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

Chateau Musar, Lebanon ("Ships at a Distance have Every Man's Wish Onboard")

You don't have to be perfect for me to love you.
I drank a deathbed conversion,
gulped an immaculate perception,
and,
digested one good calorie.
You don't have to be perfect for me to love you,
anymore.

2002 Chateau Musar Hochar Pere et Fils
cinsault/cabernet sauvignon/cinsault/grenache

..licorice in a tweed suit with lapels of Piemontese tannins,
well-worn.
with tender authority, a father teaches his son to shake hands
A firm grip..
.. an aroma, spicy as Midnight in a garden of evil
and gritty as a late night subway stop;
and its color, deeply imperfectly red-brown.

New Spain Old Spain

Old Spain
Running Cedar, wending pipe smoke, yellowed pages of books


New Spain
plummy, cool, crushed cherries


Old Spain
summer's tomato juice, sangria + porron




New Spain
rosemary and salt capsule, wine glass + porron


New and Old Spain, Bodegas Ysios 2002 Reserva
Tempranillo foundation supporting new structure--soft oak--soft fruit-- it never is and always was Rioja (new vineyards, new wine)
new and old

Mothers' Day

Finding that "Joy of Sex" book in her parent's night stand had lasting effects, but she loved her mother anyway. Happy Mother's Day

1989 Forstmeister Geltz Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese

While driving a serpentine, recondite road that ended in Gordonsville, Virginia, a gassy smell purled from the byway. In polite company, or when tasting a Mosel riesling, I would determine this odor “petrol”. But, yesterday, I thought gas. So I stopped.

The car tripped into the creachy parking lot of a business that looked like an ongoing yard sale. As the vehicle righted itself, I noticed a floppy-eared dog running towards me. We were deadly close to the road, poochy and I; except, it wasn’t a dog--- but a rabbit---- eddying through a virescent channel of too-long grass. Don’t worry, he was friendly.


1989 Forstmeister Geltz Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese

Vitelline with green bits that capture light like a telescope, luminous and smelling distinctly of gas, at first, this wine was a letdown. Very little fruit and no flowers (especially in the mouth), until, its temperature warmed… Then, a surprise, the wine was invacuating orange blossoms, lime zest, tangerine peels and a mouthfeel as lush on the tongue as a field of unmowed Zoysia grass is underfoot. The wine, framed in honeysuckle, but not finished by it, slid into life, but died in the road.