Well, I wound up buying three, a Chard a Cuvée a Merlot.  And the Merlot’s what now I sip.  And what I think… well, was going to do another MOCK SOMM post to blog or write some article how this is an example of the benefits to sustainable farming, but no.  I fly directly t my novel and keep writing till the dryer upstairs stops.  This Merlot’s darker than most, with more charcoal and smoke insinuation than others I’ve tried.. and the fruit, unspeakably immediate and believable in all its circlings and savory speech.  I imagine myself giving talks on Merlot and why it should be loved, and how so many times even before that movie it was expected to be weak, to be dismissive and hindered by its lightness.  I need travel more than ever, I see.  And how I see the road, the remedy, frankly, focus on this tie between wine and writing, Literature and the stories you see in wine.  If I had my wishes pocketed, right now I’d be in Florida, on a high floor staring down at some beach sipping a light red, Pinot more than likely, and scribbling in the journal Mom and Dad bought me.  No formal writing like I’m now doing for the novel, and no new typings of any sort.  Just a sip, then a scribble, then another sip and another.  And at night, light gusts only to remind me I’m finally on the Road and the air is different here, this is the difference I’ve sought.  I’d finish my wine and odd scribblings and walk the beach, thinking of poems and paragraphs for the next novel, how I should finally write that novel about the grad student, 23 and in grad school for Math, working at an Insurance Agency, selling, and just wanting to photograph things, people, traffic, even the garbage that people dispel to roadside, capture everything.  He even wants to travel and shoot in war zones, get the pictures that no one else will to tell some kind of truth–  Then I start thinking, I want to be him, I want to be this character I haven’t even written yet.  The wine tonight is very much working as I wished it to.  And, Merlot, no shock, the varietal that brought me into wine’s story in some serious strand.