I have written in this space previously about Dad’s long history working for NASA. As a child, I thought my father was an astronaut because he’d leave for Florida ahead of a rocket launch and then, when the launch was done, he’d be home.
Coincidentally, so too was the travel schedule for a deputy director of public affairs, which Dad happened to really be.
As an aside, my brother Paul recently sent me a posting in the federal DayBook — job listings — for the very position Dad held at both NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he finished his almost 30-year career.
“FYI in case you and Catherine decide to move to D.C. so you can start your childhood over again,” Paul wrote in a note to me with the headquarters listing. “This time you would get to play the role of Dad working at NASA.”
Dad worked at headquarters until NASA decided it was time for a transfer. He had a choice: the research center in Cleveland or KSC. This was the late 1970s, when Cleveland’s river was still flammable. Dad chose Florida, where he’d be working PR for the new Space Shuttle program.
The early 1980s were an exciting time for NASA and especially the folks at Kennedy Space Center, at which the shuttle Columbia would be launched in 1981 on its — and the program’s — maiden voyage. Dad had lots of pictures of him at the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the shuttle was bolted to its boosters, and pictures of him — complete with NASA hard hat — beside the giant crawler as it transported the whole assembled product to the launch pad at top cruising speed of 1 mph.
Columbia lifted off on Sunday morning, April 12, 1981. Somewhere along the way, a bottle of red wine was made to honor this moment in our nation’s history. Bully Hill Vineyards in New York produced it — it still produces a “Space Shuttle Red” for $9.99. The label on this bottle included a pen-and-ink drawing of the shuttle launch. In the lower left hand corner, it reads “First Shuttle Flight ‘COLUMBIA’ April 12, 1981.” On the right hand corner, “Cape Kennedy Space Center.”
On the back, the label includes this: “The artwork on the front label is the work of the owner of Bully Hill, who cannot legibly use his name on this design because of federal court action.”
That would be Walter Taylor, whose family owned the winery until it got bought by Coca-Cola. I’m sure lawyers got very rich over the dispute of using the Taylor Wine name.
Regardless, Dad loved the label. He kept an original unopened bottle — and another, commemorating Columbia’s third launch in 1982. He got that one (vintage 1990, actually) at a liquor store for $5.99 and left it unopened. The price tag was still on it.
This all came to a head — and not a very fruity one, at that — last weekend when Catherine and I, in the throes of packing for a pending move, decided to open the bottles and dispatch with what would probably be pretty terrible wine but bottles worth saving for posterity.
The first sign of trouble came when I tried to slide in the corkscrew. The cork disintegrated, first slowly then all at once.
I reached for a glass and poured. Like fine wine, some things just get better with age. But let’s be clear, what sat on the counter in front of Catherine and I was not fine wine.
Few wines can last 40 years. These weren’t among them. The color was the consistency of, well, Coca-Cola. The aroma was the smell of what happens when you mix vinegar, peat moss and fresh compost. It was revolting, but it might actually have made a decent rocket fuel, had we tried.
At one point in time, they might have been modestly decent table wines, these two bottles. But the spirits had long since given up the ghost.
Why didn’t Dad just open and drink them and save the bottles? I’ll never know. He was never a wine connoisseur; wine came into our house by the jug, four jugs to a box. His idea of splurging was Kendall Jackson wine, and that was for his post-funeral social.
In the end, these bottles outlived the very program they celebrate. More space programs are coming, and perhaps more wine to mark the occasion. Meanwhile, they’re still looking for someone to fill Dad’s job.
March 28, 2021 at 02:00AM
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Column: The 40-Year-Old Wine Soured in a March of Time - Southern Pines Pilot
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