Some winery inspired poetry from Ridge’s blog by Christopher Watkins

On my way up to the  Wine Bloggers Conference 2009 in Santa Rosa Sonoma County CA, I stopped at Ridge. Even though Ridge is probably my favorite winery in Caliornia, partly because I got my start there and partly because they make GREAT wine, I haven’t been back since my last day working in the tasting room a million years ago.

It’s changed quite a bit. For one, there is a tasting room, not just a picnic table set up outside. And there are lots more picnic tables, many of them under a shade structure.

The views are the same–spectacular–and so is the wine. Honestly, I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels up there close to the sky, looking out over the fog fingers to the mountains ringing the SF Bay. And the wine, everything I tasted was lovely, full of perfect impressions of pleasure onto my palate.

I was spurred to visit for several reasons, one being that I discovered Ridge’s blog recently–it was started only a few months ago–and I really liked the writing there.

So I was overjoyed when, even though the tasting room is officially only open on weekends, they let me in–and I spent some time tasting wine and talking wine, writing, and blogging with tasting room manager and chief Ridge blogger, Christopher Watkins, who has an MFA in poetry.

For his one year anniversary at Ridge, he posted a series of poems about life about there. So, in honor of the Wine Blogger’s Conference, and for this week’s edition of the poetry train, instead of offering some of my poetry, I give you Christopher Watkins, who I will be nominating for a wine blogger award next year. Enjoy.

Crisp autumn morning;
a deer heart’s worth of inno-
cence stirs my soul.

In a clearing, the
new wind reminds me, you can
fall off a mountain.

At the insistence
of the wind, thin mountain brush
fidgets, pointing east.

Birdless, the wind-swept
air; snakeless, the cold, dry soil;
empty, my mouth, of words.

As might a painter’s
palette imitate the sky,
I try the mountain.

The wind, stripping our
revisions away, reveals
the first masterpiece.

Stone greets vine-root, brush
greets breeze, sun greets fog  — Grateful,
I take autumn’s hand.

If terroir is a
sense of place, then my soul is
a moveable wine.