Sowing On The Mountain Wine is a bridge between the two worlds, the living and the dead. Harvest is a story of death, of profound undoing. The grapevines, which began to grow as the Winter faded, opened into the morning of Spring, and pushed forth green shoots, and the shoots opened into leaf and stem, […]
Organolepticians Number Forty-Four (October 14, 2003)
Extra Innings The appearance of yellow leaves among the green ones on the Syrah vines at Bassetti Vineyard on Friday, the third of October, seemed a sure sign that the end of this season was approaching fast. The grapes, themselves, were hanging in there, with a sugar content that had only reached just a bit […]
Organolepticians Number Forty-Five (November 2, 2003)
Ghost Stories The snowy egret is just inches above the water, its wings extended in an almost shockingly straight line, the tips poised, mid-stroke, directly over the shimmering S-curve of its neck and its head. It’s a sunny afternoon in Berkeley; a soft breeze from the South whispers through Aquatic Park, wrinkling the water beneath […]
Organolepticians Number Forty-Six (January 31st, 2004)
I Wanna Be Like Mike I don’t know how anyone makes it through winter, sometimes. The temperatures in the northern half of the U.S. over the past couple of weeks have been frightening to read. The highways are coated with ice, and 18-wheelers, mid-sized sedans, S.U.V.s and punch-buggies are flying off across the road shoulders […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Six (November 27, 2002)
Merging with the Energy I’m babysitting our 28HL membrane press through the last squeezing of grapeskins for vintage 2002. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. The last day of crush (for which thanks-giving is always in order) comes, this year, 90 days after the first day of crush. Almost a quarter of one year, by far the […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Seven (December 14, 2002)
Talkin Bout Good News! Each year since our first vintage, back in ’85, we’ve celebrated the completion of harvest in one way or another. The first few years we had a party for the family and friends who’d helped out with the crushing and pressing. We’d whip up a pot of stew, or a few […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Eight (March 2, 2003)
Breakfast of Champions Spring Training 1989(Whackin’ in Huatulco) Back around 1990 I played slowpitch softball in the Berkeley “C” leagues, on a team composed, for the most part, of aging psychotherapists, with one or two wine business types thrown in for good measure. We were the “East Bay Wine Works” team, known colloquially, as “the […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Nine (May 13, 2003)
Blast from the Past There was a wine I bought some time in the early part of 1985, from my old friend Kermit Lynch. It was the year I started Edmunds St. John, and I wasn’t sure yet what kind of wine I intended to make, so I was shopping around for inspiration. The wine […]
Organolepticians Number Forty (June 13, 2003)
Wonder If We Know Just Who We Are Yesterday felt like my birthday. According to the calendar, my birthday is still some ten weeks off, but yesterday my phone rang all day long with people wishing me well and congratulating me. A lot of the calls were from people wondering where, in the Northern California […]
Organolepticians Number Forty-One (July 20, 2003)
Tales of Wining and Dining The venerable wine writer Hugh Johnson, whose World Atlas of Wine has taught me the most about wine of any book I’ve encountered, once remarked that wines’ initial importance to humans, ultimately, came down to its capacity to intoxicate, to “banish care.” He may well be correct, yet it’s the […]