Clairette & fire: An old view of the future

Year 14, No. 12

July is always something of a strange month for me as while it marks the halfway point in the year for everyone, if you’re like me with a January birthday, it marks a halfway point in your own personal year as well.

Say what you want about the whole Zodiac thing, but I watch my Cancer friends frolicking about in sun-kissed shores, ice buckets filled with all manner of bottles, living up their most happy of birthdays. The envy, is real.

I can’t help but recall various birthdays of my fellow Capricorns and I where it’s cold, people are sick/still hungover, usually broke, and so few feel like celebrating. That or maybe we sea goats are just really unpleasant to party with because we’re very serious which, if you think that’s the case, then you’ve truly not partied hard enough with a Capricorn.

Whatever the perception of our being grumpy and less fun than just about anyone else, we’re actually a happy lot as it’s a fact that the most suicidal sign in Zodiac appears to be the Virgos! (**)

So the whole point in talking about this hinging of this year is that it’s a great vantage to look back as well as forward. This is why I’m happy to release the newest report on the official release of white wines from the Southern French region of Gigondas.

It’s been a long time in the making and, in my opinion well worth the wait as while I tasted a number of these for the 2024 Gigondas Report, they’ve evolved well in a scant few months and show great promise for the region as a whole going forward.

This Gigondas report looking to the future is then joined by an older, but still noteworthy piece I wrote about the Cain winery in Napa Valley when I visited a year after the Glass Fire of 2020 had destroyed nearly all their vines as well as the winery. They’re still rebuilding from that and while fires haven’t been a (huge) issue for Californian wine regions in the last couple of vintages, they seem to be coming back in force for 2024, so it’s still a very real threat.

Drink well, be well.

-Miquel

(*) Free to read

(**) I’m not making it up.