Sometimes a bottle belies our expectations. It can be frustrating, but this is not always a terrible thing. I was around 15 and pursuing Amy Romero for the second time in my youth. Mixtapes were the secret to wooing anyone and my sister always lent me her CD player for noble endeavors. There was a song released years earlier that stuck with me, an easy listening radio favorite. It was by John Waite and was called "Missing You" (Tina Turner would later cover this song in 1996). 

You can write it off as 80's fluff, but I thought at the time that song spoke to our relationship, one that existed mostly through telephone wires. I didn't own this CD so I had to walk down to Music Plus (this was well before the internet and, perhaps, common sense). Flipping through the Ws, I thought I found it. One that looked promising at least. There was a faded image of a lovesick troubadour at his piano. I couldn't find "Missing You" on the tracklist but convinced myself this had to be it.

The album was called Closing Time. It wasn't by John Waite, but was the debut of Tom Waits. It was nothing like I expected, and not something I immediately embraced. But it later stirred in me. It struck a curiosity that I didn't fully explore until college, when I really walked through that mirror and into a world of sailors and saints, of thorns and thieves, of broken hearts and folks in a fix. Bourbon stirred with a rusty nail. True love. It was romantic and dangerous, like one's first carnival.


This Saturday at OAKLAND YARD we'll be pouring a fascinating flight of all natural wines. Rare releases offered by the glass too, all day long. These wines are unusual, gritty and honest. They stir and often later resonate. Full of fun and funk, at times both lively and confounding, exciting and strange. Like one's first carnival.

Come walk through the mirror this Saturday from 2-5pm. We'll have Hank Beckmeyer of La Clarine Farm pouring some of the most honest and dynamic reds you'll ever taste from 2600 feet up in the Sierra Foothills. Maybe he'll bring his goats. Andrew Nelson will be pouring Stirm Wine Co.'s racy Riesling along with his own Chuchaquis rosé from ancient vines in the Santa Cruz mountains. We'll have other oddities by the glass too. Nothing spooky, but all super natural. 

This is not a tasting that anyone should be missing.

See you there,

Daniel