There's a new DVD of a concert by Albert King. If you don't know this already, Albert King is the greatest blues guitarist who ever lived. Only Stevie Ray came close, and Stevie sounded a lot like Albert.

Albert was a big man, a left-handed man, and when he started playing there weren't any guitars built for lefties, so he played a regular guitar upside down. He had huge hands, and he didn't use a pick. He played like no one else.

With Albert it wasn't about technique. He knew about six phrases and played about fourteen notes. But every phrase was in-the-pocket and every note was telling; the swinging notes swang, the crying notes cried and the singing notes sang.

I remember back in 1969 seeing a concert at the old Fillmore East in New York: The Who headlined, preceded by Chuck Berry and Albert King. I'd heard Albert but never seen him. I was probably too young for Albert; all my guitar heroes were guys like Alvin Lee who played a lot of notes. Yet on that night Albert played a slow blues in a minor key, and at some point, to my utter astonishment, I felt tears on my cheek. What's happening to me? I thought; The guy plays FOURTEEN NOTES.

But every one of those notes was music. And every note was played with truth and with passion. And it is what, 34 years later, and Albert left us some ten years ago, and I don't listen to a lot of blues any more. But Albert King is the shit. Every bit as true and honest and real as he always was, and the reason I tell you this is, it's not about how many notes you play; it's not about HOW you play at all....it's about what you play.

And if you're wondering "What does this have to do with wine?" then say your question out loud. With wine it isn't the notes, it's the music. It isn't the trees, it's the forest. It isn't the parts; it's the whole. And the very minute you learn to see wine that way, you stop fussing about how much flavor, how many nuances, how much intensity, how many "points": wine becomes either authentic or inauthentic, in every echelon of quality, so that an honest young dry Muscat is every bit as valid as the most regal Riesling, as long as both are honest. And you grow weary of show-off wines, big-fake-boobs wines, superstar-winemaker wines, because life is too short to tolerate the bogus. Once your soul tastes authenticity, it will spit out anything else. Play only the true notes, it will say. It doesn't matter whether they are Albert King's fourteen, or Trane's fourteen thousand - just make them all be music.

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