Music Trumps Wine

Was going to post something about trying to decide what to drink tonight with dinner but decided that music trumps wine this evening. In fact, I should really be working on a writing assignment that’s painfully late but instead I’ve fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole. Two roots I snagged on my way down:

Rest in peace. As Old World Old School puts it, rock ‘n roll is here to stay.

Nostalgia for me, and on the mind with the Pavement reunion tour and just released best-of compilation. And hey, it is kinda wine-related after all, what, ‘oysters and Dry Lancers’ anyone? Side note for Pavement fans: interesting articles on Slate

From Deep in the Archive: Harvest 2003

Five years ago I worked the vintage in the mountains above St. Helena in the Napa Valley. At the time I started something resembling a blog, which in the end was updated oh, I don’t know, about three times, maybe four. To all you winemakers and cellar rats with blogs, I don’t know how you keep up with it, but I’m impressed. After a long day on the crushpad and in the winery, the *last* thing I felt like doing was looking at a computer screen. A cold beer and hanging out on the porch was about all I could muster.

If you’d like to read a couple of informative winemaker/proprietor blogs with substantial harvest sections, then I can recommend the Tablas Creek blog, by Jason Haas, and the Montalcino Report, by Alessandro Bindocci of Tenuta Il Poggione. Where they get the time, I don’t know, but both blogs are worth checking out if you’re in need of a harvest fix.

I did manage a few entries back in 2003, and for some reason I felt like sharing the one below–a little vignette from the end of a frustrating day. My, how emo of me, both this post and that, right down to lack of capital letters and the title quoted from the Cure.

i’m shaking like milk

[Oct. 1st, 2003|07:14 pm]

this evening was all about the birds. after a short, frustrating day where the grapes we were crushing came in not-quite-ripe enough (forcing us to stop half-way through the harvesting and use buckets to transfer the mish-mash of fruit and juice to a smaller tank), it was nice to look out over some of the vines and see the flock of chickens jumping to the lower hanging grape clusters, eating the plumpest berries; to see blue-jays dive bomb the fruit; and to look over at the fermenting pumice pile and see several wild turkeys leaping around drunk from the weeks-old sauvignon blanc grape skins. even Chester the Horse tucked in to this pile. this is the second such start-stop we’ve had here this season, and it’s getting frustrating. establishing a working rhythm is impossible, and of course we are racing against nature a little, hoping that the fruit gets ripe enough to be harvested before the rains. still, it’s amazing to stop and think about how much of a force weather & the seasons are, something so easily overlooked in an urban lifestyle.