Up Name

All I can say is thank the Craft, thank the wine, thank anything connected to the wine and writing and the day— the vineyard walk, the pictures I took while walking the vineyard.  In a mood of consolidation, tonight.  Thinking of those wineries that make so many different wines they really don’t have what I’d consider as a consumer a consistent narrative.. then the wineries like Arista whose prominence most assuredly sounds in Pjnot Noir’s arena.  Finally with time to self, like I did this morning in the adjunct cell.  No bitterness here, though, and not that there was in the early A.M. of this 26th, but… I don’t know, wine has me considering more and more with its form and colloquy, telling me to embrace the freedom that all the authors I admire did.  I’m climbing in my mood like Mom, Dad, and I did up that cliff of a Road.  Wine tells me to relax, to learn, to not be so hard on self, and to consolidate.  Specialize in some paginated approach—  Don’t be like those wineries that produce dozens of different types of wines just so they have a multitude of SKU’s.  Have a determined and purpose-prone voice.

A couple came in today from Denver, CO.  One of the first questions they had for me and my friend Lainy was, “So what is your specialty.. what are you known for?” I had my answer, Lainy has hers.  But we had a response.  To me, Dutcher Crossing’s empiricism exudes from Cabernet.  Yes, we make more Zins but the Cabernets are what convince people of emphatic identity.  Have to. keep saying that to myself—  “Identity, Identity”.  Not just with Dutcher’s wines or wine principally, but my identity as a writer in wine’s world.  Tonight, after as long as I’ve been awake, has me more susceptible and open to the evening’s narrative modality.  As I offered this morning to class, “Telling a story…Truth…You can’t understand your story till you’ve been exposed to someone else’s…” The Zin I’m sipping, this 2014 Rockpile beast has me unusually observant for how tired I am.  I’m looking at the picture I took this morning, the shot of the parking lot by Emeritus; like a time capsule and memory of a long-ago moment only early today.

The Craft, these words and the sentences or the quasi-phrases they form promote the standalone moment.  Wish I had the gall and inner-propulsion to assume the mental state of some authors, like HST, but I don’t.  I just sip this wine and let it talk to me—  It says to relax, stop thinking so much.  You made you morning coffee already, you’ll do your client writing in the morning.  The Prichett Peaks tells me to look around the room I’m in, the home study (now more of a ground for random objects, some I’ve placed and some I have no idea how they landed).  Zinfandel used to be my wine totality, I used to call myself a “Zin guy”.  Why.  Why do I have to be an ‘anything’ guy?  That would mean, or deductively one could assert, that I have a speciality.  I don’t.  Not yet.

This is obviously a wine-curved paragraph set.  And so what.  I’m in the wine world and industry and I think about the storytelling potential energy of it all.  From my first day pouring at St. Francis till today, at Dutcher.  My timeline is extensive and exhaustive. So what do I do?  What can I do, but write on—  Pritchett call.  Another, yes.  Fill glass.