Starblanket Red Blend, Paso Robles, 2018

With your mind you have ability to form
And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm
You close your eyes, you concentrate
Together, that's the way

-Klaatu, "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft"

Briar fruit. One of the first and most evocative descriptions I'd ever heard, used to describe the wines of Dry Creek Valley. Nick your hand reaching too far into the bush for that especially plump and dusty berry. Risk versus reward at the instinctual level. Into the mouth with a heady pop and a staining burgundy streak on your fingers, your lips and your clothes.

With Starblanket, that same brambly, uncultivated flavor is found with paysan varieties that showcase Paso's potential. Petite Sirah contributes a blackberry gastrique - hitting high and low with trembling acidity and plump, dimpled summer sweetness. The Grenache is a slinkier, kirsch-thick version that tastes like it's been tumbled through a dry riverbed. Two great flavors that taste great together...

In all my years of enjoying wine, it was never the high-art bottles that got me thinking cosmically. It's always a deceptively good but frank wine that steers the thoughts and conversation away from itself. Enjoy Starblanket thusly.

They call me the breeze/ I keep blowing down the road
I ain't got me nobody/ I ain't carrying me no load

-JJ Cale, "They Call Me The Breeze"