Visionary California Winemaker Robert Mondavi died yesterday at his home in Yountville, California. He was 94. That’s a damned good run.
Even though anybody who knows me knows that I fucking LOATHE wine (it gives me an immediate and pounding headache, somethin’ fierce) as well as most of the phony, pretentious pricks who push it (I got your “playful, nutty, noble bouquet” RIGHT HERE, motherfucker), I can still acknowledge this man’s wondrous lifetime accomplishments. Mondavi was, after all, an ol’ school, OG Italian winemaker; he was bonafide.
In fact, when I heard of his passing, the first thing that crossed my mind was that I hope his family has plans to carry his fierce, ballsy old ashes high into the air above his vineyards, so that they may be allowed to rain down upon the land that he loved so much and tended for a lifetime — and finally become one with the soil that nurtures the vines that produce his prize-winning wine.
Then, at long last, Mondavi’s own physical essence shall be allowed to mingle with and inform the terroir* of the blood-red hooch he so patiently teased and beguiled, like a lover, from a coy and tantalizing earth — an earth upon which he spent almost a full century doing precisely what he loved, and famously doing it his way.
(Cue the swirling, awe-inspiring strains of The Circle of Life from The Lion King)
*Many thanks to the ever brilliant, ever cheesy for this bit of earthy wisdom and foodie terminology. I hope I did you proud, sir.
About muffybolding
Muffy Bolding is a mother/writer/actor/knitter/feminist/withered debutante who likes the smell of asparagus pee, and remains obsessed with the bathroom hygiene of her three children -- despite the fact that they are 23, 19, and 16. She is blissfully married to a cute Jewish boy who looks like Willie Wonka, but remains tragically in love with the dead poet, Ted Hughes. She has the mouth of a Teamster, and her patron saint is Rocco (pestilence relief.) Ms. Bolding lives in Southern California, where she enjoys typing words, making movies, and plucking the rings from the fingers of the dead. She was the co-creator and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning satire zine, Fresno Lampoon, and in between writing screenplays, carnival barking, and savagely threatening her trio of darling larvae with a wooden spoon, she currently publishes the zine, "Withered Debutante." More of her work can also be found in the anthology, "Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts", the compilation zine, "Mamaphiles III: Coming Home", as well as in The Cortland Review and hipmama.com. She is currently writing and producing for film and television, and working on a book of essays entitled, "Inside A Chinese Dragon." She has slept around, but not nearly as much as she would have liked.
muffy bolding 