Hayley

Hayley is a broad faced and freckled blond woman happy to be showing us around the winery that wants to be a barn not a chateau but looks a hangar, Jackson Triggs. Hayley is young and so still honest: she sees that the components of a barn--troughs instead of sinks, exposed wood, loftish height, do not combine into the semblance of a bar. And she says so, right out loud, with a smirk a more experienced tour guide would not have even contemplated.

She walks us along Chardonnay. The vines run north and south as they do in this area. The wine grapes should be small with a skin ready to yield the flavor of the wine.

Best show: the assortment of glass cubs, decanters and pitchers to serve wine in. The stirrup cup is explained, and we are urged not to waste precious spirit by warming the wine glass. Swirl and savor, Hayley explains, do the backward whistle against the palate.

The stirrup cup, the most engaging of drinking cups, requires two to use it: the servant to hold it and to set it, upside down in its tray, when the lord departs. Mr. Jackson has quite a collection there, and I enjoy its many flavors, as I do the Riesling which is perched on the cusp of sweet and dry, a vivacious wine, and which I buy.