Old Vines & Felines

Not the best week for kitty Otis, our female tabby who is due to turn 18 years old in May. “Otis” was the name she came with when Kathy adopted her from the Humane Society outreach in Seattle in fall of 1999. We definitely wanted an older kitty because everyone seems to want a kitten, leaving the mature creatures to languish at the shelter. Or worse.

Otis, dubbed “The Wee” almost immediately, is pretty prissy and somewhat aloof, but she’s been a real indoor sweetheart lo these dozen-plus years. A fighter, too: Over the last decade, she’s been diagnosed with dental issues, a thyroid problem and feline cancer.

Her cancer regimen consisted of oral ingestion, every 5 weeks, of the drug Leukeran (apparently it’s used to treat lymphoma in humans, too) for 4 days. At the time, the vet told us that this treatment might buy us another 20 months or so. That was almost 6 years ago.

Well, this week our Bay Area veterinarian’s suspicions based on Otis’ last blood work were confirmed: The cell counts have shot up drastically; the Leukeran ain’t cutting the gig anymore.

Otis’ new treatment, begun this past Wednesday, consists of a one-time injection of a med to “jumpstart” the process, a monthly oral capsule of something called CCNU, and twice-daily tablets of what Kath calls a “Prednisone chaser.” We should know if there’s any progress when she gets rechecked in 4 weeks. Poor baby Wee. Like old vines, the life of an older living being (her 18 kitty years translate to approximately 88 human years) tends to yield diminishing returns.

In an attempt to recharge from the week’s disappointing pet news, yesterday Kathy and I motored even further inland from Oakley, to the Central Valley, a huge wine region of old and new varietal plantings around the city of Lodi, that for decades has been the prime grape source for cheap jug and box wines from the Gallo bros, Fred Franzia and other labels available at a Rite-Aid near you.

Part of the Lodi grape farmer’s dilemma used to be that when you’re paid by the ton, you’re not doing yourself any favors by adopting best vineyard practices such as dropping entire grape clusters to the ground (allowing those remaining on the vine to ripen and develop fully). A grower selling to, as one vineyard owner told us, “the Big Boys” could ensure a full year’s income. The flip side to baby getting new shoes that year was that the Big Boys knew it.

Spending the afternoon in Lodi was an eye-opening realization of just how much this grower/buyer dynamic has changed in the Central Valley. There are now literally dozens upon dozens of new tasting rooms and boutique wineries, many built or founded by growers who have banded together to create a legitimate, viable “wine country” destination. It’s exactly the type of approach that I wish Oakley growers would adopt. The sense here in our ‘hood is that our growers have been farming the land for generations; running a winery or tasting room isn’t what they do, or worth the hassles. Yet many of the new Lodi tasting rooms and wineries are owned by senior citizens, who until two years ago, were strictly grape growers themselves. Maybe it’s a case of Central Valley growers getting tired of having to depend on Gallo largesse for their livelihood. Everywhere in the wine biz, it’s a classic story of growers having to fight the weather, a client’s vineyard management demands, endless negation and lowball prices for their grapes and even the chance that handshake agreements will go “Poof!” (“Hey Milton. Whaaaaat’s happening? Uh, yeah, we’re not going to neeeeeeed those five tons of Alicante Bouschet after all.”)

Yesterday, we tasted some delicious Petite Sirahs, Zins, Chards, Alicante, and at least one dynamite Carignane from old vines getting ready to celebrate their 100th birthday. And we did it in some of the most modern newly constructed tasting rooms we’ve ever been in: a mindboggling juxtaposition of old skool farming and new school marketing. That the wines being poured were tasty, the prices were astonishingly good, and that the tasting fees on the table card were routinely ignored by management speaks extremely well of this burgeoning wine getaway ready to explode in popularity. Kath and I will certainly be back, especially when an enthusiastic winery pup led us to the tasting room (see photo).

The CV, and Lodi in particular, needn’t be held hostage to das Big Boys such as Gallo. In my Modesto opinion, of course.

Full circle? Maybe. Well-aged kitty, well-aged wine region; with new instructions followed for both. May The Wee transform as gracefully with her new prescription as Lodi has with hers.