The vineyards profess passion and one unusual.  Each walk out there for me, in the morning or afternoon at lunch, was a Road for me to remind myself why I’m here.  Why I do what I do.

Why did I leave?  I guess, and as I often say, to try something new.  I have, and now more than any other time in my life I know where I’m supposed to be.

I know what all my books will speak, where they are planted – in the vineyard, with all these Sonoma County rows and blocks.

This morning, it’s cold.  And most of the blocks out there in Russian River and elsewhere step toward dormancy.  And the industry, going into the “slow season”.

But not this writer of vino.  Not even a little.  I’m more alive and speaking from the vineyards and my vineyard walks and wines like the Barbera that the Nurse and I last night tasted.

Am I taking a risk?  Of course.  Everything embodies a degree of gamble.  But I know this Road, I know these colors, and the sky above me.  I write Sonoma County and its soil types, the glass and what’s in it.

The STORY of stories, alive and walking a new music.