6/29/19

Second to last day in June.  Will be in Sebastopol, today.  Alert on my phone saying I had to be here AT 8, but incorrect.  Not sure how that happened, maybe I put something on calendar as all-day event.  Anyway, two wines tasted last night.  What is an all-day effort is to write about each, 500 words each.  Sipping coffee from office as I rushed here from getting gas just in case I was wrong and did have to be here at 8.  Strong, but not at all appealing in flavor or, well, anything.  But it has caffeine, I’ll take it.  $8 more in envelop.  OR should I set aside for next Saturday in Napa tasting wines at whatever, however many dozens of wineries and tasting rooms and collectives there are.  Not thinking about it.  $8 to envelope, done.

Wine one, a Rose from Topping-Legnon, think that’s how you spell the winery and is the actual name, far too dark for your typical or even non-typical Rose.  Not much said through introduction on nose, with aromatic language and touch, then on palate a bit more expression and layeredness to her, but again nothing that confirmed or affirmed any distinguished identity.  Not that I didn’t like it, her, but again there was not much said.  That doesn’t mean the wine was bad, or missing something, or once more that I didn’t like it.  No.  There was just a compromised connection for some reason.  With only two glasses, really a glass and a half, if even that now that I think, we didn’t have that attraction.

Second, a Robert Young Cabernet, Spring Mountain.  At first, I thought something was wrong with her.  I don’t know what, like temperature damage or just a bum bottle.  Not in any way the case. After some air falling down the bottle’s neck, 20 or 30 minutes give or take, she was alert, awake, ready to communicate.  No more dreaming of another thrilling Cab from Robert Young. She was present, there, speaking to me and now I was ready for the page.  Of course I’ll write more later, but I can still taste that immediate pulse, the pronounced impression of the mountain, of the winery, the ’15 vintage which as many know had its own mood and shapeliness from the drought.  Don’t want to write about her like these published wine blatherers.  There was far too much there, far too much being sang to me there in the kitchen, from that glass.

Seeking more definition from wine, and last night’s second bottle provided more than what I expected.  To be honest, I just wanted to taste wine and not think that much about it.  I didn’t want to be a writer, not then, but again, the second bottle had a vision more consistent with my own than my own.  Convincing composition and what I said to myself in the last glass about 45 minutes before bed was, “I need a vineyard.” Pretty much the only thing I wrote last night in the Kerouac journal, watching the final inning of a Giants game.  Find myself thinking now, this morning in the office to this coffee and stop myself.  Just write about the wines, and what they say.  The Cabernet more and moreover speaking her song, not letting me stray from the vineyard rows again.