My friends gasped as if I wasn’t there having the conversation with them. “Oh my God, I talk to myself so often these days, I forgot you, or anyone, were actually there, listening.”
“And?” I pressed.
“I just hope when I die that I can be reincarnated as a young, Black female,” my friend said with an air of resignation that such a thing would never happen in this, or the next, life.
Dearest Trebb,
It seemed just like yesterday we were sitting by the beach enjoying each other’s company, the gentle waves lilting to the cadence of the soft Italian jazz music coming from Chalet Federico. Lordy, I miss you so.It’s not that I haven’t tried to move on. I’ve tried almost everything in the book. I’ve tried your neighbor, Verdicchio. It just wasn’t the same. I’ve ventured further north, and tried Soave and Lugana, no luck. I even ventured to France and had a fling or two with Ugni Blanc. But I kept coming back to you, Trebb. There’s something about Trebbiano Abruzzese.
More questions than answers. And that, coming from a world and a time when so many thought they had the answers right in front of them. And then the unimaginable happened.
The question, for so many of us, is how do we find our way through the fog? Will we ever get back?
Living in California after college, I got into all kinds of jazz. John Coltrane, what’s not to love? So, when I got a Miles/Coltrane CD for Christmas, I was really excited. And then I got to listening to the music.
It’s much like a photograph. 1/100th of a second. And then something else. Not gone, but no longer there with the energy and the force it initially struck with. I guess you could say it’s a bit like those times when you are intimate with someone and for a moment everything disappears and there is only light and passion, and emotion and energy.
And while it wasn’t quite that dramatic when it happened, looking back on that day, I realize I was then bound to wine, it made an indelible impression. Let me tell you about it.
Transformational over Transactional
It’s something I ask a lot. Then, maybe it was because they knew I had buying power. But not now. I’m done with that. So, why, if at all, do some of those folks still stay in touch?
Fifteen years in most cases is a relatively young age. But for a wine blog? It’s ancient. Some would say passé. Lord knows, I’ve tried a lot of different things to keep it upright and sailing right along. But It is work. No doubt about it. Although it is also a labor of love.
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| ♫ It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ♫ |
Another aspect to this exercise is also to use those years as a personal reference. Maybe you were born that year, or married, or a child was born, or someone died. Anything that would be considered a particular landmark in time. It gives context beyond just the wine and the score it received.
I have had every one of these wines before, and while they are considered iconic wines, especially in regards to the prestige they proffer to the greater world of wine, they also imprinted my sensibilities towards an unabashed conviction that Italian wines are as good as any (e.g., French) wines in the world. It was not the case when I started out. In fact, I spent much of my early career expending my most persuasive capabilities in an effort to dispel the myth that Italian wines were somehow inferior to other wines. Now, not so much, as Italian wines are finally the darlings of the sommelier and collector universe. The mill of God grinds slow but exceedingly fine.
When all the kids took their swing, the poor creature finally burst opened and all manner of shiny and sweet things flew about the field and we all scrambled for the treasures. I don’t know why, but that memory reminds me of 2020 and Italian wine.
That was how I started out with this odd holiday, Thanksgiving. Like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving has come under fire by some who see it as having racist origins, representing a celebration of the conquest of Native Americans. I get that. I also know we, as a country, need something to unify us in this time of discord. I don’t think cooking a bird or smoking a ham will save us, I’m not that naïve. But I do see people finding ways to make moments for peace and serenity. And if celebrating Thanksgiving in the old way that the story was told to us is behind the times, can we not shift from that to a less highly charged observance? We cannot go back and undo what the Anglo-western world did to the indigenous souls here in America. But we can recast the day with thoughts of gratitude and clarity. No, we Americans aren’t the greatest nation the world has ever seen. We aren’t even handling something like this pandemic as well as many other nations on the planet. We have failed miserably. But we cannot shirk away and pretend that all that came before didn’t. We must admit, even concede, that we are not great again, and we must start over again, with the hindsight that we didn’t do it right, all these years. We must change now.
On July 18, 2016, an intergalactic dust storm - Mendacium Collocatio – plowed into earth, broadsiding North America. It modified the brainwaves of half the people it hit, and created synaptic disruptions in them, for which we are just beginning to understand the ramifications. It also appeared that those who were affected also acted as transmitters of turmoil, impairing about 20% of the people they came into contact with. It was during a hotly contested political campaign, and this was not noticed for what it was. It was thought at first that the activities of people were aroused due to their emotional connection to one or the other candidate. We are only learning now that was not the case. The earth had been hit with the equivalent of 15,000 kilotons of this cosmic micro dust, 10,000 times more powerful than the bomb that exploded over Hiroshima. And while the dust storm didn’t spread toxic and lethal radiation like a nuclear blast, it nonetheless caused widespread disruption. And it has been theorized that it made the human population on earth more susceptible to dormant viruses lying in wait, creating a confluence and causing a Perfect Wave scenario. The last time this planet experienced such a Perfect Wave was 66 million years ago.
