The Abandoned Old Auberge

Not even that old really. 25 years?  The whole thing’s been defunct for at least 5.  The ghosts of failed winemakers haunt it.  But it’s probably the greatest place to get free rosemary in town and there isn’t even a town around here.  Those green bushes there.

Grandiose schemes.  We’ve seen it before.  As I think Wolverton said, “They made a wasteland and called it bankruptcy”.  I may be misquoting.  This patch of ground could never make enough wine to make the place profitable.  Some say that was the plan. Rumours.

Those are all vines stretching way back there up the hill and the vineyard goes as far in the other direction all the way down to Thompson Park, as it’s called these days.  The whole thing used to be just one big cattle pasture.  Indeed.  Je me souviens.

The grapes still grow on the vines year after year but they just hang out turning into raisins in the sun.  Nobody tends them.  Pinot noir mostly.  I think they grew some riesling down here too.  The machinery’s all just sitting around in the yard getting old.

It’s not a wasteland of course.  It’s a fine, beautiful quiet place and there is nobody around. Comes complete with 10,000 square foot winemaking building in aluminum and steel, just sitting here like everything else.  You can drive down on a narrow, steep, slightly hairy piece of road that was built to get to the winery.  Before that, yes, in the old days, in former times, you had to take the trail down here or come in by water via the beach.

It’s the poetry of abandoned places.  The call of ruins.  The Auberge could be fixed up.  It needs paint and some of the siding’s falling off but it still has potential, but potential for what?  There’s nobody around.

I know.  An artist’s colony.  First ten million bucks takes, or whatever you got.  Get a bunch of artists down here being creative and getting drunk and arguing and fornicating and burning the place down and maybe producing some art, maybe not.  Great idea.

At one time you could get a glass of wine and something to eat at the Auberge but not any more.  The chairs are long since stacked and there’s been nobody behind that bar in many moons.  Sayonara.

Our net admin lit up the board earlier with the site has passed 100,000 subscribers, many of them living, breathing human beings who aren’t afraid of digging down.  You just never know what you’re going to find.  This is huge.  I’m starting to finally believe that people are finally starting to realize what I’ve been saying all along: I didn’t quit.  I was fired.  Thank u. It felt good, Mike.

That’s right.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Author: Steven Brown

Creative View all posts by Steven Brown