This is a story of  passions - or make that three passions: art, wine, and an impoverished country half a world a way.

It begins 28 years ago in Merced, Calif. where a Belgian artist named Luc Janssens met and married a French winemaker named Genevieve. It continues today in the Napa Valley where they have created  “the tiniest winery in Napa,” to help the people of Laos in Southeast Asia.

Luc Janssens is more known in Napa as an artist and educator than a winemaker, whereas Genevieve Janssens, long-time director of winemaking at the Robert Mondavi Winery, is not quite the quintessential home winemaker. But together they operate Portfolio Limited Edition winery out of their garage, where together they make about 180 to 200 cases of wine each year, all for their Lao Foundation, which is building health clinics and schools in Laos.

“We raised about $40,000 last year,” she said.

Mission to Laos

Luc had just returned from a mission to Laos when he and Genevieve met with the Register last week at their art-filled home in the Napa hills. He has made about four trips a year to Laos, since the country was opened to foreign visitors in the 1990s. His interest in the country goes back further, however, to the time he spent in Merced, when he was teaching art and French literature, when he found himself becoming involved with a group of Hmong refugees from Laos, a country that had been ravaged by war and political conflicts. “People came to me because I could speak French,” he explained, “that was the vector for the community.

“I became interested in these people, in their beliefs and values, and how as refugees they could fare in this country,” he said. “They were so wonderful, so gentle and forgiving. The most rational way to help them was to understand them.”

Luc went on to complete a Ph.D. thesis on the Hmong people and then, in the 1990s, he was able to visit the country in person. The poverty and plight of the people was overwhelming, he said. “When I saw it, I decided I had to help them one way or another.”

They founded the Lao Foundation. “So far we’ve built two health clinics and two schools,” he said. This spring a third school, a boarding school for blind children, will open.  “We do what we can for health care because it’s totally pathetic,” said Luc, who has brought 10 ultrasound machines into the country and launched a program to teach computer literacy to health professionals

He’s also gained support from others, including Kiwanis and Napa’s Dr. William McClure, who helped organize this latest mission to Laos.

“When he saw what was there Bill said, ‘We have to do better,’” Luc said. During this week-long mission, they built a tent city where McClure and a team of 13 performed 96 surgeries on 58 patients, many of them children suffering from burns and birth defects. “Many of them are just living with pain,” he said. “In some cases we can give them a new life.”

The main source of support for the work comes from the Portfolio wine.

‘Team work’

The Janssens’ garage is entirely converted to a mini winery,  with a neat row of barrels and one fermenting tank “We do everything here,” Luc said – sorting, crushing, fermenting, bottling, aging. “It’s all done by hand,” he added, right down to hand-sorting the grapes. Since we don’t do quantity, we can do it.”

“It’s total teamwork,” Genevieve explained. “The idea is not to be big, the idea is to make it fun — and delicious.”

Delicious it is. The Portfolio wine, primarily cabernet sauvignon with 10-20 percent cabernet franc blended in, has that same luscious elegance that’s characteristic of Genevieve Janssens’ wines. In the valley, she began working at Opus One, the Mondavi-Rothschild joint venture, in 1989; in 1997 she moved over to Robert Mondavi Winery.  “I have only worked for Mr. Mondavi,” she noted. “He is my inspiration. It is Mr. Mondavi’s lead that we still follow, his voice that we hear.”

In creating her Portfolio wines, she said, “I work the same way. You can’t make wine without fantastic people. If the wine is good, it’s because of the people.”

Genevieve sources her cabernet sauvignon grapes from “an incredible friend, George Hendry,” she said. The grapes from the Hendry ranch in west Napa, she said, “are wonderful. It is a beautiful terroir.”

Much of the wine is bottled in large format bottles, and all the bottles bear the label, etched in gold, derived from one of Luc’s drawings, the original of which hangs over a fireplace in their home; it’s two profiles facing each other.

“A portfolio, after all,” Luc said, “is a collection of art work.”

Making the Portfolio wine, Genevieve said, has been part of  a “fantastic journey” of winemaking in the Napa Valley. “and it’s been a good way to raise funds for the foundation.”   

“It’s quite rewarding,” Luc said, “It’s a way of sharing the luck we have had in life.”  

More information about Portfolio Limited Edition wines and the Lao Foundation is available at www.portfoliowinery.com; www.portfoli ogravure.com and www.laofounda tion.com