Of my own. Of our own where I could involve Jack and Alice if she wanted, and whatever other little Beat’s on the way. Sipping the Meritage the other night and my ’12 Merlot last night confirmed what I’ve already for so long apprehended and arrested in my scope: it’s wine, and that’s it; written about and explored– but enough dreamtalk, time to plan, my wine and vintage this vintage and what I want expressed in my bottles– half to secure 1.5 to 2 tons, 80% Cab the surplus Merlot for this chapter, this year. And the wine itself tells a story, something like the thoughts of Kerouac and Hem how they absorbed the moment and just like that my wine needs to absorb and propel not just the conditions of the vintage but the winemaker as well. Me. A winemaker, and why not, I’ve done it before and I thought yesterday when in the ‘TR’ I had a thought.. “color, focus on color not marketability and I want the wines to taste how they look”… Like with my Merlot last night, the lighter red presentation with magenta edges and a seemingly raspberry or rose subtext in its visual, and that’s what I tasted. And the Pinot yesterday in the room, that ’13 Anderson Valley, the one I couldn’t stop visiting and re-visiting and trying to understand, each sip with a new paragraph or a revision, and then the next bottle I opened for some guests from Southern California, with the eagerness and vast cellar they couldn’t help but tell me about, too saw something different than I did earlier. And I just like realize: ‘evolution’, in so much, both wine consciousness and interaction and language and connection to stories and how the production of the wines and those sipping scribble their own autonomous notes and pages. So what do I with them, translate? Not so much, I don’t know, certainly draw and share certain observations, isn’t that the job of anyone writing, writing about wine? Again I’ll try to be Socratic and say ‘I don’t know’, but I have quite the anchored idea.
A small family tasting room, of my own, my own ‘TR’, but just me, a 1man show, no? My son greeting people as they walk in and charming them with his energy and grin and how he knows so many new words and where everything is around the winery… A dream, more dreamtalk and dreamchat with myself but that’s how something reaches a bottle, that’s how winemakers finish their projects and pour them for people at a table, at a dinner, or for themselves– and there’s nothing foul or disturbing about that! And on that first day, the first day we open I’ll have the bottles pre-tasted and in-the-moment characterizations of each bottle more or less prepared, memorized.. nothing written down, I want to be in the moment with my room and my wines and the visitors sipping them for the first time. New stories, characters, and me with a new role in the cast, sipping and talking with them, holding the wine up to the nearest bulb to see the color and character clearly, examine what it promises…..

(5/26/15)