Summer Wine Groove #2

Song: Marquee by Greg Laswell

Wine: Kendall Jackson Reserve Chardonnay 2009

You get that I'm trying to pair wines with songs the way wine critics pair wines with food, right? I thought that was obvious, but my wife tells me I should make it explicit. I must not be the first (or even close) person who's done this, so I'd just assumed people would know what was up. If I had to pair wines with food, everything would be paired with a Twinkie and a side of beef, and it would be no good.

The other thing I want to explicitly reveal is that I listen to the song and drink the wine while I write the post. Since I'm asking my reader to sit, drink, and listen, I do, too, and I can't complain this is a hardship. I didn't intend to conduct any kind of a Writing Experiment, but my wanna-be-English-teacher self tells me this would be useful in a classroom for teaching mood and tone. You can't give children wine, or you would soon be fired, but the song you could do. Many have done this before, but it's interesting don't you think? I use music as an anti-depressant, and I always assumed it works for me because I don't actually need an anti-depressant, but maybe there's more to it. Maybe the connection between music and mood or music and *mood* (literary mood) is more nuanced than we believe.

Tonight's wine is a conservative choice, a common favorite available at many chain restaurants. I wish I were cool enough to say I hate chains and that I never drank anything I didn't discover myself. The reality is you need a standby if you're caught at a chain because your toddler only eats chain food. That's the purpose of this choice, which is good and reasonably priced. It was one of those wines my wife and I were almost ashamed to like as much as we did, given the yuppie American mainstreamness of it.

 

Kendall Jackson Reserve Chardonnay has defined some genres for me, both of chardonnay and California. The one I "tested" is the 2009, but I've drunk enough to know any year will do. I pair it with Greg Laswell's song Marquee, which I'm sure most of you have heard. The purpose of the Summer Wine Grooves is not to teach anyone new music or new wine, but to remind people in case they might have missed something good amid all the hoopla and non-hoopla of the world we're in. I find that with both music and wine (two of my favorite things) I lose objectivity and have such strong opinions I can't see out of them. But then someone I respect will sometimes remind me to taste or listen again.

Anyway, we're at the beach this week. I was utterly afraid of the three hour drive with Ari, which turned out to be six, but then he was fine. B and I were so traffic stressed we almost imploded, but Ari thought it was a grand adventure.

Still, it's hard traveling with a young child. B and I often go without the basic human necessities of regular liquid or food consumption and excretion because we're both so focused on his. I can never understand how this happens in retrospect. It seems utterly implausible that one normal child can make two adults so non-functioning, but I know the phenomenon is common, even among the experts. My former therapist, who has two kids of her own and specializes in new moms, once told me she had "no idea" what she and her husband were so busy doing with their kids that made them too busy to pee, eat, sleep, or shower. Since she told me that, I feel no shame, which I suppose was the point of her telling me. I've had many excellent shrinks, but none are needed right now!

My biggest problems this week are my hair (in eyes forever no matter what I do, but prettily so, according to wife, therefore I cannot cut it) and the one half of a corkscrew in our beach rental. See my solution in photo above. Oh, and there are only Supremely Tacky glasses here, but B and I embraced the tack and chose the tackiest one for our K.J. consumption (also in photo.)

Happy Fourth.