Winemaker Kevin’s Personal Journals

AKA Collection Of Winemaker Ramblings

Wine & Music

People ask me a lot what made me think to pair wine with music. Mostly, it’s because I love them both, and love enjoying them at the same time. Also, it’s because they are exponentially in virtuous cycles with each other, increasing the enjoyment thereof for each.

They also play off of each other well. For example, I pair “Plage” by Crystal Fighters with one of my fun & light wines, such as the L.01 “Skin Contact” Chardonnay Blend or L.02 “Urban Flora” rose, that I like to drink during summer; it is a bright, cheerful song about asking a friend to join you down at the beach. How can you not be happy drinking a wine like that while listening to such a joyful song!

Just as it is hard not to feel a bit philosophical while listening to “Together We Will Live Forever” by Clint Mansell and sipping on a bottle (probably straight from the bottle, or if anything a mason jar or metal camp cup, of our v.08 “The Sower” Tannat or L.07 “Delirium” Cabernet Sauvignon.

I guess I just like to really dive into the souls of things. Like a wine, I guess I just view them almost as people. They have personalities, star signs and whatnot, and you can profile them metaphorically using “pairings” as a means of anthropomorphizing them. I do this also with life activities, literary quotes, movies, and the ever classic food pairings.

You can check out my Voluptuary & Lucid “Wine To Drink Wine By” Playlist here. Check it out, it’s good stuff.

Why Do You Make So Many Wines?

They ask

Because I can, I answer, because I feel a need to create and spill these ideas out of me in a flurry before this existence is gone.

Also, because people seem to love them and keep buying them and that allows me to work with an amazing team here at Voluptuary & Lucid Wine and collaborate with other local businesses and continue creating and add what we can to the human creative consciousness.

I also think that the world is too homogenous. We are all suffering from the law of diminishing returns in a society so intricate that it needs mindless repetition and product consistency in order to feed the masses. This is a noble thing; I truly admire the advances in production consistency, efficiency and quality in all human endeavours. It is in fact our impressive ability to automate and streamline our existence that is the ruination of our enjoyment of life. We have lost the joy of surprise and playfulness and replaced it with consistent dulness.

My older brother John once commented that creativity for the sake of itself was a fight against this joy-defusing monotony, an almost mathematical antidote. Think about it: if you have 10 experiences, and 9 of them vary in quality but are more or less of the same theme, and only 1 of them is totally different in theme, it will rest in a “blue ocean” of experience. Like rice expanding with water, the one with space will “grow” in enjoyment potential the most, not by being superior in some personal way, but rather by doing something whose uniqueness and newness is scratching the itch. If you can scratch that itch and be of good quality and style, then you are onto something.

Anyways, that’s how I work. I start by imagining something I would like to create, or tasting a wine in its most raw form and imagining some outcome that might be interesting. Sometimes I start from a distant idea of a flavor profile. Other times I hear a few ideas and mix them together like idea salad and out comes a dish. Whether the idea is possible isn’t important. Just that I start in some direction; along the way reality will backslap my plan and I’ll have to use that momentum to roll into a spin move and try to pass off something to my crew that we can mould into a fun wine. And if I fail I re-evaluate and find a different way to use the wine. The failures are often the best actually; saving a ruined white wine is how I discovered 2-vintage-skin-contact winemaking. Integratin’ Brettanomyces in a Syrah was how I first learned cherry and maple wood integrate microbial “complexity’ very well.

And along the way I just bottle as many random barrels or side experiments or whatever I feel like, if I think it will be delicious and people will enjoy drinking it and it will sell and then I can keep making more delicious & unique wines.

-Cheers, Kevin

BOoks & Wine (What’s With All The Books?)

Another question I am asked a lot is, what’s with all the books? Our winery has thousands of books (in fact about 8000 in total between our two winery locations). The credit for that wonderful collection goes to my father, who was a book collector and avid reader and raised us as readers, self-educators, and book lovers.

My bedroom as a child had no walls. Or rather, every single wall of the room was covered in bookcases and books from corner to corner, floor to ceiling. My bed was a roll of blankets in the middle of the room (my father was also something of a luddite and did not believe mattresses were good for us, although he did finally let me add a used mattress to my room when I was a teenager), but the bulk of my room was taken up by books. We had no TV (another philosophical choice by my father) and so the primary form of entertainment was perusing the bookshelves until you found a good book, and then spending some time with that book.

Reading wasn’t just a solitary thing, to be done in your room. It was also something of a social event, the kind of social event that bookish folk love: you might find us boys (there were 3 brothers in the house in those days, Marcus off to the Navy) and our dad lounging on the floor in the living room (my dad didn’t believe in couches or padded chairs) or on stools in the kitchen to be nearer the warmth of the stove. All reading books. Mostly silent, enjoying each others silent company. Perhaps taking spoonfuls of the stew dad had made, or sipping on a cup of hot tea. Occasionally one of us might chuckle at a clever line in the book, the others would look up in mild curiosity, and the chuckler would explain the context of the book, read the line, and the rest would chuckle or smile. A brief conversation might ensue, discussing the line or the plot or the idea. Then we would all return to our books.

It’s such a simple thing, it feels almost silly to share. But it was precious, and now that my father is dead, memories like this are truly precious. In an era where few read actual books anymore, I suppose I bemoan the loss of this sort of shared experience. I know there are new shared experiences, new ways to read and learn (such as you are doing now), but still I miss these old ways.

So, I put the books out not just for display (although I admit they look beautiful), but more so in hope that my winery become something like our kitchen as children: a place to come together, share some space, sip on a drink or nibble on a bite, read a book, and build new ways of being as a community.