Melancholy sneaked up when I was least expecting it. From where I was sitting on the terrace, the late afternoon view looking north over the vineyards to the ridges of the moraine was sublime, and the pure air and glistening sky were flawless. I had gone to Channing Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton to catch up with Christopher Tracy, the winemaker, his wife Allison Dubin, the general manager, and Cooper, their five month old son. And to sample new releases from the 2006 vintage.
The wines we tasted were splendid. Tracy is emerging as one of the most original and visible winemakers in the region, and his wines get more interesting each year. I particularly admired Mosaico, a blend of five different white wine grapes that were grown in a single field, then harvested, pressed and fermented together. The taste was rich, deep, fruity and complex, surely, I thought, one of the best whites to come out of Long Island. It was by any standard an enchanting moment: charming surroundings, delightful company, captivating wine. Yet I was feeling pensive—that familiar annual sadness that creeps up on me in late August. The passing of another summer in the Hamptons, today turning into yesterday, never to be recaptured.
The melancholy visits me every year in late August and early September. I’ve commented on it occasionally on these pages so an attentive reader might recognize my whining as well as some of my words.
Most people measure the passage of time with important events—usually birthdays and the New Year. Yet I never feel older on those occasions. For me, Labor Day marks the transformation. When I finish off the last open bottle of Cristal with the Champagne Louis Roederer group at their table at the Hampton Classic, long after the crowd has gone, that moment specifically, officially, unmistakably, marks the end my summer. I am wistful because even though autumn is perhaps our most beautiful season, those long, lovely, incomparable days of summer are winding down.
By Labor Day, the leaves on the chestnut trees by Town Pond are starting to fall, and I’ve already detected a few leaves floating down from the historic elm outside my window. The garden centers have begun their fall sales. Friends report in on the plummeting prices of nursery stock—far more compelling than our swooning stock portfolios. The television meteorologists get breathlessly excited about hurricanes forming in the Caribbean and heading to the East Coast. Local melons are plump and juicy, tomatoes are plentiful, and the fall crops of broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower and all the root vegetables beckon to me at the Green Thumb. The messages all around are strong and clear: summer is ending, fall is here.
Perhaps it is the pace of a residential resort community. Even now, with more people more of the year, there is a distinct change in the feeling of our towns following that first Monday in September.
I wish I could be more like my friends who jump right into fall, who walk off the beach without looking back and plunge into the world of white azaleas at forty per cent off. They are not sorrowful and triste the way I am. They are not listening, or at least not paying attention, to the clock ticking off the seconds and hours of summer—and the days of our lives. They embrace the shift in the season, where I am reluctant. They accept the inevitability of time, while I grudgingly let go of another precious golden season. Their sparkling afternoon at the horse show or casual evening at a barbecue is my existential journey—my passage to another year.
At least I know it is not goodbye to my friends and readers. It’s just a bientôt. We’ll all be together for another wonderful season in the sun next year.
