Tag: wine consumers

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Health/Wellness

wine sketchez: Three Fat Guys Wines

Three Guys, Two Wines, One Obsessed New Fan

Chardonnay.  Cabernet.  So how are you to be bedazzled or even a little taken by varietals that so many producers bottle?  Easy.  When they’re done to this stratospherically savory extent.  Before I get into the wines my and Three Fat Guys’ vin ami, Wes, sent me, you have to examine their story, which starts with genuine tempo and color.  The elevated interest and tireless curiosity for and in wine.  Tony Moll, one of the Guys and Owners of the this playful yet prominently tasty enclave of a label, tell me his fascination with wine started just before starting Three Fat Guys with partners Jason and Daryn.  He tells me that in the off-season he’d go to local wine bars in Sonoma and just immerse himself in everything about wine.  Oh and that’s another facet to this brand I find immeasurably interesting and encouraging as a wine consumer—  all three played professional football, and those journeys together on the Road for the game is what actuated their chasing a more oeno-centric story.  When home from the season, Tony would find his favorites, what he liked and didn’t like, and intensify his fondness and acuity in wine’s world.

He knew he wanted to create a “premium wine,” he tells me.  Well, if I’m to react to such a remark, he failed gloriously.  The Fat Guys’ wines are anything but premium, in my language—  Words I’d employ then immediate deploy to this page are ‘cosmic’, ‘inspiring’, ‘vocal’, ‘inter-dimensional’… inexplicably delicious.  The Chard and Cab Wes sent me were anything but template, anything but expected.  Yes, the common consumer would note their “premium-ness”, but I find myself in uncommon sphere and state tasting these wines.  What I tasted was something of a quality that we consumers wish for.  You can find a simple “premium” bottle on the shelf at Safeway.  This is different, another planet and page, story, narrative.  What was in the bottle was true fermented magic, a lively literary quality that educates a sipper’s senses, like I jotted in the Composition book, “Moriarty-esque reflective madness”…  But, again, more on that in a bit.

This is a small producer that’s not on the “I’m a small wine label” self-anointing chariot.  What you have in your glass with TFG is three gentlemen who love wine.  That’s it.  The fervor of their fondness translates to what you sip, exponentially.  You can only be smitten and seraphically instructed with their bottles.  Tony tells me that he loves the reaction when people taste his wines, when people merely look at him and utter in tremor, “WOW.” Remember, these are offensive lineman, put on the field to protect the quarterback, to block, to be firm and stern.  And how serendipitous in how they don’t care about notoriety, awards, scores, or any other kind of pseudo-prestige.  They just want to be known for wine, wine that is “damn good wine” as he tells me.  Well, with this motion, he and his Guys succeed ad nauseam.

I started with the Chardonnay as you might expect, the other night, hoping that I would taste something new from Chardonnay’s all-too-frequently harangued identity.  First nudge of fragrance after opening bottle, smelling cork and then into bottle’s neck, was pair and vanilla, apple and a cinnamon-sewn pie crust.  On palate, I was greeted with tame acidity coupled with the apple and pie crust, vanilla and almond, a little toast… lavender?  There was a that jazzy weather I dream I’ll one day taste in Chardonnay.  Finally encountered, finally taught something new.  And as the wine invited and later fully embracing the temperature of the room, the texture became more sensual, the apple and pair soupçons more immediate, more visible and believable.  The Chardonnay took on a haunting and persuasive, bewitching quality I’ve never experienced in a Cali’ white Burgundy.  This was a new experience, and I was renewed as a wine lover.

I’m a “Cabernet guy” you could say, so I’m exceptionally welcoming and nearly a bastard critic with Cabs I’m sent.  Like the Chardonnay, TFG’s Cab had a dark personality and widely-erotic electricity to every parcel of its palate.  This is the wine that had the personality of Dean Moriarty, his wild charisma and irresistible allure.  The fruit that spoke to me was in the purview of blackberry and dark chocolate-adorned cherry, then cocoa powder and espresso, a wink of mint and black licorice, smoke.  Doing both its vineyard site, vintage, and varietal a marathon of justice.  There was a rare coherence in this bottle, a bewildering synergy of all parts and personalities, measures and clefs.  If one of these wines sends these gentlemen to some unseen notoriety, whether they want it or not, their Napa Cabernet offering will cement such.

Three lessons learned for the writer, here.  1, Chardonnay is the most extraordinarily effusive and gorgeous white varietal, if done the way these lineman have ordered.  2, if all Cabernets were done this well, I would not drink anything else.  All other varietals would be hit with a preference asteroid which would tie them in certain extinction.  And, 3, the focus of any small label—rather than telling everyone they’re a small label, or artisanal label, or some cult wine producer—should be to just make some damn good wine.  Well decreed, Mr. Tony.  These wines are unlike any expected palate presence of Chardonnay and Cabernet.  Par conséquent, their unique beat, their instructional quality, their haunting stubbornness in anyone who sips.

(10/20/16)

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Try Pours

Think I want to give Zinfandel another shot.  I all but dismissed the varietal from my life, no matter how it was produced and no matter how innovative the producer thought he or she was during fermentation and aging.  But, now I’m open to a little exploration, a little Zin search, and a little more openness of mind.  So… guess I’m due for a trip to Dry Creek.  And again, open.  To everything.  All styles of Zin and, again, regiments and treatments.. everything.  Then, I’ll deduce and conclude which sippable shape I’m attracted to.  And if it makes me a ‘Zin guy’, then fine.  I doubt that will happen, mind you, but I do expect a little more about Zin and my palate’d relationship with it.

12/22/15

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NaNoWriMo Thanks

…or at least MARKET it.  This is the caffeine talking, maybe I shouldn’t’ve ordered a 4-shotter.  But I did and here I am.  The winery tomorrow should also prove quite fruitful.. taking a picture of this setup, me at the counter, coffee and computer, thoughts and wishes, the liste.. everything, this time, now, 12:47 and how that could be a novel to itself.. deciding that I will have everything I want.. well, I do, I just have to sell it.  Funny this new obsession with selling, I never considered myself a salesperson, nor have I ever even slightly enjoyed the concept of selling or being a seller, but infused with the appropriate creative acts selling actually becomes not selling at all, but more a sharing of passion for something.

Looking left now out the back patio, to the fall leaves that haven’t yet met the ground, I dream of a vacation home somewhere.  Not adding that to liste but I’m just daydreaming…

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1,000 words — barrel 10

A Cabernet, one my sister made, on desk at left.  And me, after today, after the group of drunken IMG_9391southerners toward day’s close, I’m bit nervy.  but I maintain and look at the stack of books, or “tower” as Jackie said, to my right, all my books, he insisted on making a “big huge tower, Dada!”.  And I welcomed it.  It reminds me I need to write more as well as read more and mimic and study the paginated saunter of my metered beacons, these authors I follow and immerse myself in.  This could be the wine talking but I don’t care, I just follow my own impulse at the moment, and it’s not that late, only 9:57PM on this Halloween eve, my desk looking like that of a, well, a ‘Me’.. the writer/professor, working for Self, and staring at the Plath entries, the Capote short stories, Emerson’s words– Alice messages me from upstairs to tell me little Kerouac is out, “passed out baby” as she says.  And oh yes, he delighted in his costumed and canided  carousal, my little Beat.

That dog still barks, from outside, off to the right.  Annoying, but I take another sip of Katie’s Cab and retreat into wined thought, into my visions as a wine something.  Going upstairs to check on the Beat–

And indeed, very much asleep.  I remember when young always wishing that Halloween would fall on a Saturday, well.. I’m here, on a Saturday, it’s Halloween, but I’m too bloody old to enjoy it as I would have when in San Carlos, walking around the old neighborhood with my then-friends– Matt, David, Adrian, Erick, or whomever.  Time’s pocketing a severe advancement and trumping of my self-esteem this eve.  But, ‘huh’, the writer thinks, ‘nothing a little wine won’t fix!’.

IMG_9374Wine education.. Wine consumers… Wine whatever…..  Whatever Wine whatever connecting people with wine and selling wine crEATively.  How bloody hard is that?  I don;t know, but I’m knowing, I need to organize myself more, I thought all day, writing notes to the ’13 Arista Longbow Pinot, thinking about that coy sweet ebb on the last bit of palate contact.  But somms won’t want to hear that, and maybe that’s what I should go after, just write against them and challenge them kindly.. the other day at the Grower’s office I so many times hear people mention somm opinion, like it’s something they should fear or what– Wine isn;t that, it’s not fear, it’s not for the bully bull, it’s not the fear mongering tarantula “journalist”– this is definitely the wine talking, so I should have on more glass, and this is me– I’m not out “partying”, I’m not at some dimwitted useless timesuck of a wine industry “social” or openhouse.  I;m here at me desk writing, next to a stack of books my son architecture’d.  Like he wants me to read more, like he wants me to draw from this building, this tower, as I sit here.. it’s taller than me.  I don’t want to stand, I want it to continue its lurch over me, staring at me, saying ‘READ!”, “STUDY MORE!”, “Be a REAL professor!” So, then, okay.. I adjust and augment.. but that Autumn Walk mystery dog, whosever it is.. barking like a harassing howler, just wanting to puncture a poet’s peace–

And it won.  So I get more wine.

And the glass, partially full, and my thoughts are just jumbled in the optical of this book tower.. Capote’s short fictive foreards, and me with this Comp Book open, my classes ending in just over seven weeks.. or six.  Feeling like my daughter may early arrive– can’t think about that, much I want to, much I want to see little Ms. Austen in my arms and being held by Ms. Alice, and by my mother, Dad, everyone.. this is definitely the wine boasting its oration, and its stampede of confidence (it is a Cabernet afterall), but I ignore it or try–

IMG_9390

Admiring the sight of the night’s cap, in glass, in my moment’s immediacy but I feel like I alway play with that word, the life of the writer at his desk like that’s something to be impressed by, who am I talking to me or you– the poet knows nothing but his own fantasies– her on the page and me in control of her character and where she goes what she studies what punctuation I implement to do what.  So what.  WHAT.

Old pictures on the camera haunt me, tauntingly, the old winery and what that did to me.  But I forget it, think about my son tonight and how all he wanted was more candy in that plastic pumpkin.  That was his prime priority, just finding the prize, the sweet, for he and Addy.  Ugh.. the writer’s being overtaken by the wine now, but not drunkenness, just slowed, and the day’s as well to blame, working behind that bar, one woman saying the wine was so strong “my eyes can smell it!”.  Meant to write that down but it became so busy and I wasn’t in the mood to scribble it into the little mmc book, black, but I remembered it so that means it deserved a page, right?

And I think I’m defeated, old journal entries calling to me but I don’t know where they are, probably in some box but post-move into this Autumn Walk writer-bunker I don’t know where they’d be.  Too late to check with mother-in-law asleep in living room, Alice upstairs in her dreams with Ms. Austen inside her, and Mr. Kerouac snoring till his decision.–  Look at me, reader; 36, married and house and children and pressure but I still write– so many father-husbands turn to something, and I guess I am as well but it’s the alphabet, my cored expressionism, which is flawed in so many dimensionalites but it’s me.  So that makes me…..  I don’t know.

That dog barks again.. goddamnit!

(10/31/15)

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Let the

3PM-ers out, and I don’t care.  I was nowhere near a teaching mood today.  Haven’t eaten so I’m a bit hungry, but I’m agitated, by my own procrastinating qualities, and the knowledge that I could be doing more, working harder as a writer and blogger and business owner, I guess.  So what to do?  The angle of being a father, I need to record that more, more writing on Jackie and my relationship with my best little Beatnik friend.. everything from where we go and at what times and what he says and how I see him fitting into the eventual winery, other than being the cute little guy that says “HI!” when you walk in.  Which he doesn’t do often, say ‘hi’ to unknowns.  But I need to capitalize on the material that he is as a character– and before you say it’s trivial, such and approach, or objectifying him or just using my son as content or marketing fader, NOT TRUE.  It’s praise of him and sharing how thankful I am for this little Artist in my life, and how he makes me a more centered writer–  I really should go get him now but I needed to record this, what I’m feeling and hearing in my nuclei.

Now I’m seeing more stories.  Again I have to return to the reality and the trial and trails of the adjunct, and why so many of us leave “the profession” and why we blog as we do.  The adjunct tale, how we count the weeks in the semester especially in a semester where we, I, we, maybe took a class at a campus we don’t entirely adore.–  In the breakroom writing then two adjuncts, both high school English teachers come in and bitch about the papers they have to hand back, “come-to-Jesus moment,” Vanessa says, then she goes off on the food on campus, all complaints, and not only from her, from me, all of us.  At first I got tired of hearing them, most especially my own–  Now she continues on about how she just went out to eat, the other adjunct asks about a corkage fee and she boasts how she doesn’t drink, “so the wine thing doesn’t interest me.” Sounded arrogant.  And embittered, probably from the papers she had to grade and now has to tonight return.  And, with all embrace and speed, I empathize.  So firingly, quite aligned with her thoughts.  So we’re all fucking bitter, in certain moments.

Home, I open a bottle of the Merlot I made in ’12, and what vroom, what vivacious algorithmic velocityIMG_9099 to its everything, EVERYTHING.  This is the wine I should make, for the rest of my life.  If this were for sale in my tasting room, and that’s how I;m tasting it, as a consumer, a first-time visitor, I quite enjoy it.  Believable and emboldened fruit formation with a romantic texture and consistency, sip 1 to last.  Lovely.  And I don’t want to talk about wines like I always do but I quite like this, if you must know.  Time for one more class, the night’s cap before my long day come morrow…  Just smelled the Merlot, from the final glass I poured myself and I had to walk away and record my reaction; the rich lavender, cherry and cinnamon, throwing their noted bodies into my perception.  This is just the wine I want to make.  And I have.  I did!  So I have to do it again, soon.

New note, that I again sip after washing my hands in the small powder room by the wine cabinet; dried rose petal, or spicy potpourri.  I may have had too much and my senses compromised but I’m not distracted by my phone or some message that may or may not be waiting for me who cares right now I’m a writer writing stopping for nothing not even punctuation– I know I’m viewed as scattered, a backwards swirling universe or maelstrom, but I’m writing at least and so much fearlessly.  But something in me still thickly loves to teach, to interact with and talk to students about books and writing; to Exchange Ideas, as Coleman put it.  And my approach to this wine thing is just that: an Exchange of Ideas.  Not trying to “educate” anyone, just hoping to share the love and fascination with the world and terrestrially vinified galavant around us.

Can’t believe I made this wine– well, with much help from my friend Blair, yes, but it was my idea to start.  That is, this wine couldn’t and wouldn’t be sipped now by the writer if I hadn’t had the curiosity–  I remember the day the wine arrived to the K—- crush pad, the dry ice being added, and then when it was in the back room, cold soaking.. dark, rested, sumptuous and taunting.  So it is now, when I sip, poking at my composure and daring me to analyze it, to describe what I taste– but what if I just want to sip?

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Beatifically Mad Again

This morning, oh this morning with my little technology skirmish and remembering last night with Mom and Dad and the wines we opened and surveyed, Dad speaking of the Devil Proof Malbec as one of if not the best wine I’ve ever put before him.  And those are the the caliber wines I hope to soon make for my admirers– or not even those admiring my writing or wines, just those lending me their time to taste and interact with my efforts.  Feel like I’ve already had too much coffee this morning but the Beat brews himself another cup.  This morning jotted some thoughts while Alice relaxed on the couch, stretching out her legs rubbing her stomach communicating gently but intently with little Emma, Jack running around with his lucky rock and a quarter– “Wine from removed objective, perspective; which includes no sipping, small or significant, nothing, taking a full step back and simply observing; the sippers and their questions, their trips and their planned tastings, how they talk to each other at the bar and how they wish they could stay out here just one more day, not go back to work and how if only they could win the lotto and move out here, just drink wine and eat wonderfully like that’s all the people of Healdsburg and Sonoma County do.” So many visions and entertainments cognitively and analytically yesterday in the Sanglier tasting room and more today to be sure, from talking about the wines or just watching people pass the tasting room, not wanting to come in for whatever reason.  Wine and my relationship with it, my “end game”, making my writings more “evergreen” as Sean the editor put it.  I’m changing I realize as a character, a precise beatific remolding of my mold and manuscript from day to day, questions and answers, submissions of assignments to myself and my readers, and one day my babies reading my work, like a student again me the writer professor whatever I’m calling my self this week.

Haven’t sipped the coffee yet, afraid to, don’t want to jitter with too much jolt to be sure, or unsure, who’s really sure of what they want and how they see themselves in 10 years.. me, 46, is that even possible?  Time will have its way and victory and I loathe it for that in so many tactical ways–  There, sip 1, small and polite, not too loud.  The mornings I’d spend in the Kenwood market parking lot or the overflow lot at the old winery, in my head now thinking of how that seems like a far forever ago but I’m here now in my home office listening to Hutcherson’s tunes as I do, like I did then before work, with one of those breakfast burritos and sparkling waters or Dr. Peppers, venomizing my words and thoughts toward that place and why I was there at 35, with a wife and son and still in a condo– “Why don’t I have my own business yet?” I remember so many times writing and blogging and saying to myself as I’d walk through those two tall doors to the tasting room, my peace broken having to leave the quiet concentration of my car writing to be a clock-controlled bot.  But no more.. with the Autumn Walk and mikemadigancrEATive shop I have too many new beginnings, new promises and stories.  I can only be Zen, wrapped in my anti-Nietzschean melodies and scales played on this neo-underwood.  I wish.. just another piece of technology I’m dependent upon.. so badly want to write like Kerouac, with complete and vocally blazing autonomy, no device doting, but I can’t I’m in this time and at this desk, but I see the class half full.  And half is as good or glorious and completion, a heaping wave of fortune and blessings [pardon the word, if you know me and my Agnostic folding)–

So lovely writing freely this morning, with this jazz and coffee, my little notebook and nothing else.  Found an old picture of Jack yesterday or the day before of him sitting up, less that a year old, holding one of my Composition books.  Three years ago, more, and here I am how did I get here and why doesn’t time just slow down for the writer/winemaker just a little bit.  Another note from this morning: “Disgusted by pop culture music its lazy ways and instant attention and fame and praise while real writers and thinkers hurt & hunger”.  It truly does make me sick.  I have to exercise more crEATivity.  Especially with my new hostility toward academia.  Solano being the prime evidential submission, how they boast they support adjunct faculty and promote all this activism but put such poster or quasi-banners in the most unnoticed and trafficked areas.  How is that support?  And not only that, stick us in that pen, that holding cell.  I won’t let it ruin my morning– I’ll write faster and with more creative craze than any of those sweatyhog full-timers.  And what can they do?  I mean, if you truly pose that question and dissect and explore hypotheticals, you notice ‘nothing’.  They can’t touch us.  As with me, we can leave the profession and more than likely be better off.  As some full-timers may have wine or something else as a hobby or sidejob, I do the same reversed.. winemaker and writer just teaching for fun.. truly for the love of students.

I stretch and breath and love my morning even more.  Another small tilt of my coffee cup and thinking about the day of content and material in front of me I smile, for me and Jack, Ms. Alice and Ms. Emma when she arrives, just over two months ahead of now.  My little girl, sure to be immensely proud of her writer/winemaker father, rising early like farmers and winemakers during harvest, never stopping for anything or anyone.. just working and building the story as winemakers build their brand and story and explore varietals, further specializing their tone and talk and grapetrot–  MY beat intensifies this morning and me along the keyboard, pretending it’s an underwood, that I’m Kerouac, the next morning after some party or some interaction with another beat–  I want to stay at this desk all day but I know I can’t I have to be out there gathering, hunting materials and characters, those tourists that step to the bar for the first time, saying how much they love the wine, how they can’t wait for their shipment to arrive at their house, sharing the wine at a table– new thesis for me as a consumer, keep exploring; keep with the questions; forever be a student of Life and wine and writing, Literature– bring the new Kerouac novel to the tasting room, be a Kerouac– or no: more a MADIGAN.

Stretching again and letting another jazz track play before stopping and getting in shower.  In this morning’s session, nothing can hurt me– nothing, no obligation or bill or deadline, no assignment or hostile student, no client or anything.  No weather no taxes no threats, no impending El Niño.  No. Thing.  A writing session at the Oakville grocery sounds sumptuous in its own angularity today but I won’t.  I will stay behind that Sanglier bar and pretend it’s my TR, my winemaking efforts being sold and disseminated.  And what a story of Glenn, a farmer once in the corporate world, rewriting his story and having everything go as he wanted it to, how he measured– “If I told you, I’d sound arrogant,” he once said when I asked him if this is how he saw it developing, how his business and move from Texas forwarded.  And just as he saw, and how could that be seen as arrogant, his response?  Only admirable.  What he did, the “re-write” if you will, is just what I’m doing, what’s been set in motion with mmc, and the new blog– the visual approach to wine and its scenes and shots.

And like that.. onto page 3 you find me.

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Thrall Depth

IMG_9018Finally at the desk to write freely.  Met with winemaker friend Jesse earlier, and before so met with Gary, former K—- friend for some tasting, the Stonestreet set.  Not a “bad” wine there, not in any respect or ramble.  In fact, I just finished my second glass from the Chardonnay I bought today.. nice oak ebb with syllabic fruit form and arrangement, placement.  Just another brilliant Chardonnay in this recent white wine rile I’ve been on.  Thinking what else I have to do tonight.. more house-keeping keeps; officialize website, order business cards…  I now see that this content marketing shop will interfere with certain or all writing urgencies– but “Mike Madigan, Author” is an mmc client, so not too much can off the ledge leap.  OH– want a night’s capping.  But what?  More Chard, or one of the Lagunitas?

Smelled the fermentation again today, just on the “Walk” patio, this morning, so now I’m promise a future in wine, making wine for my own label like my friend Jesse and touring the country for pourings and explanations as to why I made the wine I did and whatIMG_9024 food I’d pair it with– actually, I want to have food in mind while making my wines, as my sister explained at Dad’s 70th, while introducing the Chardonnay and telling a story of how Mom would not just cook to and with it but sip it as well.  Everything I do now is WINE, and all stories are wine-sewn, as so many people talk about terroir I seek to be one truly living it, like Glenn, like Jesse, like my sister– in the vineyard and seeing what the vines want us as winemakers to say.. now, we may not always agree, but there can be a certain syllabic synergy, most luminously.

Tomorrow I’m in the Sanglier tasting room, learning from Chelsea and learning more about their model and wines and how the wines are spoken, what they orate in the TR context–

IMG_9026Just checked on my little Beat, qualmless in his sleep, dreaming of things I;m sur eI have no idea how to interpret, jaded as I am with my age and advance life lording.  Night’s cap, at left, a Lagunitas.. should go in other room to watch what I want, something for next week’s lectures.. secured classes for next semester, today; a 5 and a 1A.  Remembering when I first started teaching and how eager I was and how I’d go anywhere and teach anywhere, any class and at any place– so eager and they know that they feed on it and us, our optimism and open bags, notebooks and car doors; we’re on the fucking freeway more than at that class’ helm.

But that stops for me.

Now.

This semester.

And next.

And after next, if I get to next, I’ll be a winemaker, writing fulltime and only having priority and universal impetus in my own layered notes and whimsical musings, all wine-riled and ruled.

Such kalological code.