Sunday, March 30, 2014

Pulling cork: The problem with the other side of the table is there's no time to taste wine

                                 Black Bottles  
   The 2014 California futures tasting at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, near the Mall, came off with its usual smooth efficiency yesterday. Offered for sampling were barrel samples mostly from the excellent 2012 vintage and some from the lesser 2011. The idea behind the tasting, in case you're wondering, is to sell high-end wines before they're finally released, assuring those who can afford them a case or more that usually sell out before they're released. Early buyers also get a bit of a break on price.
   I stood behind a table pulling corks from unlabeled black bottles shipped from Napa Vally, and apportioning dollops of Dunn Vineyards' Howell Mountain cabernet sauvignon to the legion of proffered glasses. These were mostly collectors and enthusiasts from all over, the most common comment being, "Dunn's reliably good," with a couple of "Dunn's the best," high praise indeed in that company.
   This is the top Dunn cabernet, costs $90 a bottle, and comes exclusively from slopes high on Howell Mountain on the east side of the valley, some planted as far back as the '70s. (For particulars go to: http://cjonwine.blogspot.com/2014/03/pouring-for-randy.html) I tasted it right off and was struck by a freshness straight out of the barrel, the tannins masked and the fruit surprisingly fresh under the overall smoky assertiveness of inky new wine. One reason for its approachability was its relatively low alcohol (under 14 per cent). After it had sat in my glass for an hour I tasted it again, and formidable tannins romped, presaging a long life for the which these cabs are known, and big rewards way down the line. Like maybe in 2025.
    Since I was alone I couldn't make the rounds of the tasting tables, as I had hoped. Finally I accepted the offer of a former journalist to cover for me while I sampled some of my neighbors' wine. A couple of standouts, new to me, were the Barnett 2012 Rattlesnake cabernet, made from fruit limited to one and a quarter tons per acre because of that high vineyard's extreme rockiness. It was tightly structured and very potent, including the 14.8 per cent alcohol. But there's real promise for this wine when it starts coming round in a decade or so ($145 a bottle now).
    I also liked Carte Blache's 2011 Nobles Ranch pinot noir ($$75) from the Sonoma coast, and Sanguis's Loner R-12a pinot ($65), though the alcohol in both was quite noticeable.
   The tasters were for the most part casually dressed and knowledgeable, their teeth stained purple after the first few minutes. After three hours even those who had spit out the wine they were showing some of its influence. Some had given up the spitting in favor of swallowing, a mistake. One said unapologetically, "The winemakers put so much effort into this it's feels disrespectful," and he was serious. (I pointed out that winemakers spit.). Another asked for no less than three pours - "I want to make sure I'm getting all the nuances" - and finally turned to the tables of Chinese dumpling, cheese, prosciutto and lovely crusty bread, almost as an afterthought.                                                    

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Out of the blogosphere: the 100-point scale from Tom Wark's Fermentation (http://fermentationwineblog.com)

(See also http://cjonwine.blogspot.com/2014/03/robert-parker-grumps-again.html)

                    

100 Point Wines and My Worry I Might Have Gone Round the Bend

  By Tom Wark                                                                                         

 Do you ever start to wonder if there might be something seriously wrong with your mental or emotional capacity due to the fact that so many people understand or agree with something that is instead entirely lost on you?

This is how I feel about the idea of rating or ranking something that is nearly entirely a subjective experience: Wine. Yet, recently I’ve read so many different explanations as to why the idea of rating wine on the 100 points scale is meaningless because a wine is something that is experienced so subjectively and can’t be assigned a specific and seemingly objective spot on an aesthetic continuum. Still, I can’t buy this argument.
This positions doesn’t appeal to me factually, emotionally, intellectually or philosophically. And yet among that sophisticated and well-educated core of wine drinkers and thinkers, I am absolutely in the minority on this.
Maybe the problem is that I’m self-centered. When I consider this question of the utility and legitimacy of a 100 point rating scale for wine, I’m thinking of how it appeals to me and how it informs me, rather than how it appeals to the masses or what it does to inform the masses about a particular wine. Call me simple, but I have a very good idea of what a critic means when he assigns a given wine 92 points, and the written review that generally accompanies that rating almost always confirms my understanding of the meaning of the number.
Part of this has to do with my view that the “score inflation” that many see as a contrived occurence, is to me really just a matter of there being a lot more better wines today, not a desire among critics to out-do the other or get their name in lights.
Among nearly every critic I know today, an 87 point wine is a very nice wine, very drinkable wine, even interesting. Meanwhile a 92 point wine is an exceptional wine that is far above average in quality. And a 97 point wine is simply special; a breed above the others. I don’t know any critics that would take issue with this assessment.
Additionally, I’ve never had any illusions that a critic assigning a number to a wine has anything in mind other than to communicate that the score represents their own, person, subjective evaluation of a wine, and does not in turn mean that “this wine is objectively better than that wine” on some sort of scientific scale of quality. I also have the bad habit of thinking that anyone believing the critic is proclaiming some sort of objective or scientific or numeric certainty about a wine’s quality just doesn’t understand how a critic approaches their task. For a critic to actually believe this is what they are doing they would have to live in some sort of imaginary or alternative world that is without precedent in this reality. (That said, the idea of a fictional world in which there exists scientifically defined standards of quality makes for an interesting premise for a Sci Fi story.)
I was most recently reminded of my outlier status on this issue of ratings and the 100 point scale and listening and watching the astute Jamie Goode give his rambling explanation as to why the 100 point rating system is “absurd”, “daft” and “silly”, yet why he’ll continue to use it in his reviews. Jamie, like so others, argues that the rating of a wine with a particular number represents some sort of definitive marking that becomes a “property” of the wine when in fact it is no such thing. But I think he’s unnecessarily bringing up the notion of objectivity. I simply don’t ever see any claim being made that a score represents an objective measure, but is almost always claimed to be merely shorthand for how the wine touch the critic, relative to other wines the critic has tasted.
In other words, Jamie is reading too much meaning into the attachment of a number to an experience. It can in fact be done but it doesn’t suggest anything scientific, objective or pre-determined. It’s just short hand.
Jamie, and he’s hardly the first, also touches on another criticism of the 100 point rating system that is, again, lost on me as an argument. And that is the claim that the 100 point rating scale implies far more precision on the part of the taster or critic than is humanly possible. “What’s the difference really,” they ask, “of 1 point. And can you reproduce that kind of precision if you taste the same wine again….Well of course you can’t,” they say.
I don’t get this argument. It flies right over me because I see the assigning of a point score as representative of an impression the wine left, not a precise point on an X-Y axis that is suggested by the criticism of the 100 point scale.In other words, I know that the critic knows that a wine they give 96 points to could easily be given 94 or 95 or 97 points and the wine would still fall into the same category for the critic. That it was a 95 point wine rather than a 94 point wine for the critic is just a matter of the way the wine smacked the critic in the head at that moment. The precision is understood to be and is in fact, not as precise as the number suggests.
This raises the question of whether or not there is a scale that better allows for this kind of imprecise precision. I think there probably is such a scale (perhaps a 20 or 50 point scale, but I don’t think these alternative scales are so much more effective in communicating the momentary impact of a wine on a critic’s mind that it’s necessary we call for the abandonment of the 100 point system.
The ambiguity of faux precision in wine ratings isn’t the worst thing in the world any more than a ranking of the top 10 Second Basemen in the history of the game is a bad thing.
This positions doesn’t appeal to me factually, emotionally, intellectually or philosophically. And yet among that sophisticated and well-educated core of wine drinkers and thinkers, I am absolutely in the minority on this.
Maybe the problem is that I’m self-centered. When I consider this question of the utility and legitimacy of a 100 point rating scale for wine, I’m thinking of how it appeals to me and how it informs me, rather than how it appeals to the masses or what it does to inform the masses about a particular wine. Call me simple, but I have a very good idea of what a critic means when he assigns a given wine 92 points, and the written review that generally accompanies that rating almost always confirms my understanding of the meaning of the number.
Part of this has to do with my view that the “score inflation” that many see as a contrived occurence, is to me really just a matter of there being a lot more better wines today, not a desire among critics to out-do the other or get their name in lights.
Among nearly every critic I know today, an 87 point wine is a very nice wine, very drinkable wine, even interesting. Meanwhile a 92 point wine is an exceptional wine that is far above average in quality. And a 97 point wine is simply special; a breed above the others. I don’t know any critics that would take issue with this assessment.
Additionally, I’ve never had any illusions that a critic assigning a number to a wine has anything in mind other than to communicate that the score represents their own, person, subjective evaluation of a wine, and does not in turn mean that “this wine is objectively better than that wine” on some sort of scientific scale of quality. I also have the bad habit of thinking that anyone believing the critic is proclaiming some sort of objective or scientific or numeric certainty about a wine’s quality just doesn’t understand how a critic approaches their task. For a critic to actually believe this is what they are doing they would have to live in some sort of imaginary or alternative world that is without precedent in this reality. (That said, the idea of a fictional world in which there exists scientifically defined standards of quality makes for an interesting premise for a Sci Fi story.)
I was most recently reminded of my outlier status on this issue of ratings and the 100 point scale and listening and watching the astute Jamie Goode give his rambling explanation as to why the 100 point rating system is “absurd”, “daft” and “silly”, yet why he’ll continue to use it in his reviews. Jamie, like so others, argues that the rating of a wine with a particular number represents some sort of definitive marking that becomes a “property” of the wine when in fact it is no such thing. But I think he’s unnecessarily bringing up the notion of objectivity. I simply don’t ever see any claim being made that a score represents an objective measure, but is almost always claimed to be merely shorthand for how the wine touch the critic, relative to other wines the critic has tasted.
In other words, Jamie is reading too much meaning into the attachment of a number to an experience. It can in fact be done but it doesn’t suggest anything scientific, objective or pre-determined. It’s just short hand.
Jamie, and he’s hardly the first, also touches on another criticism of the 100 point rating system that is, again, lost on me as an argument. And that is the claim that the 100 point rating scale implies far more precision on the part of the taster or critic than is humanly possible. “What’s the difference really,” they ask, “of 1 point. And can you reproduce that kind of precision if you taste the same wine again….Well of course you can’t,” they say.
I don’t get this argument. It flies right over me because I see the assigning of a point score as representative of an impression the wine left, not a precise point on an X-Y axis that is suggested by the criticism of the 100 point scale.In other words, I know that the critic knows that a wine they give 96 points to could easily be given 94 or 95 or 97 points and the wine would still fall into the same category for the critic. That it was a 95 point wine rather than a 94 point wine for the critic is just a matter of the way the wine smacked the critic in the head at that moment. The precision is understood to be and is in fact, not as precise as the number suggests.
This raises the question of whether or not there is a scale that better allows for this kind of imprecise precision. I think there probably is such a scale (perhaps a 20 or 50 point scale, but I don’t think these alternative scales are so much more effective in communicating the momentary impact of a wine on a critic’s mind that it’s necessary we call for the abandonment of the 100 point system.
The ambiguity of faux precision in wine ratings isn’t the worst thing in the world any more than a ranking of the top 10 Second Basemen in the history of the game is a bad thing.

On the other hand, there indeed could be something seriously wrong with my mental and emotional state that prevents me from appreciating the nuisance and uselessness that is the 100 point rating scale for wine. That’s possible. However, I think I simply understand it a little differently that puts emphasis on the honesty of the critic and usefulness of numbers to represent a scale of relativity.emotional state that prevents me from appreciating the nuisance and uselessness that is the 100 point rating scale for wine. 

Friday, March 28, 2014

Green screens forever

           The incredible beauty of the shown world                                                    
                                  

   The Environmental Film Festival wraps up this weekend, and it has been a wonderful and inspiring run. Last night we saw Happiness, shot in Bhutan by Thomas Balmes and Nina Bernfeld . Ostensibly about an isolated people about to receive the blessing of TV and the Internet, it won the Cinematography Award for World Cinematic Documentary at Sundance. In fact it's about human suffering, transcendence, and the utter lack of control ultimately we all have, whether in a nomadic culture in one of the least hospitable places to live, or a lucky 1-percenter at the zenith of the industrial/over-wired world.
   One great thing about Happiness (happiness is a state-given right in advanced Bhutan) is its lack of didacticism. It shows, as all good films must, and it wins your heart with the honesty and perserverence of people in what is a highly compromised struggle, whether the impressionable kid Peyanki, his family, or the monk departing the monastery. In this way it's typical of the films shown in the festival, and a shame as well as a (minor) crime on the part of the people living in the nation's capital, or visiting, and not at least dipping in every spring, to emerge renewed and broadened.
    There are three days left, and there's always next year. Meanwhile stay tuned with these folks, and go: 
  http://www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org                                                               

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Robert Parker grumps (again)

In case you're following the clash of old and the new wine criticism. (See also http://cjonwine.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-100-point-scales-dead-it-just.html)

     By Blake Gray     

from his excellent blog, The Gray Report

(http://blog.wblakegray.com):

Wine Advocate bares its teeth; here's why

      After a brief cease fire for the professional wine writers' symposium, the war of words in wine criticism flared up hotter than ever last week, with a barrage of insults from the Wine Advocate for a tasting of leaner-style California wines curated by Eric Asimov and Jon BonnĂ©, and later at least one lawyer letter.
      Sadly, Robert Parker seems to have become bitter, trying to hang onto what he long believed to be his position as sole arbiter of taste in the wine world. It was pathetic, but no longer surprising, to see him upset about a tasting he didn't even attend. He wrote, "Any defense of 'different tastes for different writers' ain’t gonna’ fly either….they are alleged to be professional writers…and this dribble misleads their readers."
      Please note that though the Advocate's lawyers sent Wine blogger Tyler Colmana letter demanding that he remove  longer quotes than this one, I believe I have the right to publish it under the Fair Use principle. I'm not going to fight Parker in court over this sentence, though, so if I get a letter, I'll switch to a paraphrase. Yes, it has come to this. 
      Parker's outbursts have become commonplace, but it was surprising when Lisa Perrotti-Brown, an MW and now the Wine Advocate editor, chimed in with a wine-by-wine trashing of the tasting, which I'm not going to quote, because, see the previous paragraph. And new Advocate critic Jeb Dunnuck piled on as well. 
      I didn't go to the tasting, and while I deplore any writers threatening legal action at other writers, I want to try to stay independent at a time when much of the wine writing world seems to be choosing sides. 
     But I think I can explain what would motivate the Advocate to be so aggressively negative about wines other critics like.
     The Advocate is making a play for China; this isn't a secret. They see China as the future growth market not just for wine, but for consumption of wine criticism. 
     Parker is still the world's most important wine critic; his scores are still news. But you look at photos of him and think, he's not going to be around much longer, which is why the Advocate's new owners need to parade him around China now so they can capitalize on his personal brand to popularize theirs. 
     When Parker retires, there will be a scrum to be the most influential critical voice on wine in the US, but also in China.
     Perrotti-Brown and her bosses aren't particularly worried about Wine Spectator, Antonio Galloni or James Suckling. They are all doing the same thing the Advocate does. Competing against them is like trying to win an election.
     The leanness movement, with Asimov as its figurehead: that's a revolution. They're not trying to win power through using the same system; they're trying to eliminate the 100-point system, and even the very concept of critics telling people which wines are best. Asimov is thoughtful and intellectually generous, but many commenters with similar views are, as revolutionaries tend to be, loud and tediously dogmatic.
     If the Advocate wants to establish dominance in China, it needs not only to parade around its figurehead, but to ensure that the system he established takes firm root -- not an easy task in a country that has its own long-established ideas about food and drink.
     It's easier to understand the Advocate's actions viewed in this light. It's doubtful that three Advocate critics would pile onto a tasting of wines that Galloni or Suckling likes; that's a country-club disagreement. But when your grip on power feels tenuous, and you hear people shouting slogans outside your door, perhaps it's time to call in the tanks. 

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Pouring for Randy

I have surely been poured more than
a thousand wines at tastings over thirty-odd years of writing about wine as an avocation. Now I'm stepping to the other side of the barrel to pour for collectors and the trade at the annual futures tasting in Washington, DC. next Saturday, hosted by MacArthur's Beverages. I'll be writing about that experience, and what is a very good vintage. Prices should be up there since expectations certainly are. What follows are notes about Dunn Vineyard's cabernet sauvignon, its vineyards, winemaking regimen,  etc., written by Randy Dunn's daughter, Kristina, director of marketing: 

      Specifics: We harvest, crush, ferment, press and barrel all our vineyard blocks separately. After 30 months in 100% new French oak barrel (wide and tight grained and several different coopers), we blend the bigger, heavier, more age-worthy lots (usually older vineyards) to form the Howell Mountain wine, and the softer more approachable (usually younger vineyards) along with whatever we purchase from the valley floor to make our Napa .

     Our oldest vineyard was planted in 1972. Our youngest was planted in 2000.  We bought the first vineyard in 1978. Randy was at Caymus (full time day job) and started Dunn in 1979 (as a night and weekend job). The vineyard's 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. We have several different vineyards on our property on Howell Mountain: 35 planted acres, 28 of them in Cabernet Sauvignon, the others containing varietals that we make into home wines.  Vine age ranges from 5-35 years. Our Cab clones are 337, 15, and 4.  And 2 unknowns we call Dunn and Frank. Rootstocks- 3309, St. George, 1104 and 420A..
    Answers to frequent questions:
Vineyard Spacing: 5X10.
Yield: 2-3 tons/acre
Fermentation: 7-10 days for the initial fermentation, with      pumpovers 5 times a day for 10 minutes. 
Diemme Press
100% new French oak barrels,  30 months in barrel. Secondary fermentation in barrel.
Racking: every 6 months
Sterile Filtration prior to bottling.
Bottled in June. We waxed the Howell Mountain bottles in August.  This is done by hand.We bottle about 4,500 cases a year.
Split 50/50 between Napa and Howell. Napa blend for 2011 will be 100% Howell Mountain fruit, just like in 2009 and 2010.  2009 was the first year that the Napa was 100% Howell Mtn fruit. No, we don't own vineyards on the valley floor. 2012 vintage will have Napa valley floor fruit in the Napa Valley wine as we did purchase some fruit that year. 
    Winery particulars: 
    Yes, we do offer tastings/tours at the winery, by appointment only.  Absolutely no weekends as it's Randy and Lori's home. $30/person waived with purchase. Contact me - via email or phone Kristina@dunnvineyards.com or 707-965-3642. http://www.dunnvineyards.com/. People can buy direct and we can ship to most but not all states. 
     The 2011 will be bottled June 2014, the 2012 will be bottled June 2015. 
     WEATHER in 2011:
     Jan. No rain
     Feb. warm, then rain started end of Feb. Some really cold mornings - 20 degrees.
     March - April In 31 days we had 17 inches of rain. On April 13 rain and hail. April 11th rain, sun, hail. April 20th/21st 89 degrees  Bud break for us on the hill. Some rain 23-25th of April.
     Warm May,  June, rain during bottling. Then back up to the high 90’s.
      July 5th foggy and cold morning. Low 50s at night.
      In 2012 growing season we escaped the spring frost season with no losses. The vines are being managed for leaf density and mildew control. The crop does not look heavy so no thinning will be necessary. Now we wait for more good weather from now through harvest”
     On par with 2009 growing season
    WARM summer days, cool nights until mid August- then HOT!
     Light rain for a few hours one afternoon.
     Heat again in September 4 weeks of high 90’s (last  2 weeks of August and 1st 2 weeks of September).
     First day pick CAB - Sept 24th Monday.
 It will be a great vintage after a wonderful growing season. We are 2000 ft elevation, sun exposure - all aspects. Rich volcanic soil, rocky. Vines have to search for water. We do not dry farm. We are not organic nor are we "sustainable".  We are old-school. Make wines to age, don't hand sort. We're not tech-savvy geeks. We make wine we love and hope others love it as well. And they are all under 14% alcohol. 

      Hooray for that, I say.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Letters from the Equator, 11 - Into Africa, with difficulty...

 The Great Globe Girdling Pirhana-Yellowtail-Batak Pig­-Mulligatawny Soup-Smoked Eel Protein Continuum                                                                                                               

                                                                         
          Libreville, GabonI came to what used to be called French Equatorial Africa primarily to ride a train through childhood dreams: dense jungle, savanna, primordial heat, and  the promise of exotic animals in the place that spawned them.
       The Chemin de Fer Transgabonais, completed in 1986 and cited as Gabon's signal achievement, ran east along the equator, toward the Congo border. The railroad had taken 12 years to complete and cost $4 billion, a lot of money for a line extending only about 400 miles. My map showed it passing through the town of Oyan, smack on the equator, and I hoped to get that far and then take the train back to Libreville or dip down, if possible, to Lamborene, on the Ogooue River, where Albert Schweitzer had established his clinic in the early years of the century.                       
      A French civil engineer I had met on the plane over the Sahara had advised against this. The train was extremely pas propre (dirty), he said, and always late. It was going to take at least a day to get there, maybe more. As things turned out, because the Transgabonais left before I got there - the Frenchmen hadn't said anything about early departures - and before a lot of Gabonese got there, too, judging by the number of people standing on the platform, in a foul mood.
             I decided to rent a car in Libreville. I found two local agencies, but they had no cars. The Avis agent had no cars. Driving in the rainy season was an arduous task, anyway, she said. Why didn't I take a "bush taxi?" It was several hard hours on a messy road to Lamborene, and several hours back the next day, or the day after. It didn't really matter; this was Gabon.
       The Gabonese drove like Frenchmen, regardless of the surface, but that wasn't the real problem. I had come to ride the jungle train and found it gone, and a squalid mess where there was supposed to be a station. The best way to travel, it turned out, was neither the train nor the highway, but the rivers, and I didn't have the time for that, Gabon not being used to sightseers. They tend to get in the way of extraction of timber and oil, its chief concerns. "I think you are the only tourist in Gabon," said another Frenchman, one of the extractors.                                                             
       Foreigners other than myself were all there on business; they and their Gabonese contacts made up a gimlet-eyed collection in the hotel lounge, drinking Castel beer and looking for opportunity. The man in the double-breasted suit with two young flankers similarly attired was either a gangster, or Gabon's chief supplier of some commodity like toothpaste. It was impossible to tell which. I had the feeling I had been set down in an equatorial, cameo Houston, the myriad commercial plays crowding other aspects of life.
      Craven financial endeavors affected the mood of the population, even when most of it wasn't prospering, judging from the looks of the place. The nightlife reflected a preoccupation with things more sybaritic than social. The clubs had names like Black Moon, Vertigo, and Midnight Express and were full of men talking loudly.                                              
      Gabon had been disappointing westerners since 1472, when the Portuguese arrived and discovered that the Komo River on which Libreville now sits led nowhere. ("Gabao" is Portuguese for hooded cloak, not reassuring.) Dutch, French, and British traders came after ivory and slaves, the latter profoundly influencing not just the interior of west Africa but also coastal settlements like this one, whose people became dependent upon slave labor and lost both their own skills and tribal cohesion.
      Today the country has about a million citizens, divided among four major tribal groups. The per capita income is twice that of most sub-Saharan African nations, despite poor management , and inflation. The argument could be made that.oil had affected the country as slavery once did, inspiring grandiose schemes like the Palace of Conferences and Libreville's other lunar public buildings like the Transgabonais railway, and the palace of the president, His Excellency El Hadj Omar Bongo, a convert to Islam who spent $800 million on such things as Corinthian columns and Italian marble facing for the totalitarian pile on the Boulevard de L'Independance.
       This palace resembled a hyperthyroid Holiday Inn. I tried to visit it, without success. The guards forbade me to photograph it, but then who would want to? Bongo doesn't care for scrutiny or political opposition; he may be the shortest maximum leader in the world. had read that the word "pigmy" was forbidden, too, but was afraid to ask.                                             
     
       His countrymen's basic skills languish, the roads go further to pot, but there's always oil revenue. Gabon has one of the greatest disparities between a few rich and many poor of any country on earth. The statistic that lodged in my mind was that Gabon consumes more champagne per capita than any country on earth, while the men I saw drinking in the little bars near the Marche du Mont-Bouet were consuming beer, not Moet.
      I had come to the market on Sunday to see the produce: huge bunches of bananas , bright medleys of fruits and vegetables spread on blankets, piles of big manioc leaves and bound sugarcane, displays of dried fish that surpassed those I had seen in Sumatra, with smoked eels curled and stacked, and huge skates' heads piled in baskets.
    The durables, however, were tawdry - pocket knives that threatened to fall apart when opened, "locks" that didn't. So-called native jewelry included "snakeskin" bracelets that were really contact paper on metal loops. People spoke when spoken to, but there was an edge to the greetings. I didn't see another foreigner in two hours of wandering there and decided it wasn't xenophobia I was witnessing. Thurston Clark had found the Gabonese sullen, adding, "I had never seen Africans so tightly wound."
      I watched two cab drivers involved in a minor accident scream at one another for ten minutes, not machismo, real anger. I asked permission before taking photographs, but that wasn't always enough. "A real savage, eh," shouted a woman, about me, and she wasn't joking. I put the camera away, thinking that though photography was wonderful, it could sometimes get in the way of life - in this case mine.                                           
       
      I was tempted to blame the French. They exploited the country at the turn of the century, taking timber and other resources and leaving precious few amenities behind. Independence didn't come until 1960. Gabon seemed to embody the worst of both France and Africa -- arrogance, inefficiency, a love of the bureaucratic. Then I heard children singing a hymn in French in a little church off the Rue Batavia, and took note of the boulangeries and epiceries, and the bakeries. Libreville had the best bread of any stop on the equator.
     Gabon produced the greatest volume of sweat in the shortest time of any equatorial country. Even my so far water-repellent money belt was breached. I had about run out of steam, having traveled in three weeks 35,604 miles by air and crossed the equator eight times. 
      Linguistically, I had moved from Portuguese to Spanish to Kiribati, to Indonesian, English, and now French. Common botanical threads ran through the cultures: papaya near the Rio Negro, corn and beans in the Andes, tomatoes and coconut toddy on Tarawa, palm oil in Sumatra, cut flowers in Singapore, bananas in Gabon. I had been privy to the great globe-girdling,   armadillo-shrimp-yellowtail-Batak    pig-Mulligatawny soup-smoked eel protein continuum. I fondly remembered Nestor, Mangauea, Frans and many others, and felt I had known them in some other life, not just days or weeks ago.
       A diminishing time line, a sentimental jet trail, stretched out behind me. The manioc of Brazil had appeared again in Gabon; the seeds of the rubber tree that provided Manaus an opera house had been smuggled out in the late nineteenth century to Malaysia, where they contributed significantly to the commercial success of Singapore. The Japanese martial triumph on Kiribati had been repeated at the tip of Malaysia, when the Japanese took Singapore in World War II, and now they were gone from both places. The absence of real democracy, I was sad to conclude, was missing from about half the equator I had seen.                                                    
      I looked west from Port Mole, in Libreville, where boats set out  daily for Pointe-Denis. Beyond it lay the Atlantic Ocean, waves rolling in under equatorial aegis. Beyond the horizon lay something known as the Romanche Fracture Zone, Big Foot tracks at the bottom of the ocean, then a trough 26,000 feet deep, and finally the Ceara Abyssal Plain before the South American continental shelf rose to meet the mouth of the Amazon. In another geological time, before that continent split off from Africa, the Amazon touched this shore and, according to theory, ran in the opposite direction. It drained not South America, but what is now west Africa.
      For weeks I had been carrying around the $10 worth of Brazilian reals that no bank, anywhere, would exchange for local currency. I put them into an envelope before I left for home, addressed it to George on the River Ariau, went to the Libreville bureau du poste and sent it, sun-wise, back into the heart of Amazonia.                            
(The first Letter was posted on Dec. 21, 2013, in the archive, right, and 2 and 3 in  Feb. The rest are in sequence.) 
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