When customers think that the fax machine sends actual pieces of paper through the phone lines.
Sunday is indeed the Sabbath and a day for seeking refuge from the general public. During the winter months, Tarara Winery is the perfect gateway for disappearing into the world at large.
Located either on the set of The Walking Dead or on the way to grandmother’s house,
Tarara Winery is a sprawling estate nestled deep in the woods of Leesburg, VA. It’s got a bad case of the creepy trees, sparking a discussion in the car regarding the high probably of the woods being inhabited by witches. Xavier says no but I say he just can’t see them.
In the summer, this place would no doubt have the vibe of a lavish country club, complete with lots of high-roller wine-drinkers, but in the winter we felt compelled to ask the receptionist if they were open as it seemed like we were the only ones there.
In other words, it was perfect!
At the bar, we sampled six different wines. As usual, my imagination got the best of me and I insisted on trying the one called Magic Dragons from the Boneyard Collection. Unfortunately, I found the name preferable to the wine.
To be clear, I’m not saying the Magic Dragons was bad, it just wasn’t as good as the #SocialSecret White 2012. Now, that – my friends, was the bomb diggity ding dang. If you’re going to spend $30 on a bottle of white wine, get this one!
Fruity, but still smooth and definitely dry, this is a Chardonnay-esque white wine that I highly recommend drinking while sitting in a big chair by the fire because, at 12.5% alcohol, you won’t feel like getting up anytime soon.
With regard to socializing, the secret is, that after the first glass, your guests will feel like Alice In Wonderland. While they may hear voices, walk funny, and smile at imaginary cats, they will most certainly tell their friends that you have thrown the best.party.ever.
Who doesn’t want to throw the best party ever?
I wanted to talk about the #SocialSecret because I have already reviewed a red wine from Tarara in a previous post. That being said, it is absolutely worth mentioning that the Tranquility 2014 is outstanding and will probably make your clothes fall off. No joke, if there is a such a thing as a wine erection this wine would cause it and, at $45 a bottle, it is money well spent.
The Tranquility is very, very good.
Let’s walk around the grounds and sober up a bit before getting back in the car.
Shadow Lake. Tarara Winery.
I was looking for grape vines but found these fruit tree orchards instead.
The shot of the day is this abandoned house that we passed on the way back to civilization.
Abandoned house. Leesburg, VA. Photo by d.Nelle Vincent
I got snagged in a barbed wire fence to get the photo below. I have no idea what this structure used to be. Let’s call it Mystery Of The Day.
Abandoned building. Leesburg, VA. Photo by d.Nelle Vincent.
Twenty years ago I had dinner at Olive Garden with Monique. We were there to celebrate (Thank God We’re Not) Mother’s Day and I wanted a glass of wine because it seemed like an adult thing to do.
Despite living in sin city, I had grown up on a dirt road and had no idea what to order. Monique’s family, on the other hand, was in the habit of attending cultured events like the Santa Fe Opera and she was somewhat better equipped to differentiate between a decent wine and a bottle of cough syrup.
Burned in my memory for all of time because, at the tender age of 21, I had notably fewer things to keep track of.
Which brings us to the present moment.
Xavier and I made an afternoon adventure out of visiting Costco in Leesburg, VA. We live in Maryland but in these parts packaged liquor can only be sold in state regulated liquor stores, ergo not Costco.
Hence the drive to Virginia.
We bought two wines on this trip. I have already reviewed one of them, the Sofia Rose’, and the other – based on the recurrence of an old memory, was 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon from Kendall-Jackon Vinter’s Reserve.
I had meant to pair it with food, take some nice photos and to write something eloquent about it, but that’s not what happened.
I came home from work on a Friday night feeling exhausted and fed up with the steady stream of idiocracy that had filled my shift. Poor Xavier got home and asked how my day was.
Now faced with wild gesticulations and an ongoing rant, Xavier silently opened this bottle of wine and poured me a glass because he’s a good husband like that.
It worked like a charm and by the the second glass I had calmed right the fricky-frack down.
How was it? I would call it a solid “pretty good”. A far cry better than the yellow tail Cabernet Sauvignon, though not quite as smooth as the one from Tarara Winery that started this whole wine review business in the first place. It’s worth noting that the Kendall-Jackson is about $14.50 at Costco – as opposed to the $45 price tag on the Cabernet from Tarara.
For $14.50, I think this wine is a good buy. If you want me to say that it tastes like cedar, vanilla and cherry…. um, sure. Yes, it tastes just like that.
My review: A fairly smooth red wine with a pleasant woody aftertaste and enjoyable sedative qualities. May save a marriage.
Wine barn. Linganore Winecellars. Photo by d.Nelle Vincent
2014 Chardonnay from Linganore Winecellars
“It has a looonnnnggg buttery finish”. The bartender pursed her lips while making a socket puppet shape with her hand.
I would feel like an idiot saying that, with accompanying gesticulation, but what I will say is that if grapes and butter had a baby, it would be this wine.
Xavier and I drove out for a visit this past Sunday. We wanted to taste the dry wine list; specifically looking for a Chardonnay and a Cabernet-esque dry red.
I wanted to like the one called White Raven because the name is cool, and I expected to like the Chardonnay Reserve 2015 because it’s expensive. Neither of these things came to pass.
Apparently cool names and high prices do not necessarily mean better. As far as I’m concerned they hit us with their best shot right out of the gate. The Chardonnay 2014 is everything they claim it to be. It has zero percent residual sugar and is quite literally smooth like butta’, which makes it deliciously dangerous becauseit is also 11.5% alcohol.
We bought a bottle and, at check out, they asked if we would like for them to open it for us so we could enjoy it there. I said, “Only if we can stay the night.”
Lightweights…
Pro tip: If you put a straw in the bottle, you can claim to have had “only one drink.”
Linganore Winecellars. Mt. Airy, MD
I specialize in making nice places look like run down abandoned buildings but Linganore Winecellars is, in fact, quite lovely.
Lucky for me, the weather was cold and there were not many people milling around outside but, inside on a Sunday afternoon, the scene is warm and bustling with thirsty wine connoisseurs.
Linganore Winecellars. Mt. Airy, MD
As previously mentioned, I was looking for a Chardonnay and a dry red. We didn’t buy a red but the one I liked the most was the Chambourcin. It’s very dry, with zero percent residual sugar, super smooth, pleasantly oaky, and likely the topic of a separate blog post. 🙂
Xavier in his new Mini Cooper Clubman. Linganore Winecellars. Mt. Airy, MDSleeping baby grape vines. Linganore Winecellars. Mt. Airy, MD
Sofia is Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter and she now has her very own line of pink wine with her name on it. Lucky her.
I had no idea that Francis Ford Coppola had time to stomp grapes in between all the gangster flicks but apparently he is a skilled multitask-er, which means that he himself does no actual wine making but that’s cool and all so long as whoever does the actual work gets paid actual money.
I say the verdict is still out as to whether or not I like this wine, though I’m leaning towards the latter. Xavier tapped out after the first glass leaving me to ponder the rest of the bottle. His exact words were “It punched me in the jaw with tartness. I don’t think I’m going to have a 2nd glass.”
It is indeed a tart wine. I believe the grapes were fed a steady diet of vinegar and Warheads sour candy, which caused insanity and birth defects, but the glowing pink color is just enticing enough to make you think it’s good.
That doesn’t mean it’s not good but it’s out there in a no-man’s land of foreign flavors. Not bold enough to be red and it’s not sweet or crisp enough to be Moscato.
Wine snobs drawl with superiority, “That’s because it’s Rose’, Dumbass”
Yes, of course, the Rose’ of The Godfather’s daughter no less. This poor girl has her name plastered all over the bottle and now everyone is blaming her for leaving them puckered and bug-eyed.
I’ve long made a practice of selecting wine based on the color of the juice and the appearance of the label and, while this often doesn’t work out in my favor, I can say…
Since I decided that I need something new to talk about, a fresh project to take on, and an excuse to get out and visit new places.
This idea was born today at lunch. I said to Xavier, “I want to visit wineries, take creepy pictures of their vines and talk about their wine.”
I had him at “wine”.
We were in Leesburg, VA with a car full of groceries when this happened so a winery trip has yet to occur but I do have a wine to review!
I received this bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Tarara Winery for Christmas.
Being absolutely candid, this is the best wine I’ve ever had……ever.
That being said, I’m hardly an educated wine connoisseur but what I can tell you is that it’s silky, rich, and smooth; lacking that feeling of being punched in the throat right at the moment of swallowing. It is very good when paired with dark chocolate.
Prior to this, I believed that I did not like red wine and mostly drank $7 bottles of Moscato.
Adam Conover claimed on his show, Adam Ruins Everything, that there is no difference in taste between cheap wine and expensive wine and, to be clear, Adam is wrong.
The Cabernet Sauvignon from Tarara Winery is a $45 investment and, take it from me – a drinker of cheap wine, you can absolutely tell where the extra money goes. I mean, I can’t say precisely where it goes; fatter grapes, Miracle Gro, aged longer in better barrels, more fairy dust and magic beans for all I know, but the difference in quality is undeniable.
In fact, it was this wine that peaked my interest in doing something creative on this blog that involved wine and writing and photography.
So stay tuned, more wine reviews are coming and very soon we’ll get out to visit a local winery!
I intended to write an eloquent soliloquy in farewell to 2016 but my neighbors are playing their music so fucking loud that my dishes are rattling so let’s talk about that instead.
There are many compelling reasons to move away from the apartment life and chief among them is neighbors. Neighbors and their music, kids, friends with benefits leaving their cars all over the place, dogs that they don’t clean up after, and their sticky discarded mattresses in the dumpster.
People can be disgustingly annoying and adult human beings should not share common walls with one another.
By this time next year I’ll be writing from the breakfast nook of my new home in Los Lunas, New Mexico.
But a whole lot of stuff has to happen before that outcome can materialize.
There is money to make, contracts to sign, school to attend, credit to repair, land to be cleaned up and a house to buy. The massive river of inertia is once again being rerouted only this time it leads back to the southwest.
The east coast is alright, it’s green, the squirrels are cute and the ocean is nifty but I don’t belong here. It’s not in my blood.
In 2017 Xavier and I are both going back to school. The time has come to sharpen the ax. In the meantime I am working in the print and marketing department at the nation’s largest supplier of stapler accessories. It’s ok for now. It’s consistent income which is more than I can say for the fitness industry. I’m going after a degree in computer science though so the copy machines are temporary. It’s not a bad job but I want more money, a lotmore money.
I feel like I have underutilized my intellectual capacity. I want to do something that makes me feel smart and pays the bills. I’ve discovered plenty of ways not to accomplish this and I no longer have the wherewithal for messing around with mindfuck MLMs. If you’ve been flirting with the disaster known as “home based business”, let me save you some valuable time and money with this one piece of advice.
If you want to make real money, learn real skills.
Peddling bogus nutritional products or whatever imaginary system that Empower Network sells is not a real skill and the longer you leave your hand in the fire the more in debt you’re likely to become. Are they scams? No, but they’re bullshit games of hot potato; passing the buck on a product that is inherently worthless until or unless you can pass it off to someone else by convincing them that you know the “secret” when all along it was only hypnotic smoke and unicorn tears.
So, like I said, it’s time to hit the books, to grow the brain, to work smarter not harder and to invest in our future.
Let’s call 2017 The Year Of The Wolf. The year of strong connection with instincts and intuition, high intelligence, loyalty and communication.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go break my neighbor’s stereo.
It’s always bothered me when people tell the story of how the lost car keys saved their life. You know, the one that goes like this: “I spent an extra 15 minutes searching for my keys this morning and I was so mad because I was going to be late for work. But then, while driving, I passed a huge accident. An escape convict in a stolen car ran the light and the other driver was blasted to smithereens. I am so blessed because God saved me from being in that accident and it was a miracle.”
Is that a fact? I always want to ask if it’s a fact but it seems rude to question other people’s miracles.
But is it? A miracle, I mean. That’s the conundrum, we can’t know what would’ve happened if... because it didn’t.
On the flip side of the coin, how do we know miracles don’t happen dozens of times each and every day? Maybe you were day dreaming and missed the exit, maybe someone had to go and get a flat tire right in front of you, maybe you lost your car in the parking lot or maybe nothing out of the ordinary happened at all but someone else lost their keys or missed their exit thus preventing them from T-boning you at an intersection.
We don’t go around saying, “Nothing happened today and it was miracle!” But maybe we should.
Miracle or coincidence?
What if the keys were hanging on the hook in the kitchen and you left right on time? Would you definitely have been in the accident or, might it have still involved the same two cars? There are no tangible answers but yet we still want to believe and can’t dissuade ourselves from looking for evidence.
Believing that events have meaning seems to be hardwired in our DNA despite the fact that the only supporting evidence lies in outcomes that never transpired. Human minds can find evidence to support absolutely anything at all so long as we want to believe it.
All miracles aside, perhaps the single most important evolutionary development that allowed humans to rise up the food chain was the ability to recognize patterns. We see imaginary faces in clouds and in trees just as easily as spotting the gaze of a predator from within the tall grass.
Pattern recognition allowed us to navigate by the stars and to know when to plant the crops. The FBI uses pattern recognition to profile serial killers and boxers use it to land a knock out punch.
Have we become so skilled at pattern recognition that we are now able to observe the wheels in the sky orchestrating the big picture? Well, maybe, but we do know this: humans can process seven things at once, give or take two depending on I.Q and coffee intake. Because there are a million or so observable things happening at all times, it hardly makes sense that we should focus our attention on seven of them and then call that reality.
Hey, do me a favor right quick and tell me which side of this mask is concave and in which direction it is turning?
Even knowing beforehand that it is an optical illusion, your brain cannot stop seeing the illusion. So my question is, what if you didn’t know or even suspect that there was another angle from which to view something? Chances are you would accept it at face value.
In the same way that the A minor is relative to the key of C major – the same pattern from an altered perspective reveals a completely different thing.
The power of perspective and observation will make your beliefs about the world true, but only in your own world.
In November of 2004, shortly after making the final payment, my car was stolen out of my mom’s driveway. My purse was in it along with my phone, camera gear, a suitcase of clothes plus all of my CD’s and the spare keys to my house including the garage door opener. We were returning from a road trip and I was dropping her off. Not planning to stay long, I went inside but then ended up staying for dinner.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of returning to the spot where your car was, now gone without a trace.
Needless to say, the empty driveway was more than a little inconvenient. My insurance company flatly did not believe me about the contents of the car and refused to pay for anything except the actual car itself. Naturally I had closed my bank accounts immediately but this did not stop the crooks from writing my canceled checks all over town and it did not stop the collection agencies from pursuing me in an effort to collect funds for all the bounced checks.
The car debacle took months of unpleasantness to rectify. To make myself feel better, I fired my insurance company. I don’t want to name names but let’s just pretend they were called Allstate, and I told myself that perhaps I wasn’t as unlucky as it seemed.
Could I have experienced an unconfirmed miracle? There’s no way to know what would’ve happened if my car hadn’t been stolen so I thought why not assume the best? Maybe my perspective was all wrong and I thought I was looking at a picture of a horse when it was actually a frog, maybe I can’t tell which side of the mask is concave and which is convex.
Had my car been waiting for me in the driveway, like it had been for the past seven years, I may have driven it under a truck the next morning on my way to work. I may have been driving too fast, swerved to miss a stray dog and crashed through the guard rail, plummeting to a fiery death.
Or, I could just be the unlucky victim of a very expensive crime.
Blessing or curse?
Unprovable either way so the verdict is out for interpretation.
But does it matter? Our interpretation, I mean. Does it affect the actual truth? I believe it does not. Universal law is what it is and certainly doesn’t care what we think of it. Gravity doesn’t go away or get stronger based on the strength of our conviction that gravity is real. The difference being, of course, that gravity is provable. Gravity can be demonstrated in predictable and consistent ways.
Unconfirmed miracles on the other hand, not so much.
He was wearing the owl tie that I given him the previous year after his performance at Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque. Xavier and I stayed for the book signing after the show so I could remind Mr. Sedaris that I was the one who had given him the tie (and therefore probably his biggest fan).
He remembered me and said it was the only owl gift from the book tour that he hadn’t thrown away.
Xavier and I arrived in Baltimore early so we would have plenty of time to park and to eat before the show. We found a good parking space on a residential street that was a five minute walk from the theater. We both made it a point to memorize the exact address so we wouldn’t forget where we left the car.
212 Park Avenue. Simple enough.
If you’ve ever been to see David Sedaris, you know it’s not unreasonable to stand in line for 2-3 hours to get a book signed after the show. By the time we left the theater, it was after midnight.
Midnight in Baltimore is unsettling. Dark, cold, raining, and a bad reputation for crime in the streets.
On the upside, at least we knew that the car was nearby. Xavier put the address in his phone and we began walking, and walking, and walking. We walked much further than we knew we should have and were passing things that did not look familiar but the map said we were going the right way.
Sensing that something was amiss, we cleared the route and re-entered the address. This time the map showed us a different route and, though irritated, we felt relieved to have finally found the right way.
Did I mention that it was raining and that I was wearing high heels?
Once again we set out towards the car. Walking quickly and confidently so as to not look like what we were – small town folk wandering lost in the streets of Baltimore at 1:00am, or in other words, likely to get mugged – we said that the map was stupid and clearly to blame for this predicament.
Lost in unfamiliar territory, I was getting blisters on my feet and trying to stay cool like Fonzie. This was no time to come unhinged.
We followed the map and we walked some more. A lot more.
At this point, most couples would’ve started bickering over who was at fault. We did not, and thus passed some kind of ill-timed cosmic compatibility test. Nothing brings out the true colors like being cold, tired, and scared. For a moment I thought of the movie Open Water and hoped we would not suffer the same fate.
The map said we were headed right to the car but it was becoming obvious that we were nowhere near the car and probably even further away than before re-entering the address.
You know that feeling when you wake up in a hotel room and, just for a split second, don’t know where you are? Disconcertion and panic until the rest of your brain fires up and delivers the pertinent info? Yeah, it was like that, minus the resolution.
Had we wandered into an alternate dimension? Seriously, what the hell was happening?
We walked around downtown Baltimore for an hour and half in the middle of night, following our map on one wild goose chase after another.
Eventually, when we ready to give up and find benches to sleep on, Xavier noticed that there were not one, and not two, but actually three streets with the name Park Avenue in the vicinity of Joseph Myerhoff Symphony Hall.
Hilarious.
At 1:45 in the morning, we finally found our way to the right 212 Park Avenue and to our car that was waiting for us.
We drove home without incident.
Was the universe fucking with us or keeping us away from the car for a specific reason? Could this be yet another Unconfirmed Miracle?
Think what you will but I’ll tell you this. Not one person threatened or even approached us while we wandered. Neither of our phone batteries died. Xavier did not lose the keys. The car started right up and we did not get in an accident on the way home. If the universe were fucking with us, wouldn’t something have actually happened? Wouldn’t we have gotten mugged or wrecked the car on the highway?
What did happen is that we were delayed by an hour and a half by a very bizarre map anomaly.
While we were shivering in the rain thinking what a bullshit scenario we had found ourselves in, maybe we were seeing the optical illusion and the truth is that we were being guided away from something sinister – a Bogey Man in the night who would’ve found us had things gone as planned.
There’s no way to know but, in the end, it’s what I choose to believe.
He used to be my downstairs neighbor but he had shady roommates and things had clearly taken a turn for the worse.
The car has been in the parking lot of the grocery store for two weeks. It doesn’t run and he doesn’t run either. The bus stop for the shelter is too far and besides, he’s barefoot and doesn’t want to go anyway.
He was my downstairs neighbor and that was unfortunate for him because I live on the 4th floor and he can barely walk, or wear shoes, or stand up straighter than 45 degrees.
Lord knows why his kin put him in a 3rd floor apartment, maybe they hoped that once he was up there he wouldn’t be able to get back down. I just hoped he didn’t set the building on fire because, for all of his shortcomings and ineptitudes, he was a master of chain smoking. Sitting on his balcony all god damed day, smoking one cigarette after another and blowing the smoke right in to my living room though notable, was not his most endearing quality.
Honestly, I had no warm fuzzies for the guy or his meth mouthed daughter and her crack head boyfriend. Xavier complained to the front office and called the police for various disturbances more times than I can count.
One time, at 6:30 on a Tuesday morning, all the 4th floor neighbors were awakened by the jangle of what sounded like my grandmother’s telephone and a wild pounding at the door. It turned out to be the fire alarm and the old man wielding a mag light.
Psychotic breaks are more entertaining when they happen after the sun comes up so, as you can imagine, the neighbors did not see the humor in a wild eyed lunatic tripping the fire alarm after sprinting up the stairs to escape the men with guns and knives that were not in his apartment trying to kill him.
Xavier called the police, again.
Then one day the old man and his entourage left. They left but their stuff didn’t and the maintenance crew had the best day ever gleefully tossing all their furniture off the 3rd floor balcony. It was glorious, I sat outside and watched.
From time to time the police would come looking for them. The car would reappear in different parts of the apartment complex. I don’t know where they went but they didn’t live downstairs anymore so I mostly forgot about them.
Two weeks ago Xavier and I found the car at the grocery store. It lay dead in the far corner of the parking lot, trash bags closed in the doors to keep the rain out and a note taped to the window.
I think now that I am idiot for not taking a picture of the note because it summed up the prevailing lack of forethought that is the defining characteristic of this whole situation.
The note was from the old man to meth mouth and crack head saying where he was staying and at what number he could be reached. I don’t know how the recipients were supposed to know to find the car in the grocery store parking lot and, if he had access to a phone, why he didn’t just call them in the first place. It occurs to me now that they are or were likely in jail and therefore not available to chat but if that is the case then what was the point of the note?
Xavier and I went to the store yesterday to pick up some sushi for lunch. The car was still there, sans the trash bags and the note, but this time the old man was sitting in it.
Apparently homeless and no doubt barefoot, he and his car were in a sad state of decline. Xavier called the police to speak with adult protective services. They came out but there wasn’t much they could do. The old man was having a moment of clarity and wanted to stay in the car and it was evidentially his prerogative to do so.
He told the officer that he was broke until his disability check came so maybe when the postman delivers it to the car he can go to a hotel.
I could keep waiting for people to change or I could change and the latter necessarily meant it was time to boss-up with no remorse for the blood in the water.
It’s been said that to carve an elephant from a block of wood, all one needs to do is cut away everything that does not resemble an elephant.
It would not do to lament the corners of the block or the shavings of wood that are cut away. They are not elephant shaped, so why would you want them?
To hold on to things that do not serve begs the same question: why would you even want them?
I took some time off from writing this blog but now, on a rainy day in Easterville, I have something to say.
It was time to clean house because the elephant had become unrecognizable.
Asking people for things they don’t have with the persistence of a dog scratching fleas is, well, exhausting to say the least.
The definition of insanity after all is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I could keep on keeping’ on, waiting for people to change while time keeps on slipping’, or I could change and the latter necessarily meant it was time to boss-up with no remorse for the blood in the water.
You know what I’m talking about.
If your elephant is integrity, why do you rationalize?
If your elephant is honesty, why are you willing to live a lie?
If your elephant is better relationships, why do you pursue people who are less than worthy of your attention?
If your elephant is enlightenment, why do you stay asleep?
Trust The Devil You Know 