Boulder Or Vegas, Then
TASTING NOTES: “The 2023 vintage of The Stand offers brooding aromas of black plum, boysenberry, blackberry jam and toasted oak with notes of violets, leather and mocha. The mouthfeel is dense and seamless, bursting with velvety blue and black fruit flavors laced with cinnamon accents. A juicy, integrated finish lingers with spicy notes of black pepper. The native boldness of the Petite Sirah is rounded out perfectly by the Rhône varieties, creating a seamless blend that keeps you coming back for more.” (AbV 14.5%)
VARIETALS: 82% Petite Sirah, 7% Grenache, 7% Syrah, and 4% Tannat
BARRELS: Aged for 13 months in French oak barriques and puncheons
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: The Stand.
Stephen King’s The Stand is one of the longest novels in the English language — the uncut version clocks in at 1,152 pages, which is either a badge of honor or a threat, depending on your relationship with commitment. Published in full in 1990 after a truncated 1978 release, it follows a global pandemic that wipes out most of humanity, then splits the survivors into two camps: the good ones gathering in Boulder, Colorado, and the bad ones gravitating toward Las Vegas under the sway of a figure named Randall Flagg, who is essentially evil’s middle manager. King has deployed Flagg across multiple books — The Dark Tower series, Eyes of the Dragon — as a sort of recurring chaos agent. He’s the villain equivalent of a utility player.
The novel’s central question is essentially: when civilization collapses, which side do you end up on? Boulder or Vegas? Cornfields or neon? Mother Abagail or the Dark Man? King isn’t subtle about the allegory, but he earns the lack of subtlety through sheer accumulated weight — 1,152 pages of weight, specifically. By the time you get to the titular stand, you’ve lived with these people long enough that the stakes feel genuinely enormous. That’s the trick. You can’t manufacture that feeling. You have to build it slowly, layer by layer, until it’s dense and seamless and you can’t quite remember a time before you cared.
There have been two adaptations — a 1994 TV miniseries that people of a certain age remember with unearned fondness, and a 2020 Paramount+ series that nobody defends. The book remains the thing. It always remains the thing.
ICYMI, you have two choices:
- Worried Summer heat might get to your wine before your wine gets to you? Order from the sale linked here, and we’ll get it to you at a cooler time of year!
- Want it shipped now? Every package during the summer will have protected temp control ground shipping for much of the country that takes longer but will ensure safe delivery. Expect up to two weeks for delivery. Now through the September 12th offer.
