What kind of a wine writer am I, said to self sipping this latest bottle which I’ll more than likely put off putting to page (some 2015 Anderson Valley Pinot I’ve never heard of before, just saw it on the shelf at Oliver’s today waiting for sandwiches being made, and pulled it)…  So, I just see them as a renewing assembly.  A magical colony of speakers forcing me to more speak about my wined journey.  From the Angels & Cowboys Proprietary to the Westwood Chardonnay from Sangiacomo’s blocks, I’m given new typing fire and vigor for wine.  My wine book, if I ever finish it, and I might with this shelter-in-place stage, will be from this… this new and renewed decision to write only wine.  This blog, is it a blog I ask myself listening to the words in my head about this Pinot and about two other wines from Westwood that should be photographed here but I guess I enjoyed them so much I forgot to take a picture.  Cursing self, know I have to call my friend over there… the only one who responded to something I posted about needing new wines to write.  Should have written about them in “real-time”, as my friend Tasha often says.  Any wine writing should be done while sipping it.  Notes?  Sure, you could, but why.  Have the notes be the page, right there, at the keyboard, or inked from pen to line.  Notes, okay.. but the reaction ought be caught and captured, enraptured there.  That’s what this group teaches me…  That K-Squared Merlot, from Russian River Valley of all places, a bottle I tasted in a Zoom chat and tasting with my friend Mariah and her boyfriend Danny.  She brought a Zin from…. now can’t summon the name, but we talked about the wines we picked and why we brought them.  Told her mine was from the unfamiliar, and that I was curious how it tasted… how wine should be, no forethought when writing, or speaking, sharing as we were.  Just there, then, those words, that conversation, that call.

Pinot has softened, or equalized itself, become strangely composed and riling some underripe pulse and recital.  Nothing incongruent about palate… everything symmetrical and sound, round, the wine herself deciding her own sound and song.  She tells me to follow the holler of those wines, the ones I didn’t write when right there, with each, sipping.  To be not just present but pronounced as a writer of wine, by the wines you meet.  Second sip from second glass, and it’s though she heard me.  Now more dark, with a sound and assertive step and echoing wink-etch.  Soul to dreams, and back to glass in next pour, the next page, the next sentence I envision committing.  Am I caught up now, no… more to find, more to just pull from a shelf and try.. learn the language and story, characters and voices, expressions and shapes.  Wine isn’t learned, it isn’t even explored, IT is not an ‘it’, but she.. SHE… she is to be brightly and immediately loved, for flaws and favor.

4/16/20