Lucinda Williams & St Helena Cab
It’s pretty impossible to forget a night in New York City downing a bottle of St. Helena Cabernet Sauvignon with Lucinda Williams in her dressing room. When I recall that evening, it isn’t pinned in my memory by the awe or nerves I felt from hanging out alone with this queen of country. It’s glued in place by the interplay between sounds & flavors of the moment: the folky reverberations of the artists onstage floating upstairs, the wine’s blackcurrant & tobacco aromas wafting out of the readily available plastic cup, and stories told by Lu’s gravel road voice.
The topic of conversation was cherishing her contemporaries. Lucinda had just finished her performance in a variety show, a duet with Emmylou Harris, and I arrived at the perfect time with a bottle to reflect within. As I drove my corkscrew into the best Cab of the bunch, she reminisced about the loss of so many artists who’d come up with and before her. It was December of 2017 and Tom Petty had recently passed. Her disbelief at the immediacy of his loss was palpable in the room; it hung heavy and stained the air already musty with the backstage area’s old wooden construction. Words formed slowly in between sips of wine, warbling out in disconnected stanza. She had opened a few of Petty’s final shows and found him to be in good health and spirits. They’d even taken some joyous selfies together.
As she reflected, sound & flavor made its mark on this moment. Her stories come to me now in plastic sidewall refractions of dark fermented fruit and a hint of perfumed beauty products in the air. Steve Earle’s growl could be heard emanating through the floorboards, his distinct Americana accompanied by vibrations of thick overdriven electric guitar and stings of red-hot fiddle a la The Dukes. My throat clenched around the Cab’s alcohol burn, stinging with the echoes of the sawing bow below as I struggled to swallow Lucinda’s sorrowful bereavement. We gulped this back together, allowing the pleasant acids to nest upon our palettes in the moments of silence needed to pay tribute in reflection. Those pauses for tasting & consideration as we poured out some of Napa’s finest rendered this experience one of a kind.
Lucinda reminisces…
…and I sneakily try to snap a pic while we sip… admittedly a little shaky.
So many of my experiences can be recalled by revisiting a tightly woven tapestry of sounds & flavors. As I turn to share this blend of sensory richness with you, I rejoice in the chance to re-taste, to remember, and to make new memories as our present seasons turn into the new vintage.