Sonoma County. A cup of coffee, quiet house finally, and thinking about where I live and all the time I put into the wine industry. What did it do for me if anything well of course it did something. What. What precisely. To write about wine. To never again set foot in a tasting room on anyone’s clock but my own. Transported last night by that Pinot, sitting on the wood floor of this Autumn Walk home, the floor bothering me but me sipping through it and writing through it, seeing my book of some sort of shape being finalized, here and there and taking me from here to there.
And of course it comes on, “In A Sentimental Mood”. Arguably my one Coltrane track that speaks to me like no wine or tasting room, not even the vineyard walks, did, do. Seeing me in the late afternoon, on my deck, looking out at my vineyard. Kids in house waiting for dinner. There are wines that do that, sometimes. Last night was one. The Bernardus. A Pinot. 2014. A vintage I’ve always thought was overlooked, or underestimated, underrated. I just thought, she fly me somewhere. Back to Burgundy or to some part of a Carmel or Monterey beach. I should be on a run right now but I couldn’t dismiss what me called, put me in this seat, instructed me to further be instructed and mentored by the Pinot’s physiology and psychology. She spoke with temperament and tenacity. She put me on a Road back to Monterey, back to the classroom. Yes I write about wine but more what wine embodies and connotes more than denoted. The inference of a Pinot bottle like that, to be in your current clock and time on clock like you’ve never before practiced.
Out of wine’s industry and in another business, one that allows and invokes more wine writing from me. Wine was the institution, the university if you will, its industry and all the tasting rooms over the years that is, and now I’m here. Helping build a business and thinking of a vineyard, my vineyard, the one I’ll soon see after achievements or certain goals that become ribbons or laurels. Laureling myself into new wined pages, here in the kitchen, in the morning, seeing and understanding toward what I’m headed. That Pinot did this, whirled and wove certain spells around me which I have no intention of dismissing. Keep me trapped, I beg the notes I remember…. Jazzy cinnamon lanes doused in smiling cherry cirrus, thin but not dismissible.
In Sonoma County, writing about another county and one of its AVA’s, just dreaming and planning, writing way there. And I ask myself, “What exactly do I want from wine, wine’s character aggregate and dialect. I don’t know if I know, yet. That’s what I love. That’s what wine encircles ideologically to me, for me. Just seeing where the Road goes, where your narrative’s to be thrown. So many want you to know that they know so much about wine and wine areas, growing regions, how the industry works and their story in the business…. okay, but then what. Why not be more professing of exploratory urge rather than advertising your fabricated mastery? Try going from there to here, where you’re just on your Road, seeing, perceiving, tasting, dreaming, writing and re-writing.
10/14/18