The Classics

Drunk from disposable plastic cups on a cold beach, with the sun in our eyes. We shucked the oysters sitting on a log on the beach, facing Tomales Bay. They were meaty and saline, tasting more of the east coast than the west, with none of the cucumber sweetness we associate with the Pacific. Muscadet is getting riper, fruit becoming more and more of a presence in this pairing, softening the salt and mineral and steel. I miss the spareness, the sense of this being a magic born of cold wind and dark water.

The domaine is under new ownership, Michel having retired and sold to one F. Lallier. The wines are the same, for now. 

A football field of fake yellow silk, the brilliant yellow of lemon peels in the noonday sun. Thunder and torrent drowning out the priest. The awning shaking with the weight of rain. Incense everywhere, in the air, ashes spotting the wet ground a moment, then dissolving. The chanting is inexorable, guaranteed to put you in a foul mood if you weren’t already. The prayer bells lend the occasion the somnolence of a zeppelin slowly deflating. 

The undertakers, efficient, are taking down the funeral decorations while the service proceeds. The deceased apparently do not mind. One accosted me as I brought the departed one more meal, I think he was worried that he would have one more thing to pack. The most clean cut undertaker acts as a conductor, timing our bows, herding us with the efficiency of a jaded sheepdog. Our guests line up to offer one last prayer, the family, arrayed around the coffin, bows deep to thank them. It’s the only human moment in the whole affair. We bow and go round the coffin and bow and burn incense and do not, even once, speak of the dead, her deep gentleness, her sweet tooth, the softness of her hands, the yellow enamel pots with which she cooked, the vibrant richness of her language, the history witnessed by those glittering eyes, the utterly unconditional love she showered on us.

Cherubic relations, with the smiles of the innocent, have their cell phones out, recording everything. I try to imagine when they’ll whip these videos out to show.

The undertaker calls for volunteers to carry the coffin. He has a decent baritone. My cousins and I lift grandma into the hearse. Her sons push the hearse, the family following behind. We wear thin white socks, meant to suggest walking barefoot. Actually walking barefoot is frowned upon. The storm sheets the road with a quarter inch of running water, our socks trap water like wetsuits. My feet embrace asphalt, concrete, tile, the unexpected calm of a street marking underfoot.

Passing from room to room in the crematorium. The decorations suggest politely nondenominational worship, but the organization of the space makes us feel like witnesses to an execution. The final passage is an architectural joke. The coffin rolls across a bare courtyard on an automated forklift, straight Amazon’s wet dreams. My mum’s last sight of the coffin came as it was shunted into a steel oven, roaring with flame.

Afterwards, the undertakers ladle water over our hands, from a pail filled with flowers. 

Vin de joie

Do we really gain by deconstructing joy?

Fer Servadou, carbonic, from the Aveyron. Made by a gentleman named Nicolas Carmarans, who used to run a wine bar in Paris - there seems to be something about the experience of selling wine in Paris that drives people to move to the countryside to make it.

He doesn't make this one anymore but if this was anything to go by, his wines are well worth seeking out.

Old School

90/10 Viura/Malvasia. 6 or more years in barrel. These wines are still fined with egg whites, a practice which speaks to the unyielding traditionalism of its makers, three sisters who are the fourth generation to run the winery.

It was a good year. This was a wine of depth and mystery. Drinking beautifully, but every sip hinting at something in reserve. Quietly aromatic, slightly oxidative, tautness without acid. A muscular and graceful poise.

Oh Montevertine. The first of many middle fingers raised to the Consorzio, and still one of the very best. Nearly all Sangiovese, the remainder Canaiolo, and the odd drop of Colorino. Also from a good year, as evidenced by the existence of Pergole Torte from that vintage. Not light, but with an impression of lightness created by perfect posture. Old fruit sighing out the last of its freshness, leather, the expected aromatics, but all thrown into a new light by that perfect, perfect carriage. Too little of this to go round.

The Lost and The Proscribed

95% palomino fino, 5% garnacha tintorera.

A white wine stained red, smelling orange, or like flower water. Intensely, overwhelmingly, disgustingly, seductively aromatic. In the mouth, balance, tannin, not precise, but centered. Lovely, but only in small doses.

Les Sucettes a L'Aunis

A new low in hipster wine labels, from Julien Pineau. Perhaps a deliberate throwback to the minimalist excesses of the nouvelle vague, perhaps merely 30 years out of date.

Reductive, spritzy, grippy. Obviously a hipster wine, but one that still acknowledged its origins in some very ripe bunches of pineau d'aunis.

Salt Lake City

The city reclines against the mountain, the aspiration and purpose of the city center giving way to an easy sprawl along the plain. Buildings are slung low and obviously cheap, drab houses that could be sneezed down, commercial buildings of cinderblock, uninsulated against the mountain cold. It feels expedient and careless, like someone said there should be a city and then walked away.

This seems to have been liberating. Garages and junkyards share space with houses with yards and picket fences. A restaurant with a line out the door sits across the street from condemned houses, their roofs punched in to deter squatters. Homeless people sleep in a parking lot next to a cinderblock building with carefully patinaed steel doors. It houses an architect’s office with a neon sign and a quite excellent cafe, bearded men within like ghosts of the bearded men outside.

The death and life of the modern American city run together here, Ouroboros tattooed upon the sierra. Green shoots are scattered at random through the ash of the last recession, and it feels like the next one is just waiting to happen. The streetscapes seem born of tenacity and inertia and the fear of the future. The dreams are small and careless because even here, under the infinite sky, no truly new ones have been born in years.

Flawless Perfection

One of my favorite blogs on architecture is Build LLC's. This cheat sheet sums up why. Image and copyright theirs, naturally. 

Vegas again

This morning the desert air is a prism, and the mountains are cut from the sky with god's own exacto. 

The awareness of the desert is everywhere, the sense that this has all just been rolled out like a Persian rug, and could all be rolled right back up again, when the money stops coming, when people get bored of foolishness and hope, when there's no more excess to lust after. You drive in and see these things rising like worm-gods from the sand, an LSD mirage, and it's like they're waiting for the dunes to sweep through, for sand to cover the lobbies and the air to dry the glass, preserving everything just as it is, lights still blinking, forever. 

Leaving the strip, you drive across a flyover, like the spine of the continent, and find yourself rolling down towards Chinatown. Five linear miles and counting of run down strip mall, stucco and desert pink paint, blasted to a whisper by the sand. It’s all a dogpile of asian restaurants of all ethnicities, spiked with vape shops and gas stations and massage parlors, and, tellingly, not a single other type of business in sight. Nowhere to buy clothing, or groceries, a book, or something injection moulded in China. This, in my experience, makes it unique among all the ghettoes of the world. 

It's like these were airdropped here by the whim of some Croseus, or, more likely, sprang up overnight, mushrooms drawn by the moisture of a sudden population. Thai food shotgunned with tamarind, chilis deployed correctly, matched with a wine list that made me blush. Edomae sushi, served in silence, handed to you piece by piece over hinoki counters, touched with soy sauce three years old. Food that passes for serenity.