If I needed a sign no one cares, then the fact I can count on one hand the number of people who asked ‘Hey Hannah, why did you name your wine Y’ is just that.
Thanks guys, love you too I’ll have my hand back.
No one seems to care – much, and never will as much as me, so I figured I should do what my mom and friends say and get on with it so I can get on with other stuff... So I did and thank god! Because now I have the time to take pictures that take too much time like the admittedly rather nice one above.
I thought names matter a lot. Consider the aura-stripping power of a bottle poured from a sock! Drinking wine blind is like using crutches, drunk, in pitch dark except someone also just spun you around and kicked away the crutch. But we do it because labels and names tell us stuff, and because sometimes these things can matter too much. (I think there are also people who think drinking blind is fun?)
Giving a name to a thing — a fear, a thought, a wish, an intention — (can) make(s) it (more) real, so one should give with intention. Or not! What does your cuvée name say about you? How personal is bearable, how much is yuck?* How much is a misplaced call for help? Must one just ‘feel’ it? Has the wine been made in the spirit of it? Must there be a hidden meaning to it?
The new nonchalant me has decided rien, none, no, not.
The new me has chosen names because she liked the sound of them. The look of them. Quelques-uns refer vaguely to opaquely personal stuff but most do not. Two I’ve stolen from the books of an author I love, three describe the look/feel/texture of the bottled stuff (one of which, d’ailleurs, is another book rip-off), and there’s one I cannot pronounce and wish everyone who wants to order it — the Chardonnay — luck!
The new me has also chosen a new name for me (so busy!) because my real name is not a wine name: and this is a fact that was confirmed to me this February when I saw it on an actual poster, which was weird. Besides looking out of place next to the likes of Babass, Balagny, Bouju, Bruyere for reasons more obvious than not starting with a B, ‘Fuellenkemper’ is just too officially… me? And my wines I feel are not — and probably won’t until I learn how to make what I want.
With a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to repeat something I’ve made which begs the question: who made it then? I don’t mean mystically or energetically or ‘I’m so laissez faire philosophically that I let the grapes become the wines they wish to be,’ but literally. All I do physically is go get the grapes, put them in press or tank, then let the juice ferment. The rest, the ‘now it’s a wine people want to drink’ bit is bibbidi bobbed boo-abracadabra to me.
Hence the new name (just the ABRACADABRA bit I mean).
It’s two letters shorter, in case you didn’t count, and unlike the quickly pretentious roads alchemy terms were taking me down — it's fun! Like me :) Plus! on posters, As come before the Bs. Not that anyone cares about names anyway.
p.s: Thoughts on the all CAPS?
* true story about the piercing btw.
