Kids yelling outside, making some mock-siren call.  Wines for tonight, nothing too special, or ornate.  Not what I’m going for.  Think wine.. keep self centered there.  Wrote in journal that wine is in everything, from how I parent and wanting the kids to be in the business with me, but not forcing them to of course..  Running, keeping self healthy and in some sort of sharp shape so I can continue writing and wine and writing wine.  It’s everything.

Quiet house now with kids and Melissa off on a drive.  Use every bit of this time.  Don’t even want to spend the couple minutes to make another espresso shot.  A little water left in bubbly can.  Done.  Now what.  I search my thinking and all corners of my character for something, for anything.

Feel like I’m coming undone a bit in this lockup, this quarantine, the safety of the house as menacing as the virus out there killing hundreds of thousands.  Calming self, looking at what’s captured in mind, the vineyards visited.

2:58, quiet outside.  Soft LoFi beats playing in here.  Do some research, stop writing for a bit I tell myself.  Mom has recommended that over and over… put the pen down, she demands.  Don’t do anything, relax.  Need to her words summon more.

Email alert going off.  Leads being assigned to me but none are really at that Enterprise height.  Haven’t done budget in a while.  Maybe should do that, get caught up and isolate more money for the shop.  STAY IN THE SHOP, I write again. What shop, and when will there be a shop with this SIP order and all the fear and cautious, which again I support.  Just frustrating for dreamers…. Well, wait… what?  AUGMENT.  Audible.  Shift, write a new reality.  No “pivots”.

Tasting wines with an AE friend, probably sooner than later.  Another email.  Nothing important.  So I listen to the current track and dream of my vineyard, my wines, the shop…. What do I really want from wine.  What does she want from me?  What have I been told to do?  Easy.  No need to write it here.

One time at Dutcher Crossing, the now-head winemaker Nick took me to the tank area to taste through some lots, mostly Chardonnay.  Never really took to Chardonnay I told him, he told me to wait, don’t think that way.  Poured something from a tank that I’d never before met, neither style nor vineyard, nor inoculant or the oak approach.  Since then I’ve been more open to Chardonnays.  So why the fuck did I get an SB for tonight?  Sounded right.  No matter though, I replay our walk tank to tank over and over while sitting here and hearing those kids outside, the neighbors’, seeing the juice swirled against sun and concrete-covered vessels.

Then I think about Roth, St. Francis, the couple years I helped at Mayo… my whole wine life not flashing in front of me but forwarding me to a newly written wine-me.  Interesting.  Should I pour a glass?  It’s after 3, finally. No.. wait.  Tell AE friend that at four, we pour.  Oh… and my Westwood friend Drew’s dropping off three bottles I bought and two new bottles he wants me to try.  100 words to each bottle, minimum, I just wrote on a page in the ’48.

Making wine… how do I even start.  Where do I get the fruit.  How much do I make?  Do I start with a barrel, or two, like I did at Kunde?