Archive for June, 2011

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Bloom, and other wonderful things …

June 30, 2011

Please forgive yourself if you don’t yet know the name Kyle Theriot. You will. He’s new here at Ridge; our new Monte Bello Viticulturist.

It’s an extraordinary job, done only by extraordinary individuals. Rarely will you encounter such a singular cross of low-down, dirty, funky agrarian authenticity, and high-brow, tech-nerd, number-crunching, software-savvy obsessive compulsivity, as you will when meeting a real-deal viticulturist. They may rarely, if ever, be on the cover of Wine Spectator, or win awards, or give speeches at fancy dinners, but take my word for it, good wine is simply not made without them.

Kyle is stepping into an intense gig; in more ways than one. Monte Bello isn’t just any vineyard, either by legend, or reality. It’s a great deal of pressure, and a tremendous amount of work. That the powers-that-be here at Ridge believe in Kyle the way they do says volumes about the caliber of his character.

Now add to all the above another trait; an artist’s eye.

I bug viticulturists. I always want stories, pictures, videos, you name it, if it’s from the vineyard, I want it. But it’s not their job to amuse my wishes. Most don’t. I have been very fortunate here, however, to have developed great partnerships with the gang in the vineyards. They’ve been very supportive, very helpful, and they’ve bequeathed a lot of experience and knowledge. Kyle has been here just a short while, but I am already inheriting from his benevolence, and as I said above, his is no ordinary eye. I told him I would love a picture of bloom (when it happens). He sent me this:

Which is but one vine from the Gate Block at Jimsomare. Which looks like this:

And I told him I’d love to see a picture of some of the younger Cab Franc vines. I got this:

Please join me in welcoming Kyle Theriot to the Ridge Vineyards team. Lord knows, we’re happy to have him.

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Posted in Events & Photographs, Monte Bello, Vineyards and Oenology | Leave a Comment »

Don’t Tickle Me Elmo, Just Play Piano To The Sounds Of Me Drinking Wine!

June 27, 2011

Which is likely to go down as one of the weirder blog post titles in the 4488 history …

But, there is in fact a point.

Which is this; I was very recently scrolling & strolling through the search engine referral metrics that WordPress very kindly provides (please click here for compendiums of some of the rather more strange and wonderful items that have appeared in past queues), and I couldn’t help but notice the almost laughable omnipresence of The Muppet’s saxophone player, Zoot. I quite literally referenced him once, in a long ago post (found here), and ever since, he’s proven to be an unlikely evangelical inadvertantly proselytizing the gospel of Ridge. Blowing our tune, as it were …

So I was sitting here thinking about Zoot, and The Muppets. Which inevitably led me to thinking about Elmo. Which reminded me that today is Elmo Hope’s birthday! June 27, 1923!

I have great affection for people like Elmo Hope. Not only because he was a great artist, player, performer, and composer, but because he’s a tad unsung; he labored years under the shadows of giants like Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I am not sure he’s that well-known outside of — to borrow a quote from Bob Dylan — a small circle of friends.

Which leads me to think about Ridge. It’s a funny thing; amongst a small but admirably devoted cadre of loyalists, I think Ridge is fortunate to enjoy a rather exalted reputation. But conversely, I could probably stand up on our knoll and throw rocks at Cupertino for weeks on end, and probably not hit more than 5-6 folks who have any idea who we are, where we are, or what we do.

(disclaimer: i don’t actually throw rocks off the knoll.)

Which is kind of like being Elmo Hope. He could have probably thrown rocks at Manhattan all day, every day, and not have hit more than a few folks who knew just what a great player he really was.

So today, I am celebrating lives under the radar; the unsung artists of our times, those whose talents and contributions far exceed their recognitions. Do I include Ridge in these categories? Hard to say. On one hand, I certainly don’t wish to disparage those who do know us, and I certainly wouldn’t wish to sound ungrateful for whatever awarenesses and praises we’ve accrued over the years. But on the other hand, being on the “public” side of the Ridge enterprise, I am also acutely aware of just how short our shadow is often cast.

And speaking of shadows, I believe it was the very astonishingly great Michelangelo who is credited with stating that, “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”

And it was the very great poet Li-Po who wrote the following (translation by David Hinton):

Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine.

No one else here, I ladle it out myself.

Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon,

and facing my shadow makes friends three,

though moon has never understood wine,

and shadow only trails along behind me.

Kindred a moment with moon and shadow,

I’ve found a joy that must infuse spring:

I sing, and moon rocks back and forth;

I dance, and shadow tumbles into pieces.

Sober, we’re together and happy. Drunk,

we scatter away into our own directions:

intimates forever, we’ll wander carefree

and meet again in Milky Way distances.

And it is me who says, here’s to you Elmo, or should I say Hope, and to you, shadows, and to all who wander carefree amongst ye … I raise you a toast; a Syrah dark as a shadow …

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Posted in Wine and Jazz | Leave a Comment »

A Chardonnay Vertical? Oh, no you didn’t! Oh, yes I did!!!

June 27, 2011

(spoiler alert: this post is going to end with an opportunity to taste for yourself the chardonnay vertical i’m about to wax poetic on …)

Chardonnay and Vertical. Not sure you see those two words together that often. Cabernet & Vertical, sure. Bordeaux & Vertical, sure. Ridge & Vertical even, sure again. But Chardonnay & Vertical? Maybe not so much.

But why not?

I had a conversation just the other day with Fred Swan (he of NorCalWine.com fame), who wrote me to ask if a chardonnay I’d recently had him taste had been decanted. Fantastic! That’s another two words you don’t hear too often in the same sentence: Chardonnay & Decant. But because Fred is the real deal, he knows that Chardonnays often should be decanted. Why? Same reason why a vertical. Because if it’s a good, well-made, complex wine that is going to grow, develop, and mature over time, than a) it’s likely to benefit from decanting when it’s young, and b) it’s going to be both delicious and educational to taste it in a vertical.

So, absolutely a chardonnay vertical! And not just any chardonnay vertical! Dig this:

2003 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello Chardonnay

2004 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello Chardonnay

2005 Ridge Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountains Estate Chardonnay (#2, Wine Spectator Top 100)

2006 Ridge Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountains Estate Chardonnay

And how does one get to experience this exalted tasting?

To answer that question, I’ll have to take you all the way back to February 6, 2009. Do you remember that day? It was the morning after we learned that Olympian Michael Phelps had been caught smoking marijuana. Dublin’s airport had just been closed because of snow. We were on the verge of confirming A-Rod’s steroid use. It was heady times, to say the least. Up here on the mountain, we were en route to launching a legendary event, but on that cold, wet day, things weren’t looking too auspicious. It was to be our very first First Friday event; something we’d never, ever done before. But things didn’t look good. It wasn’t just raining. It was DUMPING! It was a monsoon! A maelstrom! All the wine we’d opened, all the bread we’d sliced, all the cheese we’d readied, it was all to be for naught. Surely no one would come.

But from out of the whipping shrouds of black and gray, out of the spastic tendrils of fog and mist, they came. Dank, damp, huddled figures; bemused and soaking, but present. All told, some 40+ folks made it up Monte Bello Road on that nasty February evening, and accordingly a legend was born; the sweet wine song of First Friday. If you’ve not been, a rite of passage awaits, an indoctrination, an awakening.

You just have to be a member. Or a friend of a member. And you just have to RSVP, so we can make sure we’ve got enough delicious wine, bread, cheese, tapenade, hummus, charcuterie, etc., to keep you and your palate happy.

So, the point of all this gibberishing is this; the July First Friday event is unique. Because it’s too hot to send member shipments out, we accordingly don’t schedule a July release at all; meaning, there is actually no pick-up opportunity at the event in question.

But we want you to come anyway!

Come together. Right now.

So what do we do? Well, every year, for the July FF edition, we try and come up with something singularistically quadruple-groovy to entice your participatory attendance.

Thus, the Chardonnay Vertical …

Your mama’s alright, your daddy’s alright, it just seems a little bit weird. Surrender.

Full disclosure, there is not much of any of these wines left, and the inventory train is already running light on freight …

You been a good ol’ wagon, daddy, but you done broke down.

Meaning, this is your chance!

You’re going off the rails on a crazy train.

Come join us. Be a member. Become a member. Befriend a member. Do whatever it takes. But join us.

My notes:

2003 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello Chardonnay

Comprised of the first 17 barrels to go out under the Monte Bello designation since the 2000 vintage, the 2003 was a welcome addition to the portfolio upon arrival. With well over 5 years of bottle age now upon it, the color has deepened to an intensely concentrated gold. The aromatics percolate with weighty notes of lychee, pineapple, beurre blanc and apricot, wrapped in a swaddle of sweet summer corn and warm winter caramel. The wine still retains much of its mountain acidity, though the viscosity has developed some heft. The movement across the palate has admittedly simplified somewhat; in that it doesn’t carom around betwixt the various sensors the way it might have done so in its youth, but this is more than made up for by the dignified compression of all the multi-tiered complexities.

2004 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello Chardonnay

Lighter in hue than its predecessor, and possessing a comparatively lighter, more delicately playful mouthfeel, this is an exquisitely fruit, mineral, and acidity-driven wine; archetypally mountainous in character, quintessentially cool-climate in profile. Apricot dominates the aromatics, with hints of fig, quince, and especially poached pear chiming in. The acidity is concentrated in comparatively narrower fashion than the ’03, less in the cheeks and more on the tongue, but has a lengthier finish that showcases a greater degree of minerality. Side-by-side, these two offerings afford the taster a textbook case study of vintage variation; both are well put together, both are complex, rich, and flavorful, but each has very different personalities that will play differently for different palates.

2005 Ridge Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountains Estate Chardonnay

Oddly enough, despite all the critical hype that has surrounded this wine in recent years (#2 on Wine Spectator’s year-end Top 100 list!) it’s not an offering I’ve tasted with much regularity, so I was quite pleased by this opportunity looming on my horizon. In the glass, the wine displays an intensely golden color, and its legs evidence a staunch viscosity. The aromatics put forth a quite singular intersection of nothing so much as cantaloupe and peanut brittle, hammocked by a sort of crèche of poached tropical fruit, mango especially. Quite fascinating, and truly unique. The flavor profile spreads wide across the palate immediately upon entry, with little tip-of-the-tongue action but lots of cheek activity; not a tremendous outlay of acidity, but some good and fleshy fruit, and a pleasingly mitigated sweet oak dose. Mid-palate is dominated by opulent apricot characteristics, which round out into a sort of pastry effect in the finish; brioche-y yeasts, and a rich and sweet apricot spread. A truly singular wine.

2006 Ridge Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountains Estate Chardonnay

Appropriately paler in the glass that the rest of the ensemble above, the hues are positively aureate; splendidly vibrant, and bright with dancing flaxen highlights. High-toned on the nose, citrus notes are clearly present; a sort of lime-ade summer freshness skipping about in the grass. A somewhat unexpectedly weightier mouthfeel perhaps suggests (based on how the more mature offerings above are showing) a wine in transition, making its move from a more youthfully crisp, acidity & mineral driven offering towards a wine of greater gravitas, depth, and heft. In its current form, an almost dangerously approachable wine; soft, inviting, sensuous, and even a tad deceptive; like being drawn into the aural beauty of a soft and gentle song, seemingly lullaby-esque in its simplicity, only to realize later the words tell of sacrifices, dangers and redemptions of the most desperate sort. The finish is still coming together, and while the complexities are evident as regards the layers of fruit, spice, yeast, acid, and viscosity, the wine still seems slightly, adolescently discordant. Abundantly promising, but perhaps another year away from full maturation. That said, I personally would drink it now; it’s delicious.

Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won’t you be my neighbor?

 

July First Friday. Dig.

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Posted in Chardonnay, Events & Photographs, Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains Estate, Special Offerings, Tasting Notes, Varietals & Blends, Virtual Verticals, Wine Blogs | 5 Comments »

Wine Blogger Tasting #2, The Story In Pictures!

June 24, 2011

Another of our attendees for the Wine Blogger Tasting (and also a first-timer) has proven herself to be quite the formiddable talent with a camera! To see a fine sample of what “Yumivore” can do with the ol’ lens, check out this lovely spread of shots:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yumivore/sets/72157626863032791

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Posted in Events & Photographs, Monte Bello, Social Media, Wine Blogs | Leave a Comment »

Wine Blogger Tasting #2, Our Bloggers Begin To Chime In!

June 24, 2011

 One of my favorite things about our Wine Blogger Tastings is actually something that comes in the aftermath of every event; the opportunity to read the posts authored by our attendees. It is very much a credit to the devoutness, seriousness, and studiousness of our guests that we often don’t get to do too much talking during the actual tasting, so I always look very forward to these post-event wrap-ups, to get a fuller sense of how everyone felt about the experience.

I am happy to share with you links to three posts that have already gone up (quick work, gang!):

–”Pork Cracklins: Adventures in Cooking.” A first-timer at our Wine Blogger Tasting series, Sheri’s primary focus is on all things culinary, so I was especially pleased at the prospect of her attendance, as I love to see how foodies respond to our wine.  Plus, I LOVE the name of her blog. You can read Sheri’s post here.

–”Wine Maven In Training.” The blog of an East Coast transplant now acclimatizing to the world of Californian viticulture, penned by the winner of our contest theme (you’ll have to read the post to find out!). You can read the post here.

–”NorCal Wine.” A heavyweight contender for being the gold standard of Californian wine blogging, NorCal Wine is an excellent resource and read, so it’s always an honor when Fred attends one of our tastings. You can read his write-up here.

 Enjoy the posts!

And, thank you to our guests! It is a pleasure to read your work, and I thank you for sharing your tales.

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Posted in Events & Photographs, History, Monte Bello, Social Media, Wine Blogs | Leave a Comment »

Asparagus & Wine: Not So Sacrilegious After All!

June 23, 2011

I know, I know, asparagus & wine, can’ t be done, shouldn’t be done.

But all I’M saying is, if you get the asparagus fresh from your local farmers market, and you wash and trim it, and you roll it around on a plate of olive oil and Salle Alle Erbe, and then you put in on the panini grill, while simultaneously washing, dicing, and pan-frying crimini mushrooms in a hot bath of olive oil, butter, white wine, and chopped garlic (which, when removed, leaves behind a glorious gravy in which to quick fry some diced cherry tomatoes), right next to a burner which is boiling the salted water in which your tricolore Radiatore is cooking, then all I’M saying is, that if at the end of all that you toss it all together, such that you have Tricolore Radiatore tossed with Grilled Asparagus, Butter-Garlic Mushrooms, and Quick-Fried Cherry Tomatoes, well, what I’M saying is, is that if you pair this:

with this:

You won’t actually be doing anything sacrilegious after all, no matter what anybody says. It’ll just be good.

And, to quote Devo …

That’s good.

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Posted in Chardonnay, Food & Wine Pairing, Santa Cruz Mountains Estate, Varietals & Blends | 1 Comment »

Wine Bloggers Tasting #2, 6.17.11, The Aftermath …

June 21, 2011

Now THAT was a tasting! An 11-vintage vertical of Monte Bello, tasted blind, with a challenge; try and guess the appropriate chronological order. Needless to say, we put our bloggers to work!

Not to mention our staff, who were charged with the responsibility of opening, decanting, and tasting all those bottles!

Here at Ridge, we’ve just released a veritable treasure trove of Library Monte Bello, based on innumerable internal tastings and endless analyses as regards prices and inventories. The end result is a truly spectacular arsenal of back vintage Monte Bellos the likes of which are rarely seen. So it seemed like a good idea to debut some of the key releases with our bloggers.

Accordingly, we tasted the following Monte Bellos: 1977, 1978, 1981, 1985, 1990, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, and 2006. Plus, just for good measure, I threw in a barrel sample of the new 2010! Which makes 11. Our Monte Bello goes to 11.

To match the drama of the tasting, we hosted our bloggers in a brand-new, never-before-seen tasting environment! (Stay tuned to this story, cuz this is gonna be big!) It’s a stunningly beautiful room, with every inch dialed in to support not only a sumptuous showcase for the glorious surroundings of our vineyards, but a highly engaged, sensorially analytical tasting experience as well. It was such a pleasure to host and taste in there, and I look so forward to introducing you all to this amazing new space!

One of the key assets to the room is full media capability, which came in very handy for this tasting, as we were able to very successfuly monitor all the Twitter activity the tasting generated. Thank you Twitterfall!

Tasting with Wine Bloggers is a somewhat unique experience; a living duality of funk and finesse, devoutness and derangement. On one hand, these are very, very serious tasters who do what they do for no reason other than that they are passionate about it; they are not “professionals” in the traditional fiscal sense of the word. On the other hand, they are stranger, more eccentric, and often more opinionated than your “traditional” journalist. In short, they are both fun and funny, and they are also often somewhat singularly socialized, peculiarly impassioned, and both silent and loquacious in equal measures.

For this tasting, heads went down right away. The tasting was afoot.

Regrettably, I didn’t get an inordinate amount of time to mull over tasting notes; I was busy with the planning, implementation, and hosting duties; we’ll have to wait for our bloggers to chime in with their observations, but I can certainly give some quick notes and impressions:

1977 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

Having tasted some 60+ different bottles of this wine during a large member event recently (the Monte Bello Final Assemblage Event, held for our Monte Bello Collector members), I can firmly state that a) I am a big fan of this vintage, and b) this was a very good bottle. It is mature, certainly; not a lot of primary fruit, and fully dominated by secondary and tertiary herb & spice components, but it’s also zestful and spicy, elegant and stylish, and very well put-together. One recommendation, if you’re serving this wine, give it a VERY gentle decant, and serve within 20 minutes.

1978 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

One of the greatest of the 70s vintages, showing no signs of degradation; still a lot of fruit, good if subdued structure, and a real tangible decadence that is devoid of anything cloying; rather, it’s discreetly sensual and quintessentially refined. Same recommendation as above as regards decanting; this won’t need much more air …

1981 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

An internal staff favorite, for sure, and with good reason. Loads of low cedar and tobacco in the nose, plus a healthy dose of plum, black currant, and black pepper. Great juice, light and playful on the palate, with a round, sweet finish. For whatever reason, I find this to be a very romantic wine; it drinks like soft music, cuddles like Sunday night movie night, flickers like candles and kisses with sweet languidity.

1985 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

One of the great and archetypal “old world” Monte Bellos, with lots of lead/graphite minerality, red and brown wood notes, and some great earthiness balanced against a voluminous body. Remarkable too for the density of the fruit.

1990 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

A vintage that’s come in and out of focus for me over the years, but which showed very well in this tasting. Lots of the cool-climate Monte Bello characteristics; a sort of eucalyptal herbality, a comparatively leaner mouthfeel, and tremendously vital acidity, but all this combined with big, rich fruit, and lots of mountain brambliness and dark berry … still young, though no longer discordant. One blogger guessed it as a late 90s vintage!

1994 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

Didn’t love the first bottle we served of this; while the taste was fairly enticing, the nose bordered on off-putting, and didn’t reallyseem to want to blow off. So we opened and prepared a second option, and found much better aromatics, though truth be told, the first bottle had in fact blown off much of its funkiness by this point. That said, the second bottle was the one we went with. Much more seamless, with fruit balanced against spice, tannin against acid, and while rusticity is definitely still a big part of this wine’s personality, it was well-integrated into the overall construct with the second bottle.

1995 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

I’ve written quite a bit about this wine of late, so the short version is that FINALLY this wine is starting to show itself. One of the biggest, most intense, more dramatically structured Monte Bello vintages ever, this wine is finally starting to allow some of its prettiness to emerge, in the form of some lovely lilac and lavender notes, overlaying a wealth of rich blue fruit and some dark cocoa and chocolate notes.

1999 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

This is a vintage that just seems to continue its ascendancy every time I taste it, and it very much seemed to capture the imaginations of the bloggers as well. This is a wine that, put simply, is in fuego. All its harmonic components are in sync, all its melodies in harmony. Given that it’s a vintage that has, in the past, been the subject of some speculation as regards a posited lack of ageability, it’s particularly wonderful to see it showing so fresh, and so lively. It certainly still shows some of the chewier dried fruit characteristics that have held hallmark status in its profile all along, but wrapped as they are now in luscious fruit and well-coated tannins, its hard to say anything other than that this is a happening vintage.

2000 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

Oddly enough, by comparison to the above, this is a vintage that didn’t seem to engender much commentary from the bloggers in attendance; strange given the exalted status of this wine, courtesy of its legendary showing in the Young Cabernet portion of the Judgement of Paris re-enactment. Given that the tasting was blind though, of course no one would know the vintage, and perhaps free of its associative powers, it simply didn’t bring the excitement? I decided to taste this wine again, in the privacy of my office, to really try and get a handle on this mercurial and much-debated, oft-misunderstood vintage. Given the seriousness of the endeavor, I called on the ol’ typer:

And this is what we came up with:

(please click to see the full view)

And so, continuing on …

2006 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello

One of my personal favorite vintages, and one that seemed to go over quite fine with the gang as well. So young still, but already evidencing foreshadowings of the complexities to come; I think this is going to be one of the greats, showing all the multi-tiered layerings that have always been the hallmark of “classic” Monte Bello vintages …

And lastly, I am happy to report that, by almost all measures, the 2010 barrel sample was a total hit. VERY, VERY excited about this vintage, as all at Ridge are …

And so that’s that, another fine wine bloggers tasting notched into the neck of our bottle. Thanks Bloggers! Until next time, excellent quaffing to you!

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Posted in Events & Photographs, History, Monte Bello, Social Media, Special Offerings, Tasting Flights, Tasting Notes, Wine Blogs | 4 Comments »

Monte Bello Calling …

June 20, 2011

GREAT article today from Geoff Last (a longtime Calgary wine merchant and writer, and a regular contributor to City Palate magazine and other publications) about Zinfandel entitled “Edgy Zinfandel Rocks On.”

Why do I like this article so much? Because it starts like this, “If I were to cast California Zinfandel as a rock band, I might equate it to a group like the Clash …”

Nice!

Plus, Mr. Last includes a very fine review of our East Bench offering, and also writes lines like, “In my quarter of a century in the wine business, I have never had a bad wine from Ridge …”

But mainly, I like this article because it mentions us and The Clash together.

 Which makes it a punky kind of day for Ridge! Because this article comes right on the heels of a FANTASTIC tweet that came across the wires today from our good friend Wayne at the very excellent wine blog A Long Pour:

 wkelterer: Fugazi is the @RidgeVineyards of indie rock. Still the coolest thing out there after all these years of inspiring others!

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/wkelterer/statuses/82681815260864512

Nice! Ridge Vineyards, The Clash, Fugazi, and You.

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Posted in Social Media, Varietals & Blends, Wine & Music, Wine Blogs, Zinfandel | 1 Comment »

Farewell to The Big Man ….

June 20, 2011

The world lost quite a musical force of nature on the 18th of June. Clarence Clemons, the Big Man in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, passed due to complications from a stroke. An irreplaceable loss, indisputably.

Now, I’ll confess that Springsteen and co. haven’t done much of worth to me in many, many, many years, but the early works remain powerful and beautiful to me, and they remain a part of my life, and my soul. Bless you Clarence, for contributing so many heartrendingly excellent melodies to the canon of our sonic lives.

But why note all this here, on a wine blog? Accruers of Springsteen arcana will know, but in case the rest of you don’t, you’ll have to come with me all the way back to 1974. When The Boss looked like this:

as opposed to this:

And Big Man Clarence rocked like this:

It was Liberty Hall, in Houston, Texas, and Springsteen had a problem; a broken guitar string. For not the first time, and certainly not the last, The Big Man was right there to save the day, as he would do time and time again over the decades. The Big Man went to the mic, and called the tune, a little slab of jazzy soul by the legendary vocal trio Hendricks, Lambert, and Ross. The band hit it, and Clarence dropped the lines; some of the both funnier and more pathotic spins of viticultural prioritization ever committed to record. For example (lyrics approximate, as they were delivered live):

Well one day when I was laying down napping
When I woke up everything was burning with a snap, and a crackle and a pop
You know the fireman chopped up my TV set and tore my apartment apart
But when he raised his axe on my bottle, Jim, I had screamed with all my heart

Gimme that wine
Gimme that wine
Gimme that wine
Let me take one toast before I roast

Or:

Well one day when I was walkin’ home, staggerin’ home to bed
A bandit jumped from the shadows, put a blackjack upside my head
That cat took my watch, my ring, my money and I didn’t make a sound
But when he reached in for my bottle Jim, you could hear me scream for blocks around

Gimme that wine
Gimme that wine
Gimme that wine
Beat my head out of shape, but leave my grape

Wherever your journeys may take you now Clarence, here’s to hoping you’ve got your wine with you! You’ll be very, very missed, but we appreciate the gifts you left us. The rave-ups and rockers were groovy, but it’s the long, slow, elegantly stately and soulful ballads that continue to move me Clarence. They’re beautiful.

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Posted in History, Viticultural Salmagundi, Wine & Music, Wine and Jazz, Wine Quotes, Wine Tales | 1 Comment »

Juxtapositions …

June 17, 2011

Were you to say, “The sun went down in honey, and the moon came up in wine,” I might say, “Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon, and facing my shadow makes friends three, though moon has never understood wine, and shadow only trails along behind me.”

But were you to say, “She said that all the railroad men just drink up your blood like wine,”  I might say “Drinking together among mountain blossoms, we down a cup, another, and yet another.”

And were you to in fact say, “A bottle of white, a bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of rosé instead,” I might actually say “You, pretty girl, wine-flushed, your rosy face is rosier still.”

But if in the end, what you actually decide to say is, “We’re gonna bring a case of wine, hey, let’s go mess and fool around you know, like we used to,” then it’s quite likely that what I’ll say is, “Who can leap the world’s ties and sit with me among the white clouds?”

 

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Posted in Wine & Poetry | Leave a Comment »

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