For a full review of the weekend (including tasting notes) see the post here.

I took inspiration from this event, and decided some time ago that for my next significant birthday (my 40th), I’d incorporate a wine tasting of some sort to celebrate wines from the year of my birth – 1971. Having just celebrated my 39th birthday a few days ago, I have officially kicked off my quest to acquire some representative wines from the 1971 vintage to open in April 2011 as I officially leave my “30′s”.

I start with two wines already in my possession, both gifts from my friend Roy on previous birthdays.

1971 Noval Colheita Port

As much as I am a fan of Port, 1971 wasn’t such a great year in Portugal for wines. This is one of the only Ports from 1971 that you can probably find out in the marketplace today. I’ve had the privilege of tasting a bottle of this Colheita Port on one occasion before and it was quite remarkable.

Here is my tasting note from the last time I tried this wine:

“Bottled 1999. Brilliant caramel in color, with aromas of spice and carmarlized sugar. Smooth and coating in the mouth, with great acidity. The alcohol still remains very balanced in this wine, and the wine has notes of dried cherries on the long finish. 94 points.” (Sept. 27, 2008)

Unlike Vintage Ports which are aged in barrels for 18 months and then bottled for additional aging, tawny Ports remain aging in barrels until they are ready to be bottled and sold. This allows gradual evaporation and oxidation that give the wine both it’s golden-brown color and typical nutty or caramel flavors.

A quick primer on Tawny Ports…

Tawny Ports without any age or date indicated on the label are basic tawny Ports, which are blended Ports and have spent at least seven years in barrel.

Tawny Ports with age indications like 10, 20, 30 or 40 years old are blends of wine from multiple years, with an average age of the wine inside at least 10, 20, 30 or 40 years old, respectively.

The third type is the Colheita Port (Colheita is Portuguese for “vintage”), which is a tawny Port blended from grapes from a single vintage year (like 1971).

Miller Williams
(1925 -  )

Of History and Hope

We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.
But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—
and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.
Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet—
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

April is National Poetry Month, so you get bonus a bonus poem this month (which is particularly warranted since I’ve been remiss in sending out the Poem of the Month on a regular basis lately).

It has been a very busy month for us, and we have had the joy of celebrating, among other things, my parent’s anniversary and 7 family birthdays (including my daughters, and my own today).

I’ve begun reminiscing a lot about what birthdays meant to me as a child, but also thinking about what they mean to me now as my own children grow older. My daughter Emma just turned 9 last week (with my son Alex reaching the “13” milestone a month ago), and it is cliché but so very true for every parent out there that in the blink of an eye, it seems, our small infants have grown up overnight, developed personalities, quirks, and lovely natures that we don’t seem to have much control over any more. We raise them in the best possible way we know how, and then comes the moment when they cross that invisible threshold and cease to be a little “us” and are suddenly their own little “them.” It is a brilliant, humbling moment, and is usually only recognized in hindsight. I can only imagine that it must have been exactly like this for our own parents years and years ago…

Yet that moment also holds hope – hope for their future – a future (as Miller Williams’ poem points out) that we as adults will never be able to fully see. It doesn’t exist yet, but is the expression of everything we hope and dream our children’s world will be one day.

I thought I’d turn to two poems this month to celebrate the dichotomy of birthdays – the helplessness of watching our children grow older, and the possibilities embodied in the year(s) ahead.

Gerald Stein
(1925 -  )

Waving Goodbye

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway.

An annoying – though thankfully non-destructive – virus decided that my computer would make a good temporary host, delaying the March Poem of the Month.

The confluence of the virus with Spring Break didn’t speed up the healing, but thankfully the patient has now made a full recovery. With the remnants of Spring Break still lingering in the air for many of us, I thought it was an appropriate time for a poem about travel…and birds.

Happy Spring everyone!

Stewart

Timothy Steele
(1948 -   )

In the Memphis Airport

Above the concourse, from a beam,
A little warbler pours forth song.
Beneath her, hurried humans stream:
Some draw wheeled suitcases along
Or from a beeping belt or purse
Apply a cell phone to an ear;
Some pause at banks of monitors
Where times and gates for flights appear.

Although by nature flight-endowed,
She seems too gentle to reproach
These souls who soon will climb through cloud
In first class, business class, and coach.
She may feel that it’s her mistake
She’s here, but someone ought to bring
A net to catch and help her make
Her own connections north to spring.

She cheeps and trills on, swift and sweet,
Though no one outside hears her strains.
There, telescopic tunnels greet
The cheeks of their arriving planes;
A ground crew welcomes and assists
Luggage that skycaps, treating bags
Like careful ornithologists,
Banded with destination tags.

I was exchanging emails with an old high school friend last week discussing our 20-year reunion, coming up this summer. One comment in her email struck me, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since – “Could you have ever imagined 20 years ago that you would be where you are in life today?”

I saw the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” not too long ago, and one scene in the movie asked a similar question. Brad Pitt’s character narrates an unfolding of events that culminated in an accident that proves crucial to the plot of the movie – “If only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab…”

I can say that I’ve had moments in my life when I’ve applied the same logic to some tragedy or other painful experience – I’m sure we all have. But I can also say that as I sit here sipping a cup of hot tea, my children sleeping quietly down the hall, my cat Emelye curled up in my lap and purring softly, a wedding a few months away, my friends and family on my mind, and a whirl of moments I have experienced, decisions I have made, and paths I could have traveled down, there is a peaceful feeling that life resolves and places us where we are meant to be when we are meant to be there.

Could I have ever imaged 20 years ago that I would be where I am? No. Can I image where I might be tomorrow, or a month or year or 20 years from this moment? No, but like Mary Oliver in this month’s poem, I am extremely optimistic…

Stewart

Mary Oliver
(1935 -  )

Walking To Oak-Head Pond,
And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit
In The Next Days And Weeks

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled–
I’m wading along

in the sunlight–
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead–
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon–
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from–
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind–

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage–
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

Today marked the passing of one of the country’s true literary legends, John Updike. I hadn’t featured one of his works since September of 2004, when I shared his poem “The Angels” , so it seemed fitting to dedicate this month’s selection to Updike. I thought this particular poem appropriate to his passing – “…know we go to sleep less to rest than to participate in the twists of another world…”

I hope you enjoy this poem, as we welcome in a New Year, a New Government, a new hope just around the corner…

John Updike
(1932 – 2009)

Tossing and Turning

The spirit has infinite facets,
but the body confiningly few sides.
There is the left,
the right, the back, the belly, and tempting
in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,
that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation
in one or another arm.
Yet we turn each time
with fresh hope, believing that sleep
will visit us here, descending like an angel
down the angle our flesh’s sextant sets,
tilted toward that unreachable star
hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence
dreams and good luck flow.
Uncross your ankles.
Unclench your philosophy.
This bed was invented by others; know we go
to sleep less to rest than to participate
in the twists of another world.
This churning is our journey.
It ends,
can only end, around a corner
we do not know
we are turning.

It seems easy to look back at this year and remember all of the tumultuous events that marked 2008 – economic implosions in the housing markets and then the financial markets; terrorist attacks in Pakistan and India; Governors in New York & Illinois taking precipitous falls from grace, straining our faith in our elected leaders; continuing genocide and humanitarian crisis in Africa; and war and conflict in Russia, the Gaza and yes, still in Iraq & Afghanistan.

But the wonderful thing about our human spirit is that we carry on with hope for something better in the coming days, months and years. Sometimes, an American Olympic Swimmer DOES break all of the records; sometimes BOTH candidates are about doing things a new way; sometimes people DO find the loves of their lives.

Wishing you all a wonderful new year,

Stewart

Sheenagh Pugh
(1950 – )

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

It’s been a busy month here in Seattle, and there were so many wonderful things to celebrate and be thankful for during this last month and especially this Thanksgiving weekend.

Since last month’s Poem of the Month, I accepted a position with T-Mobile as their Manager of Finance Training and Career Development. My role with TM is to develop job competencies and career paths for the 900+ employees in TM’s Finance organization. I’m very thrilled to join such a great company.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, our festivities included my kids getting to meet their “new” cousins from California, who came up with their families to celebrate Thanksgiving at Jody’s parents. It was a convening of the Kealy clan that included Brothers, Sisters, close family friends, and an Aunt and Uncle. We all hit the Seattle Thanksgiving Parade, and to round out the weekend, Jody and I were lured into attending a surprise engagement party, where we got to spend a wonderful evening surrounding by new, and old, friends.

I hope that your Thanksgiving was filled with joy, hope, and that wonderful recognition that life creates infinite things to be thankful for.

Warmest wishes,
Stewart

Starfish
by Eleanor Lerman
(1952 -  )

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

I began this month with my annual Port wine trip to Portugal with our For The Love of Port tour, spending four days in Oporto visiting the Port Lodges, and then travelling the 100 miles up the Douro River for four days, visiting 7 Quintas over the remaining four days. The harvest was in full swing while we were there, and there was considerable buzz not only about the 2008 harvest being picked, but also the developing quality of the 2007 vintage that has been in casks for a year. For the wine lovers and Port fans, my tally for the week was 176 wines, ranging from two 1937 colheita Ports to 2007 Ports sampled directly from the barrels, to even a few 2008 wines, whose grapes were literally crushed hours prior. Other highlights included a once-in-a-lifetime dinner at the fabled Factory House with some of the luminaries of the Port industry and being able to once again climb into the big stone lagares at Quinta do Crasto and actually do some grape-stompin’ myself. We had a great group travelling with us, and it was a very memorable return to Portugal for me.

After Portugal, my lovely girlfriend Jody met me in London, and we spent the next few days enjoying the London sights and culture. We saw “Wicked” in London’s West End, and attended another Port tasting. After a week of drinking Port, you would think that I’d be looking forward to a break, but this monumental tasting of some of the great Ports from Cockburns could not be missed. The 23 Ports on the day’s tasting agenda included Cockburns Ports from 1896, bottles from every declared vintage, 2007 cask samples, and even a bottle from the non-declared 1977 vintage, which basically doesn’t officially exist. It was provided from the private reserves of Cockburn’s winemaker, who joined us for the event from Portugal and added absolutely wonderful commentary about the wines throughout the night.

How could one top such a week and a half? A surprise trip to Venice for Jody, who thought all along that we were just going to spend “a few days in Scotland” after London. The weather was warm and perfect, the city was absolutely magical, and as the final exclamation on an unforgettable two weeks, we got engaged at dusk in the plaza of San Marco, steps from bank of Venice’s Grand Canal.

For October’s Poem of the Month, I give you a selection from the prose Poet Louis Jenkins…

Louis Jenkins
(1942 -  )

Flight

Past mishaps might be attributed to an incomplete understanding of the laws of aerodynamics or perhaps even to a more basic failure of the imagination, but were to be expected. Remember, this is solo flight unencumbered by bicycle parts, aluminum and nylon or even feathers. A tour de force, really. There’s a lot of running and flapping involved and as you get older and heavier, a lot more huffing and puffing. But on a bright day like today with a strong headwind blowing up from the sea, when, having slipped the surly bonds of common sense and knowing she is watching, waiting in breathless anticipation, you send yourself hurtling down the long, green slope to the cliffs, who knows? You might just make it.

I’m heading out tomorrow for my annual trip to Portugal’s wine region, where I will spend a week with wine friends touring and tasting through the Douro Valley. This will be my third year visiting there during harvest, and one line from this month’s selection, “The long brown path before me” makes me recalled the rugged beauty of the rocky Portuguese vineyards seemingly far away from the rest of the world. The Douro Valley is a far cry from places like Napa or Walla Walla, mainly because there simply are not a lot of tourists, shopping, spas, or other amenities you’d fine in many other wine regions. Maybe I love it for the fact that such a place of simple ruggedness and beauty produces such amazing Ports and wines from its rocky soils. It’s a magical place, and I am looking forward to arriving there in a matter of hours.

Portugal will be followed by a few days in the UK, visiting friends, catching a show in the West End, attending a monumental Cockburn Port tasting reaching back to the 1890’s,  enjoying some museums and…well, since I’ve always been such an Anglophile…just taking in the sheer history of the place.

I hope you are all doing well, and I leave you with a selection from Walt Whitman’s Songs of the Open Road…

Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)

From Song of The Open Road

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

Walt Whitman
(1819–1892)

Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.