Yountville Prose
The entirety of the collective offering was nothing less than declarative. From the whites to the reds, both Cabernet Francs, the Syrah, and notably the Howell Mountain Cabernet, I was pulled from tasting normality. It was a haunting progression of tasting wine that I’ve waited for for some time— busy’s I am it’s arduous to find a plot of hours to go out, be a tourist— and if you’re in the industry you understand that, “What’s it like to be on the other side of the bar.” There was no bar here. Joey with his calmed and decidedly conversational ebb sat me down and poured, talking about the wines in a way that aligned with how the wines wheeled their amalgamated thesis to me as the wanna-be tourist. I sat at that rustic, cozy square table and sipped the SB, Chard, Pinot and Franc, Syrah, Howell Cab, and just sensed a separation from palate pattern. Each of these offerings displayed decision and animation in their thought folds. I’ve always said that “a good wine is not only one you like but one that follows you.” Each of these bottles possessed that poise, that resilience to chase me back to the car, to make me meditate and postulate my relationship with wine.
It’s been years since I’ve found myself in the Cornerstone tasting room, but there I was, today, with my Composition Book and not able to write and reflect, react, quick enough. Sitting at that table, I belonged to the wines Joey poured— I belonged to that view, the chair and the Syrah while I took my sweeter than sweet writer-time. My aggregate counterpoise tells newfangled forms across varietals. Cornerstone Cellars has decided its reality, clearly, and I was fortunate enough to be there, right there, in the Room for some disclosure and geographic sensibility. I react to wine, but I have no reaction. Cornerstone has me simply smitten.
want to mimic. Would have written earlier, but I thought it the need and the optimal for the writer to speed to vineyards, walk around an take pictures. Be a photog’… or a writer that loves photography which is more the case. I have thoughts in head and Mom told me not to be too wordy with my reactions to these wines so I won’t. And she’s astute, my amiably-set mama. She urges, more than her assertion of not being “too wordy”, to just be me. More conversational about wine, no so syllabically analytical, or at least that’s what I read into and from her speak. So these wines, like new characters on the stage— unexpected and theatrical, but not overstepping. A Chardonnay, which I always have trouble listening to, no matter how it’s crafted and cared-for. Then the Cabernet, which has that flex and broadness, but with unexpected Victorian angularity— romance, and a dactylic disposition you wouldn’t forecast for a Cab.
families and people with whom they can share that story, what’s in the bottle— more than sipping, or feeling of effects. But an envelopment in wine’s sensory atmosphere and phenolic music. I roll my eyes sometimes when I hear people conveniently using the Robert Louis Stevens quote, and I think I finally know why. As much poetry as I read and write, teach to English students, wine spans disciplines, is more than verse and establishes its own discipline in our worlds, becoming inter-dimensional and intergalactic, defying natural laws and going to spaces in our existences that indubitably teach us more about our existences. Like my vineyard stroll earlier and anything connected to wine and its development and elemental assembly, where I am now at my desk, staring out at the Sauv’ Blanc block, gifts me innumerable lessons.
