MOCK SOMM: GReedy Wines, a reaction

Already in love with small producers, I was sure this was to be a label that would contribute to me and my story and transcending wine character in some new encompassing way.  The wines are one facet with me, certainly an important one, but not the be-all of the new presence, whatever I’m sipping and whatever new label I involve myself with.  GReedy Wines, an amalgamation of talents and visions of Greg Urmini and Ross Reedy, shows the approachable more story-told side of wine and the narrative that I’ve always found more inviting about wine.  These two oeno-elevated chaps have travelled and studied impressively, as well as formally studied, and only from a true adoration of and envelopment in wine itself.

The next morning I go to my office, open my Composition Book and look through my notes, which as always I have an arduous and incensing time surveying.. but I started with the Sauvignon Blanc jots.  A ’14, fruit from Alexander Valley, does see a bit of an oak’d motion, but not much, not enough to interfere with varietal integrity or regional translation–  I scribbled (if I’m reading it accurately): “Poetic pulse from intro to conclusion of sip; melon and cream, light herb and pineapple; a jazzed tap of white Bordeaux–” And there are more scribbles from there, but I remember now the revolution of the palate-feel and how the wine itself took to oxygen, developed and peculiar and impressively characterized sensibility to its “palate traffic”, I wrote.  I’m again thinking of their story, Greg and Ross’, and how they merely want to share, display what they can do, yes, but offer something different to the wine lover and translate varietal and region, and vintage in their own way.  I read down in my SB sentences, and see verses, that’s what this bottle made me do, there in my home office; a wine with influence and persuasion, rhetoric, I wrote “…expository, effusive, dactylic…” And this isn’t just one of those sip-before-dinner Blancs.  It’s with the momentum that can walk and recite alongside dishes.  Lighter creamy pasta, or chicken with light pepper and lemon, or a caesar salad, or for lunch with a chicken salad.  It beckons something with flavor punctuation and charisma to match its won.  Another note, “a letter to Sauvignon Blanc as a genre, as a story and song…” Now, I’m not certain what I was inferring or asserting with that scribble, precisely anyway, but the bottle had me encased in thought, a bright awe, and stricken with impression.

Then Cabernet, also from AV.  A 2012.  And Cabernet is that one varietal that I’ll always moniker my own.  But this bottle taught me, contrasted with other bottles out there and ways the grape is handled and then bottled.  Greg and Ross illuminate a more melodic palate beat and presence with this ’12, singing through suggestions of plum, chocolate, light espresso, light and atmospheric oak, or cedar, theses– adored “all minutes and measures of this Cab”, as I have the Comp Book.  Between the two wines, this project catapults the GReedy boys’ story the most prominently– that wine fervor and going our there and living it, the travels and education, the self-education and writing your own story, everything that the small label should embody, PRACTICE, and share.

So is ‘love’ a strong word, when addressing me and my affinity for small production houses?  Not a strong word, but an inaccurate one, surely.  Small producers are my theology, as a wine writer, drinker, chaser and storyteller.  This story can only grow for them and the bottles they produce, are not only inviting and communicative now with their flavor arrangements and ambient textures, but would as well enjoy residency in a cellar.  And wines that visually and immediately demonstrate that degree of agility and proverbial availability, openness, “diplomacy” as I wrote at the page’s lower sector, should be written about, brought home, shared, studied, explored over months, years.

Researching them more, the GReedy assembly, I find they met while in travel, where from a literary disposition can only encourage character growth and provide that story the consumer wants to read– hence my theology in the small producer.  There’s more sincerity, more candor in the narrative, and in what’s bottled.  More pervading intimacy, for sure, and like I scribbled at some point last night, I think while tasting the Cabernet: “Traveling in ideas and interpretations, transformative properties for wine’s character and me as the sipper, scribbler.” Am I lost in the wines, yes but no, more like metaphysically prompted.  And not many wines do so to this writer.  In fact, less than very few do.

So, here this morning with my coffee, I return to my SB notes, on how the first olfactory impression was rich, “beaming” as I wrote, and entirely believable.  Not contrived or conveniently morphed with oak or inappropriate alcohol content.  “More music in this SB than the others, much more sway and swagger.. general sensory magnetism…” And I kept on noting and writing what I encountered.  Wrote more on the SB than its Cab cousin, but I still puzzle and de-puzzle what I sip and what I wrote, being put in the palatable maelstrom of GReedy Wines, its two-bottle and wildly coercing portfolio– in fact, no, they deserve better than such a clinical noun, ‘portfolio’, ugh… a short story, or novelette, one which will keep in its scribe bass and highhat taps; its own song and Art, travel and education, the Road and the growth and the ambrosial madness of wine and its world.  These two produce the same as I in this Comp Book, on these keys, with fervor and tireless reflective urgency.

And quickly back to the Cabernet deconstructions, and one word cages me, “hymn’.  Connection to the theological lean, yes, but beyond that I’m lost.  And I don’t mind.  Consider this morning’s thousand an appreciative epistle to the two.  To travelers, the wine-minded, the urgent artists, to the ever-written story.  Stories.

Link to Their Website:  GReedy Wines

Direct Link to Get on the Mailing List, to Purchase GReedy Wines:  GET ON THE LIST

(8/16/15)