Only a bit over an hour now till I leave this Autumn Walk base for a rugged vineyard scape. I know what waits for me but don’t and the notknowing of it all is what’s getting me out there. Thinking of leaving a bit early to get some coffee, but I don’t want to be kept up when back home. So this is what the harvest crews go through, I think. The winemakers, if they’re small producers like Glenn. And that’s just what I want to be and how I want to be seen, the completely autonomous Artist with wine’s world and all the images and stories, everything there for me to write about. Yes I’ll have three cameras on my person, armed, but only to aid the writing, for the content, for both clients, and myself– the wine starts here, with nights/early mornings like this.
Could very easily just leave now, wait for them there but no I want to see Glenn and his crew at the ready, and I’ll be ready to capture everything. Pinot Noir in a block known for its defiant nature, “shrugging its shoulders at bad weather”, as Glenn the other day told me. I restart tonight as a writer, and wine writer, and winemaker soon.. soon-to-be, sooner with a better understanding and grip on what’s in my glass; Pinot I opened last night and the red I opened a couple nights before that, the Merlot last week from the Christopher Creek boys. Taking this all with a certain new stride and not too seriously as it’s wine, meant to be a story and written and embraced as someone wants to, not with the pressure of some fluffy publication like Spectator or something rushed and one-dimensional like Enthusiast. Just Human, and enjoying, Artful, appreciative.. inviting.
10:21PM… Now what. Just look at the clock I guess. What am I after tonight? The energy of the harvest crew, Glenn, me out there taking pictures, “like a Ranger” as Jerry said of me in ’12 when I was out at the K—- blocks running around mad with my buttons and notebooks. He said I was in one spot the next, then would disappear for another shot, another vantage. Those picks were around 4 in the morning, and I remember thinking of how incredible it was to witness and hear, shoot and later about scribble. Today’s email matter, no longer considered an “event”, prompts me to settle on my life’s topic: wine, wine’s relationship with literature. I’m the one out in the vineyards just for the high of observation, my insatiable pattern of placement and knowledge gluttony; and those scenes, scents, movements and languages; the obscure phrasings of vineyard crews and winemakers. I want to record it and be a part of it. BE it. ‘IT’ what? A winemaker? Maybe. Just be around wine and writing about my life wined, all circumstances and sequences.
Going to watch the news for a bit, pack, then leave. Alas here, Harvest 2015. No more self-doubting, only producing; crush the grapes, watch fermentation, rack, bottle, and let it go.
(8/12/15)