Since it’s been warm I’ve been walking to my job at a flower shop, it’s my main time to myself and I mostly use it to totally unspool before doing customer service. I let my heart open and melt over the smallest things. At least half the time I listen to Nicki Minaj’s hit “Moment 4 Life”. The chicory growing underneath the train tracks at Wabansia & Leavitt. While chicory is not really a Chicago only thing, it does feel like a beautiful Chicago thing to me. Seeing the bluish purple mass of buds at the beginning of day fills me with energy while also grounding me. It is summer it is the morning. By the time I walk home the flowers are closed, there will be new ones tomorrow.
Treated as a roadside weed in the city, Cichorium intybus (related to but distinct from one of my other favorites Cichorium endivia) was regarded as a symbol of its perseverance because of its long flowering season. Blue wild flowers are somewhat rarified and eye catching, which is likely while they catch my eye, and in the Middle Ages through 17th century were considered a source of apotropaic magic. From Greek meaning to ward off, apotropaic symbols and gestures help ward off evill You also may be familiar with chicory root as a coffee additive (like in Cafe du Monde blend coffee) or substitute. When chicory root is roasted inulin in the plant is converted to hydoxymethyl furfol, giving it a taste similar to a roasted coffee bean. A small trick for the brain when one cannot afford coffee and needs to also persevere through their day.*
I wish that I could have this moment for life
For life, for life
'Cause in this moment, I just feel so alive
Alive, alive
Last Monday I helped my friend Mike cook a paella he had been thinking about. We invited a handful of friends over to eat it along with some snacks and drink some wine. Mike covered a bottle with a sock and poured out a liquid that fell between dark pink and light red. Everyone immediately knew what it was, in the sense knew that they knew it but couldn’t speak it. I saw the cork when Mike opened it so I couldn’t play in the traditional way but I didn’t want to be left out of the game. Mike’s roommate Kat, maybe the best/my favorite wine professional in Chicago, was really on the verge. I gave her a bad clue, a story from my life. The first time I had had this wine.
I was at Red & White Wine Bar with my friends Rebecca and Ari, we were making a pit stop before going to Rainbo Club for some other reason, I can’t remember. We asked Kat to pick our wine for us, “please”. Kat walked me into the store and we did a lap together before she picked up a bottle of something and said, “Have you had this? It is the best wine.” So it was that for us. The 2017 vintage was very watermelon juicy and shot immediately to your heart and to your brain. We drank it fast, the three of us were almost finished with the bottle (we were crushing it) when my crush walked in the bar. We were leaving and it was so hard to leave the opportunity to spend spontaneous time together (Cub and I were talking recently about how “stolen time” is so important in why we like natural wine which we can save for a future blog).
In the middle of repeating this I thought that maybe it’s not really a helpful story to Kat, it was actually just another night of service and there are many wines for her that are the best wine. She though did guess Lamoresca Rosato, which was the subject of the story and the sock covered bottle in question. Every time I drink that wine I remember the butterflies at the pit of my stomach. It makes me a bad wine professional because the personal attachment I have toward the wine prevents me from approaching it subjectively even though it changes in the bottle over time and between vintages. It makes me a good wine professional because I will do my part to make sure Fillippo Rizzo gets paid for his vintage, not that he really needs me in particular. The wine is very good.
All of my favorite wines have a mundane life story attached, that’s how they became my favorite. Every time they are revisited my memory opens up, my memories attached to the bottles combine with the present and offer a strand of connection, a narrative that is nice to attach to. About my friends, about the person who I usually don’t know who made this possible. The memory is summoned and it is changed by the present, connected to the new experience. It’s easy to accept nothing is the same but you can have a trace of feeling back. A lot of times I try to open something my friend and I have had in the past even if they can’t remember. And then I tell them about the last time so we can have that moment for life:)
This is my moment, I waited all my life
I can tell it's time
Drifting away, I'm one with the sunsets
I have become alive
We are waiting on some Lamoresca Rosato right now and hope to have that along with a few bottles of olive oil and a mystery selection of new bottles in the shop for the weekend. If you’d like us to reserve you a bottle, let me know: rainbowwinechi@gmail.com
*My main source for this is this short article from the Journal for Experimental Botany
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