Harper Ranch, 2015 Anderson Valley Pinot Noir

Anderson Valley, blocks and soil stretches that always to me chant and inquire about my intentions.  Am I just there to taste Pinot, or is it something else, am I hoping to meet some lost ghostly love, in the bottle and with the narrative helix therein.  With this bottle that I pulled again with no method from an Oliver’s shelf, there was a new translation and new mode.  New piece of Pinot’s epicenter and collective thesis and general thought.

She delivered all hoped-for skyshapes, from texture to fragrance, the visual skin to her unseen code and complete belief in what’s sought, seen.  At my kitchen counter tonight writing for the second night in a row on wine in this same chair, new consistency and body, page-throw and practice… feeling her instruction is more freeing than containing.  Convivial and discrete, but still with some demand of my form and way, as tired as I am and end-of-day. 

Decided cherry tell and center, further urged by vanilla calls and forceful yet massaging epitomes of the Burgundian entity.  I’ve had Pinots before that are translated this way, but not with such adept let and steps.  I could not be more in a collected wave, some said calming turn and quick quip of sip.  She has me thinking of my sentences, of things I’ve said in the past about wine reiterating how short our time is here, our stage and the invite to say what we need say.  Me writing about wine, to a Pinot I’ve never met before.

People ask me so often why I’m always nudged to taste something new, why I don’t join a wine club and why don’t I save a little money.  First, this Pinot wasn’t that much, under $30 I think.  And, why not follow whim.  Why plan.  Why not be the Art and fanciful frolic that Pinot itself and especially explanations and impressions like this exhibit.  Wine is whim, this Anderson Valley body enjoins.  And then, with another sip, and another, a freed me.

4/17/20