Bill Dixon once took the guitar pick out of my hand, threw it across the room, and said, “NOW play.”

Bill Dixon to a player after a performance: “What was happening there?” Player: “Well, I thought…” Dixon: “You *THOUGHT*!

The great Bill Dixon loved Harvey’s Bristol Cream. He used a fountain pen, and wrote in the most beautiful hand ever.

Bill Dixon loved the playing of trumpeter Tony Fruscella, and was the first person to hip me to the brilliance of George Russell (especially later works), whom he also adored.

Bill Dixon taped every rehearsal, every performance, he ever did. Even with students.

Bill Dixon’s ensemble met on Fridays, 7 to 9. Sometimes he walked in at 7, took out trumpet and played. We played till 9. He left. No words.

Bill Dixon owned one of the most beautiful Jaguar XK-E’s I ever saw. Sometimes on weekends he’d take it out. Unbelievably cool.

Bill Dixon thought that knitting needles should be in every drummer’s stick arsenal.

“Now, you cats, you come in here, with your workmens’ boots, holes in the jeans. Cats when I was coming up: they DRESSED.” — Bill Dixon

amphorae

frank cornelissen’s old vine nerello mascalese at 950m altitude, mt. etna.

antoine arena in “les hauts de carco” vineyard, drinking frank cornelissen’s munjebel 6

les hauts de carco vineyard, patrimonio, corsica

loup de mer, bandol, france

]]> http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/2010/07/sicily-corsica-bandol/feed/ 3 http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/2010/07/barometer-and-thief/ http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/2010/07/barometer-and-thief/#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:21:43 +0000 admin http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/?p=571

barometer at domaine jl chave

thief at domaine jl chave

1.  Great Wine

“Everyone wants the best eye surgeon, the best babysitter, the best vehicle, the best prosthetic arm, and the best hat… People are afraid to explore their own peculiar taste for fear – that it would be uncool. Just like when you’re a teenager you don’t want to be caught with the wrong sports shirt, the wrong socks.”   – Tom Waits

The table was festooned with bottles of wine.  The guys at the table poured, swirled, sniffed, gurgled, spat, and ranked one wine after another. Somebody handed me a glass and said, better get moving if you want to try all of these. I accepted the challenge and entered the fray.  Many of the wines were opaque, richly textured, and a bit sweet. Some others—saturated with the toasty flavor and fine-grained tannins imparted by new oak barriques—were difficult to recognize as being from any particular place or having any story to tell.  The consensus was that 2007 Masseto and 2007 Ornellaia were the wines of the night.  I was happy to have had the chance to taste them, but I can’t say they spoke to me.

Amid the chaos of clanging bottles, I found a wine I could imagine returning to throughout the evening. Its more understated but still ripe fruit was balanced by good acidity and it went well with the food on the table.  It really was quite beautiful.  I said I admired its elegance, which sparked discussion.  “That’s because they over-produce and they’re lazy!  In the early days they made Great Wine.  Imagine the kind of wine it would be if they didn’t rest on their laurels!”  Somebody added, “It’s not that it’s bad wine. In fact, it’s quite good. But it doesn’t have what the others have. It doesn’t have what it takes to be a Great Wine, and this estate should be making Great Wine.”  It may not have been Great Wine, and it certainly wasn’t natural wine, but the relatively restrained 2007 Sassicaia would have to do.  It was something I could actually drink.

If a wine is fresh, supple, transparent—or a little rough and rustic—and beautifully accompanies your meal, can’t it also be great?  How, for example, do the mineral Muscadets of Marc Ollivier and graceful crus Beaujolais of Jean Foillard fit into a viewpoint of wine that most highly values power, concentration, opulence, lavishness, grandeur, extraction, density, and…oomph? Is a wine’s ultimate ambition to scratch its way relentlessly to the top of a rigidly stratified Quality hierarchy (not worth drinking=80 to 85; not worth being seen drinking in public=85 to 90; not an embarrassment to drink=90 to 95; worth murdering to drink=95 to 100+*) and never to tumble from that summit? Does the appreciation of wine solely involve the discernment of Quality via a matrix of officially sanctioned benchmarks, or can there be something else? Can’t there be something else?

2. Chianti

I traveled to Tuscany to visit some vignaioli who work naturally. But natural wine per se was only discussed during one brief exchange.  While Giovanna Morganti was showing me the newly built cantina at Le Boncie, her home and farm in San Felice, I asked her if she considered herself a “natural winemaker.” She immediately said, “Yes.”  But then she paused, reflected, and clarified: “I don’t ‘consider it’ – I am.”

This resonated deeply with me.  I am a jazz musician, and natural wine reminds me of jazz. Both capture the spontaneity, purity, vitality, and beauty of the moment of their creation and the raw materials (grapes, musical ideas) they are created from. And both also start fights, mostly regarding definitions, e.g. “what is jazz?” and “what should natural wine be?”  These fights rarely go anywhere but in circles.

We’re stuck with the words.  But it’s dangerous to get so caught up in the word that you miss the thing.  Many musicians don’t want to box themselves in.  I can appreciate that. And I understand the fuzziness and essential artificiality of borders between musical genres.  But saying that I’m a jazz musician doesn’t threaten my creative freedom or shackle me to tradition.  It’s more an ethos: the basic spirit of what I do.  Giovanna’s strong, confident “I am” was similar.  It was a declaration from a woman neither attached to, nor confined by, nor defensive about natural wine and all the debate surrounding it.  For her, natural wine is not a subject to “consider,” apart from the thing itself.  It is a reality, born in her responsibly farmed vineyard and traditional cantina where additions, corrections, and enhancements are not needed, so they are simply not used.

Giovanna Morganti’s “Le Trame” Chianti Classico comes from alberello-trained Sangiovese and Fogliatonda (a related, traditional variety named for its rounded leaves) grapes grown in stony, calcareous soil.  The vineyard is plowed once in winter, then planted with a cover crop (wheat and broad beans) that is cut during flowering, carpeting the ground and creating a reserve of humidity in the soil for the roots of the plants.  Hand-harvested grapes are fermented for about two weeks in small open-top wooden vats and transferred to 15-hectoliter botti or 500-liter tonneaux (both French) where they complete their élevage. New oak is brought in only when an older barrel or two must be retired.  Now that the cellar has moved from the cramped main house to a separate cantina with more space, Giovanna hopes to acquire more of the larger containers, because when raised inside them “the wines age more gently and acquire greater finesse.”  We opened a bottle of her 2008.  It is classic, traditional Chianti Classico that will age beautifully. It is not hard-edged or aggressive and certainly doesn’t require the inclusion of international varieties to “round it out.” Nor would the toasty vanilla flavoring of new barrels make it better wine. The wine is pure and elegant, and reveals strong minerality, energy, and freshness.

Later that day I visited Montesecondo, Silvio Messana’s family home and azienda near Cerbaia. I showed up late, but Silvio welcomed me warmly and was incredibly generous with his time.  Over coffee he told me about his years in New York and Boston, working as a musician as well as in wine sales with Michael Skurnik.  He talked about meeting his wife Catalina, about their three sons, and about his ultimate decision to leave the states and make a go of it as a winegrower in Toscana upon inheriting his mother’s farm in 2000.

The property was conventionally farmed at the time. But Catalina was always concerned about healthy living, and their sons had attended Rudolf Steiner Waldorf schools, so she urged Silvio to convert to natural and biodynamic methods on the farm.  Some time later, he attended a lecture by Nicolas Joly that really inspired him and strengthened his commitment to biodynamics.  During the first vendemmia at the farm, he and his wife looked at each other and asked, “Do you know how to make wine?”  Both answered “no,” and thus began their first decade of trial and error, of getting to know the farm and learn the necessary vinification skills.

As we chatted, Silvio never spoke about biodynamic preparations, the cycles of the moon, or dung-filled horns.  He was not waving a flag for biodynamics. But the sense of life on his farm is obvious.  His neighbor’s vineyard appears barren, almost utilitarian, in comparison. At Montesecondo, a layer of diverse growth thrives between the vine rows, and Silvio has begun the laborious process of converting to alberello training, as he feels that this better distributes the plant’s energy to where it’s needed the most.  Silvio ferments in stainless steel in his small cantina, and the wines rest in used 500-liter French oak tonneaux in a naturally cool cellar underneath the house. The Montesecondo Rosso sees no wood and is bottled about 9 months after the vintage.

Three bottles were opened: 2007 Chianti Classico, 2009 Rosso del Rospo (Cabernet Sauvignon/Petit Verdot) and 2009 Montesecondo Rosso. Silvio, Catalina and I drank the wines sitting around the big wooden kitchen table.  They were – all of them – wonderful.  The Chianti Classico was structured and intense, yet very accessible now.  The Tuscan voice of the more angular and tight Rosso del Rospo had not been drowned out, even though the wine was made from Bordeaux varieties. Silvio is considering the intriguing prospect of aging future vintages of this wine in amphora.  And the 2009 Rosso was charming, alive, singing: an Italian analogue of, say, the lively Gamay/Pinots from Dard & Souhaut or the juicy Passetoutgrains from Michel Lafarge.  It was less sweet than the 2008 bottling, and Silvio and I agreed that it is clearer and more focused. It is very refreshing.  Silvio says that his wines are improving with every vintage, and that their increasing articulateness follows directly from his growing intimacy with the farm.  He’s done something quite special at Montesecondo simply by respecting his land, and allowing the wine to let it speak.

3.   Detractors and True Wine

Natural wine detractors will tell you that there’s no such thing as natural wine because all wine is natural.  That “natural wine” is merely a marketing term, used by opportunists trying to cash in on the zeitgeist: there have always been producers who work naturally but don’t try to attract attention.  They’ll say the wines are unclean—flawed, usually—and that you are probably attracted to the flaws.  Sometimes these objections have merit.  It’s neither useful nor intellectually serious to defend a yeasty Petri dish of a wine just because it was fermented “wild” from naturally farmed fruit and bottled with minimal sulfur.  But it’s equally disingenuous to suggest (as I’ve seen done) that Chateau X is making vin naturel, just because they are now using a few biodynamic preparations on their farm, or eschewing herbicides and pesticides.

You can have an organic or biodynamic vineyard and still be screwed.  Your site may be problematic. You may obliterate healthy diversity by trying to predict and plant “magic” clones.  You may pick at too high brix and end up with sweet, flabby, high-alcohol wine that your enologist acidifies and then slathers with new oak in order to craft a product for the so-called “international palate.” These procedures – regardless of the farming – will not result in a natural wine.

In 2008, while in Vienne, France for the jazz festival, I had the pleasure of meeting Jean-Louis Chave, proprietor of the venerable Hermitage domaine of the same name.  Over dinner, he talked about terroir in a way that really stayed with me.  I’m quoting from memory, but the ‘rant’ went something like this: “Everybody talks about terroir. But you can’t talk about terroir if you are killing your vineyards with chemicals. You can’t talk about terroir if your vineyards are dependent on irrigation. And you can’t talk about terroir if your work in the cellar is full of techniques that don’t allow the grape to speak.”

Returning to Vienne last week, I had the opportunity to visit Chave in his cave, and again he bypassed bullshit to get to the heart of the matter: “These vineyards were here long before me, and their fruit will give wine long after I am gone. So the important issue is not quality, but truth.  I am not looking to make a great wine, or a Chave-brand wine, or a great Syrah. “Chave” is not important; the grape variety is not important. Hermitage, the truth of Hermitage, is important. The grape is only a vehicle to translate the information of the soil, the site, and the specifics of the vintage into wine. We try to raise the wine so none of that information is lost. When this happens, you have a true wine.  That is our goal.”

It is also the goal of the best natural vignerons.  Beautiful, clean, beguiling natural wines do exist. And contrary to what detractors suggest, the passionate, meticulous people who make them, such as Giovanna Morganti and Silvio Messana, don’t run around with placards saying, “Look at me! I’m natural!” They simply go to great lengths, every step of the way, to farm responsibly, and to raise and bottle true wines, wines of purity, expressive of their origins. Their best efforts are thrilling, and always worth supporting.

I’m back at my home in Los Angeles after 12 packed days in New York.

The June 2 show at Smalls was outstanding.  The band featured Alan Ferber, Shane Endsley, Adam Schroeder, Jon Gordon, Ben Wendel, Danton Boller, Donald Vega, and Mark Ferber.  Everybody had amazing solo features; ensembles were clean, crackling, and in tune; the grooves were hard; and there were surprises in every song.  At the beginning of the gig, writer and old friend Stanley Crouch took a seat at the front of the bar and stayed through the end of the second set.  (Thanks to Smalls’ live stream, I heard that many folks from here and abroad were able to catch the show.)

mark ferber & ben wendel @ douglass street music collective

shane endsley & adam schroeder @ douglass street music collective

We all hung around for the late-night gig.  Alice Feiring and José Pastor smuggled in some beautiful wines, and we drank and watched as various NYC night-owl characters played out their various dramas, some with horns or other instruments, others listening, drinking, hovering.  Alice remarked that she felt like we were all part of a scene in a JP Donleavy novel. (Ever so politely, she communicated this thought to me in the form of a note, so as not to disturb the musicians, who were about 2 feet away from us!)

roy hargrove late-night @ smalls

The next afternoon, Alice included me as her guest for an incredible tasting of back vintages of the great and rare Valentini wines from Abruzzo.  I was blown away especially by the various Trebbianos, and loved the Cerasuolos and Montepulcianos.  Alice and I shared a bottle of Pepière muscadet, then had dinner at one of my favorite places, Frankie’s Spuntino, on Clinton Street, but sadly we brought a yeasty leesy 2004 St. Joseph from Dard & Ribo for which we had no backup.  Still and all, for one day, we had done pretty well.

As the days passed, I had great food at Café Mogador, Abraço, Momofuku Ssam Bar, Bar Jamón, Mary’s Fish Camp, Marlow & Sons (!!!), Bar Boulud, Motorino, Ten Bells, and Gramercy Tavern.  There was even a delicious homemade pesto cooked by songwriter Richard Julian in the kitchen of songwriter Jesse Harris (with 2006 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco and  2006 Pierre Savoye Morgon Côte de Py), and a dinner at the home of another friend-of-friends (sounds like Facebook) that included 2000 Volnay Champans from Marquis d’Angerville, a lip-smacking Muscadet “Amphibolite” from Jo Landron, 2002 Savennières Clos de la Coulée de Serrant from Joly, and 2003 La Conseillante.  There was a wonderful wine “tweetup” with NYTimes wine writer Eric Asimov, Talia Baiocchi, and my friend and former student John Ritchie (soon to have his own wine shop in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn).  John and I closed down The Ten Bells that night, along with rhythm section par excellence (and wine lovers) Ben Street and Ted Poor. What a city; running into folks constantly!  My final evening in New York was spent with friends drinking classic Bordeaux wines from the 1990s: Clos du Marquis 1995, La Chappelle de La Mission Haut Brion 1998, and L’Angelus 1997.  They were very good wines: not trendy, not different, not surprising or startling, certainly not “natural” wines, but perfect in the context of a meal and alongside each other.  On this trip I ate and drank very well indeed.

macvin from the jura @ bar boulud

The week of the 7th was spent in rehearsal and at Avatar Studio A, recording my father’s new album with a powerful New York band.  He wrote several new pieces for this album, some very loose variations on classical themes by Debussy, Stravinsky, and Puccini; and he also recorded music that he premiered at the Chicago Jazz Festival last year.  As well, I led the band in recording my piece “Virgo,” a tribute to my father which was commissioned in 2008 by the LA Philharmonic and included on the Hollywood Bowl 90th birthday tribute to him and Hank Jones.  I’m really happy with how the music turned out.  The ensembles, especially, are very strong, stretched-out, and intense: exactly the feeling I was going for.  Jeremy Pelt, Antonio Hart, and Dick Oatts took beautiful solos on the piece.  Look for this new record to come out in the fall.

There’s lots–new–to come.   I’ll be recording a new quartet album in São Paulo in September.  I’m planning to bring the Nonet back to Smalls or another venue in October or so.  Over the coming weeks, I’ll  be finishing the writing for and preparing to record “Seasons,” a four-movement suite for guitar quartet that I am writing to be played on John Monteleone’s quartet of archtop guitars that will be shown in a groundbreaking Metropolitan Museum exhibition of the work of New York luthiers of Italian descent (including Monteleone, James D’Aquisto, and John D’Angelico).  The CD of the music will be available in conjunction with the exhibition (which opens in February 2011), and we’ll premiere the piece on a Sunday concert at the museum during the early part of its run.  Stay tuned for the announcement of the other members of the quartet: it’s going to be an incredible ensemble of guitarists.

Before all of that, there’s a summer festival tour of Europe with Diana Krall, with my own parallel wine tour going on simultaneously.  Expect to see coverage of some decadent days: I’m gearing up with video.

See you soon!

http://irom.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/live-jazz-the-anthony-wilson-nonet-at-vitellos/

In the wine world, the über-critic Robert Parker Jr. has just released his point scores for 2009 Bordeaux–numbers which have a direct impact on future demand for those wines–and folks are checking their bankrolls so as not to miss out on another “vintage of the century.”  Maybe they lost money during the recession, but if they can scrape together the cash, they can have a few cases of Cheval Blanc that will be delivered in a couple of years, flip ‘em after a couple more, and all will be right with the world: I don’t know. I haven’t paid much attention, and my awareness of what’s happening comes mostly from hearsay.  A couple of months back, Robert Parker also coined the term “anti-flavor elites” [sic], an unabashed, Palinesque potshot at wine drinkers whose tastes differ from his own.  Tons of internet ink was spilled over that; it spawned a twitter page and a facebook page.  And also, lately, out of most people’s awareness probably, but quite strident if one follows the world of wine on the internet, there are also enthusiastic arguments about the meaning, merit, and sometimes dogma of “natural wine,” a relatively recent interest of mine (the wine, not the dogma!).  I appreciate everybody’s passion, but I must admit that for me so much talk about everything becomes…well… overwhelming.

For example, there are the so-called “jazz wars.”  What is “moving forward” or “innovation” in jazz?  Is it represented by those who have been busy absorbing hip-hop, indie rock, odd-meters, contemporary European classical music as well as esoteric/ethnic forms, etc.?  Are “moving forward” and “innovation” impossible for musicians who continue to work with some idiomatic elements that detractors would say are signs of a dead, or at least dying, art form in desperate need of (that word again!) renewal?  Musicians, bloggers, critics, and involved listeners are hashing these issues out on a daily basis all over the internet.  But the rancor doesn’t usually result in any significant resolution, integration, understanding.

For my part, I have experienced firsthand that the music tradition that has nurtured and raised me, regardless of what one cares to call it, was not formed by polarized thinking (though I could certainly name musicians who resort to that kind of thinking).  Musicians in “jazz” have deliberate choices to make from a wide-open (not polarized) field as they develop an identity: elements such as sound, touch, and the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content of their improvisations or compositions: these are all, to a greater or lesser extent, chosen, and they are not chosen for forever and all time.  The options stay wide-open, and the responses to those options constantly change.  It’s as simple, difficult, and existentially charged for each musician as that.  These concerns aren’t really related to whether or not somebody’s music fits some agenda that I have (or that he/she has) about “jazz” or “innovation.” And it seems to me that an appreciation for this progression of complex, individual choices–beyond the limits one’s own taste*—-is central to the act of trying to understand an artist (present or past) in any meaningful way, or to begin to get a grasp on what exactly “moving forward” or “innovation” is within the context of an artform as it develops, morphs, and grows.

Thinking philosophically about these things takes me only to one level.  Seeing a show or listening to a record by a new artist may surprise, impress, or frustrate me intellectually, but how did I feel the music? What was my experience physically, emotionally?  The same goes for wine, of course, and other disciplines of art.  Equally, I sense that this is fundamental in the business of encountering other people, day to day.  And it’s quite possibly the same with any other things that you find interest in.

Renewal, resolution, integration, and understanding might arise when I stay in that open field, putting aside polarized or dogmatic thinking, and just listen (or see, or taste). When I bring a bit of presence to the situation.  You and I, sitting in the same room together may have vastly different experiences, but by really being there (which means not only in the room, but with each other) and letting go of our conditioned responses as best we can, we stand to learn quite a bit more about the object of our fascination than we might have before.

*I go back again and again to something the winemaker Aimé Guibert said in the film “Mondovino”: “Taste is a personal dance.”

]]> http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/2010/04/503/feed/ 5 http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/2010/03/oz-wrap-up/ http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/2010/03/oz-wrap-up/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:06:38 +0000 admin http://anthonywilsonmusic.com/?p=491 There are lots of reasons to go to Australia and New Zealand.  Are you tired of the US grind? A frequent traveler totally broken down by the endless security checks and routine humiliations of flying just about anywhere?  A foodie? Wino? Lover of culture or the outdoors?  A trip down under will do you worlds of good.  You’ll encounter genuinely friendly people who work hard but know instinctively when to chill.  You’ll experience lively cities and gorgeous countryside. You’ll eat well, drink well, and I guarantee you will relax.

Our recent tour down under was a total groove.  It was a triple-, sometimes quadruple-bill.  Diana Krall was the headliner, and there were also sets by Madeleine Peyroux and Melody Gardot; several Australian shows also featured a set by Katie Noonan.  We played Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland in New Zealand; Perth, Melbourne, Barossa Valley, Brisbane, Sydney, Hunter Valley, Bowral, and Yarra Valley in Australia.

So much happened in three weeks, but here are a few things that I remember warmly:

–A wonderful workshop in Perth with the very interested students of Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, and just before it, an interview with Ray Walker, Ian McGregor, and Fred Grigson of the Jazz Guitar Society of Western Australia.

–Also in Perth, spending time talking wine with Ann Marie Tamburri. Along with her father, Michael Tamburri, she runs one of the best and most beloved wine shops in Australia. Their selection is wide and deep, including many old vintages of classics like Penfold’s Grange, and they turned me on to some really interesting bottles, such as Batista Pinot Noir, and Spinifex Rosé.

–Late dinner at The European, and lunch at City Wine Shop, both across from Parliament Square in Melbourne. Here I had meals that included textbook pâté de campagne, beautiful fried padrón peppers, and wines such as Michel Lafarge Bourgogne Passetoutgrain, Hervé Souhaut Syrah, and Maxime Magnon “Rozeta.”

–Airport check-ins throughout the country, completely without passport, completely without stress.  The easiest check-ins I’ve experienced since… well… probably since being in Australia five years ago!

–Great, relaxing, liver-challenging days in the Barossa Valley with bandmates Robert Hurst and Karriem Riggins, our tour promoter Carl Nicholas, friends Ben and Lucy Glaetzer, as well as Ben’s uncle, Wolf Blass winemaker John Glaetzer and his family, Reid Bosward from Kaesler winery, and many other friends, some of whom I had met on my last trip to the Barossa in 2005. In keeping with a tradition started on that trip, there was even a small jam session at Ben’s winery just before I departed for Brisbane. What a groove!

–Beautiful long walks and great meals in Sydney, one of the most naturally beautiful cities in the world.  In Sydney, I had perfect espresso at Toby’s; fantastic breakfasts at Bills on Liverpool Street; natural wine at the Bentley Bar and Vaucluse Cellars; and an incredible dinner overlooking the harbor at chef Matt Moran’s Aria.

–The final night of the tour, very late indeed, sitting at the rooftop bar of Melbourne’s Supper Club (also related and adjacent to The European and City Wine Shop), drinking 2000 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo Monprivato and 2000 Dom Perignon Champagne, conversing with Sir Tom Jones (who was also on tour in Australia, with the same promoters) about Count Basie, Jerry Lee Lewis, and James Brown; about his early days growing up in Wales; and about life on the road.

–Great van drives with Karriem and Bob, plugging our Ipods into the stereo and listening to VSOP, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Os Borges, and so many other of the artists that we love so much.

–Newly discovered Australian wines from Sami-Odi (Ebenezer Shiraz), Luke Lambert (Yarra Valley Syrah and Nebbiolo), Lucy Margaux (Adelaide Hills Monomeith Vineyard Pinot Noir), William Downie (Pinot Noir), and Bowe-Lees (Nebbiolo) were notable for finesse and balance, and for their dedication to various levels of more “natural” winemaking; 2001 Yarra Yering Dry Red Wine #2 is truly worth seeking-out, simply a beauty; Penfold’s 1962 Bin 60A and John Glaetzer’s 1977 Langhorne Creek Cabernet Sauvignon were elegant, delicious, and going strong after years of being properly cellared by the people who made them.  The flagship, textbook new-school Barossa shiraz such as Ben Glaetzer’s Amon-Ra and Annaperenna, and Kaesler’s Old Bastard were huge without being overwrought: juicy, intense wines with ripe fruit, but balanced. I drank them with gratitude and abandon.

—————————————————–

I’m back home now, enjoying gorgeous Springtime weather in Los Angeles, watching my garden come to life, practicing a bit and writing a bit, gearing up for an April relatively packed with some of my own shows (check the appearances section!), and counting my blessings for this beautiful life I lead.

I hope your days and nights are equally blessed!