Grand Cru & Grace 24x30

24x30 Las Vegas, Nevada 

For this piece I wanted to paint the tasting notes of one of the best wine tasting experiences, you have both shared together. What I found was a gold mine of poetry and motion, colors and textures, richness and contrast. I never realized before how much wine is art. From the creation to the analysis, they are a frequency like identical twins. Thank you for taking my art in this direction. I chose a 2000 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Echezeaux to paint the tasting notes of, as Kelly shared with me the joy and grand enlightenment of that tasting experience you both got to have. As I researched the wine at length I can understand why this was a highlight. 

Within this canvas, I hope you can identify with the velvet richness, explosive perfume, bright red cherry, dark fruit, red currant, warm spices, black tea, and rose petals that makeup one of the finest actual wines as well as special experiences of your careers and memories together. 

For me wine was always the hardest and least favorite aspect of my job, but Kelly always made it fun and approachable. She was always helpful to me even though I was likely completely crazy, riddled with anxiety and fear. The first time I did inventory with her & Amanda they both probably wanted to kill me but didn’t even make me feel bad about constantly messing up the counting.  I had to learn how to close the restaurant by myself. It was one of the hardest things I have ever learned. I remember pacing the dining rooms, watching all of the guests, my head racing that if someone had a heart attack or started a fight what would I do? It almost felt like being at the wheel of a massive cruise ship and not really knowing what to do yet. Painstakingly Kelly made me a list of every single thing with every single password on every single spreadsheet that I would need. When she had to leave I cried. Dried my eyes, called her ten times, and eventually closed that building for the first time. 

I think in life it’s the people that give you their time and attention when you are the most afraid and feel the smallest that you remember the most. They keep a little safe space in your heart of the best of the best. Thank you for being one of those people to me. 

Your stories and kindness are kind of like the experience of the opportunity to taste a wine like this. This comes from plots from the medieval times first only inhabited by ancient monks and is named after a prince from 1760, who they say lost his heart to the land.  To me selling wine was always about telling the stories of the vineyards, the stories about the people that make it so special. Thank you for telling me about YOUR stories. Working at Disney. Vdara. The hiking accident. Your workouts. The hikes. Going camping with no poles in the damn tent. You answered like 39393 questions about Havasupai for me. 

As a side note, I was trying to say “Echezeaux” like 100x because my brain couldn’t formulate it and say the word. My cat was laughing at me and my husband, who speaks French, walked out of his meeting to correct me. So Grand Cru doesn’t really suit me. Too fancy. But it’s a nice way to describe what you bring to others through just being yourself - the best of the best and often rare.