Showing up in Connecticut

After showing up to claim my rental car without a license, quickly thinking: don't panic, it's got to be in the mess of your apartment...somewhere! there were no other glitches. Taxi's showed up at my feet, easy, to ferry me back and from the apartment where I knew exactly to find the forgotten document. There was no traffic. There was no stress. I thought. I solved the world's problems in my head. A great big, public thank you to Ted and Barabara who were responsible for bringing me out to the New Jewish Book Festival, Farmington Valley Jewish Congregation-Emek Shalom. The event was terrific, at least for me. I need to get out into the hinterlands a little bit more often because it is all too easy to sit here in the comfort of the shtettle where I can find everything I want. I get spoiled. I forget that not everyone knows who P***** is. And mostly I forget that not everyone deeply cares about wine. No wonder wine books are such a hard sell. Few people care. People were curious whether natural wines aged (I talked about some of my favorite older wines that predated much technology and aged beautifully: yes, I'd bet money they age and the others don't. Can they tell which wines have additives on the label? No, but you can read between the lines. Organic or sustainable or biodynamic grapes most probably means conventional wine. Look for Organic or Biodynamic WINE. Are these wines more expensive? No, mostly cheaper and taste better. But Ted, the organizer cared, as does his wife and a few of the people who showed up, One man actually drived up from New Jersey. One woman came because she and her partner wanted to grow/make wine biodynamically on a Napa mountain. Most gratifying was seeing people cozy up to the Cot and the Fleurie-- little too warm but still lovely. The more conventional wines were not overoaked monsters but every single one of them were cloyingly sweet in comparison. The difference between natural and non were dramatic, yet not clunky.