Posts Tagged ‘wine’
New Photos
I’ve always loved taking photos of reflected images. The sometimes subtle but often radical change in how we perceive an object when it’s seen through or reflected in something else holds tremendous visual and intellectual interest for me. Glass and liquid are particularly effective media for this because they can render an image as clearly as a mirror or distort it beyond recognition. The result is at once a beautiful image and a bit of a brain puzzle.
When I’m working in the evenings, I often find myself with a glass of wine at my desk. At one point a while ago, I noticed that the image on my computer screen was doing very interesting things in the wine. I grabbed my camera. The interplay of the color of the wine, the glass, the screen and the images on it made for a nearly limitless and fascinating series of photos. Different evening, different wine, different computer screen offered another opportunity and a completely different effect.
Here are two of my favorites.
Right Brain Rose © Angela Smalley
Pinot Noir and Jelly © Angela Smalley
I sense the beginning of a show coming on. I’ll have to get more wine!
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CommentThe Boy I Want for Valentine’s Day
The first time I ever saw this wine in my favorite neighborhood wine shop, it was described to me as love in a bottle. I’d say it’s pretty damn close. I certainly loved it. And what better name for a bottle of love than The Boy?
The vintners notes about this wine say:
This Boy is a wild one: ripe black currant and blackberry, cigarbox and dried game meats. This wine is all about intensity—especially in terms of aroma. Expect room-filling aromatics: spicy sanguine, earthy, and all the red fruits…raspberry, strawberry, and cherries.
What girl can resist a wild and intense boy?
And about that label, which I adore:
“The Boy” was the first wine Charles Smith made that was not Syrah and as a result, he put the K” on the back label. Of course, this left a simple white label, reminiscent of the Beatles White Album. However, one thing lead to another and it all left Charles thinking of yet another musical artist, French chanteur Serge Gainsbourg and his song “The Boy.” The lyrics go “I am the boy who can enjoy invisibility” – a sentiment much enjoyed by Charles. Thus K “The Boy” label came to be.
Created by Charles Smith, also known for his popular Velvet Devil Merlot and Kung Fu Girl Riesling, K Vintners is in Walla Walla, Washington and turns out rockin’ reds with intense and amazing flavors. His Royal City Syrah received 99 points from Robert Parker and was named #2 in the Top 100 Wines of 2009 by Wine Enthusiast magazine.
But I’m nothing if not loyal. Whether or not there happens to be another present at the time, this is The Boy that I’ll be having for Valentine’s Day.
Mirth
On what many consider to be the last day of Summer, and before I turn my attention back to the reds that I favor, I am enjoying a particularly delicious warm-weather wine: a chardonnay called Mirth. I happen to be drinking the 2009 vintage.
For the few of you who actually have been following along from the beginning, you may remember how excited I got about the Corvidae Wine Company. At the time I had just discovered their Syrah, Lenore. Well, now I’ve finally tried Mirth, and it is mirthful indeed.
One for sorrow – two for mirth – three for a wedding – four for birth.
OLD NURSERY RHYME ABOUT MAGPIES
It follows that two of anything would be mirthful. Two magpies, two friends, two lovers. Two bottles of wine? Just make sure that if you are not angling for a wedding or for a birth, limit yourself to two!
Bordeaux Uncorked
Photo by Philippe Roy
The Moment is extolling the virtues of Bordeaux’s “unstuffy new profile.”
See the woman at the table on the left, in a white t-shirt with her back to the camera? That’s going to be me as soon as I can get on a plane that will take off in this rain!
Corvidae
I have a thing for crows. They are the symbol for the Celtic warrior goddess Morrigan and they have particular totemic significance for me. In a complete non sequitur, I also have developed a proclivity for choosing bottles of wine based on the unusual or somehow symbolic nature of the name on the label or its imagery. Which all brings me to a recent procurement trip to my favorite wine shop, BRIX, in the South End.
As I looked among the familiar labels and contemplated a couple of bottles that were part of that evening’s wine tasting, I saw a Syrah called Lenore, made by the Corvidae Wine Company, sporting a black label that featured an image of a crow. On its reverse the bottle had the following quote from Edgar Allen Poe:
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore – Nameless here for evermore. The Raven
From that point there was no question but that this would be my choice for the evening. It was just too perfect. And it was. Juicy and fruity. Intense and jammy, almost like a Zinfandel, but softened a bit after being opened for a while. A wonderful quaff indeed.
I later was transported to corvidae heaven upon learning that the other wines from this label are a Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah blend called The Rook, a Cabernet Franc called The Keeper, a Petite Syrah called Fable, and a Chardonnay called Mirth. Each Corvidae wine is named with a particular fairy tale, fable, or legend in mind. “Rook” references the legendary luck associated with crows. “Lenore” is named for Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”. “Fable” is inspired by the story of the fox and the crow and its moral- “Beware of Flatterers”. “Mirth” refers to an old nursery rhyme about magpies. Be still my dark and twisted heart. And then my bliss was made complete when I discovered that Corvidae Wine Company is an offshoot of Owen Roe. Owen Roe Winery makes some of my favorite bottles of wine EVER.
The timing of this discovery was also bizarrely prescient, given the call I had this week with Zulu, a tattoo artist in LA who will be creating a crow tattoo for me. But that is a topic for another post.
My name is Angela Eloise and I am a freelance writer. That sounds as if I am copping to an addiction. I am. In addition to writing this blog, I also write a column about social media and I am at work on a series of essays that I hope to see in print some day. Cloud of Chaos was born from my desire to dance with the absurdity of life, to create a space where I could write and share all of the gorgeous, fun, snarky deliciousness I find spinning around me every day. What does a spinning cloud of chaos have to do with writing? Everything, as it turns out.
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