As I begin writing this, I have opened a bottle of 2013 Eyrie Vineyards South Block Pinot Noir. My mother and I purchased this bottle on our trip to Oregon and California while I was in college. At the time, I was a freshly-minted Certified Sommelier—an achievement I earned soon after turning twenty-one. After walking into the tasting room wearing my pin (cringe), I was soundly put down by the tasting room manager who demanded I blind one of their library wines in "earn" the right to wear that pin. After totally flopping on a 1980's single-vineyard chardonnay, we got to talking and she told me mother and I about the bottle now sitting open before me. That story comes later. Now is the time for reminiscing, and that these moments and milestones are already nine years in the past stun me, and that it has been over a decade since the grapes in this wine were growing humbles me.
In a recent conversation with my girlfriend, I brought up the movie Sideways. The moment of poetic waxing over the variability and difficulty of growing and making pinot noir is well-known, as is the monologue reflecting upon the appeal of wine itself. Thinking about the weather, the people who worked the vineyards, the time that has elapsed since the grapes were grown, the fermentation started, the wine bottled. And, of course, the decision of when to open it. As is said, that if one opens a bottle on that day, it would taste different than if the bottle were opened on any other day, at any other moment, for any other occasion.
The pressure then not only on the occasion but on the bottle to live up to that occasion.
What could rise to the occasion of thirty? Three decades—one remembered well, one remembered through the lens of nostalgia, one through the whirlwind of adolescence. Even the reminiscence above has weight. I am nearing a decade of work in an industry I chose out of passion, despite the advice of my academic advisor. Working in wine has brought me out west and into the south. I have stood in mountainside rows of grapes, bottled homemade wine under blood moon eclipses, drunk and tasted the product of agricultural methods new and ancient. There is something beautiful about working with something so indebted to nature and to the everlasting creativity of mankind.
In the same period, I have learned immeasurable things about my own creativity. From the study of food and beverage pairing to the running of my own cocktail program, the restaurant industry has helped develop a side of myself I never really through could find satisfaction in work. In my time, I have helped open two new establishments, grow another, and help one survive the onset of COVID. Therein too, survival, tenacity, and expansion.
All the while, in the background, beats the drum of writing as an outlet of creativity. I discussed with a friend the constant sense of a lack of productivity driven by the sense of my own mortality (insert a Hamilton lyric here), and in doing so tallied the works completed recently. Five novels in as many years. Two full scripts. A myriad of poems and at least a dozen short stories. I have been published! I have had a play produced professionally and performed in Boston. My name, my words, have appeared before a public I long thought myself a mere member of. What more heartening thing could I have experienced, and how many more such moments lie ahead? It is not mere self-aggrandizement which has me writing so, but a genuine appreciation for the depths of experience life offers.
It is understood, and deeply felt, that not all of these experiences are pleasant. Within the past few years, I have stood at the deathbeds of the last two of my grandparents. I have watched my mother outlive both of her siblings. In my decades upon the earth, I have had loves lost, friendships disappear, heartbreak at my own hand and at the hands of others. My family stands on the precipice of selling our last true connection to the state of Vermont, and a piece of my childhood therein. On more than one occasion, I myself have had to be spoken off various precipices emotional and physical. These are obviously unpleasant reflections—I said as much above—but they are necessary. I exist in spite of these things (and what a wonderful motivator spite is), and I exist as I am for these experiences.
And then we think of the rest. My mind, my sentimentality, goes to art. Literature, literature, literature! My annual rereads of The Sun Also Rises. The depths of poetic prose from Olivie Blake and Emily M. Danforth to the spartan and absurd realism of Lemony Snicket and Sally Rooney. To live in an age where the written word abounds even as many bemoan its death is perpetually invigorating. Then there are the movies (my somewhat dead list of my top ten will be finished eventually). Everything from the animated powerhouses of Studio Ghibli to the classics long before my time to the rise of the modern joys of Wes Anderson. Music! From my first Brad Paisley concert to the wild trips out to Colorado, Pittsburgh, and New York chasing bands. My three Halestorm concerts in as many weeks following them through New England, and singing happy birthday to the lead singer of The Pretty Reckless. Meals around the country, and soon to include a stop in a wild, rocky outpost of Europe. Michelin to food truck. Prepared my others and myself. A million tastes and as many preparations. Then we think of plays and musicals... acted in and seen. Inspiration abounds, despite the spectre of artificial intelligence threatening even this fundamental piece of mankind. Even video games—the one medium in which that essential element of human choice is preserved, celebrated, and so often deliciously subverted. Would you kindly acknowledge them as an art form?
Then of course we are inspired. Then of course we create ourselves. In the words of Muriel Barberry: I want to be building. As I sit and reflect now on what the next thirty years of my life will look like, there's a temptation to give into my sense of satisfaction, when it exists, and say something cliche like "more of the same." But it was Ratatouille which told me that change is nature, and it was Hamilton which reminded me that I am never satisfied. "The same" here means the different, the evolving, the expansive elements of my life ahead. In a few days I will board a plane for my first European excursion: the Faroe Islands. There, with a childhood friend behind me, I look forward to drinking a coffee at a small shop at the end of a tiny, windswept spit of land which defies the Northern Atlantic with every seaborne sunrise. I have two short stories out for review. I have one novel preparing a journey back into the depths of self-publishing, one being prepared for the gauntlet that is querying, a play getting reworked for submission to theatres beyond Boston,
Will I fail? Without question. Will I succeed? Here and there. In my online writing group chat, the one where we are all chaotic vegetables, a frequent refrain (familiar to those in the writing and trying-to-get-published world) is "You win some, you lose more." I will not pretend that I do not have my grand sweeps of anxiety (existential and general) and dread (mostly existential). The morning of my thirtieth birthday was spent in bed—almost four hours of pondering, the occasional sniffle and tear, and lolling about in a book and on my phone. I was slightly hungover, a solitary party of aforementioned bottle the night before rounded out with tiramisu and bourbon, but as I walked to the kitchen for coffee and tylenol, I found myself humming.
It was a familiar tune... one I had heard that spring. It was Baba Yaga's song from Skazki.
I live in a world where my own songs get stuck in my head.
Rounding out our discussions of bottles and wine from the beginning, I had long decided that the 2013 Eyrie Vineyards South Block Pinot Noir would be my thirtieth birthday wine. In 1979 and 1980, there were tasting competitions in Paris similar to the famous 1976 Judgement of therein, whereby The Eryie Vineyard's founder, then-winemaker, David Lett's 1975 South Block Pinot Noir defeated some of the finest wines from Burgundy. This wine is from ten rows of vines in his vineyard, a minute portion of the production. Then, David's son, Jason Lett, discovered that the vines were infected with phylloxera and would, eventually, die. The back of the bottle says that this wine bears the signature of a remarkable man and a singular place, and with the impeding death of the vines and the passing of the original winemaker, it is also a taste of a time as well.
And from that bottle, so much. From the trip when I purchased it, immeasurable memories. I savor the final drops as I do the wistful farewell I bid my twenties, my teens, my childhood. I try not to get lost in the maze of memories, but unfortunately nostalgia is a favorite, tempting ally of my heart. I think back not only to the circumstances of my birth but also the path life offered me after. Once, in a somewhat heated conversation, I mentioned how I can never be sure if my mother held me or not. In the same breath, shuddering and soft for the ache in my chest, I can tell the story of when my parents knew I was born and available for adoption. They got the call on their wedding anniversary, which is tomorrow. I live a life blessed with love immeasurable and opportunity and fortune incalculable, and that I have anything to grieve or regret simply means that I have tried, and lived.
So, there's little for it but keep living, keep building, keep trying. Hello, Thirty. Show me what you've got.