For the first time, I looked up the origin of the word Tempranillo. It comes from the Spanish word temprano, meaning “early.” Tempranillo grapes ripen earlier than others.
Fueled by metaphor, Tempranillo is a story wrapped in vulnerability, exploring the emotions of lost access to a relationship/time/place that was once available and rich with meaning to its narrator. The real-life inspiration begins with a glass of tequila, not red wine. A few Springs ago, someone left their empty glass of tequila on my windowsill. As time went on, I couldn’t bring myself to move it. That glass was the last physical representation of what once was our evening, what once was our communion.
I felt like I left my heart in that night. Where I last felt most alive remained remembered in the dusty residue at the bottom. I imagined how an empty glass of red wine dries with a red circle at the bottom. Like taffy, strapped to a memory, to August, disarmed.
Tempranillo takes place on the keyboard of a piano, a Spanish vineyard, the wrinkles on a face you love, the bottom of a glass, a rainy morning in America, and all in the month of August.
Watch the A capella lyric video