Wine & Words May

The Book:

Mink River Brian Doyle

Like Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Brian Doyle's stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people.

In a small town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking…

It's the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and readers will close the book more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world.

The Wine:

Old Love comes from one of Gretchen's all-time favorite vineyards out of Oregon. 

"OLD LOVE is a dry, white blend that dreams of capturing the summer sun in a bottle of wine. Aromas of fresh cut blood orange, salty lemon and aloe vera typify this racy, texturally rich white wine. Guided by mother nature, we combine the Big Salt process, with a proprietary aging process to elevate the terroir that each of our five vineyards bring us (citrus, salinity, bright acidity, florality, ripe apricot)" - Ovum Wines