Tag: Wine Growing

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Friday My Friday

The war with tech on wages, and I type on my wife’s new laptop, the one issued by herIMG_8260school (they would never do that for adjunct at the JC or university… spit!).  Trying to stay focused on my mission tomorrow with Dad and not be befuddled even the slightest by this latest tech clash.  This is like Ukraine and Russia, or the Russian-supporters or what be.  Not sure what side be me, as as soon the writer thinks he’s ahead and in so many ways dominant, he’s set back, attacked, and…  Don’t want to talk about it.  Feels odd typing on someone else’s computer, and the writer tries to ignore it, re-focus on the wine I sipped tonight, the Kunde Family’s ’14 Magnolia Lane SB.  I texted Zach, their winemaker and tangential friend to the writer, that this SB translation show much more vintage congruency, much more texture and impact, impression.  Now the writer’s in his night’s cap, seeing the day come morrow, Dad’s and my first mission together; wine-honed and to only gather content content CONTENT.  For the startup and for this wined log of course.  No TV on, and me with my IPA wanting to makewine buinse wine, again today hearing Glenn talk about the Kick Ranch and the various clones present on the block sequences and how they need water and how there’s only so much water.. maybe I’ll take a couple IMG_8258classes.  Or maybe I shouldn’t.  I’ve been an academic all my life, what if I turned into one just fully living wine?  No formal schooling or any institutional stretches, just teach mySelf?  Yeah that IS what I’ll do.. so if I were to further deconstruct the SB from tonight, I’d affirm it had more almond and vanilla vertices about its strut.  The acidity was more understated than the ’13, and the overall fruit jargon of the wine was less-contrived.  And I think that’s from ’14 being a deliberately reduced crop, or at least that’s what I was told by —–.  But the consumer doesn’t care about that, they want to enjoy what their sipping and this SB has more universal elevation and speak to it than the ’13.

The weekend, or weekend-like for a writer like me.  Beginning my running again on Monday, Labor Day.  Only 5 miles, and more emphasis on weights in my routines.  And maybe even a bit of boxing, just for added cardio.  Have to be alive and quick my babies, and for the traveling I’m near to do.

IMG_8257        And then I notice the writing slow, and my attention wander and stray like one of the domestic cats on the Autumn Walk block.–  Reached down over arm of couch left for beer but it was right.  That’s exhaustion, not liquored effects.  Wish it were…  We all slept so brilliantly last night, especially Jack early in A.M. running into our room all chuckles and congealed humor, hopping over my stomach to lay next to me and tell me about the how Gra’pa and Magah (Mom) are coming back soon.  This more calculates the family winery aim.  And walking the blocks today with Glenn as I did, talking about Syrah clones and GSM’s and the Pinots he makes…  So much more to my story, my family’s story.. and it’ll be written, you’ll see.

Should get to bed soon.  Have a long day of wine IMG_8249study tomorrow with Dad– Want to show him ME on my A game, at my most precise and acute.  Again distracted by how Jackie’s cars litter the floor here in the family room of the Autumn Walk base.  His confidence of ownership is more than luminescent and proverbial, he’s of the founded and formed mind that he can do anything, that anything’s possible.  What an entrepreneur my little Artist would make…  WILL make, when a part of this mmc camp.

(9/4/15)

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Glenn Alexander on 2015 Vintage Growth

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New saunter with new

IMG_7095friends and new observations, portraits of Russian River and viticultural empiricism.  Sounds of dried leaves, step step step…  And that phantasmagoric fog that beat into the scene like some soft percussion hint, the brushes over snare, and I bob my head waiting for music but none, just quiet and more visuals, jest me awed and listening to him tell me about the soil and the trellising system, yield and clonal amalgamation, presence and octave– everything there was Literary, watching the clusters morph to something that’s envisioned or published and printed on some postcard, made into merchandise with a skew then sent somewhere, then discarded both materially and in memory.  But not me, not after that walk, even if I tried I couldn’t lose the clusters and that gray sky and the intermittent coy atmospheric nudges against the right then left side of my face.  I felt part of it, it, the hills and flats and those clusters.  Then the vineyard chief showed me the color contrasts of the rows and how that translated to ripeness levels and the vintage’s message and expected yield.  I just wanted to keep walking, write in the Comp Book and take everything with me, everything now here with me in my writing grotto, looking over scribbles that I can’t translate or decode even with as much coffee as I’ve today sipped.

One set, of vines, in particular held me, told me something that I can remember, just the vintage is IMG_7090coming and Pinot’s now my conductor, purpose-r.  And I’m settled in that godly swing, like an ax to a downed tree part I’m in Pinot reach, I’ve already been reached, my new docility accredited to the fold; wine and Russian River, a vineyard walk with friends new– and maybe next time I will stay, just a little longer, see what the hills and trees and screaming blocks instruct.

I was never that much a follower of anything Burgundy, until of late.  Singing varietal, Pinot is, one having its way with our inner-shores and climates, fermenting our moods into something more composed, more composure about the sipper, this sipper, as he pours a little IMG_7093more and holds to his knowledge that the vineyards know more about him that he them.  And what does that mean, another walk, more steps over those dried leaves and under competing trees– a war over water, struggling vines giving to new notes and insinuated brow, more California or Burgundy I don’t know, you tell me.

With another glass I talk about it, more notings and pages not thrown to ground but just set aside.  The blocks deserve my most tracked and traced attentions.  So I stop with sips, I just look at the puddle in the bowl, wondering what it’s doing chemically, what the oxygen urges from its core and tabulated temperament.  I’ll in a minute know, but not now.  I have to wait.  The same as growers with new plantings.. fruit, fruit, where is the usable fruit?  Patience.. but not easy.. not for this saunterer, not with my steps or scribbles.  I type faster making myself think I caught it all.

(7/10/15)