2006 S. A. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese

I pour this wine for eight people and watch eight people pour it in the dump bucket like a poison. Like it’s a trick. The table, collectively, looks at my face as if they will find a punch line scribbled on my forehead.

I try again, for three more.

Same thing.

Ha Ha , now I get it. Riesling.

But, this isn’t “Fargo”, a hysterical murder, though the wine I’m serving offers as many crooked smiles and awkward pauses as that movie. And, I’m not pouring “Summertime”, a biography of someone else, though really it is.

Not only does the wine taste like summertime and sunshine, but this wine IS a biography spanning 200 yrs. of familial winemaking.

(of the Prum family, specifically Raimund, the current owner and winemaker at S.A. Prum.)

Shake it off. They don’t realize that you’re wounded, a mother seal on an ice flow in Antarctica, watching her cub clubbed.

2006 S. A. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese

From the Graacher Himmelreich vineyard in the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer comes something I really like, ( I like tricks too, but this isn’t one), a wine with the intensity of Gabriel’s stare and summer cum autumn and a love life with someone you won’t see sleeping, ever.

Riesling.

Rose petal jam on broiled grapefruit and pear tartin. Ginger. Gas and piss on the nose, mixed with sweet nectarines and honey rolling down a rock quarry. While fermenting, it spent five weeks in the company of some fine natural yeast. What went on in there?

Summertime, cum fall. The Life and Times of S. A. Prum.

This wine could sit around for as long as I’ve been alive and just get better. I can only hope for so much.

Mutual of Omaha, Wasps, Insignia and really, really meaning no Harm

The nest hangs in an eave on a side porch of my house. The grandfatherly Marlin (me) watches wasps buzz in and out of the paper-like nest from the safety of a bush.

Marlin (I)say(s): The wasps are good predators; they eat the white flies that attack the grape vines . But, they are most ornery in the fall, when they go after sweets left at picnic sites, especially in the daytime, as they gather food, and while the queen lays the last of her eggs in her papery nest. We are going to disturb this nest by knocking it down with a broom.

Enter Jim (this is also me), broom in hand, he swings, scattering the wasps from their nest. He runs, exhilarated, his poosely frame enlivened from the act of fucking with something dangerous, life threatening even, for those allergic to the insect.

Of course, Marlin(me) stays in the safety of the bush and continues to narrate.

Marlins says: The wasp is like the Taliban, it is tireless and must know that you are serious in your efforts. They will return to this nest in a few hours and we’ll be here, in this bush, with a broom and maybe a bucket of water. We won’t use a pesticide, which would take away the old-school thrill of thrusting a creature from tranquility to hunt it, dislocate it and observe it really pissed off.

There is no such thing as non-interventionist wine making. Biodynamic wine making is really fucking with Mother Nature, but in a nice way. If Marlin and Jim were biodynamic wine makers, they would probably have worked at a place like J Phelps, alongside aging patriarch Joe, with a broom and a bucket of water.

Marlin would narrate. Jim would do the heavy lifting. I would encompass both of them as I hunted wasp nests at the winery.

2006 Phelps Insignia
Though it is difficult for me to get excited about a wine that retails for around $200, I was, definately, after tasting this new release. Why so? It was a smash soon after I opened it.
And, also, there is biodynamic winemaking at Phelps, 100% in two of their vineyards, which will soon be Demeter certified. The two biodynamic vineyards are Home Ranch and Bacchus, but Insignia juice is also sourced from the other five vineyards owned by Phelps, as well as from the biodynamic ones.
The wine, made only from grapes grown on the estate is a blend of 95% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot. Dense and chewy, it spent 2 yrs in French oak developing sweet cherry, bramble berry and nutmeg flavors accented by moss and forest aromas. Yes, I know this sounds like a slew of Parkerisms, but his words really describe this wine well. And, after being stung while hunting wasps nests today, I have no original words for this wine, just original thrills from drinking it. Wasps are not the only creatures I’ve messed with lately, just the last ones to sting me.

Nobody is Perfect, Except Me and Bummer Hardluck

It is an eastern philosophy--I am part of all I have met--that keeps Bummer Hardluck's chin up. Not famous, not young and not pretty like his brother, Less Hardluck, Bummer sweeps up at Franciscan, while waiting on that record deal.

That deal will never come. Too scared to play when it counts, B.H. is like that little green frog in the Warner Bros. cartoons---he sings when no one is listening.

He plays backup for friends. He's a component, like this bottle of wine he found one day.

2004 Petit Verdot ( Franciscan)
Bummer's find came from a dismembered blending kit used for component tastings. He didn't realize he had given me something kinda rare, an unoaked, 100% petit verdot.

I'm not a winemaker, or a sought-after taster, so I don't think I'll get this opportunity again. But, I'd sure like to smell this wine a time or two more.

The perfume was leafy. The aroma morphed to smoke, like a straw house on fire. It was sweet smelling and herbal, as is homemade root beer. And in the mouth, a curious sensation of pernod and ash, but no roundness or vanilla The berries were dried blueberry, cherry and plums. I had to pull my tongue from the roof of my mouth, the wine was so tannic.

I stuck my tongue out at Bummer, who told me it was black.

So, this is what 1% tastes like?

It's Bummer's lot to find things while remaining hidden himself.

BODEGAS CAMPO VIEJO Rioja Gran Reserva 2002

Some people count out-of-state license plates on car trips, I enumerate abandoned houses.


Or tumbledown barns. And, delightful, sidelined strip motels. Empty restaurants overgrown with kudzu, not ivy. Dotting a Procrustean landscape--how long will they remain? Outposts.

These rustic structures that someone owns, yet has forgotten about, silently quake with possibility. They beckon from the side of the road and whisper from gulches--OPEN ME UP--LET SOME AIR IN--and I WILL REWARD YOU. I offer a new lease on your existence. Your past is our preamble.

It is for this same reason, I like Rioja. It feels forgotten (but remembered) from its first, country sip. And it is changing too, divided into two camps (or more) of wine making, sort of like the Brunello thing.

I swallow a cedary sip of Campo Vieja Gran Reserva bottled years ago...02 was a long time ago for me anyway...and know immediately this wine should breathe just a bit so it looses that forsaken quality.

As I hoped, a new life entered when I opened the windows on the wine; cherry, mint, cinnamon, geranium, violet unrolled on a fading carpet of moss. I got to it just in time.

I could live here. Things would be different.

Thriller Chardonay

I still have a “Thriller” tape, one I made by recording the songs off the radio. It was the first tape (no one was buying albums then, they scratched, and you couldn’t play them on a Walkman) I wanted to own, asked my parents for, and didn’t get, until years after I'd lost interest. There are timelines on one's interests.

How did a kid make a tape in the 80’s?

By requesting “P.Y.T “ et al from disc jockeys and sitting by the radio with a Ulysses-sized tape recorder; index finger on “record” and middle finger on “play”, and hoping to catch the first notes of a song without catching the song’s announcement. Then, without removing said fingers, listening, diligently, for the final notes to stop the tape before a commercial.
It took several tries, many pleading song requests, and weeks of listening to Q94, ears cocked for “Billie Jean”, concomitantly for sounds of my mother looking for her tape recorder so she could listen to her daily ration of “I’m OK, You're OK"(i have this book nearly memorized) but body engaged elsewhere, much like a mother half- listening to a baby monitor for cooing. But I got the whole thing. Then, I learned to play “Beat It” on a BK pickle piccolo. Life was good.

1982-Kendall-Jackson First Vintage of Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay and “Thriller” is on the radio.

KJ was one of only a few wineries using Lake County fruit and was, at that time, a boutique winery with Jed Steele making the chardonnay.

In 1983, the “Thriller” video released at Christmas, but I saw it the next year with my best friend’s mother, a horror movie junky and belly dancer who let us stay up all night watching a bootleg,unreleased copy of “Reanimator” and dress up like werewolves. She gave us a taste of her KJ mixed with Sprite. This is sort of what the wine has morphed into.



Wait--that isn't true--the style of the wine hasn't changed much. It is a little less oaky than it was in the 80s and a little more viscous, but its spirit of south of dry remains.

2007 Kendall Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay
Baked apples and vanilla with a little pithy lemon oil. Weighty in the mouth leading to a roasted pineapple and toasted nutmeg finish. I wish a had a Whopper (mayo drenched pickles would connect with this wine) and an apple pie.
BK , KJ and MJ-- americanata is doin' the writing today. That, and my sidebar is full of "natural wine" posts.

CSM Canoe Ridge Estate Cabernet 2006

Everything old (cabernet, kitschy, kirsch-y nose)
Is new again (cabernet, the color of blood sausage)
The CSM wine rolls into and spreads across the tongue as skin roils into chilled hotel sheets--
guilty, moribund decadence

Simmered cherries enriched with nutmeg to start, finishes with cherry cordial candy--
did I say guilty?

Unlike many Washington state cabernets, this manages to stay away from soft-boil, fudge textures and too concentrated flavor densities--
of what--cabernet gone to the dogs?

Taittinger Comtes Blanc de Blancs 98

A lush life,
drunk under a Strawberry Moon;
impregnated with creamy citrus poontang,
peaches and apricots,
on melba toast.

It's Been Done Writtin'

You're listening to W-R-I-T
where its been DONE WRIT
all countries all the time

reading radio W-R-I-T
it plays between your ears

Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc Sonoma 2007mangoes & yogurt from the USA
in the key of sauvignon musque
a heady mutant of sauvignon blanc
sauvignon musque is tropical with muted acids in comparison
with a finish longer than that Rufus Wainright song
it ain't grassy (no tomcat either)
Hallelujah