Thanks to the proprietors of Good Grape, the Negress is musing about a lasting California wine experience in honor of the late Robert Mondavi, who created more than his share of them. In my case, I was in Los Angeles in January 1998 to compete on a game show in a tournament. I had done well enough on the game show during the regular season to qualify for the tournament and was excited about it all. I ate a kosher meal on the trip out on the plane ( this becomes important later) and made plans to dine with a super-smart friend who has an MD and PhD and speaks fluent Portuguese. He was (maybe still is) tanned to the marrow. We went to dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant not far from the home of the Golden Globes, which is where I was staying. I was on a Merlot kick at the time, in my innocence, and suggested we try a St. Francis Merlot. I think it was a 95 (the year. I didn’t know from ratings back then). Dinner slid down my increasingly sore throat as my friend and I reminisced about school days and he caught me up on his travels (this guy’s family does some of the best vacations). I also pelted him with questions (better than bread) about my newly minted chronic state. So the talk turned to drug protocols and experimental treatments. We did, at various moments during the conversation, stop long enough to remark on how much we liked the wine. We liked its softness, the calm balance of fruit and tannin, the texture like raw silk. For someone who was used to El Gato Negro and some early Texas wine follies, I was impressed. I had just left northern California a year earlier where I made so little money that I couldn’t afford to go to Napa and Sonoma or any other wine region there. But I was living higher on the swine in New Jersey so I made plans to go to this St. Francis on an upcoming trip back to Cali.
Well, the tournament went well. I lost in the semifinals, made $10,000 and then went back to New Jersey with a sore throat and other icky symptoms. The week the tournament aired on television, I was in a hospital in Paterson with a salmonella-filled abscess on my thyroid and a computer as I wrote about it for my former employer (either a strong work ethic or symptoms of madness). The chronic condition and the immunosuppresants I was on to combat it combined with the airline kosher chicken (the only thing I ate that no one else I ate with on the trip ate) to have me end up in isolation at a level one Trauma Center for about 10 days. I welcomed insulin, needles and one more hilarious tip (don’t inject insulin into an orange and then eat the orange. Inject insulin into your body) into my life. I staggered through a music conference in Austin a month later with needles in my purse and a fear of eating anything where I hadn’t interrogated anyone and everyone who had come in contact with all the ingredients. I drakn because I could.
All right, it’s kind of a grim story. But there is a happy ending. The summer of that same year I was at the St. Francis winery, marveling at the beautiful canopy road I had driven to get there, grateful I was off insulin and only had a small scar on my neck. I bought some more Merlot and some of their Cabernet Sauvignon. I ate at Auberge du Soleil, had delicious strawberry freezer jam at the B&B I called home while I was in Napa, and discovered Italian varietals and the Viansa winery on the same trip. Next week I’m doing an Italian wine dinner in Queens. I wouldn’t be going if it hadn’t been for the St. Francis Merlot, the game show money and everything else in between.
