Musings from Bar Boulud’s Tasting Table with Mark Tarlov
Evening Land Vineyards was birthed from “a simple quest: to find the best places on the western edge of the United States that tease the limits of growing pinot noir; to acquire and maintain estate monopole vineyards and lastly, to farm these vineyards organically.” A noble quest indeed, and one that properly interprets the very idea of Evening Land, which, in literary terms, represents the promise of the western world: a place of incredible beauty, wealth, purpose, prosperity, and hope. To most, the Evening Land is America itself. This complicated yet poetic yearning is not lost on Mark Tarlov; on the contrary, it’s an important philosophical undercurrent that fuels just what Evening Land Vineyards is aiming to do, albeit with both California and Oregon pinot noir.
When it comes to pinot noir, very few would venture to call the western coast of the U.S. its Promised Land, or even its Evening Land, but that is not to say it doesn’t have its own story to tell. Likewise, D.H. Lawrence may have been a Brit, but that doesn’t mean that his complex views on America aren’t relevant. In fact, one of his poems, appropriately titled “The Evening Land,” (hardly a coincidence) can almost be read as a WineChap ode to American pinot noir.
Nobody knows you.
You don’t know yourself.
And I, who am half in love with you.
What am I in love with?
My own imaginings?
The truth is, we still don’t have the slightest idea what kind of viticultural promise lurks here in the U.S., and how could we? Our knowledge of the land is measured in decades, while that of Burgundy and the rest of the Old World can look back several centuries. However, what Tarlov and Evening Land suggest is that we are finding out. Or at the very least, we’re getting damn close.
The Evening Land wines are beautiful. They have something to say that hasn’t been said yet—that’s for sure. But perhaps more significantly, Tarlov, in his presentation of these wines, is telling the story of America’s terroir, a story that is just in the beginning stages of being written.
Yet, America, sometimes
Your elvishness, elves wanton, elves wistful;
Your New England uncanniness,
Your Western brutal faery quality.
My soul is half-cajoled, half-cajoled
Something in you which carries me beyond
Yankee, Yankee,
What we call human.
Carries me where I want to be carried…
