You better look twice. Is everything what it seems?

Regentag in Kyoto - Rainy Day in Kyoto 48,5 x 58,5 cm

1995 CABERNET SAUVIGNON

The valleys here are beautiful, with their oak tree 

lined roads, the glistening vineyards, the vintage  

Victorian “cottages,”  some painted pink, some purple,

others lilac or pumpkin orange, with their gingerbread  

turrets and wrap-around porches and curlicues and furbelows

and architectural shrubbery. Any trained sensibility balks at the    

excesses of those who like it cute. And it is true that everything matches

and almost nothing fits—if you look too closely—like any arti-

fact of perfection—a Matisse, say, or a Vermeer—and even  

the powerful, seductive, possibly life-altering pleasure

in that first mouthful of a really good Napa-Sonoma cab sauv

can lead one to an artificial paradise. Interpretation(of dreams

or of sensation)doesn’t interest the profoundly superficial natives,

not really, it’s the swirl of colors in the glass that matters, that inexorable

undertow into a pool of smoky warmth and calculated elegance

and our moving away from it at the same time, a waking up,

as it were, to the realization that every year is as good as the next.*

*One of the complaints about the very best Californian Cabernet Sauvignons

is that—due to a stable climate, ideal soil conditions, and cutting-edge crafts-

manship—every year’s vintage is as superb as the last. Which is not considered as

interesting for the aficionado(or the market)as the bad year/good  year distinction.  

Dave Brubeck - Laura