Benyamin uses a basket press the size of a large White Mountain ice -cream handcrank. He also has one of the more Lilliputian crusher/destemmers I've seen, made from redwood, with gleaming metal dowels. The device cried out weaver's studio rather than winemaker's. In step with this otherworldliness, the labeler looked like a torah scroll. Stacked in the rear were fanciful-painted panels of his Sukkah --the temporary lean-to-like structure he dines alfresco in for the holiday, that marks the marathon of holy days in the fall.
I'd landed in an unpublished chapter of I.B. Singer's In My Father's Court. I was somewhere in the refreshing Carpanthians, turning over rocks on the hunt for dybbuks and I could smell the wild strawberries and the freshly milked cows. But as the wind kicked some California dust into my nose and I realized I was quite far from the Polish mountains and wild berries and nymphs and spirits of the forest. I was merely in a Santa Cruz contradiction.
"Please don't touch anything, or we'll have a disaster," Benyamin instructed. To preserve the kosher status of the winery, anything that gets a fingerprint must be a fingerprint from a Sabbath observer. The fact that I was raised in the kind of household that pre-cut the toilet paper before shabbos didn't grandfather me in. I kept my hand on the Flip.
Benyamin was amused when I asked to see where he raised the wine, as if to say, why? But he guided us around the hill to the next shielded from the sun. Not a temperature controlled device in sight.
Jose's stomach audibly rumbled, mine followed. We needed food, yet we needed to taste, so we traversed the foliaged path to an unkempt cottage, a bachelor-like affair, infused with good-natured absentmindedness. We ntered through the kitchen, detritus was left behind from his morning of cooking. Just through the rustic kitchen was the dining living room and all of it in one open room. An english version of the Kabalah was splayed out on his table. The winemaker, it would seem, is more interested in reading than in cleaning, something I can relate to.
As I heard the stealth padding of little feet I chose my seat. That's when a red head peeked out of the draped table cloth. 
"Oh, that's Goldie Green," said Benyamin. That's because she's Golden and she lays green eggs."
He didn't laugh.
Neither did the chick, who wore the kind of expression that told me she'd be happier to hop on on Ben's seat and start to read about Divine Intellect or Divine Emotions than to leave the premises. Yet, guests were here and the chicken was on an exit path. Guiding her outside, Ben explained, "You see, she's really not a chicken."
TBC
(this is the second in the Kosher Vigneron series. Look for #3 soon.)
"Oh, that's Goldie Green," said Benyamin. That's because she's Golden and she lays green eggs."
He didn't laugh.
Neither did the chick, who wore the kind of expression that told me she'd be happier to hop on on Ben's seat and start to read about Divine Intellect or Divine Emotions than to leave the premises. Yet, guests were here and the chicken was on an exit path. Guiding her outside, Ben explained, "You see, she's really not a chicken."
TBC
(this is the second in the Kosher Vigneron series. Look for #3 soon.)
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