Haresh Shah
Of Pinot Noir And The Burlaping in Boonville
The year is 1995 and talking of California wines to the Europeans is somewhat of a joke like the early transistor radios made in Japan were to everyone. Never mind that almost twenty years earlier on the day of America’s Bicentennial on July 4, 1976, the world’s wine experts were asked in a blind tasting to compare six California Cabernets and Chardonnays along with as many of Bordeaux and Burgundies and to everyone’s horror and American wine makers’ delight, California’s best stood shoulder to shoulder with the French on everyone’s scorecards, putting them instantly on the world map.
While the wine professionals of Europe took a note of it, the wine consumers of the Continent remained oblivious to even their existence. Frustrated, California’s vintners decided, the time had come to make the world aware of the lush Napa Valley and its wines that were growing by leaps and bounds off the northern California Coast.
As a part of the broader push, California Wine Institute has invited the Dutch edition of Playboy to experience California’s wine country in all its glory, including its rapidly emerging cuisine and enjoy their steadily growing warm hospitality industry, in hopes that Playboy would take the message to its upscale demographics in Holland.
The editor-in-chief Jan Heemskerk himself takes upon the project and picks me to accompany him and assigns me to write a major piece for his edition. Not because by any dint of imagination I am a connoisseur or even an expert of wines, but because he thinks of me as someone who knows his wines, especially the ones from California.
He certainly doesn’t expect me to write something like what is on the back label of the 2011 Ménage à Trois I just picked up from the store: Ignite the romance with our silky, smooth Pinot Noir. Made with grapes from a trio of top California growing regions in a lush, fruit-forward style. It’s utterly irresistible. Bright cherries mingle with sultry violets and hints of toasty oak in a delicious slow jam on the palate. Whew! Enough to induce an instant wet dream!!! Nothing like that. You haven’t picked a wine that I didn’t like. I’m obviously flattered and pleased. Not to mention all the fun we would have traveling together. Also to get out of Chicago’s bitter winter during the month of January is nothing to sniff at.
Over the next eleven days, we did the wineries of Napa Valley that included Sonoma and Mendocino counties. We met with the owners, wine makers, PR people and tasted a whole slew of what California had to offer in terms of wines paired to what has come to be known as California Cuisine, and enjoyed tremendously the hospitality of exquisite small, quaint and cozy boutique hotels, such as Vintners Inn and Medowood and others dotted along the wine trail. I hope to write of them in detail some other time, but the story I want to tell you today is that of the evening we spent with Pinot Noir farmers in the little hill-top town of Boonville.
With Ken Beck of Fetzer, a group of us drive up the long and winding mountainous route 128 to the place called The Sound Bite. It’s a down home all American small town restaurant and bar, complete with the pool table and serving very basic food. We have what looks and tastes like minced meat pie baked with a layer of mashed potatoes. The place is buzzing with the wine grape growers and winemakers of Mendocino County. They have gathered here to present, taste and talk about their own Pinot Noirs, for which the region is renowned. More than any other varietal, they tell us, Pinot Noir is very site specific if truly great wine is to be made.
Through the evening, we taste total of twenty one Pinot Noirs, including three sparkling varieties. The tasting is divided into six flights. Each flight contains wines from three to four wineries. Most of the wines presented are of ’93 and ’94 vintages and to our un-educated pallets they taste more like Beaujolais Nouveau. For us, non wine-growers, the most interesting thing is to be among the wine farmers and the producers themselves, instead of the owners and the PR people describing their wares. The men and women we find ourselves surrounded by are the real farmers, they till the land, harvest the crops, press the grapes, make the wines and bottle them. You can see a definite parental pride and joy in their eyes as they fondly fuss over the wines that cross our lips and titillate our taste buds.
Of the five women sitting at our table of eight, four are grape farmers with their own Pinots, the fifth, Leisha is Ken’s daughter, and even though Ken too is a wine maker, he is with us as an observer – the other two men being Jan and I. Curiously, us three men are either married or committed, whereas all five women are apple heads–the Boonville slang for single women. I will call the four farmer femmes, Sally, Nicky, Christine and Mandy. They are all in their early to mid-thirties. Good looking even, in rustic sort of way. While they are dressed up for the evening, you could see and feel that they are true farmhands, wholesome and strong of toned muscles. After a couple of flights and after the ice has been broken between us, the women let their hair down and begin to educate us in the local secret language called Bootling.
‘You know what an apple head blanketing means?’ Asks Nicky. Seeing that we’re shaking our heads, she continues.
‘That means, a single woman getting laid. Like our Mandy here.’
‘Nicky! Please!!’ Mandy throws a faux embarrassment.
‘Actually she got burlaped, didn’t you Mandy?’ quips Christine.
‘What’s that?’ either Jan or I ask.
‘That means…’
‘No, don’t you dare! You are embarrassing me,’ squeals Mandy. Nicky throws a friendly wicked smile at Mandy and continues.
‘That means she got taken on top of a burlap bale,’ we see Mandy’s face turning water melon red.
‘Ouch, that’s got to scratch your sweet little booty good!’ It’s Christine again.
And while we are trying to imagine Mandy getting burlaped, the girls break out in a roaring chorus of a laughter, joined by Leisha and Ken, and then also by us while poor Mandy tries to hide her still reddening face behind the shield of her hands. The rest continue with how about, and throw at us some more Bootling slangs, such as Bucky Walter, Horn of Zeese, and Bal Gorms. They mean public telephone, cup of coffee and good food. And not to forget Madge and Moldunes meaning a whore and big boobs. Madge because in the days past, a woman called Madge ran the local bordello. Moldunes comes from the early Hippies that had migrated to the region and their women let their pendulums hang out and down – braless. There’s a story behind all of them and there even exists a book or two to keep the lore alive. While we’re all having lots of laughs interspersed with different Pinots, Sally somehow seems withdrawn, lost and a bit out of it. She is directly in the line of my vision and I can’t help but notice and observe the sadness settling on her face.
‘Poor Sally here, she’s sad tonight. She just broke up with her boyfriend of two years.’ Interjects Mandy, probably to shift the attention from her being blanketed on the burlap. But realizing that perhaps she has touched upon a raw nerve, the girls switch back to talking about their wines.
While I am busy conversing with Leisha, who’s sitting next to me, my attention keeps drifting to the sad face of Sally. She is the runt of the group, perhaps even youngest and wears shorter hair that hugs closer to her neck. She has been quiet all evening long. She looks so sad that I feel she may just break down and cry. The passive pain of her face makes you want to caress and comfort her. I see her excusing herself and slowly walking out of the restaurant.
‘She probably needs a smoke and wants to be alone for a while,’ says Christine. I wonder about Sally all alone outside the restaurant, smoking. Something draws me to her and I find excusing myself to go to the john and than casually step outside in the open. Sure enough, she is smoking, leaning against the hood of one of the parked pick-up-trucks.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes. Just needed bit of fresh air.’
We engage in small talk. I ask her discreet questions about her break up. She gives me a feeling of being welcoming to have someone to talk with. The night is crisp and clear, the stars are bright and the mountain air is refreshing. Our subdued voices waft in the air like mellow musical notes. The stray light illuminates and deepens the sadness of her face. Us both leaning on the hood, seem to have slid closer. A sweet whiff of her perfume and her gentle breathing feel somehow intimate. I imagine her face tilting and resting over my shoulder, sliding down and buried in my chest. Out lips are so close, fluttering. We’re at that certain now or never moment of either sealing or quelling of our suddenly awakened ardor.
And then I think of Susan, two thousand miles and two time zones away in Chicago, probably sitting in front of a television. We’ve now been together for more than two years. Something similar must have been going through Sally’s mind as well. We consciously and slowly retract and step back.
‘It was wonderful meeting and talking to you. Hope you write a nice article about the Pinots.’
I wait until the taillight of her pick-up disappears in the downhill slope.
●●●
I do write a nice article about the California Wine Country. I write a series of them. A few days before the Valentine Day, Susan and I are having Sushi at Kama Kura in Evanston. We both are quiet or making polite low key conversation to fill the void that seems to have dawned between us two since my return from California. I sense it, but can’t quite put my finger on the possible cause.
‘You’re too sophisticated for me.’ I hear her say. Right!
She obviously has given our relationship some serious thought during these days. We talk for the umpteen time the perception and reality – misunderstandings and interpretations. But we both know, there is nothing more to say.
‘You know, you’re right, I have middle class values,’ she concedes. I’m disarmed.
Two days later, its Sunday and two days before the Valentine Day. The night before I have cooked an elaborate Indian meal. We have washed it down with a bottle of Cuvee Fumé Preston. We have spent another one of the most loving and passionate nights. We are sitting at the round glass top table in the breakfast nook of my kitchen. There are tears. No more words. Laying in the middle is a bouquet of a dozen champagne roses – more my style than the traditional red ones.
And then she is gone. Emptiness begins to fall like the fluffy snow flakes. Slowly accumulating and settling on the ground.
© Haresh Shah
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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Next Friday, November 29, 2013
“HE’S A SON OF A BITCH’
That’s me they’re talking about. The question most asked of me time and time again is: How does one get a job at Playboy? Or more to the point: How did you get to work for them? Other than joking around, I have always avoided giving a straight answer to these questions – lest it may end up sounding like a boast.
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