Winery review: Carboy

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A post shared by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers (@kristianewriteswineries)

Visit the Carboy website

Ambiance: Farmhouse winery. This unassuming spot and warehouse are surrounded by vineyards and gorgeous mountains. There’s a space inside for tastings, but the backyard has a stage for fine live music, and the upstairs space is a slice of winery valley heaven.

Tasting: ($15 tasting for 5 wines)
Tasting style: 5 wines, 1 glass at a time, encouraged to be at the bar inside.

1. Sauv blanc, fruity scent, like apple juice. 
2. Blan.co, close to Chardonnay, acidic light, sour 
3. Rosé, fruity and bright, minerally.
4. Syrah, smells like wet cherries. winter spices, warm. Fruit forward. 
5. Malbec, dry and tannic. 
What I brought home: Reserve Sauv. Blanc

Summary: Carboy’s wines range in all kinds of styles. Most of the grapes are grown here in Palisade, and being surrounded by what you’re drinking is really special.

Dog friendly: Yes, on the yard (no dogs on the upstairs balcony – so visit twice!)

Food availability: Yes. Carboy offers a variety of boards, panini, bagged snacks, and pop cans for the whole family to enjoy a picnic on the lawn. 

The Lure Tree

Because we make wines 
that taste like the land,
I take my corked bottles
to the lake by the Colorado river
and sip quietly 
where there are dozens 
of plastic lures
colored like a carnival
tangled up in the cottonwood
like prizes to be won over the water. 

Because I drink wines 
that remind me too much 
of reed-tinged mud,
I’ve spent so much 
of my childhood cradled 
by soft emerald grass,
that I do crave cups full 
of riverbed, and for whatever reason
I often forget to walk barefoot 
or just sit in my own pillowy 
earth grass too often,
I take my time 
taste the glacier-cold river,
sifted mineral and tart.

Aerating techniques

Dzia Dzia sits at the kitchen table
spoons apricot preserves onto Saltines,
I’m just a child and my whole world is inside my house.
Sometimes, I wish it were still this way.
Mostly, I take each day with a sip from different glasses
of wine around this sleepy canyon town on the river.

Every once in a while those sips bring me back to that table,
eating crisp or buttery crackers,
thinking hard of which jam I’m tasting.
I chase the tastes of wild blackberry foraging
with my stained small hands, small dark berries as sweet as
gray rain rolling across the Mesa, clouds,
low cotton candy for pulling, swirling.

Sort of like swirling a glass of wine
but once at a tasting the vintner told me it would take years
of playing gravity on a glass for it to aerate –
And now when I watch someone’s hand
grasping the cup and stirring up a tornado, I think of futility.
But tannins always welcome water, and I dip my empty stem
in the freezing river for a rinse before heading home,
inside so this desert can drink, I sit on the covered patio
drinking a mineral forward red blend
reminiscent of the rare petrichor this monsoon season brings.

Album: Smoke After Midnight

When Down the Way by Angus & Julia Stone plays we are outside and you’re smoking your second cigarette since we’ve been sitting here. It’s around or after midnight, and the stoop is tiny and open. We can’t see stars but we can see the humidity as it hangs around us. Heavy is how the air, us, and the album feel.

Monday’s Thanks

Today I am thankful for…

1. My mother

2. Soft beds to lounge in all day

3. Ceiling fans

4. Refrigerator ice makers

5. Having/learning patience

6. Black Friday deals

7. the internet and it’s searching capabilities

8. laptops

9. fuzzy socks

10. Living in the mile-high city, living closer to the sun’s warmth

Writing Prompt: A Week to be Thankful

Every day this week, write a list of 5 – 10 things you are thankful for– the only catch is you cannot repeat any item during subsequent days.

 

What are all the big and teeny things you’re thankful for?

Move On

I have a confession to make. I have an issue letting poems be finished.

I’ve been revising the same shards of poetry for years now. Some of them, probably five years. Some have been published. Some are in the process (keep your fingers crossed). I focus on these old pieces instead of harboring new ones. I erase, re-order, mash up multiple poems. I keep re-purposing the same strings, keep re-tilling the same fucking land with no growth. 

Last week I read a prospect which blew me away: “Is there a specific book you’re trying to push out into the world that is giving you a major headache? What would it feel like to step away from that book and not look at it at all for two months?” I always thought I was a “do a task until it’s done” kind of person. I always thought this was the way of the world when it came to writing a book/collection. And maybe part of it still is. However, I actually paused after considering that question. What do you mean I can step away from a project? What do you mean I can not look at it for two months? Maybe longer?

Earlier today, I opened the same tired Word Doc full of poem fragments of the past–all those retold snips I keep frankensteining together to keep alive–and the doc was blank. I looked for History but hadn’t opened the doc in five days and there was no history to view. So the fragments are gone.

But you know what? It’s okay. It’s forcefully freeing me of those fragments I couldn’t let go of. And now I am letting it go.

Hey. I am just here to tell you: if you are kicking the dead horse of your work, maybe you should step away for a couple months. Or trash the project. It’s okay.

You have permission to move on.

 

 

Fire for a Boy in Fire

The cold door wrist
oh! Bodies are jumping in the lakes of

without grasses
I dig them out, a bloodline to sink onto

a peninsula to anchor the ankles that skid
over for itself

all that ocean a table rattles
embedded with broken statues

forgot
you jump-start my nostalgias and you’ve ambled

all over with me, dunes inside ribs or cages
The traverse of purpled nightscapes

next, a starlit whisper
except as it is the pulse of

I can’t say your energy wouldn’t be stronger as ghost
but I can speak to the difference this world will give (as you’d take you)–

Or the car after
(it has fire it has waves)

I am here to speak and be authenticated
My hands blanket the distance like dandelions

as I read In Loving Memory framed on the shelf,
I think of you as ritual 
and more than a deck of hearts break

I am not sure I can eulogize [this ache, your grief]
again

How To Write a Mimeo Poem

Title: “______________for a ____________ [preposition] _______________”
The [adjective] [noun] [body part]
[exclamation] [noun for a group] are [past tense verb] in the [vague noun] of

without [plural noun]
I [verb] [pronoun], a [noun] to [action verb] onto

a [place] to [noun] the [body part] that [action verbs]
[preposition] [preposition] itself

all that [place noun] a [noun] [plural action verb]
[synonym for ‘stuck’] with [plural noun]

[action verb]
you [action verb] my [body part] and you’ve [past-tense action verb]

all of me, [noun] inside my [body part]
The [action verb] of [adjective] [place noun]

[transition verb] a [noun]
except as it is the [noun] of

Or the [noun] [preposition]
(it has [opposite noun 1] it has [opposite noun 2])

I am here to _________ and be __________ed
My [body part] [noun] the [noun] like [plural nouns]

 

(Diagram uses Kathleen Fraser’s “Song for a man in doubt”, from Change of Address & Other Poems, Kayak Press 1966.)

 

Prompt: Who is your family?

(As gay people,) we get to choose our family – RuPaul

Make a T column. In the left column, make a list of who from your blood relatives you really consider close family.
In the right column, list who from non-blood relatives you consider close family.

Then, after considering the lists, write a poem/essay answering the following questions:

What is the difference between blood family and chosen family? What are the pros of having blood relatives? What are the cons?

What are the pros of having freedom to call someone a family member? Is there freedom in picking who you call family?