Wine & Music Inspirations IX – Regina Spektor
Just when I thought harvest was nearing an end after pressing the stubborn Red Mountain Cabernet Franc, I came into an AVA lot of Lake Chelan Syrah.
So, when even those in the last-to-pick Willamette Valley were wrapping up their harvest duties; we here at The Blending Room were starting harvest over again, crushing enough grapes to nearly double our production for the year! The redundancy began to sink in as sticky grape juice became the Something About Mary of my hairstyle; the delicate skin of my hands cracked and dried out in Man Hands fashion; and the triple-rinse sanitation mantra racked my brains like the industrial piano accompaniment of Regina Spektor’s Machine.
This song is a tribute to our current-future Red Mountain wine in the barrel-in the bottle. Like ourselves, we live in the future, daily, hoping for greater perfection and stumbling over our present blessings. Imagine, as the lyrics suggest, the robotic nature of life stemming from a creator jealous of our organics. It is analogue: the wine jealous of the winemaker’s organics? or exploiting them for its own purposes? And those purposes being for unconsummatable, consummate consumers… Am I deaf to the wine’s needs, its perspective?
Too deep, I know. But try reading Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire for a similar reversal of nature’s perspectives. Furthermore, enjoy the industrial piano strokes and dark coddling voice, a distant Tori Amos, this Regina Spektor; a Russian-born musician, limitless in her musical sincerity.
The future – it is here, it is bright, it is now.
To a perpetual harvest and eternal symphony,
Hooked into Machine, WineGirl
Wine & Music Inspirations VIII – The Rogers Sisters
As the mad fury of crush comes to an end (tomorrow’s our last day crushing Red Mountain Malbec) there’s only one song that concisely sums up my desire to be doing anything other than the triple rinse (aka sanitizing and cleaning).
I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE!
Queen’s emphatic, staccato lyrics and back-and-forth danceable rhythms are a perfect complement to cleaning up the winery after a long weekend of soap suds, sticky juice, and flying grape skins hitting the wall.
But the real song running through my head is The Rogers Sisters’ Song For Freddie.
This youtube.com version is live but still just as fun! The Rogers Sisters were blasting the poor neighbors out of their home as I took a four minute break to ride the closest thing our winery has to a bicycle: my yellow pallet jack!
She wants to ride her bicycle, she want to ride her bike,
WineGirl
It’s a beautiful day in Manson, WA. Wish you were here!
Wine & Music Inspirations VII – Ween
Only Ween could possibly capture the loco-ality of my harvest (in)sanity this chilly, fine October evening. One ton of Chardonnay grapes from the Bryan Vineyard in Quincy sit on the tarmac of The Blending Room awaiting the green light from our newest piece of tin.
Meet our mutilator/destemmer: harvest emergency purchase: new best friend:
Maude Elle Tee
And her parts. Henry Ford would be proud. (Except she’s Italian.)
It’s always a love~hate relationship in the wine industry. If you can find romance in that than you belong right here with me. Just listen to this song and you might understand the cognitive dissonance of THIS harvest moment and its wine~music inspiration. So soothing are the rhythms, yet so queer are the lyrics. Thanks Ween for making my evening more bearable.
Mutilated lips give a kiss on the wrist of the worm-like tips of tentacles expanding in my mind, I’m fine accepting only fresh WINE you can get another drop of this yes yeah you wish.
Mutilated Lips off The Mollusk by Ween
Cheers,
Sassy Frassy Lassie WeenGirl
Wine & Music Inspirations VI – Radiohead
Today, it’s grey and rainy here in Manson, reminds me of Seattle. And it also begs the question: Why is the weather so influential and indicative of our musical selections? I certainly cannot begin pondering the answer, but will suggest that Radiohead’s Paranoid Android on the OK Computer album is exactly the inspiration I need to get motivated for pressing red wine today. In fact, the entire album is needed, since it’s hard to separate each song from the brilliant overall orchestration emanating from Thom Yorke’s genius.
Bear with me: This is the kind of album that you listen to with headphones on while walking around completing your daily activites. The album quite simply synthesizes the activities of one’s motion into a sort of soundtrack of life. I am not doing justice to describing this sensation, but I highly recommend donning your iPod and walking around your daily world. Everyone and everything begins to move with the rhythm. Birds take flight on cue, pedestrians enter crosswalks on cue, and your own personal being becomes fluid.
This will likely be on repeat while we press our Red Mountain Merlot today at The Blending Room.
Cheers,
WineGirl
Wine & Music Inspirations V – Rufus & Chaka Khan
Certainly, my Friday night pleaser.
After spending all day yesterday and early today dropping fruit in the vineyards (boy, is life hard?), I returned back to the winery for evening cap maintenance. This song popped on and took the lead as today’s wine & music inspiration. Its rhythm was perfect for traipsing around the one inch edges of the fermenting bins. I’m always calling on my past gymnastic experience and my current yoga practices for these balancing times. But I was feeling extra lively tonight dancing to the rhythms of Tell Me Something Good by Rufus & Chaka Khan.
Turn it up LOUD and let it warm up your soul for a Friday night out on the town.
Cheers,
WineGirl
Wine & Music Inspirations IV – The Knife
It’s a stunning day here on the North Shore of Lake Chelan in Manson! Things couldn’t be more exciting as the Northern hemisphere moves into Autumn.
This music inspiration came on the heels of my Swedish kick from Koop, but in a radically different fashion. The Knife are a Swedish Indie electronic, brother and sister duo enlightening us with hard-core lyrics, and pitch-shifting rhythm infused electronica.
The inspiration came from a recent picture of my glamorous duties in a smurf blue jumpsuit while punching down the cap on my Red Mountain Merlot. As I was considering full immersion within the bin of fermenting grapes, The Knife’s Heartbeat sums up exactly the relationship I have with each of my wine babies. As an artist, it’s like the deal you make with your art. You can leave it to “divine sense” and “lean on fate”, unless that isn’t be good enough for you, which it sure isn’t for me. It’s knowing the medium, for me my grapes and believing what they are telling me as I carry them through the wine process. The song lends lyrics to the story of what I imagine is the melding together of an artist’s passion and craft, sharing separate heartbeats.
Whoo, that was way cheesy and heavy for such a silly Swedish song.
By the way, I really just like the song because Karin Dreijer Andersson’s voice is so magnetic and the video rocks. She has also dropped lyrics with the likes of Röyksopp on “What Else is There.” Although she was the voice in that video, she was not the model singing. She’s also featured on Röyksopp’s “This Must Be It” and “Tricky Tricky.”
Skål,
WineGirl
Then you can take it to another phenomenal Röyksopp song: It’s the single remix, but this youtube video is better than the original.
Wine & Music Inspirations III – Shivaree
Last night I was wide awake in the middle of the night contemplating the 2010 Firá Chardonnay fermentation while staring out at the waning gibbous moon. Falling on the heels of a fantastic harvest moon two days ago, I still could not get this song out of my head. Naturally it has become my next wine & music inspiration. I love the way the music carries itself through the song to tell its story to the next interchange up to the climax and finally the dénouement farewell to the moon. Her brooding voice lends solace to my sleeplessness.
Goodnight Moon by Shivaree
My goal with this year’s chardonnay is to follow the same brooding yet fluid cycle from press to barrel to the climax of fermentation and ultimately through a long, smooth and fragrant élevage. So many questions as my mind races in the moonlight. What residual will I target? Will I use MLF this year? How much barrel aging? When will the grapes be ready?
I hope you, like me, can find some solace in this song while eagerly awaiting our new wine.
Goodnight Moon,
WineGirl
Wine & Music Inspirations II – Koop
This morning was the first day of a harvest that is certain to continue well into November. The excitement, the hurry up and wait, the restless nights are finally assuaged with the reception of our first grapes at The Blending Room. But before their arrival at 12:20PM, yours truly was all a flutter and seeking solace in anything but facebook or twitter.
Thus, I turned to my now incessant search for wine and music inspirations. This is not an easy thing to do, let me tell you, but was just the task I needed to ease my apprehensive mind. I searched through the abyss of a music collection held here at The Blending Room beginning with Califone. I Love Califone, but Califone was just not making a connection with me on this cool morning. Then I remembered I was introduced to Califone at the same time I came to know the Swedish duo Magnus Zingmark and Oscar Simonsson as Koop.
That was it! Koop was the end of the search, until, alas, I pressed play on the Waltz for Koop album.
Every song is so relaxing, so beautiful, so full of soothing melody. It was such a hard choice, but I finally settled on “Summer Sun” featuring Yukimi Nagano. The inspiration doesn’t necessarily pair with a particular wine, but the celebration of the art of making wine. And the song could be taken as a small prayer for a little bit more summer sun to ripen our yearning and anxious grapes. Listen, sit back and relax (with a glass of wine, of course).
Skål!
WineGirl
Wine & Music Inspirations I – DeVotchKa
Awhile back, I was asked how I would pair my wines with music. So I thought long and hard about it… I tried not thinking about it, tried perusing the playlists, tried humming, tried racking my brain for rhythms, to no avail. I could not find any songs to go with any of my wines.
Stumped! I turned off the Jorge Ben and Cesária Évora that I normally have playing at The Blending Room and switched to a party playlist. That’s when the opening rhythms of this song penetrated my soul. The only natural pairing was our 2008 Kamari Cabernet Franc. A dark, thick, creamy, rich young wine with so many layers and so many places to go over its lifespan, just like the beginning pulsations of DeVotchKa’s How It Ends.
Finally, I’ve found our first music and wine match. Sit back and listen to the sounds with your eyes closed. The pulsations remind me exactly of how the 2008 Kamari Cabernet Franc sits on the palate of the mouth.
I love this song. It wraps my being in its full blown, bass driven pulses. To me, the same could be said of the Cabernet Franc. The only irony I find is within the lyrics. “You already know how *this* will end,” yet I cannot even imagine the ending.
This: the song, the wine… life?
It ends,
WineGirl
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