Keeping it Real

We’ve been trying to round up a photo for use for our March James Beard debut, so they can market the event (I’ll fill you in on the JBF event in a future post). Here’s the dilemma: we don’t have any “glamour” shots where we’re toting a glass, or sniffing one (perhaps empty, like Gianfranco, or full like everyone else); or throwing our heads back in mirth having a Hollywood moment; or  standing in a silk wrap, I think it was, in front of a vineyard like we saw Helen Turley doing on one Wine Spectator cover; or like countless others holding a glass in front of a barrel, these images so expected like photos with Santa at Christmas where the set all looks the same. No superbly dirty hand shot; no child feigning sleep on our shoulders; no borrowed hilltop that we try to pass off as our own; no picture of Tuscany that we want you to think is just like our place. None of that. Odd, don’t you think? I mean, we ARE in the wine business.  But we’re also in the business of keeping it real. And just like we don’t doctor the grapes from our vineyard, we don’t like to doctor our lives, even for marketing. Yes, we need some “pretty” shots of the “real” that make up what we do, and I’ve been meaning to have Kim Miller come out to the vineyard and snap our goings on out there (the wine bottles below are Kim’s work). But until then, what we have is what we have: mainly photos I’ve taken, so really there are none of me; and they’re not glamourous. They’re real.

Wine bottles by K Miller Photographs