#varietal character

[intoxicatedanthropocene]

Pinot Noir

Now this, this, this is a thin skinned, temperamental grape, the Absolute male, the subject par

excellence. Think of the average philosophy major. Think of your ‘boyfriend’… This is the

fragility of subjectivity in a glass. [The best are wearing silk, and nothing but silk, he said.  I

drank and pondered for a bit…

[intoxicatedanthropocene]

Red Hybrids cont...

In the hybrid rat pack there’s Frank, aka Chelois, and then there’s his male other, his bromantic partner, Baco Noir, like a Dean in a cloud of night smoke, he is a smoking den, a gentlemen’s club, GQ magazine, male, deep, dark, rich, black as the night, black fruits, tobacco, a cigar aficionado, caramel on the tongue, a breezy baritone, deeply tinted in the glass. He has a lumberjack frame, and is an American bachelor filled with tannic muscle. He’s a scad.  Pitch black he is. He is the right hand man, the go-to guy, the wing man, the mate, full on bro-sef, American Brother. …And here is Chambourcin as Sammy Davis Junior, adding complexity to the mix and always has notes of flint to light Baco’s cigar, with spice notes of anise, cloves, black pepper, and cinnamon, but with a muted or closed nose. Think of the spice trade! Think of slavery! Think of the network of the global trade routes, the wind currents, all that has happened so that he could exist as you taste him upon your tongue like so many words! And much like that singer he can carry a note longer than any other! And here is DeChaunac, single bottling, smooth and neutral, a Peter Lawford, balanced and cool, a settler of disputes among egos. Chancellor is the unpretentious funny man Joey Bishop. It’s the rat pack. It’s the birth of the Dream of Nationhood in a postcolonial setting, in post-WWII,  post-fall-of-Berlin-Wall America. It’s about the death of opposition, the death of the Bordeauxian dialectic – of east and west bank bottling, that war between the sexes of just the paternalistic French Merlot and Cab Sauv or Franc. It’s the birth of plurality, at a truly local and global scale.

[intoxicatedanthropocene]

Chelois

Chelois alone, is an American pirate, he is Jonny Depp as a pirate, he’s a Somalian pirate, a sommelier pirate, he is a hacker hero, he is hip, he is jazz, he is secretive, he is Gatsby, he is slumbering upon his ship, he is the American Dream. He is a thief in a glass, he is slightly queer. Steal a look into his eyes: See how they shine like black pearls, see how dreamy they are. He is involved in a mob, a collective, an assemblage of a society of grapes, a grouping of other hybrids, in the Rat Pack, as I call them, and he is the Pack Master, tenacious, hardworking, lean medium-bodied and build, sings notes with earthy overtones and pouty crooner lips that shine  like wet berries. He is a will o’ the wisp. He is an illusion.

Look harder, he said to me. What do you see? What do you see? he asked me. Do you see our past? Our hope for the future? Do you see your grandfather? Your father? Brother? Do you see your future nephews? Nieces? Do you see America singing? Is America awake? Did the dream explode? Does it matter? Is this our idea of progress? What’s in a name? Is it’s name a facade, is it the fake books that went unread in Gatsby’s library? Read them. Read this red leather book with a French currents. Here – take this bottle.

[intoxicatedanthropocene]

Riesling

Here – he said – we have Herr Humanism, Shakespearean, protagonist to every story told here. Many times he will come to you. Lead. Fixture. Ubiquity and omnipresence.  He eyes you in the hallways; you see him at the train station; he is covered in a garland, of flowers, herbs and spice, the urgent grungy scent of diesel gas. White prince, as you await. And wait. Odysseus of the sea, Hamlet of Denmark, Romeo, performer of performing, passionate, gripping hold of extreme sincerity, trying desperately for aestheticism. Complexity of despair and grief in the face of the absurdity of this tragic landscape – these gorges! The lakes! So deep! Rhine-like weather! It’s high drama! Think Wagner! But here, to drink a local Riesling is the largest of small acts, meaning everything is practice, and life is in the details heroic. Think local, think slow. For once a winter told him – Riesling that is -- and as Marcellus of Hamlet once nearly said, “Something is rotten in the State of New York,”  so here, have it botricized. We must try and try again.  Take this, he said handing me a desert wine. This is the good night sweet price you dream of.

[intoxicatedanthropocene]

Merlot (the Mother)

Here it is, Claret deconstructed, he said. The mother first, he said, shoving another glass in my face, the feminine root, he said, the etymological fixed sign. When you drink her, I want you to think of your mother, he told me, I want you to think of every mother you ever met. Her heart is a prostitute! Look at her color, she is the color of a purple dinosaur, she is Barney! She gives everything away! Kindergarten teacher. Waitress at the local diner. Suburban soccer mom. Nurse. She is the presumed unconditional love; do not give into her – you are too old for that. Yes, French in heritage, like much of theory, but never found alone there. She is strictly a new world invention, a myth, a miracle. Social butterfly, honest, gullible, sweet, affable, slightly plummy and plump, full figured and maybe soft in the head and heart. She’s always easy going, unfussy, and relaxed. But her informality never verges on untailored, she’s smart, she’s always well-dressed, she’s savvy. She’s the American Mom and the woman who pretends to have everything, pretends to have it all. You may try to become her. You just might. Your sister you speak of and your cousins will certainly try. But she isn’t real – don’t forget that. There is nothing behind her, nothing that grounds her, perhaps because she is without the other Cabernets. An imaginary mother, but with real breasts. The best bottlings have no sense of time, and are goth-like in their lyricism, and are, as Einstein wrote, spooky action at a distance, but then again, he was wrong about the quantum world.