Donald Furrow-Scott's Blog, page 3

Vineyard Log, Fall 2018

Buckminster Fuller suggested that if a geodesic sphere were huge enough, the vast amount of air inside would allow for it to float up in the sky. Odd, yet mile-wide bubbles holding a thousand tons of water do just that.

The moon is also a giant orb that hangs up in the sky.

The vines on the wires, suspended by the tensegrity of wires and poles and sky and earth, cannot wave or move. They can only grow so far before they grow old and die, so they are effectively trapped wherever they are, subject to the forces of nature that rain down upon them.

Rain falls. Water tables are under-ground. Water flows thru and around every part of a living vine, and when you can’t move an inch, the gravitational tides of the moon hanging up there in the sky suddenly become very influential.

So the vines look to the clouds for rain, and the sun for food, and the moon for the dance. The vines hear the metronome of the seasons as well. The vines then form sphere’s themselves, taking the tensions around them to weave layers and pulp around seeds. But these vine’s spheres are not geodesic or floating in the clouds, nor anemochory like a dandelion on the wind, nor drifting like a coconut on the sea. No, gravity rules the seeds of the vine; the grape, save for the tensions of sunlight, water, and soil that work allochory magic greater than most any plant could dream of.

Grapes are sweet to eat and tasty to a great many creatures. Eat a ripe grape, and the seed is passed on thru to find a fertilized pile for a new home far away from the parent plant. Grapes also have yeast on their skins that converts sugar into alcohol. Pick a ripe grape, and the wine it forms may travel far, even over the sea to other continents.

And oddly, with a rare accord, those who encounter that far-traveling wine may come from however far away to gather the vine’s seeds, and even, indeed, gather cuttings of the vine to take back with them.

Thus a vine that can sprawl no father than a few meters can come to travel around the world, to look at new skies, new clouds, new light.

Not bad for a plant, but pretty standard for good art.

Winery Log, Summer 2018; Wine tasting with the Lions

Again, how do you meet new people? The answer depends on what kind of people you are looking to meet.

Let’s assume you are looking to make a new friend, either socially or at work. A big party seems too random to make a meaningful connection with someone new. You’re looking for someone in whom you share something in common. This is the essence of wine tasting with the pride. These are the Wine Lions.

Practiced and precise, a wine tasting Lion knows what they like and what they are searching for in a wine. They may try whatever is offered, but they came in the door knowing they wanted a heavily oaked Petit Verdot or a Sémillon heavy Sauterne. Winemakers love & hate Lions, because as tasters they know themselves well enough to be comfortable in their opinions, possibly knowledgeable about other regions and methods to spark conversation and if they have the wine prey being stalked, good sales. The if is the sticking point, and it is just as much onus on the taster as the winemaker. Like good music, a good movie or good art, if it clicks between them it is a joy to witness.

Lions are no better or worse than Herd tasters, in fact, many groups contain both. But Lions will be the first to suggest a glass outside or a shared bottle. Like a pride taking down a kill, the finding and sharing of a good wine is everything to them, and if the group validates their discovery, they will leave with more bottles of it. This is good for both winemaker and taster.

Being on the side of a summer vacation lake, Lions for us are not universally snooty dry-only wine lovers. Like Oog the cavewoman bringing back rabbit, herbs and berries, they tend to have a group with diverse tastes with them and know smooth trumps dry or sweet for a household on vacation. It warms a winemakers heart to see a well-balanced mixed case go out the door with a Lion, though hopefully not to be tied to the hood of their truck. It’s summer, and the best bottle of wine in the world is still subject to the physics of a 95° day.

Lions can take on a negative aspect at times when they begin to believe they represent the epitome of good taste. Wine Lions make the worst sort of wine critics. At a wine tasting they can begin to make fun of other’s tastes as being rank amateurs, or unknowledgeable about the finer nuances of hunting wine. Instead of passing along useful tidbits to help these others, they guard sacred ideas or hunting techniques like some rabid trail guide protecting their secret spot. Besides drunks, few things at a public wine tasting go over so poorly as an opinionated jerk exposing their version of good taste; and this certainly included us winemakers as well as guests. If you find yourself roaring detrimental comments about a particular wine over the heads of others at a wine bar, go ahead and put on the fur collar, Mufasa. The winemaker is regretfully going to watch the quiet couples at the end of the bar disappear out the winery door, driven away by your indiscriminate roaring, and taking their sales dollars with them.

On the other hand, if a winemaker is going to watch a full case of Cabernet Sauvignon go out the door, it’s going to be in the hands of a Lion.

Author’s Log, Summer 2018: Online

Sure as a loaf of fresh bread grows smaller, the morning of youth passed into the lunchtime of life. I got an unusual girlfriend, a separated divorcé who had been dating a friend, and suddenly the new D&D players stopped coming by. One by one the other players got married and started families themselves or moved too far away to play, until I found myself writing alone.  Fantasy adventures by yourself seemed to lack a certain charm. The new girlfriend was above playing such nonsense, and, turns out, was not really a divorcé. In fact, she wasn’t even separated. But she certainly fed my young man’s other fantasies.

I joined the SCA for a time. It was enjoyable, and one summer I even served as an armoring apprentice to an SCA blacksmith names Tom Justice (Baron Eldred). The SCA is good for imagination, costuming and getting bruises, but it did nothing for my creative writing. Whatever physical fighting skills I possessed were pure fantasy.

In the early 1990s, I discovered a gathering place called Compuserve, and there was a forum called the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Players forum. It was filled with interesting people! They wrote in turn based adventure stories in online threads, some free-form in a gaming system called GURPS. I was home.

On that Compuserve forum, I fell in with some of the most gifted writers I had ever known in a group called STS, or Star Trek Ships. Oh, to be certain, it was pure fan-fic. A European named Tardis ran things skillfully, and a wonderful Captain Zkena Blood hired me on and that gave birth to Tejj Gelk, the Klingon engineer, and service aboard the Albatross, her Orion Free Trader.

I had a 3D modeling program called Truespace, and spent hundreds of hours building the Albatross ship in 3D, inside and out. My modeling eventually including other ships, DS-9, Intrepid class, Runabouts, you name it. I’d make short animations that took days to render on my 486s, and made beautiful jpgs of ship life and alien scenery from the forum stories.

After months of participating, an Intrepid Class ship full of players lost their game master, and I crazily volunteered to take over, with absolutely zero notes on what the other game master’s plot was heading for, only what had already been written and posted. The Captain was a Doctor in Chicago, the First Officer lived in California and the Ship’s Doctor lived in New York. It was incredible fun writing adventures for them, and with them. Super folks, who still inspire me two decades later.

I began to record Star Trek tv shows, especially DS-9s and Star Trek Voyagers for Tardis and send them to him. He never responded back.

I was somehow appointed to the STS Technology Council, where we’d offer opinions of some of the many game thread’s various technical questions. Some folks figured anyone who could knock off an Okudagram as I could must be an engineer at heart. No, far from it, but I did my best with a library of books and fan material. Finally, I became the voice and traffic cop of DS-9 in game.

During this time the married girlfriend turned into the bipolar lady I shouldn’t have ever dated. She was back to her dying husband. I was dumb, it was stupid. But there it is, and I can’t take it back now. There was always a lot of passion, but not what I know now as love, and she HATED my attachment to D&D, SCA, and online STS friends.

When we finally split up, and it was like the movie Fatal Attraction in reverse, and I learned first hand the dangers of being in love with someone bipolar. I went bankrupt when my bank accounts were cleaned out,  I lost my apartment, my aquarium fish all died mysteriously, and my computer with its backup hard drives was trashed.

Hundreds of hours of 3D modeling. Hundreds of pictures, and scores of animations way too big for floppies. Most of my writings. All were suddenly gone, and the ex-girlfriend knew everything I did online in STS. It was also on her computer. She had briefly followed me into the SCA years before, hating all the medieval nerds and making fun of them behind their backs, but putting on a deceiving show in front of them, and I knew as angry as she was at the break-up she’d not stop until I left STS or she had disrupted things there to the point of embarrassment. So I asked STS for prayers and walked away.

On my final visit to the old apartment office, they gave me a box they had stuck in their MIA box pile for the past months. It was a box from Tardis in Europe and was filled with blank VCR tapes. He had responded, after all.

I still often wonder if I’d have been stronger and trusted my STS friends more had I known he sent that box.

Vineyard Log, Summer 2018

At its most fundamental, a vineyard is an orchard, but it is also bringing art to life. The vines chosen to grow. How the vines are grown. When they are thinned and suckered and tucked and pulled and pampered, watered, babied all affect the ultimate child of the vine: the grape. If you are the culmination of everything that has brought you to this very point in your life, then so is the vigneron to the wine you sip.

A person can make music, and music is art. A person can paint or craft a violin or a solder a chandelier, and it will be considered art. Crafting the slowly growing canes of a vine up into the wires, suspended by the poles, the track of the sun carefully considered, the irrigation rigorously monitored, the treatments for diseases and pests consummately balanced with the pure product desired, all of this makes wine grapes the faktura of wine; the expression of art in its making.

A musician will practice several pieces of music repeatedly throughout their musical career. Some will be practiced standards that have become old friends, some will be the half-forgotten old piece that requires liquid-wrench to break the rust off and recall, along with a few apologies. Such is the practice of the vigneron in the vines.

At first, a new vigneron is consumed by the choices presented and obsesses over the right technique for this or that task upon the vine. A full vineyard to such a neophyte is an endless ocean surrounding them, overwhelming them. Drowning them in work.

Continual practice and a good instructor, like a music teacher, can start to push the students thinking decisions into the subconscious execution. The metronome of the vines is the seasons, however, and whether the student gets it right or fumbles at the notes, it tocks on unstoppable.

Now, after decades of vineyard work, I find my life has reversed. Things have slowed down. I am no longer the student, but there is no one to teach. So I will practice my labor of the day, whatever song the season has chosen or the vine as begged for me to perform for it. The vine rows are long and flowing, much like the surf of the shoreline of a beach. Your hands flow, like a paintbrush here, like a sculptor’s blade there. Like a weaver’s loom, the various strings are plucked. You do not simply work the plants, you play them like an instrument. Only together are you going to make music, make art.

As I said, vines are an orchard, but they are not as tall as trees. Like a shoreline, above the vines the sky is revealed in height and breadth all around you. A giant canvas displayed for your amusement. And the clouds and sun provide the pallet.

It is also like a shoreline, for you are the crab. You see, vigneron’s walk sideways to work, step after sidestep. Snip snip.

So we play musical vines along the grape shoreline, and the practiced motions have now become the subconscious mundane, and you can watch the sky. You are often working in what others call a relaxed vacation, alone with the vines stretching into the distance around you, and the sky stretching away into the distance above you, and you and the grapes play little pavans to slivers of a moon.

Winery Log, Spring 2018: Wine Tasting with the Herd

How do you meet new people? The answer probably depends on what kind of people you are looking to meet.

Let’s assume you are looking to make new friends socially, and not related to work. A big party sounds like fun to some people. Meet many new people at once, with many possibilities to hit it off with someone new. This is the essence of wine tasting with the Herd.

Somewhere between speed dating and the ultimate hors d’oeuvre sampler platter, a common entertainment method of Herd wine tasting is the “start from the top” wine sampling. For those looking to party, or unable to make a timely choice off a menu, it is a leave no stone unturned, bottoms-up flashing glass quest to try half a dozen, or a dozen, or maybe even two dozen wines, all in fast succession. Burp. Excuse me.

Rinsing between samples is simultaneously both forbidden and required, to further dilute the barbaric nature of the imbibement.

Herd tastings are the big party of wine; you get introduced to many different wines at once, it can be a lot of laughs, and it almost never, ever, takes place alone. Herd tasting is a decidedly group effort.

A herd group comes into the tasting room. Maybe they are a pair of elephants, or a herd of gazelles, or a family of meerkats, or a flock of penguins. All shapes and sizes, Herds are a group that tends to bring the party rolling in with them, and the dominant members of the herd tend to rule the roost in an effort to provide the entertainment wisdom. It takes a knowledgeable barista to not get overwhelmed, trampled and drowned out.

In group Herd tastings an artificial tradition has grown over whites – reds – sweets, with sweets dropped off the menu entirely if it’s a snobby winery. They only do “serious” wines. Seriously? 30% of the market and 100% of history revolve around sweet wine drinkers, and the one group most likely to impulse buy in a rapid-fire tasting environment are sweet lovers. Why put a dry-humored bouncer at the door to make so many people feel unwanted? Wineries that try to break with the traditional arrangement face confused tasters used to white-red-sweet from all the other wineries around them. Wineries that try to limit the available choices to a reasonable few, or charge per tasting, get a nasty rep quick. Such is life on the Serengeti.

While a new wine drinker in a Herd tasting may find a style of wine they did not know about, they may just as easily be overwhelmed and forget most of what they discover in the race to the finish. The most unfortunate example of a Herd wine tasting is the group just out to get drunk. Like a big party, they cut it loose and let it fly. The problem is, the wine was never intended to be a fast-food drive-in-window item any more than Thanksgiving dinner. The winemaker’s hard-made product is slammed down and spat out of bitter faces complaining at how awful it is, only to eagerly extend the glass for the next alcoholic lash of the whip.

Most folks enjoy parties, many winemakers included. Just stay sober and respectful in wineries. I will tell you as a wine crafter that after hundreds of thousands of poured wine tastings, none of us have ever enjoyed being the bartending butt of a drunk herd’s wine tasting joke. Years ago wineries didn’t charge for a wine tasting. They were complimentary, both ways. Like a restaurant, clients usually bought an obligatory bottle as a gratitude tip at the end, if nothing else. Like an angry Mexican chef, over time too many cheap people came in for the free chips & salsa and stiffed us with nothing, and like a trashing house party, drunk herds are why most wineries now have a tasting fee. Nothing moves the party elsewhere faster than having to pay for the cleanup afterward.

 

How can you avoid the Herd mentality? A few tips.

Slow down! This is the first and best advice to ENJOY a sampling of several wines. There is no reason reasonable wine tasters looking to learn more have to race thru them all like an adrenaline parachute jump.

Eat food! Treat a winery like a restaurant, NOT a bar. Eat before going, or bring (or buy, if they offer) food at the winery. The wine will actually taste better, and you’ll make smarter purchasing decisions. Are you going to drink the wine without any food when you get it home?

Break the tasting up!  Try only the whites first, then buy one glass (or enough) to share them with the rest of the herd and everyone talk about the wine, life and the winery. Take your partial glasses to a table or outside if necessary, and when everyone in the herd is ready, go back for the reds and do the same thing again. Then the sweets. Make an enjoyable experience out of your winery visit.

Be picky! If you are going to more than one winery, consider just trying Chards, or Cabs, or 20XX. Everyone in the herd doesn’t have to have the same wine sample, they can each focus on something different they like. You can still compare notes, and you may get more out of both the tasting and the rest of the herd.