Mick and Me (Yes, That Mick)

I have so many wonderful memories from the four years I lived in Australia that I’ve had to mentally file them into categories:

Babies and childrearing

Table wines

Kangaroos

Birds

Heat

Sparkling wines

Vistas

Music

People

Fortified wines

Oceans and beaches

Miscellaneous

Given that one of our current tasks here at Fox Run is making up a new bottling of Port, my nostalgia for Australian fortified wines is in full gear. In one memory, I’m standing in a rustic shed in a hot corner of the state of Victoria known as Rutherglen. This establishment, Morris of Rutherglen, happens to be one of the most renowned producers of a style of fortified wine known as Liqueur Muscat, a drink that really doesn’t have any Old World analogue.

I can’t possibly convey in written form how glorious these wines are to drink, so let me just settle on giving them a numerical score: on a strict scale of one to ten, they rate an eleven. They are true Desert Island wines, because a stranded wretch could take the smallest of tastes once a day and then sit back and enjoy the flavors for another hour or two. And thus the bottle would easily last until that rescue ship finally appeared on the horizon.

In any case, here I am with Mick Morris, the modest and affable winemaker of a company that was established by his great-grandfather in 1859. Mick himself has been at the helm since 1953. We’re tasting from a miscellany of casks, tanks and barrels, all of which will someday become components of one of his fortified wine blends when the time is right. There’s a story behind every one of them, one that is usually borne out over years and decades.

The Man Himself

With some fantastic wine.

As we finish up a conversation about the appropriate hang time for the grape variety Durif, Mick stumbles across a barrel sitting haphazardly on the dirt floor. “I wonder what’s in this one?” he asks. A gentle nudge with his knee indicates that it’s mostly empty. “Oh, right, the ’94. I knew it was around here somewhere.”

Given that this conversation is happening in 1989, I have no choice but to surmise that the wine at his feet was made in 1894. I also deduce that given Mick’s generous spirit, he’s about to offer me a sample. He continues, “I wonder how it’s going!” -- Australian for “how it’s doing.”

“Let’s have a look, shall we?”

Mick locates a long glass wine thief, knocks out the barrel’s wooden bung, and removes a few teaspoons of this nearly-century-old wine.

“Where’s your glass?”

The tiny bit of Muscat I am holding is as dark as molasses and almost as thick. It smells of a very fine whiskey, with hints of raisins and sun-baked soil, and there’s a huge hit of the special old-wine aroma we call rancio.
   
Mick explains that wines like this are not really drinkable on their own except as a curiosity. They’re just too intense. I take a sip – it takes fully five seconds for the wine to trickle down the glass to my mouth – and an explosion of flavor confirms this. But, Mick continues, a very small amount – maybe one part in five thousand – will infuse a large blend of much younger wines with a discernable measure of complexity, in a sort of flavor-amplification phenomenon.

Rutherglen produced vast quantities of table and fortified wine in the second half of the nineteenth century, exporting most of it to England. The vine louse phylloxera wiped out most of the vines in the late 1890s, as it had in Europe a short time earlier, and another half century passed before things were again on firm footing. The wine Mick had given me a taste of was one of the very last from the pre-phylloxera era.

You pretty much have to go to Australia to taste Liqueur Muscats. The few examples that I’ve tasted on American soil were perilously close to being caricatures of the real thing.

But it’s worth the trip. While I am not qualified to vouch for the life-changing value of, say, a pilgrimage to Mecca, I can say without hesitation that a journey to Rutherglen, and Morris Wines, should be on the ‘Things to Do Before I Die’ list of all serious enophiles.

If you do get there, ask someone how that barrel of 1894 is ‘going’. Mick retired long ago, and the wines are now made by his son, but chances are you’ll still find him kicking around the place. Fortified wines are in his blood.


By:  Peter Bell, Winemaker


Music of the Day:

• Daryl Braithwaite - Edge; "One Summer"  (Aussie pop icon Daryl Braithwaite attests to the fact that you can never really recapture the good times):

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Summertime, and the Riesling Is Ready

The end of last summer seems remarkably close in my memory compared to the months it has been; mostly due to vintage beginning with the dawn of September and swallowing up the following two and a half months... which then disappeared into the holidays.  Now that I can think about those halcyon days, I was recently feeling nostalgic for a fun visit from a good college friend back around Labor Day.  There is no doubt that I took a great deal of joy in showing him around our lovely Finger Lakes, and it was as eye opening for him as it was refreshing for me to visit the world class wineries they are populated with.

My friend had just come up from the wonderful wine bar Terroir in New York City, where he had conveniently been inundated and successfully brainwashed by their "Summer of Riesling" celebrations.  Coming from the West Coast, it did take him a few sips to recalibrate his palate to the acid-driven structure of our rieslings, but he was soon very impressed with what he was tasting.  

After the two of us had tasted at a few wineries he made the comment that he was glad to have visited Terroir beforehand because they had put him on the path to realizing "that Riesling is a great summer wine."  This comment was meant earnestly and honestly, and I took it in that spirit without saying another word.  Nevertheless, it is a sentiment that has obviously lodged itself in my brain for several months in the limbo between thought provoking and unintentional, backhanded compliment.  What exactly does that mean?  And what should it mean for those of us who fancy, and fancy ourselves, riesling producers?

As far as riesling is concerned, I hope that the answer is not that riesling is a pleasant, bracing wine for warm weather and sun.  No doubt dry rieslings are spectacularly refreshing and one of the wine world's best and only pairings with refreshing summer foods and salads.  Just because it is a white wine, however, does not mean it isn't a serious or powerful wine for the colder months as well.  In fact, the most logical pairings for riesling in my mind are distinctly cold weather meals linked to the traditional foods consumed in regions that have taken the grape to such great heights; Germany and Alsace with pork and roast birds. 

In the end, I think my friend's comment is merely another step in America's flirtation with Riesling wines.  Even in our most erudite circles, white wines are thought of in terms of femininity and lacking seriousness compared to our Anglo-historical fascination with claret.  Admitting that rieslings are actually quite interesting and fantastic for summer may just be the next step in our romancing of the riesling grape.  Perhaps as American consumers discover that rieslings with sugar can be serious wines (not to mention some of the most stunning wines in the world), they will simultaneously discover the place of riesling at the dinner table that isn't on the patio.

So are Americans romancing the riesling?  As a riesling lover and producer, I think it is probably the other way around!

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds; "God Only Knows" (In the same vein of 'what is appropriate when,' I am more and more drawn to the warm and springy sounds of The Beach Boys as a break during the depths of winter):

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But I Digress

The need to write a blog post every week or so has inspired me to troll through my haphazard collection of older books on wine, looking for amusing little sources of inspiration. These are mostly books written for the amateur wine enthusiast, which I was at one time, before I plunged into wine as a profession.

One title, published about 30 years ago, includes a very creditable section on what winemaking actually entails, in pictorial form. Titled “The Winegrower’s Year”, or something along those lines, it depicts an older mustachioed gentleman in a series of twelve hand-illustrated panels going thorough the putative cycle of his production year. The guy was certainly a polymath: not only did he make the wine, but he also appeared to do most of the vineyard work, as well as peddle his finished product to appreciative consumers and retailers.

Anyway, January’s picture showed him taking a well deserved break from his travails at a ski resort, presumably in the French or Swiss Alps, his long hand-knit scarf trailing him as he sped down the hill.

A more recent book, the fifth edition of The World Atlas of Wine, has a similar section, but the pictures have been updated, and now the jobs are divided among a number of different people, including women. No ski vacation either: January’s picture shows a warmly dressed fellow out in the vineyard pruning his dormant grapevines, while his counterpart in the winery is described as busily attending to her malolactic fermentations.

Here at Fox Run there continues to be plenty to do, though our tanks and barrels are asking very little of us in terms of intervention. Fermentations are long since finished. Winery staff do well to remember to wear warmer clothing these days, not because we’re outside pruning, but because the heat is turned way down in order to facilitate a process called cold stabilization. Tricia has promised to do an exposé on that subject in a future post, so I won’t talk more about it here (in fact, she tells me that it’s going to be a shocking exposé, so stay tuned).

This is also a fine time of year to pay visits to our fellow winemakers throughout the Finger Lakes, partly as a social gesture, but more importantly to taste their wines and see how they compare to our own. Recalibration of our sensory apparatus is a motivational factor too. Let me tell you: there are some stunning reds and whites out there from the 2010 vintage, led as usual by the illustrious and precocious Riesling.

You didn’t think I could get through an entire blog post without mentioning Riesling, did you? Even if I were composing a treatise on Current Trends in Shoe Polish, I would somehow find a way to work that grape into my narrative. And you must know by now that a near-religious worship of Riesling is not confined to our small band of fanatical winemakers either. Here’s a fragment from an article in a journal called The Riesling Report:

“What are your favorite grape varieties?” someone asked noted English wine critic Jancis Robinson during an on-line chat session a little over a year ago.

“Riesling”, she replied without hesitation.

“And your favorite blends of grapes?” added the persistent interviewer.

“Riesling and Riesling”, she shot back, as quick as a flash. “Riesling blended with Riesling would be pretty good.”

Jancis Robinson is someone whom I would call The Doyenne of Intelligent Wine Writing if I wanted to sound pretentious. (Pretentious? Moi?) She enjoys so much admiration among the winemaking staff here that we call her by her first name only, as if we were close friends:

“According to Jancis…”

“Let’s look it up in Jancis.”

“WWJS?”

Jancis knows the difference between ‘variety’ and ‘varietal’ as well as the true meanings of the words macroclimate, mesoclimate and microclimate. And she’s not afraid to insist with a gentle imperiousness that these words are not interchangeable. When the time comes for us to get on our soapbox about those terms, you will be hearing from her again.

By Peter Bell, Winemaker

Music of the Day:

• Gordon Lightfoot - The United Artists Collection; "Song For A Winter's Night":
• Click to Stream Song

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Cold and the Winemaker - Vol. 1

Before I was involved with the wine industry, colds were little more than a major annoyance with the occasional concern that they might become more severe.  The only good thing about colds, if such a thing can be said, were the times they also served as an escape from school - although even this was small consolation given the malaise they cast over a week or more.  All this on top of the boredom of having no one who dared get close enough to speak with.

Nevertheless, colds always seemed like an inconvenience that could only rarely interfere with the necessary work or school of the day.  That is, until last Sunday when I came down with my first head/sinus cold in quite some time.  The common drained feeling and resignation to my fate accompanied my football viewing that Sunday, but then I started to think ahead to work on Monday.  There was no doubt that (at that point) I felt well enough to go into work, but the complications of working in the winery while even feeling moderately ill started to dawn on me.

As my sinuses clogged up and I found myself unable to smell or taste very well, my utility in the winery rapidly dropped off.  Despite the best of intentions, there was no getting around the fact that sensory analysis of wines and tank samples would be fruitless.  With no aromas and therefore no taste to guide me, if a wine so much as tasted notably acidic or sweet to me I was thrilled at the sensation.  Had there been a wine loaded with chili peppers I am sure I would have happily drank it down in the desperate hope of blasting open my nasal passages.  Rare moments of clarity (nasal, if not from the medicine-head feeling) held much in common with the breaks of sun we get through the lake effect snow, clouds, and gray of winter: a weak affirmation of life's possibilities due to a heavy dose of remembrance for what was.

My major concern, however, was that I might spread the cold to others - especially Peter and Tricia who were still healthy and in possession of functioning olfactory systems.  With that in mind, I resolved to keep myself away from them and focus on making the best of the situation.  If I was unable to smell and taste very well, the least I could do was redouble my efforts in cellar work.  With the exception of setting up a filtration, most work in the cellar this time of year requires no direct tasting or even handling of the wine.  Behind a pair of rubber gloves and with nothing to distract me, cellar work became a much needed distraction from how I was feeling and a reason to stay moving and active.

I had never realized how large a problem a cold could be to someone's work, but now that I'm over it that won't be the case again.

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team


Music of the Day:

• Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges; "Judges": http://www.npr.org/2011/01/04/132652486/new-mix-bright-eyes-g-side-and-more (scroll down the page to listen to individual songs, rather than the entire program, it is the third song).
• I heard this two days ago for the first time, off of the upcoming album to be released in mid-February.  Frankly, this artist is redefining what the saxophone can sound like as well as what genre it belongs to (rock? jazz? classical?).  Keep in mind that all the sounds are coming from the saxophone, even the percussive ones, and this was done in one live take without dubs or looping.

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The Names of Things

It’s fun to look back on your life and recall incidents that were, at the time, acutely uncomfortable, but which after the passage of some years can be valued for their humor content, and for the way they taught you something about your circumstances that was helpful in making an important decision.

I worked for a while at a winery in a country very far from here, more than two decades ago, in my one and only assistant winemaker position. The story I am about to relate ended up being a sort of metaphor for my entire experience there. The people there took to me the way a fish does to crude oil leaking up from the sea floor, and it quickly became clear that a fast exit on my part would be the best strategy for all concerned.

I had only been working there for a week or so when the following exchange happened between the winemaker and me (cue the desperate sit-com style canned laughter):

Him: “While I’m gone, take the yellow pump and transfer the wine in tank 16 into tank 11.”

Me: “Okay.”

I looked all around, but for the life of me couldn’t see a yellow pump. [ha ha ha] There were a few other pumps kicking around, but I didn’t want to hook one of them up without the go-ahead from my boss. Winery pumps tend to have specific uses – one might be good for filtration, one for transferring crushed grapes – and they are not readily interchangeable. I got busy with other tasks.

An hour passed and my superior returned.

“How come the wine’s still in tank 16?”

“I couldn’t find the yellow pump.”

“It’s right there!”

“That’s a blue pump.” [ha ha ha ha ha ha!]

“Well, it was yellow until we repainted it last year, and we still call it the yellow pump.” [ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!]

He rolled his eyes and stormed off.

Right. It was sort of like calling a woman whose actual name is Susan “Eileen.” Some kind of insider knowledge would be necessary for that to make sense, in this case the fact that one of her legs is shorter than the other. Get it? I lean? [ha]

When someone wants badly enough to pigeonhole another person as inept, the opportunities are plentiful, and this can set up a mood that actually makes people so self-conscious that they act more inept than they really are. (And who among us is completely ept anyway?)

The first lesson I took away was that I must never set out to make people feel stupid -- not that I am remotely inclined to do so. There are better ways to Win Friends and Influence People.

Another thing I realized was that it’s all very well to have a private lingo for the equipment around the winery, but new hires need to be given a short indoctrination session if they are to make sense of those nicknames. Plus, those names should ideally reflect something obvious about the piece of equipment. Call me crazy, but I insist that when we refer to specific pumps by the color of their paint, it must be the color that is actually there in view, regardless of what other colors are hiding underneath.

Most of the pieces of equipment we use around here – tanks, forklift, filters, lab instruments – don’t merit any special treatment in the nomenclature department. But we do have a small collection of things we use so often that they’ve earned short, pithy monikers. So, in case you ever happen to stop by the winery and want to be part of The In Crowd, just pepper your speech with a couple of the following terms:

• Big Blue (a flexible impeller pump, used for most wine and juice transfers)
• Baby Blue (its smaller partner, especially adept at bottling time)
• Big Red (a piston pump that weighs close to 300 pounds)
• Big Bertha (a large-diameter hose used to transfer crushed grapes, now retired)
• Son of Bertha (Bertha’s successor)
• The Beast (a huge, very heavy ball valve that is compatible with Son of Bertha)
• Baby Beast (its smaller, comelier and easier to lift partner)
• P.O.S. (that’s ‘Piece of S***’, not ‘Point of Sale’: a pathologically unreliable diesel truck)

And lastly,

• The Shifting Spanner (just a regular old crescent wrench; this term was introduced by our Australian intern Mel, and that’s actually what they call them in that country)

And yes, we do have dibs on the name The Shifting Spanners for the jazz combo we’re going to put together one of these years.


By:  Peter Bell, Winemaker


Music of the Day:

• The Ramsey Lewis Trio - The In Crowd; "The 'In' Crowd":

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What's In The Bottle: 2002 Meritage

N.B.  With this post, we are hoping to begin a periodic series that we'll loosely call "What's In The Bottle." With each post one of us will bring up a specific bottle of wine they have tried recently and discuss it with the same candor we respect in one another and our visitors at the winery.  These wines will run the gamut from Fox Run's current release wines, 'library' wines, tank/barrel samples, and perhaps even some bottles from other wineries or regions.  Not strictly a review or attempt to grade a wine, this is more about frankly relating what is in the bottle and why that is, might be, or may become.


Idiosyncratic though it might be, New Year's Day is almost certainly my favorite holiday dinner.  As opposed to the restricting traditions of Thanksgiving (give turkey a rest, people!  Better had it been made the national bird of the United States as Benjamin Franklin seemed inclined, so that we no longer forced ourselves to pretend it is delectable) and the confusion and expectations surrounding Christmas dinner (Force the turkey-issue for the second time in a month?  Ham?  Some other Roast?), New Year's Day is one that often goes overlooked due to a lack of history and the presence of College Football Bowl Games.

Without overlooking the bowl games, our family harkens back to our very-Anglo roots for this one meal of the year 'anglo' ("and go"...anyone?  Did that work?  No?  Alright, moving on then) all out.  Potatoes roasted crisp in goose fat from the Christmas goose, roasted vegetables, creamed mushrooms, yorkshire pudding, and - the crown jewel - the standing rib roast.  This is a hefty meal that goes against the New Year's resolutions that so many will be trying to follow for the next week, but if we are breaking our own at least we are doing so in a blaze of glory.  Nevertheless, once a year it is a treat and also relatively stress-free to pull together.

So what wine does one have with a meal like this?  Fortunately, the flavors are relatively pure and simple as fantastic as they are.  This means a complex wine will not be lost in the fray of flavors and can serve as a wonderful counterpoint.  While I have no compunction about grabbing a very nice bottle of wine from my cellar (I firmly believe that sitting on special bottles for the "right occasion" is the surest way to spoil the wine and limit the number of special wines you will experience), having food that begs for such a wine is certainly a bonus.  Although it far predates my start at Fox Run, I have one bottle of 2002 Meritage that I decided was ready for the opening.

2002 Meritage:

• Composition:  50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon
• Quantity Produced:  220 Cases, very little of which I imagine still exists.
• Neither ABV or Dryness are specified, but 12.5% ABV and zero grams residual sugar are most likely.

First things first, I was glad the wine wasn't corked.  Not that there was any reason to expect it to be, but when you only have one bottle of something that is always on your mind.  The next nagging question was how tired/old the wine would seem.  We make Meritage blend wines with an eye towards cellaring potential, and many Finger Lakes Wines are cruelly cut down before their prime, but over eight years of age on a red wine from the Finger Lakes is not entirely common.  The wine was still a dark burgundy color, however, with only the slightest signs of orange creeping in around the edges.

More importantly, it still smelled like a fresh wine.  To my nose, the wine was dominated by the merlot component of the blend with its plums and blueberries.  There was also a nice overlay of oak with the spices and vanilla on the nose, although I must be honest and say it was a tad more than I would still want to see.  My loves in aged red wines from the right years and right regions are tabacco leaf and leather, two smells that are beguiling in a wine glass even if they sound bizarre, but this wine left me unsatisfied in this regard.  That is not to say the lack of these aromas are a fault in the wine, or even that they should be there, but I certainly would like to try the Finger Lakes red that pulls it off!

Upon tasting the wine, I was pleasantly surprised with how vibrant the fruit components were in it.  Despite the large proportion of cabernet franc and sauvignon in the blend, the typical forest floor and earthy cassis flavors were not so evident as brilliant cherry and muted blueberry.  The finish continued in this vein for quite some time before turning to dark chocolate.  Structure wise I was very pleased with the tannic component of the wine, but actually found the acid a bit much through the finish (a factor contributing to the bumped up tannins).  Given that this is a red from the Finger Lakes, acid is part of the game that you have to accept from the start.  The question it causes me to wonder is how the perception of the acid in the wine has changed since it was bottled, but the balance of the wine going into the bottle is one only Peter can answer.

In the end, the wine passed the most important test of any wine with flying colors: it was enjoyed and seemed to disappear without anyone knowing how.  Given the meal we were enjoying, the slightly higher acid was absolutely a blessing in terms of the wines ability to cut through the rich foods and refresh the palate.  This is the factor that makes Finger Lakes wines of all types, when well made, some of the best food pairing wines on the planet.  And on this first day of 2011, it made for a wonderful pairing indeed (although I probably wouldn't push it to 2012).

By:  Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• Mel Tormé and Judy Garland; "The Christmas Song" performed live by two under appreciated vocal legends (it's still the twelve days of Christmas!):

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New Year's Wishes

It’s 8:43 on New Year’s Eve, and the last of the fifteen-year-olds has arrived.  My twelve-year-old gratefully accepted an invitation to her friend’s home tonight, so it’s me, Elizabeth and a few of her friends here tonight.  We’ll toast midnight’s arrival with a choice of sparkling apple or grape juice.  

Don’t worry; I treated myself to some delicious wine earlier tonight.  For dinner, I roasted a chicken which was sublime in its simplicity.  It was crispy and golden brown from the butter and smashed garlic I rubbed under its skin before roasting.  In the oven, melted butter and rendered fat bathed tender little yellow potatoes I had tucked under the bird along with some sprigs of fresh thyme.  Salt and pepper completed the works.  While the house filled with intoxicating aromas, I sipped our 2007 Pinot noir and happily hummed snippets of a tune I can’t place.  

Kelby said he thought he and his family would be having beef tenderloin tonight, as that has become something of a Russell family tradition.  If we’re lucky, Kelby will post a blog explaining how he cooks the beef and what he serves with it—both in terms of side dishes and wine choices.  

Peter and I admire Kelby’s perpetual calmness, especially while he’s cooking.  On several occasions, we’ve watched him whip up a feast—hors d’oeuvres through dessert—with nary a crack in his peaceful demeanor.  It’s as though he has never contemplated the possibility that his main dish might finish cooking too far ahead of his multiple vegetable preparations, and of course, it doesn’t.  He’s as quietly passionate about marvelous food as he is about wine, and he is very generous with his cooking talents.  I’ll try to persuade him to give us his New Year’s Eve feast details.

Peter most likely had something very fresh and low on the food chain.  He’s extraordinarily adept at listening to what his body wants to eat, eating that, and nothing more.  Eating with Peter is a joyful exploration of how grains and vegetables with herbs, oils and vinegars can be simple and exotic at the same time, and how satisfying those foods can be.   

He’ll probably go to sleep before midnight.  Years ago, Peter told me that was his habit, and that he is usually the first one up on New Year’s Day.  That sounded, well, odd at first, but really nice upon reflection.  Imagine the first day of a new year, unencumbered by headaches from overindulgence in food and wine and keeping late hours.  Imagine waking up fresh and ready to tackle whatever the new day brings.  A rather great idea, don’t you think?  

I had a chance to try it for myself a few years ago.  The girls were small, and under my power then.  We toasted the new year at 8:30 and they were asleep by 9:00.  I wasn’t far behind them.  We woke up early, and went for a walk as the sun came up.  It had snowed hard during the night and the morning was muffled and still.  Unbroken snow lay all around the city; the only marks were from our boots and the sled I dragged behind me.  The girls, laughing and rosy-cheeked, took turns being pulled in the sled.  As promised, we were the only ones awake (as far as we could tell) and it felt like the whole world belonged to us.  It seemed we could feel our unseen neighbors—cozy and warm in their somnolence, they exuded a collective sleepiness that lay heavy over their houses like a woolen blanket.   It was seductive, that sleepiness, but the day belonged to my bright-eyed girls, and we were reveling in it.  

That New Year’s memory is one of my favorites.  We haven’t had another like it, though, because my girls discovered that they like to stay up late.  Veeeeerrrrry late.  

This year, we’re celebrating youth and exuberance.  Theirs, not mine.  We just went on a madcap dash to find Pop Rocks—somebody had a craving, and they were too excited to turn down.  I try to say, “Why not?” when I can.  Most stores were closed, naturally, and those that were open did not have any Pop Rocks.  The kids consoled themselves by building a fort in my living room, and playing a movie really loudly.  In a few years, this silliness will give way to sophisticated dinner parties, and we’ll celebrate that too, in its time.  

These teenagers remind me tonight of people I haven’t seen, or in some cases thought of, in over twenty years.  I wonder how they are doing, and hope their lives have turned out to be as fulfilling as mine.  

By the time you read this, December 31^st will have slipped away, and January 1^st will have quietly dawned.  

Kelby will have decorously held aloft a midnight glass of sparkling wine, and offered a toast as an ambrosial conclusion to their traditional rite.  

Peter will have slept well and risen, and greeted the day, full of renewed energy.  Perhaps he has already taken his morning walk, maybe with Max to liven up the quiet morning and to bark at all those silly people still a-bed on this first day.  

My girls and I will be among those still snoozing late into the morning.  We’ll sleep as long as the puppies will let us, and then we’ll pick up bits of fallen streamers, and wayward potato chips.  Some other New Year’s Eve, I’ll remember when my older daughter was fifteen, and she had her first New Year’s Eve party, and how they laughed all night long.  

I hope that as I’m writing this, where ever you are, and whatever form your New Year’s Eve takes, that you are surrounded by people you love, and that you are happy.  

Bonne année, meilleurs souhaits,

Tricia

Music of the Day:

• Jean Redpath, a true treasure of a performer and interpreter of traditional Scottish songs, performing live on Late Night with David Letterman (Letterman being as instantly captivated by her voice as we were):

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