The taste of this Soquel red whose name is Noir speaks a language of lost time on my tongue listening to old songs and finding echoes of Old San Jose Road years ago where I met bobcats or coyotes prowling from time to time, heard owls some nights or loud bees swarming as they moved their hive, and wild girls rode their bikes five miles uphill to find me in my remembered home with just such sips of blood-deep crimson to sweeten and darken some warm afternoons.
The taste of this Soquel red whose name is Noir speaks a language of lost time on my tongue listening to old songs and finding echoes of Old San Jose Road years ago where I met bobcats or coyotes prowling from time to time, heard owls some nights or loud bees swarming as they moved their hive, and wild girls rode their bikes five miles uphill to find me in my remembered home with just such sips of blood-deep crimson to sweeten and darken some warm afternoons. That road still curls past schools and farms and Seventh Day Adventist conference grounds and Subud House where Sufi square dances or something comparably occult occurred, redtail hawks cutting long curves through cool blue sky harassed by redwing blackbirds protecting their turf. You could pull over and buy fresh eggs if you knew where to turn, or hike up the creek and meet babes on horseback who asked you to speak to their mounts to keep them from spooking. The flavor of those days has a long finish, a strong bouquet of bay and redwood duff and poison oak and thorny blackberry bushes that pierced your flesh as you picked their sweet, dark, fingertip-staining fruit. The oaks and madrones that escaped the stove spoke of deer and fox scat on the forest floor, strangely rhyming with the scat of jazz singers so urbane their voices ring almost as clear as cricket choruses keeping the beat in the quiet of a summer night. For all we know, we may never met again, they seem to sing, though maybe what they are saying is This is eternity, this is eternity, this is eternity, repeating these rhythmic riffs like happy frogs croaking and thirsty creeks rippling as if forever after the gift of a wet winter. The trees are multi-instrumentalists whose reeds are played by sensuously shifty winds or subtle breezes that stroke your face like familiar fingers. Just listen to this local wine and taste its earthy whispers moistening your lips with something like kisses.
