 73-60 on Tuesday night to snap a four-game skid.

It’s been several years since Casper first shook up the sleep industry with its acclaimed foam mattresses that are delivered to your home in a cardboard box. The still-buzzy brand has since branched out from its signature “obsessively engineered” flagship Casper mattress to sheets, pillows, bedroom furniture, and even a dog bed. 

But the company’s latest drop, the Casper Glow, is the first to incorporate smartphone technology as a sleep aid, and it’s already being billed as a nightlight for grownups.

The small, orb-like LED lamp is designed to sync with your body’s circadian rhythms to get on an optimal sleep schedule. The idea is the Glow’s warm light lulls you to sleep at night, while a soft light swells in the morning to wake you up as gently as possible. 

You can also sync your Casper Glow with a smartphone app that allows for even more customization, including extending or shortening the time your Glow lights up in the morning or at night.  

Ad Week has more details about Casper’s new gizmo, which launched this week:

Jeff Brooks, Casper’s CMO, said Glow is meant to succeed in areas where standard lightbulbs fail, particularly in creating the ideal sleeping environment.

“There’s a lot of science that went into this product,” he said. “Certain types of light disturb your circadian rhythms, which are incredibly important for how you fall asleep and why you stay asleep.

“And I’d argue most lights on bedside tables or nightstands today are harsh. They’re not designed to kind of aid you into your drift-off.”

The Glow’s petite size—five inches tall, three inches wide—also makes it easy to pick up and carry around, is intended to make it the ideal companion for a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip.

“It gives just enough warm light for you to accomplish that task and then get back into bed without disturbing sort of your inner body’s workings,” said Brooks.

A single Casper Glow costs $89, and two go for $169 at Casper.com.