At my fingertips

Myself in Paris, 1978, on the balcony of my favorite room at the top of the Hôtel St-Louis, on the Ile St-Louis, photograph by Suzanne Parker. I've often thought that most of my life since has been devoted to trying to recapture just the calm and ease of that state of spirit; I can still remember exactly that moment it as though it were still at my fingertips, or at least those of my mind…

This is the year of tiny yields and tiny berries, which of course produce red wines of unusual depth and richness, both from the lower yields and from the much higher percentage of skins - which is where color and flavor come from in red wines - to juice. Those in the image are from the 2015 Andromeda Pinot Noir, mostly about the size of peppercorns; I've never seen such a harvest before; the wine, just now gone dry, bears no resemblance in color to normal Pinot, yet seems at this point perfectly balanced, which is always what counts. May it remain so...

Harvesting Hossfeld Vineyard in 2015

Hossfeld Vineyard, high above Napa Valley, 6:15AM, September 15; hooking the trailer to the crawler to begin harvesting the 2015 Cabernet Franc...

Living in the past?

Excellent cartoon by Robert Mankoff in the current issue of the New Yorker: a patient exclaiming to his therapist, "But I like living in the past. It's where I grew up."