20

This wine I just found staring up at the ceiling then at me, at Bottle Barn.  I looked and immediately rescued her from that shelf.  When home, I left her become accustomed to the ambient air of my studio, opening and stretching, and I new that such a young Grenache wouldn’t need too much time.  Pouring glass and the visual has me, quicker than an instant’s instantly.  I knew I was in for my own interaction with Philosophy and destiny, my own surface of thought and meditative mediation.  Suggestion first, vanilla-toffee conversation and vortex, alongside milk chocolate and floral intersections, energetic and disclosing.  Found it difficult to center on the wine, on her, because of her.  First, I’d never heard of the producer, and I thought I knew most everyone in Dry Creek, even those without tasting rooms.  Guess not, and I’m again shown that wine continues to educate us and make us more aware, wishing for more knowledge and experiences and dreams.  As she become more communicative and more eager to play her jazz for me, I decided to stop listing fruit suggestions and spices, anything oak-honed or vanilla-put.  She spoke with more verse, more of that anti-formalist grab and elevation.  I found myself and the wine, her, holding a new dialogue plot.  This was a new conversation for me, one utterly unexpected, and one educating and enriching.  With the second glass, the principles became more clear and austere.

Cherry fire and more sped recital of earth, maybe chocolate but I wasn’t trying to just list what you’d read somewhere else.  She deserves more than that… galaxies more and with the glass again falling in content, I set it down.  Looked at her with student retinae.  This morning, drinking a multiple-shot mocha, I can still feel that progression, those words from her, that in-the-moment translation and re-translation and tryst with Grenache.  Each lift and tilt, a definite and defined, defining bise (kiss).  Everything brought into and composed and consolidated in the moment at my kitchen counter.  Returning the cork to neck and placing the bottle that holds her onto the counter, I scribbled like some character meeting someone for a time first.  Inaugural love but one that’s always been— right there, waiting, me for her and her for me, me with my dashed into urgency verse, and whim-pinned poetry.

Laying down, trying to sleep last night I had words pummeling my concentration and any remaining centeredness I had after my one and a half glasses.  The softness of her approach and language, how none of those youth flaws you find in young reds impeded. There were no wishes I had, I found nothing missing.  She was precisely what the writer begged both with and without intention.  Last night, with a Grenache, the writer found more of himself in wine’s collective and individual stage presences.  This is why I’m with her, wine, why she encourages me when new and renewing characters like her.  Even after threes sips of this mocha, the first I’m sure seared my senses, I can still feel the sip slowly dance, taste that cherry, maple or toffee shapeliness, saxophone-sown cherry.  I’m following, this next day.  Haunted and taught.

(3/24/18)