PIGSTOCK: PART ONE
How does a woman, who has carved out a persona for herself as a diehard New Yorker who gets hives west of the Hudson, survive eleven days in the land of sun and heat and Californian wine and people who actually say hello to you--strangers (!) on the street?
It's really not so hard.
Eat at Coco 500 in San Francisco. Eat at Azizza in San Francisco. Drink plenty of French wine at Terroir Wine Bar (you got, it San Fran). Drink Italian mineral water. Go to Lou On Vine in Los Angeles. Sprinkle in some Palate Food & Wine. Fall in love. Score some Hook cheddar (from Wisconsin). Drive through the desert without air conditioning (builds character). Find some winemakers who eschew new wood even on their syrah and pinot. Eat a peach. Why not? Someone has to do it. Go to Pigstock. People the pig table with plenty of ex-pats.

Pigstock, the event, was held last shabbos. I was delighted to get the invitation from a friend with whom I had recently reconnected-- a Vermont ex-pat living in Carneros. We have known each other peripherally for 15 years or so, and until just a few weeks ago had no idea we had so many life experiences in common.
She, also she a dancer, ex-poet, attended Stony Brook back in the Jimmy Carter era. Even more interesting was that we both regretted not accepting up our (then) poetry professor's invitation to cavort underneath the sheets or in the woods or where ever our hearts would take us. "Oh, my! You too?" (So much for feeling special. Did he really try everyone? Probably.)
Still, What were we thinking by saying no?
Back to Pigstock.
The event, an annual one for her was held on an idyllic spot, up off Moon Mountain road in Sonoma. The road was twisty and Manzanita lined and snake crawling and yes, beautiful. If Hanzel and Gretl got lost in Sonoma, it would have been here. When we arrived, the pig --foraged by the great forager Angelo--was off of its spit (was wondering why it wasn't buried in the ground, but I'm pig-impaired).
But back to the table of ex-pats.

A Pig reveler with Pigstock propaganda
Pig was served.
And the wines came around.
PIGSTOCK:PART TWO
The sun was a tourmaline. So clear it could have been eight in the morning instead of near to five in the afternoon. We were late and from the many happily toasted faces, everyone else had started popping corks before we arrived. While the pig was being dissected, Brian, the head Dottore of Dalla Terra who I met for the first time, approached us with a bottle of 1983 Ockfener Bockstein Auslese. My friend got a taste. He did not share. But still, it was a sign for good things to come.
After debating which table, I looked approvingly at the Sablet, a Rhone Village I'm partial to, in the middle of one and sat accordingly. After a sip and soon rooted about to see what else was standing up. After a few seconds I saw the beast. There on a table not for from the pig was a 1994 Clape Cornas. I felt like Golum looking at the ring. Could I just pluck it from the table? No. How could I do that? Really, how greedy could I possibly be? Never the less, I rushed back to my table, grabbed a glass, ran back to their table and summoning up a genuine friendly kind of smile asked if I could possible steal a taste? I tried to be, you know, nonchalant, as if it didn't matter more than mere intellectual curiosity.
"Sure," one guy at the table said, "it's not as if there's not enough bottles here,” he said motioning at the other selections on the table. None of which interested me.
The man had no idea. He had not a clue that the Clape not just any bottle of wine, but the blood of Christ.
It was then I realized I could have said, "Let me take relieve you of this tired old thing, and let me give you instead a bottle of the Coppola?
But I was too embarrassed at how much I wanted it and so I merely poured a hefty pour, enough to share, and went back to the table.
Taste? Dubious storage. Seemed a little tired. But I was so happy for the silty, sweaty experience of the syrah. It had been too long since Clape met my tongue.
I was happy enough, between that and the Sablet, I could make do and probably drink far too much. Then this man at the table, John, a bearded New York City expat who lives not far from the San Francisco airport. held out a 1997 Michel Faraud's Domaine Cayron Gigondas and dramatically posited, "And now, to taste death.
John and his wife Nickie worship at the alter of ancient wines. We were in for a good ride.

PIGSTOCK: PART THREE

The taste of death and its prophet
John's death comment, did it come from some self-depracating place, not knowing that I too, and my friend were like-minded necrophiliacs?
Or was it the pig-eating talmudist within who loved to toy? Nickie, pronounced that she couldn't drink young white wines (an apt comment for an anthropologist) at all and she wore it as proudly as she did her New York-ex-patism. We couldn't have had a better table.
John went to check the wines he had exhumed for the Pig. He returned with 1996 Mount Olivet. More death! Someone who wore a Mac baseball cap came by to see what our table was drinking. He toted a Barossa Shiraz that he loved and just didn't see that its profile didn't match the wines on the table. He must have thought we were way more open minded than we actually were.
The 1996 Mount Olivet was (no notes, I was off duty) but --it was Chateauneuf at eleven years, the perfect age, my glass kept on being filled as it was being drained. Mr. Mac spilled his Barossa for the occasion. He poured some of the Olivet into his glass and held the brick colored wine up to the tourmaline light and said, "Look at that oxidation, dude!"
It's a kicker that made us laugh--hard-- until I was delivered to the red eye the following evening.
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END OF PIGSTOCK
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