Leftovers and red…

Wine never needs to frame complicated. Wine should never direct prolix. She’s inviting, approachable, narrative and affectionate. What’s surrounded by curved glass reads a presence, a prophetic face and storm of versifying lines.

After a day, working, wine waits, debates her approach to me, my life and day and immediate room. The room, now, connotative in resonance, assurance, a perceptive seat. I’m at a table with her, being instructed, listening,eating leftovers and coaching me on Now, this doesn’t have to be layered or codified, and sort of sophisticated set.

Haven’t touched this glass. But the visual and nearness has me. Inward recite, and known night, thrown toward a lone vinified light.

9/19/18

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Today… bit by wine bug, working an event at Idlewild

pouring Italian wines, all quite rare, friend from company I worked at expressing how happy she is for me now, now that I get to enjoy wine as I should as a writer and blogger.  “Are you still writing about wine?” I told her yes even though I haven’t been, much, in days recent, but after today all I want to do is hop around Italian wines, and Italy, explore the entire fucking planet as much s I can and taste as much wine as I can, in any tasting room or villa, or terrace, wherever I can.  Was in the ‘IW’ TR from about 12-8:15, listening to my friend Thomas speak on Italian varietals in the Mount Etna area. I’ll admit—well I don’t actually have to admit, but…-I don’t know Italian wines that much.  Really not at all, till I started helping out at IW.  Now I get to have fun, as I should with wine, as anyone loving wine should.

Now that I’m home, I can actually have a full glass.  Was quite cautious sipping in the tasting room, Labor Day and all, and the CHP was out like the Panzer Divisions in Warsaw.  I was sipping a bit, spitting, but more so listening, thinking of where I am in my wined story and how now I finally get a wined story.  Me, now in tech, and I have not even a microscopic regret, will some day I swear have my own little label.  I’ve written about this so many times that I’m now actually annoyed I wrote it again, another vow, another promise, but today told me… give everything to the office new, to tech, so I can play in wine.  And not just for that, but my wine life is a gift from other work.  How can I blend wine and tech, and beyond some silly rating app?  That’s obviously too much the obvious approach.  My thinking goes to discussion, to conversation, sharing of information yes but more informing other consumers.

Wine is calling me back, but not in any professional capacity.  Like Bekah said, enjoy it as you want to.  I will, starting with this Rosé.  Blend of Nebb’, Dolcetto, Barbera, and I see some cove, the Mediterranean, me not having anything to do but write. The wine bug has bitten me several times today, warned me to stay away from the industry and if I go back it’s for my own tasting room which will be invitation-only.  Friends, family, or friends or family, and family, of either.  I see after today what wine should be.  Not a competition, not a status-anything. Nothing the industry promotes, certainly not some corporate blob-glob pretending to be family-formed.  I’m sipping wine, seeing myself somewhere, knowing that what I’ve seen in wine and wha tI now appreciate and feel is what I’m to do in the tech world.  Much now answered, much now seen, a gem trove told and gleamed.

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Wine telling me

that tomorrow morning I will wake early.

This is my glass last.

There will be several pages propelled before kids and wife wake.

First tilt of the little plastic, more impassioned harmony than night prior. I’m with the wine, multiplied ways over, manuscript coupled and unmuzzled. No stop or pause or lull in its voice, step, song.

Scribbling like the Hatter mad, or Jack on the Road with Dean. Me tasting wine through valleys with one of my vino brothers…thinking, now. On this floor, all these notes, another still shot…

Convinced. Ever, forever, and never a never, with wine. She reads me and sees my eve to more ease. Leaving pleased…

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8/23/18

img_6960Noticed a typo in last night’s entry, to the ATLAS Peak Merlot I was sipping, but I’m not going to change it.  On property.  Last day in the industry, at this winery, working with this company, and onward to the new office, the new assignment… Working in “tech”, I guess you could say, but I see it as building community and contributing to an already-astonishingly impressive client relations and customer service culture, at Sonic.

Not sure how long they’ll keep me here today, as my final check’s already been cut and overnighted to the TR.  This is it.  I’m leaving.  Tomorrow at Sonic, and I only want to learn, meet other creatives, and expand my story, learn more about myself and business, people, and what the community wants.

09:19.  Should be packing up, but I’ll give myself a couple extra minutes.  In a cubicle, in cubicle-ville, villa.  How many writing sessions and sittings have I had in here stretched backward into 13 months or so.  I feel… I don’t know.  Amazing, yes.  But a bit in disbelief of my reality.  12 years in the wine industry, over.  It’s time.  I’m not excessively reflective, just in study.  And I, in now way, failed.  In no respect AM I failed, in having so much of my life in story in this industry, behind those counters, in all those tasting rooms.  Truth… that’s what I accumulated, pocketed, appreciated.  Finding that I don’t anymore need be here.  Even Stephanie, the new Tasting Room Manager here at Roth, someone I’ve very much if you must know grown to admire, inferred that I’ve graduated.  Coherence, cosmic.  The Story is speaking directly to me, offering new directives and dimensions, telling me to write, capture everything today, your last day, and purpose it all for tomorrow, the new story.  The new people, the new assignments, new KNOWLEDGE.

Hear someone coming up those loud steel stairs.  Mick, the Cellar Master.  He and I talk about all the barrels that still have to arrive before harvest.  Think he said like 300 more?  How are they going to fit all of them in the warehouse?  How will they survive this harvest, which is schedule to be I don’t know how many more hundred tons than last vintage…. See?  I still care.  I still love wine, and even the industry. But now, I just write it.  My heart and attention, my cognitive epicenter, is at Sonic, with what technology and the internet, what information can do for a home, a business, a person… a community.  COMMUNITY.  Now, I’m always with sight, and never a lowered lid.

09:27.  Ugh… need more time to write.  Left late, a bit, this morning with babies taking them to school, in Bennett Valley across town.  They teach me more than I can ever write or inventory.  They are my knowledge suppliers, those that go to throw me the sagacity fix, feed my beggar’s call for lesson, for new thoughts and gems, philosophy, life, all of it.  There, now I’m ready to walk down the stairs to the tasting room from this villa of cubes.  One final flash.

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On the eve of me leaving wine’s industry, I sip a Merlot.

img_6931The varietal that brought me into wine, that invited me into the collective compositions and narrative, luminous elucidation of it all.  After tomorrow, I’ll only write about wine.  Not be int he tasting room.  Not have to look at schedules and calendars, first thing in morning when the coffee’s barely taken its place in my pulse.  I’m sitting on the floor thinking about the past 12 years, in wine, the industry, the stories and people, everything.  Merlot, from Dutcher Crossing, inarguably the winery that made me the sales and marketing and wine storytelling expanse I am. Or that I think I am.  I’m nearly 40.  It’s time to leave. And more demanded, time to enjoy wine as a true consumer, not one saying they’re the consummate consumer, which yes I have from time to time to generate sales, which makes me feel like a slimy industry gargoyle.  But you do what you have to do.. to get that sale, oui?  Integrity.  I’m finding less and less of it, valley to valley, county to county.  I’m a consumer, now.  I write about wine.  I’m finally a wine writer.  Wow… I had to leave the business, or industry, the tasting room, whatever, to be what I’ve always wanted to… writer of wine.. translator of.

Haven’t taken my first sip yet.  I’m just staring at that Dutcher puddle, fruit from Napa, Atals Peak somewhere.  See it.. when I first arrived there, interviewing with two people now dearer than dear friends of mine.  Time, whatever it wants it just takes, and that’s my time, my life, this Now, that Now, every breath and second in a tasting room. Now, I fight back.  Tomorrow, my only plan is to thank everyone at Roth, at Foley, then start traveling.  Now I enjoy wine as a writer, a traveling wine writer who looks for any vineyard and cottage, any hut or terrace he can.  Why am I just being this, now?  I’m a wine writer, ‘cause I left the industry. There’s more than forecasted knowledge in that. I’m learning of my control, the nature of my dominance in my story.  Wine is part of it, but not everything.  So now, I sip to sip.  Imagine going to a tasting room and not identifying myself as ‘industry’.  Look at stemless plastic glass, cup, again, and breath, lean my head and neck back into the couches cushion.

img_6934

First sip of the entity, and I’m in a tasting room.  I’m thinking of how I’d speak it, how I’d “describe it” if that’s what you want to say, to a guest.  I can’t tell, anymore.  I’m just into the wine.  Staring at her shade and shape, sense and poetic form, radiant rile and speak from dimensions theorized.  I’m lost, found, loving the delicious duality and dichotomy of not just this wine but my wine story, the past, since ’06….  No miss.  Only a cherishing tryst.  I think.  Again, I’m lost in this, not sure if celebration’s the word, but something to the tune and tilt, tone of.

8/22/18

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Some random Cabernet

I bought off a winemaker based in Livermore. Might be my only glass, being so tired from yesterday’s event and all the speaking today. Just swore to self that this sitting would be the one that does something. What. What? I ask the Cab. I provoke one sip and it doesn’t answer. So I’m done for the night. Clocking out. Not sure I deserve to.

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