Jenny & Francois Tasting and Dinner, 2011

(REPOST. FOUND THIS RANDOMLY, I WROTE IT IN 2011. Touched today by its sweetness. I wanted to remind my self (today) that old interests, loves, passions have a way of seeping into the ground (water table of consciousness). They are never lost, but constantly circulated in that rich soil before growing up into the light again. Also, emotional to read about my initial experience with some of my most dearly loved wines (& winemakers...). Thanks for reading. xx

(from May 2011)
Anyone that knows me even a little is aware of my love of the "dark photo"... the pinpricks of light in a mostly dark frame, the partial illumination of dark profiles, the blurred candlesticks on the table, the windows lit at night like stage-sets. My technique has become decidedly shoddy. My teenage self would be most appalled that I shoot mostly 'digital' these days, and am not wielding heavy and obtuse camera equipment, large plates, liquid emulsion, or Civil War era photo technologies.

My childhood heroes Edward Steichen, Brassai, Steiglitz certainly gridded my early visual sensibilities, and to this day I still align my world onto a 2D black and white photographer's plane. My early days in Denver had me trolling old railroad tracks and peering into abandoned buildings with my camera, wearing my dad's old flannel coat and combat boots, I was always looking for the shot, the perfect crumbling facade, the darkest peeling paint wall. Sometimes I would be surprised, a sudden nostalgia of Christmas lights wrapped around a tree outside one night, the vast quietness of the old Union Square train station space high above my head. There was an self-enforced loneliness to these days, a built-in solitude, a serious focus, serious work.

In the ways of life, and accumulated experiences like stacked chrome slides, this earlier severity has thankfully morphed with more tactile, meaty, and live interests today. My sensibilities today have turned more towards the waxiness and polish of old Dutch still life oils, hanging rabbits, glowing apricots, feathered game birds. I am obsessed with taking photos of food and wine. I know that this comes out of older things, other places I have lived.


In Santa Fe, my favorite time of day was just at nightfall, driving around the curve on the highway that suddenly meant 'home'. In Seattle I tried to describe to my boyfriend why it made sense that our house was on a hill, because at night when all the lights went on it felt wild, (as I imagined it must have felt thousands of years ago, camped out on a plain, other fires surrounding and keeping danger at bay).

I still can't quite explain what I meant then, but I feel it, and am obsessed with what I have come to call the hinge between day and night, the fold-over point, the in-between moment that is neither, the in-between moment that breaks day to night.

Living in Marfa, TX last year I revisited my sunset shots, my oncoming night shots, headlights, train lights coming fast out of the dark. Now, as I feel my way around to a certain and specific life here in New York, as I feel my way through the lights and reflections of the wine world here, I realize that my photo days have never really left me. I take pictures of wine bottles to remember what I drank, I take pictures of wine in glasses to capture something bejeweled, something vibrant or deep in the color of it, the light through it, the candlelight surrounding it. I am aiming at more of an atmospheric record here. I want to create a sensitized image that has sound in it, clinking of glasses, movement of light and shade.

The difference now is that I want to be in the picture. I am impatient these days, there is too much good wine to drink, I don't have time to sit behind the lens arranging everything. I want to be a vibrational part of the scene, with my own colors and lights.

My friend Dawn recently asked 'what is it with all of these dark photos',,,, so here it is, long way round, but this: I am trying for the correct texture. I am trying at once to capture and to appreciate the thickness, the heaviness, the dense sweet atmosphere of a beautiful moment, a night, a time, a dinner. Last night's dinner with Jenny and Francois, and their beautiful natural winemakers, was one of those scenes.


The dinner: all of the remaining bottles grouped together on the table, low-light, French, English, hush, laughter. Some blessed person filled my glass with Els Jelipens 'white' X (but really an orange wine!). This was one of the most delicious wines I have ever had-- heady, orange peel, sugar-spice, beeswax. The beautiful winemakers (Gloria Garriga and Oriol Illa) make this wine by extended skin contact, and aging in beeswax lined amphorae (Penedes, SP). It was a bright spark of a moment in the night. They also poured a vertical of their reds (Sumoll/Garnacha), what kindness and generosity.

The Domaine Rimbert St. Chinian 'Mas au Schiste' 2007 was delightfully light-spicy, some fantastic gamey carignan, a gorgeous and thoughtful Loire red from Grange Tiphaine 'Clef de Sol' (Cab Franc/Cot) 2009 from 60 year old vines-- rich and deep but not cloying or chewy, very refined and beautiful (like winemaker Coralie Delecheneau who so eloquently explained the wine to me).

So, along with my Domaine de Deux Anes, the lights, the thickness in the room like family dinners, listening to my friend speak French to his neighbor, listening to people be quiet and drink wine, watching people that make wine drink it, thinking about small vineyards, real soil, farms, making my way around to a new concept of 'patriotism' (from my thoughtful friend Jesse), me speaking bad French (did I call O. Cousin's wife his son??), but understanding French in a way that I missed, a way that felt like a wave of the whole language coming back to me, not single words but a whole rich-gravy onrush that I used to know.

I feel like I am on the right path. And in my most rambly of ways today I think I have come around to it-- I am looking for the moments when the candles are blown out after Christmas eve dinner, the smell of baking spices, smoke hanging in the air, coffee steam, shifting embers in a fireplace, hush. I want the real things, I don't want the fancy talk, I want the grains, the essential parts of this life. I want the pure ingredients-- the cinnamon bark, the prickly pear cactus, the small french melons, the creosote, the tobacco, the mica, the limestone, the chalk, pine-resin, the freshly mown hay.

Thank you Jenny and Shane, and everyone else, thank you winemakers who brought real earth with you, who brought live things to us, bejeweled things in bottles that are alive.


Some Notes:

(Wines I poured yesterday):
Courtois VdP de Sologne 'Quartz' 2008
Nadia Lusseau's Cotes de Duras 'Haut-la-Vigne' 2009
Plageoles' Gaillac 'Ondenc' 2008
Domaine de la Tournelle 'Terre des Gryphees' 2007 Chard, and 'Fleur de Savagnin' 2007
Estezargues Cotes du Rhone white 'Les Grands Vins' 2009
Chemins de Bassac VdP Cts de Thongue 'Isa' 2009
Binner 'Muscat' 2008, 'Riesling Katzenthal' '08, Grand Cru Riesling 'Schlossberg''04

Surprise at the sugary pear spice and perfume of the 100% Sauvingnon Blanc 'Quartz', the meticulous restraint of Domaine de la Tournelle, both Chard and Savagnin (god knows I love Jura and oxidative wines), these were very precise and sat very well on the palate, no overbearing sharp notes, just hints of Jura nuttiness and beautiful lingering finish. While the Binner Schlossberg Riesling was obviously a stand-out, the Binner Muscat surprised me with its heady stone-fruit nose and then serious rooted/grounded backbone of minerality, a sort of tightly-packed backbone that really anchored the fruit.

The Plageoles 'Ondenc' was really something, and difficult to describe. As much as I love the image of father Robert Plageoles trolling through the forests around his home seeking out rare old vines, and forgotten varietals, I think that the wine stood up very well on its own, with really unique qualities; a slight cloudiness, slight sweet white fruit, pears, but something that reminded me of the forest floor. Maybe this was my imagination, as I became fixed on the idea of their family bistro in Gaillac that has old-vine specimens in formaldehyde jars lining the top of the walls.