Bleeding Edge and The Signature of All things

If you had told me a few years ago that I would be delighted by an Elizabeth Gilbert novel, I would not have objected. But, had you told me that I would give up in boredom a contemporaneous Thomas Pynchon novel, I would have said, "No way!" I don't think it's my own taste as a reader that has changed. I still love Gilbert's writing, and found with a recent re-read of the Idiot that I still love Dostoevsky after a 40 year hiatus. So, I must conclude that my own tastes have seen no radical shift rather that it's Pynchon's writing that has fallen to its knees. It makes me sad as all of his prior novels a few of which I have read multiple times have delighted me. The failure of Bleeding Edge seems to me to be in the characterization. They seem more cut outs than fully fleshed. While Pynchon has always used outre characters that bleed into caricature there was still something real, vital and lovable about them. Belief in the characters is non negotiable issue for me. Almost any other aspect of the novel can be warped and messed with without me objecting, but the characters had better have breath in them. Finally I found the Pynchon dull and enervating. I couldn't keep my eyes open reading it, and every time I picked it up I'd have to go back a few pages to find the narrative thread. Gilbert's book on the other hand kept me wide awake. A book that causes me to stay up late is a successful book, when all's said and done.

1979 Acacia Iund Vineyard Pinot Noir & 1997 Acacia Carneros Pinot Noir

Not too long ago, just before this harvest started I had to move my private collection of wines from Tolosa to a couple storage lockers. We knew the vintage was going to be huge and that we would need every square foot of storage space for barrels. They had kindly allowed me to store the 150 or so cases for several years, so I was happy to oblige. One of the things that moving your cellar does is force you to handle every bottle or case and decide if they're really worth moving and storing. Roughly 20% of the bottles weren't for a variety of reasons, but many of them looked far better than I would have expected from an ullage point of view given their age. I set aside a mixed case of likely candidates to take home and drink over the short term. Two of the wines bracketed my time at Acacia - 19 happy vintages. A couple wine loving friends were over for dinner so I took the opportunity of opening them. The first was the '79 Iund. This was from my very first vintage at Acacia. The cork had held and the wine was at full fill level. Upon decanting we found the wine to be remarkably intact with the color still red and no maderized character whatsoever. The wine was old certainly - ancient by California standards, but it smelled pleasantly of earth, leather and spice. We had many bottles open that evening yet it held its own and most of it was drunk. The next bottle was the '97 Carneros. This was a disappointment. I've had other bottles of this wine recently that were very nice, but this one was faded and past its prime. We also opened a '97 Volnay for a rough comparison and that was the least preferred wine of the three. This particular bottle certainly didn't enforce the idea that red Burgundies outlive California Pinots. It was very sweetly nostalgic to taste these two bottles that spanned the course of my vintages at Acacia. The '79 was particularly resonant as it was my first vintage, and i didn't really have a clue as to what I was doing. By the '97 vintage I'd pretty much mastered my craft, and I recall in detail how this vintage showed as young wines. Both the Pinot and Chardonnay that year were light to medium bodied and always studies in elegance and perfume.

Dawn Patrol

During harvest commuting to work is a big part of my cycling as the opportunities for longer rides are limited compared to the rest of the year. I particularly love the early morning commute on the weekends. The streets are much emptier of traffic,and what traffic there is seems somewhat less frantic. Sundays are the best as the roads are virtually deserted, and I can with impunity blow through stop signs and stop lights. This morning, the final Saturday of October and likely the last working weekend of the harvest, was paricularly fun. The fog was thick and wet, and the temerature was just above the glove and full leg cover level. I put on a watchcap instead of a helmet, which always feels good for some perverse reason. Concious risk in some way makes me feel more alive. I was just cold enough to be stimulated instead of frozen. My legs felt good, and the sky slowly brightened as I rode in. There was just enough light to not worry about hitting the random road debris. My mind and my mood followed the lead of my legs and all seemed rosy and anything possible by the time I arrived at work.