Growing up, Calistoga native Dick Vermeil learned what to value in life from his father.

“He loved football, racing and good food, especially good wine,” he recalled.

After savoring the best of football — winning a Super Bowl in 1999 as the head coach of the St. Louis Rams — the now-retired Vermeil returned to the valley this weekend where the focus was vintage racing and wine.

Vermeil was at the Napa County Fairgrounds for the Louie Vermeil Classic, a race honoring his late father’s leadership and passion for sprint car racing that shaped Calistoga Speedway and the sport throughout Northern California for more than 50 years.

The younger Vermeil arrived towing his dad’s championship-winning car, restored to a concours quality more suitable to Pebble Beach than the dirt tracks it conquered almost six decades ago.

It rolled off the trailer to a stop on display next to the wines of his OnThEdge label — including a highly-rated tribute to his father, Jean Louis Vermeil Cabernet, just days after Vermeil announced the formation of a new company to expand the sales of his wine around the country.

With his football days behind him, Vermeil continues to live near Philadelphia on a 114-acre farm in Chester County. He has traded his playbooks for financial reports, serving on the Board of Directors of a few companies.

He is in demand across the country as a motivational speaker.

“And I’m busy running my charity for the Boy Scouts of Chester County, which I’ve had for 17 years now,” he said proudly. 

But clearly wine and his dad’s race cars are never far from the center of his life, reflecting the influence of growing up around grease and grape vines.

The subjects were difficult to get away from.

“We ate lunch together and dinner together and worked in the shop together and the conversation was usually about my responsibilities in the garage or whatever sport we were involved in,” recalled Vermeil, who started cleaning parts in the now defunct Owl Garage when he was 12 years old.

As the son of a man who played semi-pro football in a league up and down the Napa Valley, Vermeil’s success on the gridiron is no surprise. But he clearly learned lessons in the garage, too.

Vermeil confessed to doing about 80 percent of the restoration on his dad’s race car himself. “There were some things I couldn’t do, like painting and putting the nickel polish on all the metal parts,” he concedes.

But Vermeil did all the mechanical work, taking the old car down to bare metal and frame and rebuilding it.

“There’s not one bolt on this car that’s original,” said Vermeil. His only concession to more modern times was replacing the original transmission with one that has a reverse gear to make the car easier to move.

The car was completed by a shop in Philadelphia that specializes in working on high-end race cars, such as vintage Alfa Romeo and Bugatti — partly because of the time crunch to get the car to California by last weekend.

“It took me more than a year to do this car,” said Vermeil, who learned enough at his dad’s knee that he could have been an apprentice in a machine shop by the time he left to pursue a football career.

“I started on the car long before people proposed putting on this race, but the bad thing was that once they set the date, I almost ran out of time,” he confesses.

His mechanical ability was proven when the car was pushed off for celebration laps around Calistoga’s half-mile oval, driven in turns by Dick and his brother Stan Vermeil, a former midget driver in the late 1950s.

It took only the same gentle coaxing that most vintage machines need, but the H.A.L. engine sputtered to life with the crowd roaring its approval in response.

Restoring the car was clearly a labor of love, not profit.

“This is my Turbo Porsche,” he joked. “It took lots of money and lots of time.”

Similar qualities make good wine. “We have worked closely for a number of years with the Smith Family Winery and owners Paul Smith and Mary Sue Frediani Smith,” said Vermeil in announcing formation of the Vermeil Group.

That relationship and the use of Calistoga-grown grapes for most of the OnThEdge wines will continue, Vermeil says.

Under the management of Tom Ward, the Vermeil Group plans to expand sales 10 times over the 1,200 cases now in markets.

Even so, there is another car project in the Vermeil garage.

In addition to the 1950 American Racing Association championship car that is now in pristine condition, there is another of his dad’s cars, circa 1956, waiting to be overhauled.

“I guess I need to get some more speaking engagements,” he joked. “If I do, that’s where the money will go.”