in the morning you have the nap option.  Off to the crush pad….  Shaved, cleaned a little more around the house and made a double-espresso.  More than alive, thinking wine and winemaking… wine writing, my wine story and how hopefully next weekend I’ll be in the Caddis tasting room, and tasting his new Syrah to add to the Syrah study.

Thievery Corporation now, something with a little more beat and pace yet still the symphonic and eased read.  Tempted to count how much is in the jar, for the wines, but that will only lead to trouble and endangering it somehow, I know.

Too many wine memories to assemble and reflect upon, within.  So I start with one – Tasting wine with a guy named Len on the Kunde Mountaintop, somewhat early in the afternoon.  Len grieved about the position, and the compensation…. Me, honestly not hearing a word but imagining writing from where we were sitting, and I would have been had I set up the patio on my own.  We sipped some Reserve Cab, and Century Vine Zin.  Len eventually calmed, and started asking me about my wine plans.  I told I wanted to make my own one day.  This conversation I think was in ’13 or ’14, and my winemaking curiosity was at its highest point, until now in 2021 with me here writing this with Syrah clouds in my head. 

Why Syrah.  It’s the most musical.  The most self-personifying and human-like.  Like a beatific and deific seductress, speaking to me and wanting me to speak from her to readers.  The wine drinkers I’m looking for are more than drinkers – they’re readers, livers, lovers, thinkers, community-intentioned beings looking to speak in only positive and elevating chimes.