Searching.

If I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going, come what may.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother, Theo, July, 1880

Love.

And there is quite a different sort of conversation around a fire than there is in the shadow of a beech tree.  Four dry logs have in them all the circumstance necessary to a conversation of four or five hours, with chestnuts on the plate and a jug of wine between the legs. Yes, let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. 

Pietro Aretino

If.

Anonymous, L'homme au verre de vin, n/d

Drinking causes drinking. Heavy drinking causes heavy drinking. Light drinking causes light drinking… The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit, thus losing a pleasure that’s been with us forever. We don’t have much freedom in this life and it is self-cruelty to lose a piece of what we have because we are unable to control our craving. 

In drinking, as in everything else, the path is the way. What you get in life is what you organize for yourself every day. There is an ocean of available wisdom from Lao-tzu to Jung to Rilke. It’s there in a preposterous quantity.

If you drink way too much it will kill you and the souls of those around you. If you moderate you can have a nice life.

Jim Harrison, from Off to the Side: A Memoir

Smile.

'Tis the season for Valençay.

Raw goat.

Lemony tang.

Crack a few Tellicherry peppercorns over it.

Put some Benny Goodman wax on the hi-fi and swig some ice-cold Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc straight from the bottle.

Smile at one of the best parts of Spring.

Itself.

St. JOHN Bourgogne Blanc: “an excellent breakfast wine” says Fergus.
Us: “What breakfast dish would you eat with it?”
Fergus: “Oh, just on its own. It’s quite happy by itself” pic.twitter.com/6dHsLqcsaS

— St. JOHN Wines (@stjohnwine) March 28, 2018

Happy Birthday, Harrison

I don’t drink before four in the afternoon, but of course wine at lunch on the river is not drinking.

Jim Harrison, born on this day in 1937

Flute.

Fight.

Harrison on survival techniques ...

The other day on a very warm border winter afternoon, I was sitting on the patio with my wife Linda, sharing a bottle of delightful Bouzeron. We were watching a rare pair of hepatic tanagers at the feeder. These birds evidently don’t get hepatitis. It was all very pleasant and I recalled again a passage from the journal of a Kentucky schizophrenic who had escaped from an asylum. He wrote, “Birds are holes in heaven through which a man may pass.” I had this little epiphany that wine could do the same thing if properly used. We all have learned, sometimes painfully, that more is not necessarily better than less. When Baudelaire wrote in his famed “Enivrez-Vous,” “Be always drunk on wine or poetry or virtue,” he likely didn’t mean commode-hugging drunk. Wine can offer oxygen to the spirit, I thought, getting off my deck chair and going into the kitchen to cook some elk steak and dietetic potatoes fried in duck fat, and not incidentally opening a bottle of Domaine Tempier Bandol because I had read a secret bible in France that said to drink red after dark to fight off the night in our souls.

Enjoyable.

America's great workhorse red grape produces the world's most wanted Zinfandels ...

The very fact that wine critics, judges, writers and educators have a tendency to dismiss Zinfandel – certainly in contrast to their slavish adoration of Cabernet, Pinot, Malbec and the rest – might well be an attraction for a generation that really doesn't care what the wine intelligentsia thinks and that is really just looking for something fun and enjoyable to drink.

Above.

Goines, Domaine Chandon, 1996

Oh, that second bottle, Harry, is the sincerest, wisest, & most impartial downright friend we have, tells us truth of ourselves & forces us to speak truths of others, banishes flattery from our tongues and distrust from our hearts, sets us above the mean policy of court prudence which makes us lie to one another all day for fear of being betrayed by each other at night.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Tongs.

Hugh Johnson demonstrates opening port with tongs ...

Benefits.

You should drink what you like, in the quantities that you like. It may hasten your death, but this small cost will be offset by the benefits to everyone around you. You should not, through your drinking, inflict pain on others: drink as much as you like, but put away the bottle before gaiety gives way to gloom.

Sir Roger Scruton, from I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine

Yes.

Nice.

... That's nice.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Moderation.

Harrison's Principles of Moderation

Quite some time ago I turned a corner with the emotion of wanting more consciousness. The following list had a wondrous, albeit slowly evolving, effect on my life. These are relatively mild pointers, though the consequences of ignoring them are as fatal as shooting yourself in the head in a curious time warp wherein the bullet takes many years to reach its inevitable target.

1. Drinking causes drinking. Heavy drinking causes heavy drinking. Light drinking causes light drinking.
2. The ability to check yourself moment by moment has been discussed at length by wise folks from the old Ch’an master of China all the way down to Ouspensky. This assumes a willingness to be conscious.
3. The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit, thus losing a pleasure that’s been with us forever.
4. We don’t have much freedom in this life, and it is self-cruelty to surrender a piece of what we have because we can’t control our craving.
5. Measurement is all. A one-ounce shot delivers all the benefits of a three-ounce shot. A couple of the latter turn one into a spit-dribbler. Spit-dribblers frighten children and make everyone else nervous.
6. With any sedative there is a specific, roomy gap between smoothing-out and self-destruction. There is no self-destructiveness without the destruction of others. We are not alone.
7. Naturally there are special occasions. When you get older like me, it’s once a month, if that.
8. It’s hard to determine pathology in a society in which everything is pathological. The main content of our prayers should be for simple consciousness. The most important thing we can do is to find out what ails us and fix it. Often we need outside counsel, for clarity and to speed up the process. (I’ve had more than 20 years with my mind doctor).
9. A lot of overdrinking comes from feeling bad physically. One over-drinks to feel better in physiological terms. This can be avoided by vitamins, exercise, and a reasonable diet. Again, it’s a cycle: Overdrinking causes overdrinking because you feel bad.
10. Another source of the problem is the unreasonable expectations we get from others and ourselves. Unreasonable expectations can be removed by thinking them over. They can’t be “drownt” pure and simple. Everyone can’t get to the top, or even the middle.
11. Oddly enough, our main weapons in controlling drinking are humor and lightness. The judgment of others and self-judgment (stern) are both contraindicated. When we fuck up, we mentally beat ourselves up. It doesn’t work at all and has to be expunged. The reason to slow down is to feel better, and it works real good.
12. You begin by cutting it all by a third. After a few weeks you go down to a half. After that your soul will tell you, when you listen. Often it is simply a matter of one drink too many.
13. We need always to separate the problem of virtue from the problem of lack of control. Certain countries — France, for example — drink more alcohol but have fewer problems. This is partly due to the predominance of wine, which has less of a stun-gun effect on behavior, but also because drinking isn’t connected to virtue or nonvirtue. It is a practical problem. Drinking has to be strictly self-controlled the moment it negatively affects our character and behavior. 

Celebratory.

Bouguereau, La Jeunesse de Bacchus, 1884

Life is so short you want to remember all of it, bad and good.  It has occurred to me that I’m drawn to wine for the same reason that fishing and bird hunting have been lifelong obsessions. The pleasure is in the path, the search for something good; finding and drinking a fine, reasonably priced wine is similar to catching a trout in an unlikely eddy of a river, or a two grouse in the bag on a cold, rainy October morning -- it is celebratory rather than sedating, a nod to the realities of existence rather than an erasure.

Jim Harrison

Gentler.

Unlike booze, good wine resonates so broadly it draws in the world that surrounds us. The effects of it are slow enough so that you can check yourself, an absolutely vital talent if you drink. As a Zen dictum says, you must find yourself where you already are and the effects of booze make this unlikely. Good wine increases the best aspects of camaraderie and sweetens the tongue for conversation. It softens the world's sharp edges in contrast to the blunting power of booze. In short, you don't become dumb at a blinding pace, and your mood swings from gentle to gentler.

Sir Roger Scruton, from I Drink, Therefore I Am

Excess.

Jancis Robinson on the history of Zinfandel ...

The breakthrough came when it was established that Zinfandel/Primitivo had to be a parent of the Croatian variety Plavac Mali. The other parent turned out to be a much more obscure Croatian variety, which led researchers to the conclusion that Zinfandel/Primitivo had to be Croatian in origin too. Eventually, after many a trek through the vineyards of the beautiful Dalmatian coast and its rocky islands, the doppelgänger was found. Croatian viticultural researchers, acting in conjunction with Professor Carole Meredith of Davis, discovered an ancient and almost extinct variety on the island of Kaštela near Split called Crljenak Kaštelanski (literally “red grape of Kaštela”) that did indeed prove to be identical to Zinfandel.

All of this happened in parallel with some extraordinary developments in the commercial history of Zinfandel. Because it had been so common in California, it was not at all revered. In fact beside Cabernet it was regarded as a sort of home-grown weed, good enough for the common man if cheap enough, but incapable, unlike the fashionable and aristocratic Cabernet Sauvignon, of producing fine wine.

The only saving grace for the reputation of "Zin" was in some extraordinary port-like essences made from some of the oldest vines in the state, made from ancient vineyards left virtually untended during Prohibition in the old mining country of the Sierras east of the Central Valley. Most of these wines were labelled Late Harvest Zinfandel and regarded as freaks in the 1970s because they reached natural alcohol levels in excess of 15% (heaven forfend).

Ambling.

Velasquez, Tavern Scene with Two Men and a Girl (detail), 1619

The MANY WINES

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,

drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power

to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so that

it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much that

just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies

are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,

not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,

and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,

or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

Rumi