If you’ve been following me on Instagram (@d_storytellah), you know that I usually end my posts with “Keep Sipping Lovely, Insta Fam.” The phrase is inspired by one of my favorite poets Willie Perdomo’s books “Smoking Lovely.” To me, the book is high like Curtis Mayfield, low like the djembe drummers I haven’t met, the ones who beat restlessly beneath the soil, especially the ones that sprout those natty vines. Like most authors and writings I love, there’s rhythm—not Zumba class, comma-or-die rhythm, but harmony of spirit and flesh which if we’re honest, is a beautiful, cruel disharmony.
I love language—the way it wraps around your culture, your history, your memory, the way it spreads and interrupts, heals and destroys. Language is a kind of lust in sound and when it joins with story and passion, it becomes so thrilling, I ache—palate-ache, pussy-ache.
My journey with wine begins with language. Well, first it begins with the Manischewitz Grape Concord Bottle my mother (Sistah Sonia) tucked away in a straw basket on top of the fridge. It was her Romanée-Conti. I’ll share more about her in future posts. But growing up in a Jamaican household, language and storytelling were intrinsic, carnal (Sistah Sonia’s Pentecostal tambourine instead of the djembe drums). Language was a way out and a way in.
When I was growing up, my parents cringed when I spoke the Jamaican patois they song-ed day and night and rejoiced at my pristine, white American English. And when I told my mother I was writing about wine, while she didn’t understand it, part of her thought this was another way “in.”
I devoted more than two decades to the study of wine and what I know for sure is that wine is a kind of language. There’s the language of the soil, the language of the winemaker, and the language we impose upon it—consumers, professionals, and curious folk alike. We impose our judgements and presumptions on the bottle like we do everything else.
The result is both dark and light, rude and welcoming, cruel and sweet, indifferent and lofty—all of this and more. But it never speaks pristine anything. It’s always a patois—a dialect you get or want to get or that you don’t get at all. It’s not exclusive or inclusive. It’s not simple or difficult. Wine is life—not the linear, good versus evil, American romantic comedy bullshit that if we’re not careful, can ravage any sense of self and real possibility. It’s messy. It’s Sunday church after Saturday hook-ups. It’s afternoon road rage afternoon after morning meditation. But it’s also memory’s music—voices clashing over fluffy rice and beans, sucking and chewing those sweet bones, kissing under a sangiovese sun while you’re in Negril or Miami, hoping this time, this time, the language you speak will be heard and cherished.
That being said, “Sipping Lovely,” is my homage to lovers of language and story, food and wine—the messy hearts, truth-seekers, the open contradictions, and perhaps the voyeurs.
The newsletter will grow as I grow, as we grow. It will be raw. It will be real. It will be honest. Ready, Fam?
Keep sipping lovely,
Dinkinish