HARVEST 2025 REPORT
PINOT NOIR
I called the pick at Deer Ridge Trail Vineyard in Santa Cruz Mountains on September 22nd. There was over an inch of rain and a lot of humidity suddenly forecasted on 9/24, and I’d sampled the site the week before, fermenting grapes in a Tupperware container. Sugar ripeness was close on all the clones, with the lower hill riper than the upper bench, but there were a lot of green seeds in my sample still. No Pinot had been picked in the Corralitos area yet, from what I was hearing, and the green seed thing was a topic of discussion. However, the Tupperware juice was incredible on day four, with plenty of color, aroma and flavor.
Tupperware fermented Pinot Noir from Deer Ridge Trail, day 4.
A new clone for me out of Deer Ridge this year is 943. It’s a clone with many interesting backstories - one is that it’s a seedless clone (because it has what people call chicks and hens, with tiny berries that never form seeds, surrounded by plump berries with seeds). It’s also one of the only clones where US nurseries have to pay a French royalty on every vine sold in the US, so not many nurseries sell it. I’m really happy I was able to get three bins of it this year, as the color was incredible at the very start of fermentation, and like all three lots I fermented, its wild yeasts did the job well, and the natural malolactic fermentation finished up smoothly in six weeks. There are currently two barrels of this resting in Tin City, having received their first dose of sulfur.
Clonal variations of Pinot Noir at Deer Ridge Trail Vineyard, Corralitos, Santa Cruz Mountains.
Mighty Mount Eden Clone.
As always, the soul of the Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir from here is this amazing block of Mount Eden Clone. Three bins were harvested and the wine is now resting in two barrels too. The last component, what the vineyard manager Prudy Foxx calls the backbone of the wine, is the Swiss clone Wadenswil or 2A, that is grown at the shadier, upper bench of Deer Ridge Trail. I worked with this clone at Bassi Vineyard in Avila Beach, where those vines also produced these large beautiful clusters. 2A is usually the last clone to ripen at Deer Ridge Trail, but when picked early, brings in snappy bright red fruits and natural acid to the blend. Because of that acid, it took two extra weeks to complete malolactic than the 943 and the Mount Eden, and I’ve got three barrels of the backbone aging peacefully at the moment.
Assistant Vineyard manager Nick Pisano texted me two days after the pick, saying it was hammering down rain at the property, and it was a good thing we picked. It wouldn’t be the first big rain during harvest 2025.
Mount Eden clone Pinot Noir halfway through fermentation.
SYRAH
And my second wine of the year, a part of Delmore wines since 2017, is Stolo Vineyard Syrah in Cambria. These grapes weathered the October 13th rainstorm event and handled it like I’d never seen grapes handle it before. People say Cabernet and Syrah are so hardy, the clusters looser in structure, allowing more airflow, that they can tolerate rain and humidity late in the season far better than tighter clusters like Chardonnay or the thin skinned Pinot Noir. I saw it for myself, and I have to commend the crew at Parr Collective for their excellent farming. The fruit quality here continues to rise. 2023 and 2024 were excellent years at Stolo, but 2025 is something special.
Alban clone Syrah from Stolo Vineyard, November 3rd, 2025.
Stolo Vineyard before the pick.
Harvested Monday November 3rd, the crew picked five bins out of the Alban clone block, and my good friend Levi hauled them to Tin City to start crushing by 1 pm. I fermented in two open top bins, and thanks to a healthy little pied-du-cuve culture I’d taken at Stolo the week prior, fermentation kicked off in three days. The Syrah spent fourteen days on the skins, and on Monday November 17th we gravity drained the free run directly into two neutral French oak puncheons, and filled my original 2017 Delmore barrique with the pressings. There’s always an insane amount of Malic acid at Stolo, so currently all three vessels are bubbling their way through malolactic fermentation, likely to finish in February or March. I tasted a puncheon on Monday and was floored with the color, pepper power and floral aromas, and promise of what will likely be the finest Stolo Vineyard Syrah yet.
Holy purple fluff of a Syrah punchdown.
Draining to press Stolo Syrah in Tin City, November 14, 2025.
I’ve learned not to count these chickens before they hatch. That said, if all continues to go well and I don’t F things up, I’ll be releasing these two gorgeous wines on here in early September. Til then, thanks for reading, and Happy New Year! - Darren
COMPLETE DELMORE WINES’ DISCOGRAPHY
Here’s a vault of tasting notes from wine writers or myself on every Delmore wine ever made, plus cellaring recommendations. My own predictions are in italics. The 2021 and older wines are all my takes on things. Thanks for reading and following along on my journey.
2024 Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains - “The nose beautifully presents the coniferous, saline nature of its Corralitos origins, concluding with a lush, refined finish with an elegantly creamy core. It is sourced entirely from the Deer Ridge Trail Vineyard. 2025-2032.” - RobertParker.com
2024 Syrah SLO Coast - “A dark, exotic and floral nose, supported by warming spice notes, introduces a coiled, slender and lifted palate. The finish is persistent and fine-grained, gradually gaining tannic strength in the glass while weaving in chalky mineral tones. 91-93” - RobertParker.com 2025-2035
2024 Syrah Stolo Vineyard SLO Coast - “A compelling and multidimensional expression of the site, melding aromas of purple flowers, black olives and white pepper with a meaty, black-fruited backdrop. The palate combines a racy, lifted energy with elegant density before closing on a pure, mineral-driven finish framed with refined tannins.” - RobertParker.com 2026-2036
2023 Pinot Noir Deer Ridge Trail Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains - “Sweet, ripe fruit, balanced nicely by wild mountain scrub, dried lavender and notes of fresh mint that lift concentrated bramble fruits to a bright, savoury finish. 2024-2033.” - Decanter Magazine
2023 Syrah Bassi Vineyard SLO Coast - “Filigreed red fruits and smoky clove mingle with dried thyme and wild mint. This will age wonderfully, but he is drinking beautifully at the moment. 2024-2034” - Decanter
2023 Syrah Stolo Vineyard SLO Coast - “A featherweight beauty reminiscent of the now much sought-after Arnot-Roberts Clary Ranch bottling. The nose is a lovely combination of peppery, savory, cool-climate Syrah goodness with a beautiful oceanic floral lift. The palate is juicy and energetic.” RobertParker.com. 2026-2032
2023 Syrah SLO Coast - “Green olive, white pepper and blue and purple fruits. An enticing purity, lovely succulence, and vibrant acidity through the finish.”-RobertParker.com. Drink 2024-2030.
2022 Pinot Noir Deer Ridge Trail Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains - “A savory and earth-driven single vineyard Pinot Noir that balances ripeness with an excellent lift and freshness. Bright berry aromatics buoy darker elements of turned earth, lifted further by pine sap and fresh mint notes. The palate has a savory generosity, plenty of piquant herbs mingling with ripe, juicy red and black bramble fruits.”-Decanter, 93 points. Drink now til 2030.
2022 Pinot Noir Bassi Vineyard SLO Coast - “Hauntingly dark and floral, textures of pure silk, lifted by fresh acidity as mineral drenched red and black fruits saturate under an air of violet inner florals. This is already gorgeous today, it will only get better with a year or two of cellaring.”-Vinous. Drink now til 2028
2022 Pinot Noir Humboldt County - “Light rose perfume and red cherry. Palate is forest and tart. Subtle tannins mesh well. TOP WINE.”- SLOW WINE GUIDE, August 2023. Drink now til 2026.
2022 Syrah Bassi Vineyard SLO Coast - “Reminds me of a good Saint Joseph.”-Jeb Dunnuck, June 2023. “Aromas of plum and blackberry along with savory notes and subtle iodine and wood grilled meats.”-SLOW WINE GUIDE, August 2023. Drink now til 2034.
2021 Pinot Noir Central Coast - My family has been loving this fresh, bright wine, especially with a light chill. It’s more like Beaujolais than Burgundy, with that natural acid and 12.5% alcohol. Going to be sad to see it go. Drink now til 2027.
2021 Pinot Noir Bassi Vineyard SLO Coast - This has turned into the wildest Pinot Noir I’ve ever put out there. The barn door is slightly ajar these days. Farmhouse Pinot Noir but with a lot of gorgeous, gobby, cherry fruit keeping things together. If I filtered or added products or put in industry-standard sulfite levels, this earthy character might be more subdued, but it bloomed after six months in the bottle, blossomed into what it is today, and I recommend decanting it and drinking it soon, especially with an epic full flavored meal, barbecue even. I do think this will age for five more years, as the bit of effervescence is a preservative. A total living wine.
2021 Pinot Noir Eden Rift Vineyard Cienega Valley - Dark as night and bulletproof. This wine is chock full of limestone minerality, glistening natural acidity, and terrace-grown purply, grapey dense fruit. A friend recently said it was a dead ringer for Volnay. Drink or hold til 2030.
2021 Pinot Noir Deer Ridge Trail Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains - Poured blind and I’d lean Gevrey Chambertin, maybe Far Sonoma Coast. Vineyard manager Prudy Foxx mentioned Morey Saint Denis in regards to the character of what this small steep coastal vineyard puts out. The 2021 has truly opened up, with the raspberry and orange citrus fruit, sappy forest character, and old world earthiness coming on. Drink now til 2030.
2021 Syrah Edna Valley - Spicy, wild, pepper, red and blue berries, saline, volcanic reddish Sicilian like palate. Still an incredible food wine for middle-eastern fare, red sauce joints, tri-tip barbecue. The acidity is ripping. Vines are torn out forever. Drink now through 2027.
2021 Syrah Bassi Vineyard SLO Coast - Super young and intense. Cut it with beef or check back in around 2026. Can hold til 2030 or more.
2020 Pinot Noir Central Coast - I’d drink these up if you have them. Remarkably good fruit showing still. Came entirely from Eden Rift Vineyard, cofermented with 5% Chardonnay, and bottled young for early consumption, though I’ve gotten feedback that it’s aging nicely. Drink now.
2020 Syrah Stolo Vineyard SLO Coast - With the prevailing wildfire smoke of 2020, I almost didn’t buy this fruit. The testing that was available on grapes at the time showed no smoke taint, so I made two barrels of Syrah. I sold most of it to a wine restaurant group in So. Cal, and a small amount at a heavy discount to my mailing list, just in case. Today, it smells like classic Stolo, but I can’t tell if it’s harsh tannins or smoke in its tannic form that makes the finish so intense. Drink now with al pastor or cigarettes.
2019 Pinot Noir Central Coast - Youthful red color with good clarity for an early bottled, unfiltered wine. Watermelon Jolly Rancher candy, cola, orangey aromas, cranberry sauce and spicy palate. Two barrels of Eden Rift Vineyard pressings, one barrel of John Sebastiano Vineyard pressings. Drink now til 2026.
2019 Pinot Noir John Sebastiano Vineyard Sta. Rita Hills - I’m reminded why Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir is so expensive. This smells and tastes pricey. There is a pronounced earthiness now that this has been in the bottle since summer of 2020, but that bright red SB County fruit is still fully on show. Drink now with a decant, or hold til 2028 if you’re not afraid of the funk.
2019 Pinot Noir Eden Rift Vineyard Cienega Valley - Deep, dark youthful color with a jammy, more Zinfandel like aroma, until you swirl and search and find that amazing huckleberry scent. Complex, young, and hasn’t changed much. One barrel of Calera clone, one barrel of Mt. Eden clone. Drink now til 2030.
2019 Syrah Stolo Vineyard Central Coast - Exactly how I remembered it looking and tasting after bottling. The ripest Syrah from Stolo Vineyard ever because it froze the last two nights the grapes were on the vine. Has that warm mineral spring earth/tar, blackberry, wild peppermint, banana, bresaola character of the site. Medium-weight, clean and glossy palate, tannins there but mellow. Drink now til 2028 easy.
2019 Syrah Bassi Vineyard Central Coast - Sagebrush, rained on lavender, raw lamb marinated in thyme and pepper, Alain Graillot Crozes Hermitage like. Has integrated so beautifully in the bottle. Drink now til 2030.
2018 Pinot Noir Eden Rift Vineyard Central Coast - Drink now.
2018 Syrah Stolo Vineyard/Boulder Ridge Vineyard Central Coast - Oh my… at a dinner party here the week before Christmas, I opened this quintessential Cambrian Syrah (two actual Syrah vineyards in tiny Cambria?!) and it stopped the table in its tracks. So dirty in the best possible way. “Under the sheets kinda way,” a friend said with a blushing grin. Yes this wine smells like sex. Maybe I should’ve stopped the project then and there. What more to achieve? The wine needed some air, and within minutes drifted up something akin to the scents I get off the famous August Clape Syrahs from the Northern Rhone. “As right as wrong can be”, Kris Kristofferson once sang. Boulder Ridge ripped the vines out after this harvest. A winemaker friend was served this blind in fall 2025 and he claimed Domaine Jamet Cote Rotie. Drink now til 2027.
2017 Pinot Noir Sta. Rita Hills - Last tasted August 2022. Was in prime shape. Drink now or through 2027..
2017 Syrah Stolo Vineyard Central Coast - Drink now or hold til 2027.
2016 “Dark Hollow” Syrah Spanish Springs Vineyard Central Coast - This bootleg wine, hand destemmed in our Templeton garage, co-fermented with Viognier in 45 gallon food grade trash cans, bucketed into a single barrel, aged in my mom’s cooler garage in Shell Beach, only to be hand bottled during the famous solar eclipse of 2017, continues to beckon me back to the garage. If wine this good and ageworthy is possible to make at home, WTF am I thinking? Drink now or hold til 2030 easy.
Marooned in Marin (published December 21, 2021 in Anderson Valley Advertiser)
Marooned In Marin
BY DARREN DELMORE
As the atmospheric river unleashed its fury over the winemaker dinner I hosted with my brand manager Johnny Roldan, trouble thundered its way down. The fifty or so guests were four courses deep at the Marin County bistro, overserved and underfed, and the outdoor patio patrons began passing on the dessert round and hitting the road. Thickly bespectacled Johnny and I had shared an UBER from SF to Marin, with plans to do the same on the backend. I’d known him for a decade, mostly professionally, and he had just relocated to the city by the bay. The night’s event was our first real evening working together, and was so far a success.
With the dinner clearing out, I shook some wet hands out in front as Johnny stood by the kitchen area with his cell phone in hand, having secured an UBER driver to snag us, who’s gamey car icon hadn’t moved much. “Seventeen minutes,” Johnny said to me, showing me his phone. “Salvador is coming.” I took a swig of one of the red wines. The tall, handsome owner of the restaurant, Germain, had told us he had a morning flight to NYC, so he couldn’t linger too late after the event. He was drinking twice as much as us, but was younger, fit, French, and the target of attention from two red faced women who repeatedly came in to hug him good bye and receive the ceremonial Parisian pecks on the cheek. One of the women looked through Johnny and I as if we were apparitions, or just boringly American like her.
“Salvador isn’t moving,” Johnny said.
More guests left. The rain hammered down. Streets turned to springs out front. “No!” Johnny suddenly showed me his phone. He’d been charged for a ride that never came.
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said. I clicked on Lyft and it wouldn’t load. The icon just spun around, the map never coming in from the blur. A few wine club members came to thank us for being there as we stood by a refrigerator full of all-you-can-drink Perrier and other cold goods. Johnny continued the search. After the members left, I asked him how it was looking.
“Not good. I think we’re stranded.” He showed me his phone as it tried to upload HotelTonight. “That’s where I’m at,” he said, shrugging his dress coat shoulders. He hadn’t been outside since it’d started storming, yet his curly hair was slick with anxiety over our failing exit plan.
Germain sauntered over with a full glass of the white dessert wine. “Zee internet is out,” he said to us. “All over.” One of the drunk girls, standing nearby, started ripping her car keys out of her purse. “You should not drive,” Germain said. “Absolutely not. No way.” Her face beamed with the fantasy of a night in his sculpted foreign arms, then she belched an aromatic blend of all five pairings. He got his phone out and had the same problem as Johnny. It was after ten.
“I think you guys are stuck,” Germain said.
“Can we try the hardline?” I asked.
The goateed and man-bunned manager came over and said the POS and the hardline were all down too.
“Is there a hotel within walking distance from here?” Johnny asked him.
“Listen,” Germain said, taking an elegant pull off the viscous white and then pointing across the street, “I live just over there. Come to my place. Seriously, it is your only option. Zee best option.”
“Totally,” Johnny said. “But I don’t want to impose.”
Germain’s restaurants here and in SF were the most important on-premise accounts for the wine import company Johnny worked for. His French boss had stressed that he was to take the upmost care of Germain and even learn some French in his off hours to further the connection.
“It is fine. It is okay.”
“You have kids,” Johnny continued, Woody Allen-esque in gesture and tone. “I mean your wife is there asleep probably. We can try for an Uber over there, at your place, but…”
I leaned to Johnny. “What about an old fashioned taxi?” But there were no yellow pages to flip through, nor a hardline to phone one in on. “Or maybe Germain’s internet is working at his house? Who knows.”
The manager drove one of the girls home after the other simply bolted. We followed Germain out back and ran through the rain into his VW SUV. I sat in back, Johnny in the front passenger seat, and Germain fired it up. He conversated and drove, and soon I realized we weren’t going across the street. Not at all. Not “just over there.” We were going west into the wilderness. Johnny’s head, right in front of me, was going into overdrive realizing this himself, but he kept it lively, this important French wine account of his. We were ten minutes west, fifteen, with trees, rain and darkness, hydroplaning through the Marin mountainside.
“Germain,” Johnny said, “seriously we don’t want to impose. I know you have a family. But thank you. We’ll hang for a bit and try to pick up a Lyft or cab at your place."
“I have to drive to SFO in zee morning. I can take you to the restaurant for a coffee, breakfast, and then drop you off in zee city. No problem. It’s cool.”
“Totally,” Johnny said, nodding his head rather spastically. “Totally.”
“It is no problem. I have a separated space for you. Separated from the main house. There is a bed in there. You guys can share zee bed.”
“Share zee bed?” we both thought simultaneously.
“Totally,” Johnny replied with false gusto. His head nodded then like it’d flop right off at the neck. I even leaned forward, mostly amused but also… “Share zee bed?” We hummed further west into the stormy night. I honestly didn’t even know where we were. Point Reyes? Sonoma Coast? Finally, we pulled left off the highway into a rural community, past a closed down tavern, with no street lights. A small neighborhood appeared.
“Zis is my place,” he said. We pulled down an unpaved alley so potholed and soaked it could’ve been Northern Panama, and approached an electric gate with mossy wood slats posted vertically onto three thick metal bars. He clicked it open and we drove through. It creaked shut behind us as we parked.
Using our phones for vision, we rushed out into the downpour and followed Germain across a flowing band of water toward the guest unit, over a mock little wooden bridge, and up to the sliding glass door of what looked like a 200 square foot office. “Man,” Johnny said, “That was like a creek through your property!”
“Zare are two of zem,” Germain said, unlocking the slider and opening up the door to reveal a small simple space, with no bathroom or chairs and just a desk on the right. Johnny was trying to compliment him on the space, which had files in milk crates on the floor, some of his handwritten sommelier exam pages taped to the wall above an old computer monitor. Germain crouched over and rolled out a full sized floor mattress, which consumed every centimeter of floor space.
“Zare you are. See you guys in zee morning,” Germain said.
“Thanks Germain,” I said.
“Totally,” Johnny added.
“In zee morning, I take you to SF. Okay, good night.”
He closed the sliding glass door behind him, then Johnny let it out. “I can’t do this. Seriously I’m fat, I snore now, it smells like old man shoes in here.” He opened up the door and called out to Germain, who returned more irritated this time. “Let me get your wifi password. And your address, just in case you know, we get a cab or an Uber out here.”
“Out here? A cab? No way.” He gave him the info anyhow and left.
I sat awkwardly at the foot of the mattress, next to a massive pair of Adidas running shoes. I looked at the wine maps on the wall, and Germain’s hand written “Good vintages” list of Burgundy, Champagne and Bordeaux, going back to 1996 and stalling out at 2007. Johnny laid down tentatively on the mattress and couldn’t even look at me. He clicked on his phone.
“I’m trying man. I’m still tryin’.”
“How are these size fourteen Adidas?” I said. “My head can go down here and you can be up there. It’s no problem.”
“No. Not happening.” Then into his cell phone, he spoke. “Johnny Roldan, call me back, ride to SF, tonight. Thank you.”
“What was that?”
“Marin county taxi service.”
“Really? Think it’ll work?”
“At this point I’ll try anything.”
He continued to type away. “I can’t do the morning thing either,” he said. “Breakfast? Same clothes? With morning breath?”
I wasn’t that excited about the prospect either. I’m 45 years old, father of two small kids, while Johnny was a couple years younger and single. But we were stuck, and now even more so.
After a few quiet minutes, he almost stood and leaped up off the bed. “Ali is coming! Dude. Twenty five minutes.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s what it says.” He held up his phone to show me.
“Crazy.”
“Twenty-two minutes!”
“Think he’s really coming? All the way out here? Is the car moving?”
Johnny’s face looked insane. “A little.”
“If we bail on Germain, we’ll be losing some placements.”
“Possibly.”
In the wholesale wine sales world, and going into the busy holiday season where imbibing ramps up a notch, it was a valid point to bring up.
“You know,” I said, “in Euro culture, this is no problem. Two travelling guys having to share a bed? In Australia even. Youth hostels. Germain will be confused why we didn’t just crash out and share the bed. He seemed excited about the breakfast part.”
“Darren, there’s a cultural divide.”
“He’ll be bummed. We could lose some placements.”
“Seventeen minutes.”
“No way.”
He held up his phone again.
The storm was at peak strength outside. Johnny went out and peed into the rainfall off the little porch. Maybe a small bathroom, or even a chair in here would’ve broadened the space out, and helped it seem more doable. But It was all bed. He came back in and laid down in his spot, eyes to his phone. I looked at the ceiling.
“Ali’s here!” he suddenly announced, on his feet and tearing open the sliding glass door and just bolting.
I got up, turned off the light, tidied the mattress up, and closed the door shut behind me. I activated my phone light and ventured out into the rain. I saw the light of Johnny’s phone going side to side by the electric gate. The creek was a small river now. I couldn’t hear or see an UBER. We were fully blocked in by the gate. “I can’t find a button!” he shouted.
“I’m sure there’s a passenger gate,” which sounded normal to say. “Or a people gate.”
The dozen or so wooden slats affixed vertically to the electric gate were soaked, weathered by Marin weather, with moss growing all the way up to their sharp, arrowed tips. You couldn’t just climb up over it. There was a small, three foot high metal pole near it, but no button to be found. Aside from the gate, industrial wire fencing enclosed the perimeter along with bushes and trees ten feet high. I left him to scan the northern corner when I heard him say, “Fuck it,” and with his one good hand, hoist himself onto the pole, then crest the top of the gate. He was up there, goofy footed, miraculous in the face of storm, and the whole thing wobbled like he was going down the face of a backwashed eight footer and was drunk, half of which was true. “Johnny!” I yelled, rushing over with my phone light on him. That was when his foot broke through three of the slats and he went crotch down on the gate. I grabbed his phone out of his hand. As he fell completely over the side with a few more slats of wood, I grasped the back of his jeans to lessen his bodyweight blow into the Marin County mud. He’d fled the compound, down there on the earth with his glasses and clothing streaked with terroir.
Still on the inside, I squatted down and shined my light upon the gaping opening, that any stranger, child, dogs or pack of boars could simply walk right through. Johnny suddenly grabbed his phone out of my hand and shined it on the open damage too, before he said, “Now we’re losing some placements.” He tore off down the dark alley, fending for himself. No carpenter by any means, I did what I could to match the rusted nails on a few of the slats to their place on the gate, but most of the pieces were smashed. I pictured Germain leaving for the airport in the morning, taking a sip of coffee perhaps, hitting the gate open and half of the wood just shaking right off.
Down the dark alley and around the corner, I finally saw headlights and a Lincoln Town Car. I ran up and opened the door. Johnny was in back, masklessly rambling a river of gratitude to the masked up driver. I looked at him like he was a mental patient.
“Was that necessary?” I asked.
“My ankle is twisted but totally worth it,” he said, nodding his head. “Totally.”
Desperately Seeking Selby (published February 19, 2020 in Anderson Valley Advertiser)
Desperately Seeking Selby
BY DARREN DELMORE
By the age of 20 I wanted to be a novelist of dark bitter books with criminal characters trudging their sins, diseases and poisoned dreams around California’s golden landscape. The writers I idolized, and which I imitated in what would now be embarrassing rip off work that thankfully went unpublished, included Bret Easton Ellis, Charles Bukowski, Henry Rollins, and mostly Hubert Selby Jr. My father, a restaurant owner, Rotary Clubber, and Republican, was a closet supporter of the independent and alternative arts, and an insomniac, often reading till dawn books by Raymond Carver, Jerzy Kosinski, Elmore Leonard, Woody Allen and more. It was in that small shelf by his bed that I discovered “Last Exit to Brooklyn”. I read it over a perspired evening when I was seventeen years old and he had moved out for the last time.
When I graduated from high school, two friends and I went on a surf trip to the remote southern jungle of Costa Rica and got ridiculously shorted on waves and mis-marketed on the all-inclusive surf camp. We surfed on day one then the ocean went flat as a quesadilla and the air turned oppressively hot. Without a vehicle, we bought a carton of cigarettes, drank Imperial beers as if that was something we normally did, and I read. I was bored by “The Virgin Suicides”, felt too low tech for “Shampoo Planet” by Douglas Coupland, got through “Where I’m Calling From” by Carver but felt the distance of my age all the while, then Selby’s “Song of the Silent Snow” with his free form lower case usage and occasional allegiance to proper punctuation cut through me with the speed of Black Flag storytelling, and I reread it in our mosquito infested hut, in between cigarettes on the beach and eating the three meals a day that the camp provided. I wanted to be a short story writer then and there. I attempted to write a few in my journal, the only one worth mentioning starring an older restaurant owner who was a gambler with a suicidal wife and a mistress in Vegas, and who gets locked up at closing by an enemy in his walk in freezer, presumably left for dead. We left Costa Rica early – the youngest of us broke down mentally and we’d discovered we’d been fed horsemeat three meals a day. Plus, I awoke with a black tongue the final two mornings, and fearing a fatal insect bite was causing my rapid deterioration, we arranged our complicated transport home. Turned out it was overdosing on Pepto Bismol.
After Costa Rica I experienced a radical breakout of acne that absolutely floored my selfesteem. I started to feel like one of Selby’s blistered Brooklyn-based creations. My mother got me on Accutane which cured your layers of skin like a leg of prosciutto, requiring monthly blood analysis for the power of the pills. It was an eight month remedy in which I shed skin, partially attended college classes, worked at the pizzeria, and found safety in a bohemian café called Linnea’s in San Luis Obispo, reading special ordered copies of “Requiem for a Dream” and “The Demon”. I filled notebooks with story ideas, journal entries about what my home was like now that my father had left my mom for his own mistress which led into the beginning of a loosely fictional take on my teens, often getting refills of coffee till midnight. I believed that I was a writer. Most of my friends were all about surfing and drinking at parties while I was moonlighting as an awkward, pimpled, literary nightowl.
All those hours and notebooks didn’t completely go to recycling. In 1998 I landed an editor’s position at The Surfing Group, publishers of Surfing Magazine. With the office based in San Clemente and my then bride-to-be and I finishing up a yearlong lease in Morro Bay before moving south, I was crashing at her travelling grandparents’ home in Santa Monica on Sundays through Thursdays, and frequenting institutions like Beyond Baroque and Laemmle movie theaters. I was reworking my first novel in café’s and the kitchen of that old wood-floored house. On one warm August Sunday, I made it to their place with the Sunday edition of the L.A. Times. I brewed coffee and read through the Books section, when I checked the calendar for the week’s events and nearly spat out my sip when I read that Hubert Selby Jr. was reading that afternoon on the 3rd Street Promenade and signing copies of his new book “The Willow Tree”. Started at 2 pm. I was on it.
I dressed as least beachy as I could, drove down Lincoln and parked in a garage near the promenade, with its street performers, high end shoppers and tourists buzzing about. I expected a line coming out of the bookstore, but I was fifteen minutes early and walked right in. A middle aged guy in black framed glasses greeted me from behind the register and said if I had any questions to let him know. Near the new releases was a table filled with dozens of the small format red hardcovers of “The Willow Tree”. I grabbed one immediately and kept browsing my way to the back. The very rear of the bookstore had a separate room that was being set up by two women, with enough folding chairs for fifty or more people. There was a podium and a microphone in the front and a table full of the new books there too. Leading to the entry of the room was a purple roped line for guests to wait in. More minutes went by. I kept looking around the bookstore to see when he was going to appear. Was he already in back? Would he crawl out of the dumpster-filled back alley like one of his inventions? One of the major writers of our time would be appearing in the flesh at any moment. My finger prints had melted into the jacket.
Then it was 2 pm and the store was empty but for me and the three employees. I eyed the front door and finally saw him. Two men, the author himself and what appeared to be his handler who was much taller and dressed in a beige trench coat, walked in. Selby was dressed to present in a button up collared shirt with a sweater over it, and there was something very New York about these guys in appearance and their movements compared to the rest of the promenade. Selby looked around the store and started waving his palm up in question. I was next to the travel section, where they’d pass me right by, but I was staring for sure. I’d never met a famous musician or actor or anything. This was strangely my Beatles moment, somehow. One of the women from the back room came out and shook his hand eagerly. “Mr. Selby, we are so excited you are here. Really. This is going to be great.”
“This?” Selby said. “Where is everybody?”
“Well it’s just two so we expect readers and fans to fill in over the hour so…”
“Yeah but nobody’s here,” he said again.
The guy behind the register rushed over to shake his hand and paint a positive light.
“Hi Mr. Selby. We’ve had a lot of calls today about this so yeah, I think people will fill in.
In the meantime, can we get you anything? Or you sir? Anything? Water, coffee?”
It truly hit me that I was the only one here for this and I’d possibly be getting one on one time with Hubert Selby Jr. and that freaked me out. What did I have to say to him or tell him about? Acne and horsemeat was all I got! And how did I deserve this? This National Book Award Winner, survivor of life, worldwide celebrated author who at the peak of his career was at his book launch event in a major US city with nobody in attendance but me.
“No no. It’s done,” Selby said to them. “We’re outta here.” Then he said to his handler “Joe let’s go. We’re going.”
“Mr. Selby please don’t,” the guy pleaded. “Please stay. We have it all set up and…”
The duo was heading my way now to take off out of the store. I had the copy of The Willow Tree in hand. I could’ve dodged them and said nothing. “Um Mr. Selby?”
Through his large thick square lenses he gave me a startled look. He was upset I could tell.
“Could I get you to sign my copy?”
“No, I’m not signing anything. I’m leaving.”
His friend nudged him then, making him soften a little.
“Okay, but fast.” He pulled out a pen.
“Thank you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Darren. With an e.”
He was signing so fast that if I was to say anything it’d better be now.
“Your book ‘Song of The Silent Snow’ has influenced my own writing so much. Thank you for writing it.”
He paused then, blinked, then looked at me and said “’Song of the Silent Snow’ did? Really?”
“It did.”
“Thanks kid. Keep writing.” Then they were gone, leaving the three employees in a quiet circle, fully flustered.
I paid for my signed copy at the register, and the guy apologized to me about the event.
I walked out on the promenade toward a coffeeshop, past hundreds of people seemingly happy and spending. My mind was swirling with what had just happened. If my dream was to write books like Hubert Selby Jr., to be like him and devote my entire life to characters and stories, and a no show book event was the culmination of a career, why do it at all? For the craft?
“Keep writing,” he’d said to me.
With a cup of black coffee at a two top table in back, I smiled and dove straight into Selby’s world like it was my own cool band discovery, my own punk rock secret, while Santa Monica was missing out on it all.