A Great Vintage
Atlanta, GA
July 24, 2021
When I was a kid, my mother would give a treat to her sons (and gift to herself) by occasionally sending them to Washington, D.C.
At the time, she had an older sister and younger brother living there, neither of whom had children. This would provide her siblings a taste of parental experience, while giving my mother a few days to rinse it out.
Within a few years, the sister would have a daughter, and the brother a couple of his own. The sister would follow with a son. Like vegans in a steakhouse, my mother’s siblings suddenly had little appetite for the offerings from her menu.
Despite the distance, I’ve always felt special affinity for my Franklin cousins. I still remember the eldest coming to Tampa as a toddler, and me being asked to babysit while her mother and mine escaped for the evening.
Ashley must’ve been two or three, and I couldn’t understand a word she said. Not because she was a babbling toddler. To the contrary. She was fluent in Spanish, and probably considered me a babbling teenager. And I no doubt gave her ample ink to draw that conclusion.
It wasn’t that Ashley couldn’t speak English. She just chose not to. I’d say something, she’d volley a reply in another language, and I’d return a bewildered look, right into the net. Then she’d laugh, and blow another serve right past me. In our little match of wits, hers was always a straight-set triumph.
I don’t know why Ashley chose to torment the poor simpleton to whom she was temporarily subjected. She probably just thought it was funny, and it gave her something to do till a more stimulating challenge came along.
Like a certain ten year-old girl I just spent time with in Walla Walla, Ashley was an independent kid with a sharp mind and a twinkle in her eye. But she pulled it off. It was almost as if people were proud to be put in their place by this charming child.
By the time I became an adult, I think Ashley already was. Few children were as savvy, or self-assured. When I was in college, friends would join me on visits to DC, and Ashley regularly accompanied us as we toured the town.
More often than not, she’d lead the way. And, before long, we learned to let her, even if she’d never been to the places we went. But none of my friends dared question this confident kid. And I sure as hell knew better than to do so. Besides, if we wanted to go to a Georgetown bar, she’d probably be able to talk our way in.
I recall my mother telling me about the time Ashley was 10 or 12. She walked alone out the door of her DC home, made her way around the block, onto the Metro, into National airport, aboard a plane, thru the Tampa airport, and to the home of her Aunty Margaret and Uncle Jerry, with whom she’d stay several days before reversing the trip.
At the time, that story sounded incredible. In retrospect, it seems obvious. I can’t imagine her doing anything else. Had there been a chaperone or a “tail”, Ashley would’ve lost him at the first light.
From the moment they met, my cousin endeared herself to my wife. As she did with my college friends, she’d chat with us at her house, and lead us around Washington. Within a year or so, Ashley was a thirteen year-old bridesmaid the day Rita became my bride. As she always does, she fit right in.
Whether as a child living in DC, a teenager visiting California, or an adult wowing Walla Walla, Ashley always impressed Rita and me with her acumen, awareness, and assuredness. She still does.
Adventure has always attracted Ashley. It continued, and accelerated, after she graduated high school. To broaden her horizons, expand her perspective, and enhance her experience, she chose a tiny college in a small town in a distant state.
It was at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington that she first dabbled in the wine business. Upon graduation, she went to Argentina, following the seasons to harvest grapes year-round. As she plucked fruit, she was planting seeds.
Ashley has always been a good athlete. I recall one year in Steamboat Springs, watching an eight year-old girl blow past me on the mountain, spraying snow into my face as she sped to a stop just shy of my trembling feet.
She’s a great tennis player, and a good enough climber that she could put herself in position to almost kill herself falling from a mountain in Japan. Somehow, she survived a profusion of broken bones and damaged organs. Perhaps she entertained herself by speaking to her doctors in Spanish, despite being fluent in Japanese.
I didn’t see much of Ashley at that time. We’d lost touch when she went west, and didn’t re-connect till she invited us to her wedding several years later.
I couldn’t be happier that she did. Not only did we have a blast that weekend, but she married one of the greatest guys we’ve had the pleasure to know. And, over the thirteen years since, we’ve had many opportunities to do so.
Ashley and Brian are a terrific couple. Both are among the most magnetic personalities in any room, yet have a knack for making whoever they’re speaking to feel like the only other one in it.
They can speak competently…and often authoritatively…on a host of subjects. But they do so with humility, while making you feel at least as knowledgeable as they are.
Ashley likes to deprecate her ability to plan and organize. Perhaps she’s right to do so. After all, no one can be good at everything. We all must have some redeeming faults.
But, at the risk of praising with faint damns, let’s say her self-assessment is correct. Even so, her ability to overcome the perceived deficiency is more impressive than the organizational skill she ostensibly lacks.
Ashley is a great improviser. She has an instinctive knack for throwing things together with casual aplomb, and the results are often preferable to anything Martha Stewart would’ve spent months orchestrating. Not every artist needs the “normal” tools, or the same muse. After all, Beethoven was deaf and Monet went blind.
My cousin greets inevitable errors or inexorable oversights with disarming shrugs and resigned laughter that camouflage and dissolve whatever anxiety she seems not to feel. Things may get out of whack, but few are more adept at getting them back into whack…without letting on that anything was ever wrong.
Confining Ashley to convention is like trying to plant cut flowers. She can make it look good for a while, but it won’t feel natural, and probably won’t last. Ashley is an artist, and a visionary. All else equal, she’d rather create than acquire, and prefers to build than to buy.
Some cynics may think my affection for Ashley stems from her acumen and generosity as a winemaker.
Well…yeah.
After all, she is good at it, and I enjoy regularly reminding myself how talented she is guiding grapes from ground to glass. Besides, if you’re going to be fond of someone, why not get something out of it?
But it’s not just her skill as a winemaker that’s commendable. Some people make themselves tall, as Samuel Johnson put, by walking on tip toes. Ashley towers simply by standing on her own two feet.
She’s successfully worked in, started, sold, and re-started businesses, both for profit and philanthropy. And she’s done so as a young woman in an ol’ boys industry, while raising two remarkable children who’ve learned from their parents how to recognize, reap, and refine their abundant abilities.
And, on top of all that, she’s patient. Doing what she does, she must be ready for any conversation to turn to the process and product of winemaking. She must be ready to offer opinions on her craft, and to smile politely as everyone else offers theirs.
But she has fermented and fortified a remarkable ability to tolerate incessant allusions to tired wine references and strained viticultural analogies. Being her birthday, we will try to avoid harvesting the sour fruit of such haggard vines.
But we won’t try very hard.
As much as anyone I know, Ashley’s finer attributes blend many varieties from a fruitful vineyard. This is no one-grape girl. She’s an entire terroir of creativity, compassion, vision, and grit.
She pours herself into whatever she does, without ever bottling herself up. When uncorked as a small child, she was fresh, crisp, and charmingly precocious. As she matured, and was allowed to breathe, subtle nuance emerged, adding more flavor to a rich mix.
Ashley is well-balanced…earthy and elegant, intense yet smooth, often sweet and rarely bitter, with lively hints of acidity or zest as the situation demands. She blends with anything, and can improve every occasion.
Like any great vintage, she is terrific now, and will only get better in the years to come. I’d say she ages well, if I thought she aged at all.
Last week we celebrated Ashley’s birthday, as one among many milestones mixed in this year’s vat. For several days, a couple dozen of us stranded ourselves in her lovely town. It was wonderful – like being shipwrecked on a beautiful island, and finding cases of wine had washed ashore. Now the cases are gone, and so are we.
But I’m guessing Ashley has a bottle stashed somewhere. If not, she probably knows where to find one. Or how to make one.
So on her birthday, we raise a trans-continental toast to a wonderful cousin…of exquisite taste, rich texture, and fine finish.
Feliz cumpleaños.
JD
