Color and Descent

We sit on a hillside, still

green but the leaves are

turning in the endless cycle

of color and descent.

Between us rests a half-full,

half-empty bottle of dark rich

red, and we drink the liquid

grapes and we drink the prayers

and the sweat of the Rhinelanders

who settled here and dug stones

from the ground and planted and

survived and flourished and died,

adding their bones to the stone

and the clay and the soil, to birth

new memories of bottles of red,

and bottles of white.

About 40 minutes west and southwest, and 50 minutes south of St. Louis begins Missouri wine country. The area around Hermann and Augusta, Mo., was certified as an official US wine district even before any areas of California received the designation (as stubborn as Missourians can be, they managed to agree on classifications before the Californians did). Oktoberfest is big in this region. The wine industry died during Prohibition but began making a comeback in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, some 16 wineries are located in the area.

This poem is submitted for the prompt at TweetSpeak Poetry, which in October is all about wine and beer. (Seth Haines, who’s behind the prompts, must be getting free samples for promoting this.)

This poem is also submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

The bottle of wine in the photograph is Augusta Winery’s Norton, made from the Cynthiana grape, and my personal favorite.

Wines and October

You tell me it has faint strokes of citrus,

and I wonder how citrus could find

its way into Missouri clay, but it does.

Or that robust suggestions of cherry,

black courant and toffee (toffee?),

punctuated by smoky oak and pepper,

will splash my palate well with pasta,

grilled meats and Brie. But a hint

of cigar? Down my throat?

Accompaniment to duck and steak

and meaty stews replete with fatte

d’animal?

I think not; instead, I will sit atop

this hill of stones, this mount of pleasant,

my glass of Oregon redness in my hand

inhaling its silky smoothness,

its ripe black fruits and rich suppleness,

and turn my eyes to the sun.

I am not a beer drinker. There are two kinds of beers I have been know to occasionally partake of:  Guinness Extra Stout (“Taste It. Believe It. Become a Believer.”) and Corona Light – occupying two ends of the commercial beer spectrum. I live in the land of Anheuser-Busch, so you think I would average more than a beer every other year.

This may have something to do with how much beer my father drank. He liked Falstaff, which was brewed in St. Louis. I occasionally bike past the old Falstaff brewery on South Broadway, and see the company symbol sculpted in stone on the building façade, and think of my father.

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry, Seth Haines has posted a poetry prompt about Octoberfest. We didn’t have Octoberfest when I was growing up in New Orleans, but when we landed in St. Louis, we discovered Octoberfest about 90 miles to the west, in the little town of Hermann. Hermann was settled by immigrants from the Rhine River Valley, and they liked their wine. Today, Hermann is part of the wine production industry in Missouri, which stretches west, southwest and south of St. Louis. Even nearby southwestern Illinois has added a few wineries.

We’d go to Hermann in October, and we would find us some wine. At other times of the year, we head to Augusta, Missouri, much closer than Hermann, and visit the Augusta Winery (the town is also home to Mt. Pleasant Winery).

And having been blessed with a bottle of Merlot from Sineann Winery in Oregon, well, you can see where this poem came from – a found poem using fragments of promotional and advertising phrases about wines from Stone Hill Winery (Hermann), Augusta Winery, and Sineann Winery.

To see what others have been writing about Octoberfest, please visit TweetSpeak Poetry and say hi to Seth.

This poem is also submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Photograph: Bottles of wine by Jiri Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.