Don’t ask me how…you don’t want to know, but I recently came across an old Vogue article titled, “Who Told Cindy to Remove Her Mole?” The provocative picture of a young Cindy Crawford circa, 1993 sauntering down the runway in Hervè Lèger obviously led me to the quick read. But, it was Cindy’s words that got me thinking about a few of my favorite things: wine, beauty, and truth.

According to Cindy, as a kid, her sister would tease Cindy about her now famous mole, calling it an “ugly mark.” For a period of time Cindy contemplated removing it. Her decision to live with her God given blemish was probably the best career decision she ever made. In a sea of ubiquitous beauty, it was this “ugly mark” that gave her “look” substance as well as elevated her natural allure. It was singularly hers, unforgettable and perfectly-imperfect. Above all else, I would argue, it made her authentic.

So what does this have to do with wine you ask? Well, Swigg is continually searching for Cindy Crawford’s mole, at least metaphorically. Adrift in a sea of ubiquitous, homogenous wine, beer and spirits that wash ashore at your local liquor and grocery store, polished up to look pretty and taste pretty (think lots of makeup), we are fishing for the authentic and the memorable, the beautiful and the profound…we are casting for Cindy, and the seas are, well… rough.

As the great twine writer Matt Kramer has stated:

“Many of today’s shallowest, most facile wines are created by winegrowers—and sometimes celebrated by wine critics—who dismiss, disregard or are even contemptuous of authenticity.”

These wine growers, critics and ultimately consumers are the same men and woman who probably think Cindy Crawford’s beauty would be enhanced or even saved by the removal of her mole…her authenticity. Rubbish!

The reality is that the “contemptuous part of authenticity” stems from the fact that many wine drinkers – and wine critics for that matter – as in life, simply reject what they cannot understand. Instead of keeping an open mind and realizing that Cindy’s mole is not an imperfection, and “authentic wine is not an abstraction,” they find solitude in a preconceived, juvenile, “one size fits all” notion of wine, beauty and taste.

To quote my hero once again, “The fine-wine transformation of our time is rooted in seeking the authentic, from the vines to deferential winemaking to the glass. It’s a matter of recognizing that there is indeed a real deal—and getting it.”

One of the producers that captures the “Real Wine” spirit of Swigg is Walter Massa. Every time I pour one of his wines, whether they be his “signature” bottles or his more modest offerings, they resonate authenticity, conjure visions of Cindy and make me want to take another sip.

As his national importer has noted:

“It’s hard not to get worked up about Walter Massa’s wines: He had a vision for a variety nobody wanted, worked in obscurity for years, rescued the grape (Timorassa), and doesn’t talk about himself but about the territory of Colli Tortonesi,” and after all these trials and tribulations has become the “Sound and fury of Italian sommeliers.”

Walter farms 22 hectares in 8 unique vineyard areas located in the forgotten Piedmontese appellation of Colli Tortonesi located in Northern Italy. If Walter is the beauty, the Timorasso grape is his “Mole.” Timorasso is an ancient Italian white grape varietal that hinged on the precipice of extinction until Walter resuscitated it. Though grown elsewhere in the appellation, Walter has made it his own. Timorasso is Walter’s letter of authenticity, a voluptuous expression of tropical fruit, Christmas spice, honey & bees wax with lip smacking minerality. There simply is nothing else like it. I sip Walter’s wines the same way my adolescent-self stared at pictures of Cindy, with passion and longing for more.

Like Cindy, Massa is not an unknown. Walter was Gambero Rosso’s viticulturist of the year in 2010, and his bottlings of Timorassa are considered some of the finest examples of white wine in Italy. Unfortunately, we live in Delaware, and there are limited bottles of Walter’s wines to drink, Hervè Lèger dresses to adorn, and there are certainly not many Cindy’s…but that’s ok, because I have Joanne, my own authentic beauty, and we always keep Walter Massa’s wine well stocked.

https://swiggwine.com/282-2/

Shorts is what Shacksbury calls an “early-morning, weekend-brunch, day-drinking, post-workout, pre-dinner, just-put-the-kids-to-bed, ‘I’ll take one more’ kind of cider.” Bright, citrusy and hibiscus notes, tiny bubbles, zero grams of sugar and a sessionable 4.5% ABV make this an instant must-have to your warm-weather beverage repertoire.

The bright aromatics featured in Shorts are the expert handiwork of Burlington, VT-based cocktail apothecary, Alice and the Magician. It’s a blend of natural extract of lemongrass along with whole flower hibiscus, which really pops against the clean, tart flavor of the fresh cider base, made with New England apples, including Mac, Empire, Gala, Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples.

Then there’s the amazing label art, designed by Austin-based artist and illustrator Will Bryant, who has done work for a huge range of clients, from Adidas to The White House. Bryant’s style is notable for its squiggles, dad jokes, googly eyes, and anatomically incorrect — but charming — wildlife. Check more of his work via Instagram.

To kick off your Shorts obsession, shop online or at your favorite bottle shop!

https://www.ciderculture.com/shacksbury-shorts/

I like to read books about natural history. It’s sort of a hobby of mine. I don’t believe there’s anything more terrifying than being confronted with the vastness of the universe. The loneliness that ensues with the awareness that we are exceptionally insignificant is sort of a mental and mortal roundabout kick to the human ego. Though I do not proscribe to any religious ideology… I’m a philosophical masochist at heart.

I recently started rereading Bill Bryson’s book “A Short History of Everything,” which if you have just one curious sinew in your soul, I would encourage you to read. Sadly, curiosity is a commodity these days, as there are more convenient myths than inconvenient truths. The 1980s has always been known as the decade of, “Living in Oblivion,” but with the rise of such groups as the “Flat Earthers,” I think the moniker is more synonymous with this day and age.

Whilst delving through Bryson’s genius tome I often think back to the “Flat Earthers,” and think how decadent a time we must live in for people to believe in such nonsense, and carry about their lives. For example, even though Voyager 1, launched in 1977 is traveling through our solar system at 38,000 mph, billions of miles away from us, and you’re probably reading this on your cell phone, there are actually people who believe the world is flat.

Science…forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

As Bryson points out, the average distance between stars is “20 million million miles away” (The millions millions, is not a typo). There are an estimated 100 to 400 Billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy (who’s counting?) and don’t forget this little nugget, The Milky Way is just one of 140 Billion or so galaxies, even larger than ours.” I’m sure Senator Clay Davis, of The Wire, would end all of this with a classic… “Sheeeeit.”

It’s been said by quantum physicists that time does not exist (at least the way we humans perceive it), and I’ve been told “that every distance is not near.” I have often felt the more knowledge I gain the lonelier I become. Maybe that’s why we have Flat Earthers? They just don’t want to be existentially lonely… or basically just lonely in their case. As Voyager I, the Stars and the Universe expand out of our sight so ultimately do the people and things we love dilate out of our world… but, Just a little at a time (So little at a time, you don’t realize it until they’re gone). Maybe that’s all death is…order giving into entropy, giving way to unfathomable expansion, creating unimaginable possibilities. And then…back again.

I took a little vacation last week over the 4th of July. It’s the longest I’ve been away from Swigg in quite a while. Rehoboth has always been my ancestral place of recess, and the sandy stretch of beach at the end of Virginia Avenue, has always been our families perch. Every morning we sleepily saunter from car to sandy nest, curtained by Maxfield Parrish painted clouds, and cocooned by a milky morning marine mist. Sitting under open sky, marooned on white sand, one gains a whole new appreciation for nuclear fusion.

Why is it, in the audience of the sun, and within the proximity of large bodies of water, time begins to slow within my mammalian brain?
I watched my children play in the water and I played with them. My wife and I smiled at each other quite a bit. I read some Hemingway, and took many half-asleep naps and dreamt of sailing, fishing and drinking. We played silly games, games of chance, games of skill and took home many shoddily made stuffed animals. This is what we did each day, and we lived what seemed like many days inside of one. We did this every day! We took deep breaths of salty umami air intermingled with even saltier aromas from restaurant fryers that seem to festoon the boardwalk. We salivated over the drifting scent of caramelized sugar wafting from confections being made inside ancient seaside buildings and discarded melting cream and glucose on the planks of the splintering wooden avenue.

Every day I would return home, sun smothered, dazed from the Vitamin D. Feeling loopy, in love with life, and the innocent introspective of my children and my wife’s smile. In my post sun-drunk content I poured a drink.

The first “drink” after a long day at the beach, is an important one. It is a moment to capture and accentuate the “high” nature has already given you. I brought a cache of Rosé down with us from a varying number of European locals. Nothing cerebral, just simple delightful stuff I can afford. I opened and poured a finely chilled example of such inside the stillness of my in-law’s house. Dorthy and I put on some deep cuts of Otis Redding as we prepped dinner. I began to pour big glasses of Rosé for she and Joanne.

Later in the evening my son and I went out searching for amphibians of the night. We captured several toads, and held them up to the slivered moon. We laughed at their beauty and design. So “cute” Griffin says. We scurried about searching for more specimens. I looked up into the light polluted sky and wondered where Voyager I was. I thought about the ocean’s tide I had played in all day and the Flat Earthers (Explain tidal forces). I thought about the distances between stars. I thought about Richard Manuel’s voice singing “I Shall be Released,” I thought about Bill Bryson (Man…the guy can f@#king write). I thought about entropy and time. And, I thought about what to drink next.

Griffin and I collected our catch and wandered home. Company had congregated before we had left. When we returned, we released or bumpy moist loves, and Griffin retired to a screen somewhere.

I poured another glass of overly chilled Rosé and rejoined the party.

Here is an article about Father Keely

“Monks don’t like change,” explains Father Isaac Keeley of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass. So it took some convincing on his part—and then, a lot of test batches—before it all came down to a high-stakes tasting of their 6.5-percent Belgian Golden Alein December of 2013, when monks from six Belgian Trappist brewing abbeys gathered in Brussels to sample Spencer Brewery’s beer. A unanimous approval made Spencer the first American brewery to earn the title of “Authentic Trappist” brewers—a coup for the monks, and, as one Copenhagen brewer told Father Isaac, “yet another symbol that American brewing had come of age.”

How did you come to suggest that the abbey start brewing?
Brewing is a very traditional monastic form of work. Now that we are brewing, I can easily see why monks like this kind of work. It’s quiet, thoughtful, deliberate, rather contemplative, and results in a really great food/beverage. So some of us thought it should be a very natural fit for us.

What was holding you back before?
Our usual approach is to do more of what we already know and do well. But we finally won over the “ear” of the monastic community when the monks could clearly see the other options were not going to work for us—e.g., more Trappist preserves, more vestments at The Holy Rood Guild, wind turbines on the flight path to the Worcester Airport, etcetera.

What’s surprised you about brewing?
Brewing has turned out to be a remarkable marriage of art and science for us, not unlike what it takes to live a monastic life in the 21st century. There is an art to becoming a monk and living a monastic life, but a lot of knowledge and life skills (the “science” of living successfully today) are requisite also. So we are finding work in our brewhouse surprisingly compatible with our monastic way of life. Now that we are on the far side of our Sabco system and are working in the new brewhouse, we are happily surprised by how contemplative brewing can be. It is increasingly clear to us why brewing has been such a traditional monastic occupation.

What’s next for Spencer?
Our identity is “Trappist brewery”—American Trappist brewery, and that is distinct from American craft brewery. It’s the craft beer movement and the cultural shifts it is inducing that in part make it possible for us monks to undertake our project, and we are very grateful to American craft brewers for their very significant contribution to world beer culture. Nevertheless, we have two different expressions of creativity. Traditionally and typically, Trappist breweries brew between one and three beers in all after decades, and often enough, centuries of brewing experience, whereas craft brewers create new beers and even beer styles relatively frequently. The monk typically expresses his creativity by working to perfect even more the one or two brews his brewery has come to call its own. So Spencer is going to keep refining Spencer Trappist Ale, brewing ever more consistently, fine-tuning what we believe is a classic Trappist refectory ale. In the process, we will be training more monks for the brewhouse, the cellar, the lab and the packaging hall, and growing step by step a beer culture within the monastic community.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/articles/10271/father-isaac-keeley-director-of-spencer-brewery/

It was another hectic week at the Govatos household. Per usual, I spent about 100 hours at the store. Meanwhile in a herculean feat of suburban mythological proportions, my equally overworked wife chauffeured our children around from practices to parties to exhaustion. However, at close of day and end of week, there must be early beds for overtired children and comfortable couches and real wine for sleepy adults.

Those weekend nights that afford Joanne and me some time alone, granted that we don’t fall asleep putting the kids to bed, I like to start with a negroni, then move on to more vinous territory. Though we have been adding a number of fantastic new producers to Swigg’s offering over the last several months, this weekend like the many hectic weekends before, I’m relying on an “old friend” to lubricate the jagged and hurried edges of modern suburban life.

I still remember when I pronounced Vajra with a hard J. Thank God, I was eventually corrected and, thank God, I was eventually exposed to what I now consider one of the finest wine producing families in Italy. Located in the Western corner of Barolo, everything this family seems to grow and vinify is “Spot-on,” delicious and amazingly affordable.

Like the cobbler’s children, who have no shoes, my wife complains as a wine shop owner we “never have any wine in the house.” However, we always seem to have a couple of bottles of Vajra’s Langhe Rosso lying about. A blend of primarily Nebbiolo, Barbera and Dolcetto with dashes of Albarossa and Fresia for good measure. The wine is what the family describes as an introductory to Piedmont. At $15 a bottle, it’s simply a humble, pleasing wine that tastes of its place of origin (Piedmont), has a fruit component that makes it easy to enjoy, and is extremely versatile with food.

This is no small feat. Most $15 wines today are made in facilities that could easily be confused for an oil refinery and seem to taste like a combination of Quaker State and cotton candy. For this taster, Vajra is wine equivalent of comfort. Like that reliable classic rock station that I always find myself listening to even though I’ve heard every song they’re going to play since I was cradled in the womb, and I damn near know every song they’re are going to play next. Yes!

With Vajra, I get that same reliability and comfort as listening to the tingly guitar licks of Keith Richards or David Gilmour at a price that allows my kids to run from Sports to activities to exhaustion.

So tonight, I will most likely pour a glass of Vajra Langhe Rosso, most likely because it’s the only wine I have in the house, put on some old Stone’s album and remind myself how lucky I am.

In the glass Vajra’s 2014 bottle of Lange Rosso is a youthful purple with dark red hues. As always with this bottling dusty cherry notes dominate the nose leading to sweet plum, dry forest and hints of menthol and rose hips.

Find the “There There” here at Swigg