Report from the Zinfandel Festival

One of the perks of working at a winery is occasionally scoring free tickets to wine events, such as this week's Zinfandel Festival hosted by ZAP, the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers.  And so on Saturday morning, a friend and I headed over to San Francisco for the Grand Tasting event.  So awesome! I'd never been to an event like it, so I'm still a bit overwhelmed.

The first thing that happens when you walk in is that you get an 80-page booklet detailing all of the wineries at the event: first by appellation (where the grapes are grown); then by whether they are old vines or single vineyard wines; then by number of cases of wine produced; then by price; and then alphabetically by winery, including what vintages are on hand.

Then you hand over a ticket and pick up your glass, inscribed with the ZAP logo, that you will use to taste all the wines you care to taste and that you get to bring home as a souvenir.

Goody! A souvenir!

Then you walk a little further and a man wearing white gloves hands you a mini-baguette wrapped in a napkin.

Goody! Bread!

Then you think to yourself, "I wish I'd brought a tote bag," since you don't have the four arms required to hold wine glass, baguette, and program while taking notes on the wines you are tasting.  Nevertheless, you press on and enter...

the Grand Tasting itself...

where every Zinfandel producer from Acorn Winery to Zynthesis Cellars is set up...

with open bottles of wine, ready to tempt you.  It was daunting, and there's no way to do them all so you have to be selective.  We stopped by the Hendry table to say hello...

My co-workers, Luis and Angela (my boss!)

...and to get some suggestions on whose wine to try.  Even then, it was still too much to do; my sense of taste got burnt out pretty quickly. But with bites of bread and sips of water in between each sample, I think I was able to get a good sense of what I was tasting.

We ended up sampling wines from about 10 different winemakers, and it's astonishing how different they can be--even from one winery, going from year to year or location to location.  

Rosenblum (Alameda, represent!) was especially noteworthy for using grapes from different sources and having completely different wine profiles. All so good! D-Cubed, whose winemaker is the current president of ZAP, served both 2008 and 2007 vintages, which were notable for how different the years were.

Two of my favorites were the 2010 R.W. Moore Vineyard Zin from Robert Biale Vineyards--poured for us by Bob Biale himself--and the Mayacamas Range Zin from Storybook Mountain Vineyards.

I'm not going to say which one was jammy or peppery or had a lot of red fruit flavor, mostly because I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but I can tell you that tasting all of these Zins at once--well, first of all, I can understand why they gave out a baguette; but secondly, it was amazing to get the sense for what wine people are talking about when they talk about the differences among wines.  They were all so distinct.  I'm sorry I didn't get a better chance to write notes while I was tasting as opposed to scribbled memories on the BART train back home. But I tell you one thing, when people talk about how wines and wineries and vintages have individual characters, I have a better idea of what they mean. It's so fun to get the opportunity to learn something about it. What a treat.

Sunday Funnies, January 29

We're in the mood for a little poetry here at the Infusion, starting with this from Nate Silver's blog tracking the numbers in the presidential primaries:

You can find pretty much every species of poll in Florida right now.

There are polls where voters checked a box. There are polls that were reported on Fox.

There are polls that called the voter’s house. There are polls where voters clicked a mouse.

Though the numbers were here and there, the outcome was the same everywhere.

Unless there is a major glitch, Mitt Romney will beat Newt Gingrich.

Well, we'll see on Tuesday.

**
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the blogosphere, Tim Schenck, Lent Madness Uberlord, has written The Annual Meeting Haiku:

Budget blah, blah, blah
Something about Jesus Christ
Please up your pledges.

Think he's been to one or two? Naaaah.

Various & Sundry, January 27

I think my favorite obituary of the week was for ChiChi, "Perhaps World's Oldest Dog," who died at the age of  26? 25? No one really knows.  Poignant, though. “'We just feel completely empty; the whole apartment’s empty,' Mr. Pavich, 38, said in an interview. 'That little 10-pound guy fills up not just your apartment, but your life.'" Aww.

Also this week, I was very sad to see that organist Gerre Hancock died.  He was a master of improvisation, as you will hear if you listen to the improv at the end of this post. "When asked about the difference between sacred and popular music, Hancock replied: 'It's all sacred as far as I'm concerned. Some works better in nightclubs than in churches, but anything beautiful is sacred.' A fitting epitaph, and by that measure, he gave the world a vast treasure of sacred music." Amen.

 Liturgy geeks, take note! Jonathan Hagger, aka MadPriest, has started a new venture, offering New Words for Holy Communion, a monthly, downloadable resource providing prayers, intercessions, acclamations, biddings and blessings for use in the eucharistic services of the church. He does very good work, and I can imagine this being an excellent resource.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has done an amazing series of posts this week confronting some "comfortable history" about the Civil War.  They are long, but well worth reading. Part I addresses the situation facing Lincoln when he took office; Part II speaks of the economics of slavery; Part III compares the American Civil War with the end of slavery in other nations.

Part I ends very powerfully this way:

I have come to a fairly recent regard for Lincoln. He rose from utter frontier poverty, through self-education and hard work, to the presidency and the upper reaches of American letters. His path was harsh. His wife was mentally ill. His son died in office. He was derided in newspapers as ugly, stupid, a gorilla and white trash. For his patience, endurance, temperance and industry in the face of so many troubles, Lincoln was awarded a shot to the head.

Now in some sectors of the country for which Lincoln died, patriotism means waving the flag of his murderer. The party he founded supports this odious flag-waving and now gives us a candidate who would stand before that same flag and peddle comfortable fictions. What hope is there when those who talk of patriotism brandish the talisman of bloody treason?

The matter falls to you. Don't conned. Don't be a mark. Live uncomfortable.

Psst...need a Lenten program?

While I'm on this self-promotion kick, I wanted to make sure you know about the Lenten program I wrote for Every Voice Network.  Called Eat, Pray, Grow (which was not my choice, I admit) it's a five week program (natch) on food: how it's viewed in the Bible, how we use it in the church, its history, and its current place in our culture.  And I think it's pretty good.  If you're still casting about for what to do at your church for Lent, this program will give you everything you need. You can find out more about it here.

I just finished completely redoing the last session to talk about how we waste food.  This session was first inspired by The Big Waste, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and was a total eye-opener.  From there, I found the book American Wasteland and the blog wastedfood.com, both from Jonathan Bloom who has made reducing food waste his #1 priority.  After reading his book and blog, I can see why.  He estimates that in the United States, we throw away (are you ready?) about 40 percent of the food that is produced here.  FORTY PERCENT!

Between food left unharvested in the fields, food that is damaged in transport that grocery stores won't even put on the shelves, food thrown out by stores when they reach their sell-by date, and food left to languish in refrigerators, enough food is thrown away in this country to "provide three meals per day for 43 million people." Wow!

I highly recommend this book.  It will change the way you look at food wherever you may be.

Guess who's going to be a celebrity blogger?

Oh, go on, guess! No, not Queen Elizabeth...  No, not Miss Piggy.  Oh, all right, it's me! I've been asked to be one of the bloggers for Lent Madness, now entering its third year of high impact, head-to-head, saintly smackdowns as the blessed throughout the ages battle for the coveted Golden Halo.

Who knew that all those years of church calendar geekery would lead to such a prestigious position?  I'd like to thank Scott Gunn and Tim Schenck for including me in the tremendous line-up of celebrity bloggers.  It is an honor and a privilege.  And now I need to write some kick-ass profiles of saints.

So head on over to Lent Madness, check out this year's bracket, sign up for email updates, and generally get ready for some holy mayhem starting one month from now.  I'll be there!

Monday Morning Preacher: Me and my best bud, Phillips Brooks

Today is the feast day of Phillips Brooks, most well-known (rather condescendingly I feel) as, "The priest who wrote, 'O Little Town of Bethlehem'." But as I was looking into him a little more, I stumbled across his series of Lectures on Preaching, delivered before the Divinity School of Yale College in January and February, 1877, and I thought, "Brother! Dude! Where have you been all my life? Speak to me!"

Take, for example, his snarky critique of those preachers who love, as he calls it, the "bric-a-brac of theology": "I suppose that all preachers pass through some fantastic period when a strange text fascinates them; when they like to find what can be said for an hour on some little topic on which most men could only talk two minutes." Isn't that fabulous?

Or his take on personality, which he thinks is one of two elements of preaching (the other being Truth with a capital T): "Be yourself by all means, but let that good result come not by cultivating merely superficial peculiarities or oddities. Let it be by winning a true self full of your own faith and your own love."

The longer I preach the more I think one of the most important tasks of the preacher is to deal with your own stuff. Only I generally don't think "stuff." (In the presence of Phillips Brooks I feel I must show some propriety.) And by that I mean, the issues that are raised in your own life by the texts that week in the context of your situation. What does this bring up? What do you really believe? What is your genuine reaction and response? How does this affect you?

You deal with your stuff not on the congregation or through the congregation, but through the hard work of "winning a true self" before you even step in the pulpit. And in so doing, you can bring yourself to the sermon in a way that is not needy, or vain, or self-promoting, or self-avoiding.

So often when I go to hear others preach, I get the sense that they were not willing to go there, to deal with whatever their stuff is, and so they end up preaching, as Brooks calls it, through "criticism."

By the tendency of criticism I mean the disposition that prevails everywhere to deal with things from outside, discussing their relations, examining their nature, and not putting ourselves into their power...There are many preachers who seem to do nothing else, always discussing Christianity as a problem instead of announcing Christianity as a message.

I can understand the tendency, as "going there" can be very hard work.  Much easier to find something interesting in the commentaries and link it to the news than enter into our own issues and frailties, subjecting them to the light of the gospel.

I certainly felt that way this week.  It was a difficult week for me, preaching-wise, as I clearly found myself in the gospel's power.  The gospel text--the call to the first disciples to "follow me"--was the very first gospel I ever preached on, 12 years ago when I was in seminary and thought I knew what my career in the church was going to look like.  It hasn't turned out the way I expected.  At the same time, I believe that in all the zig-zags and reversals, I have been following Jesus as best I know how.  I feel I am doing what I am called to do.

 And so it was a very odd experience, seeing myself 12 years ago and thinking, "You have no idea," and seeing these disciples leaving their nets and thinking, "You have no idea." It was unnerving, in fact, and as close to an out-of-body experience as I've had. But the thing for me was that I both had to deal with my stuff and also bring my self to the preaching. And can I tell you, that was not easy. Not my best sermon either, but still one I feel good about, largely thanks to Phillips Brooks' encouragement and the sense I get from him that I was at least on the right track.

As he says,

The gospel you are preaching now is the same gospel that you preached when you were first ordained, in that first sermon which it was at once such a terror and such a joy to preach; but if you have been a live man all the time, you are not preaching it now as you did then. If the truth had changed, your life would have lost its unity. The truth has not changed, but you have grown to fuller understanding of it, to larger capacity of receiving and transmitting it. There is no pleasure in the minister's life stronger than this.

Sunday Funnies, January 22

In honor of Miss Piggy's recent guest judging on Project Runway, a little divatude:


Where's my mineral water?