The Quiet Inheritance
Some things find us, even before we know we’re listening.
Lately, my ten-year-old has been listening to one song on repeat.
He found it on his own, buried somewhere in the algorithmic ether. A spiral that only heated up when he saw Rage Against the Machine on an SNL documentary. I didn’t push it. He just found the fire and followed the smoke Ramones, Green Day, back to Rage, circling around again.
But this one song… this one he keeps coming back to. Over and over.
He doesn’t sing the words aloud, except in his room with the doors closed. It’s obvious something about it gets to him. There’s a quiet electricity when it comes on, a kind of inward focus. I ask him what he likes about it and he shrugs. But there’s a hesitation there too… a flicker of that kid-awareness that this thing feels like his. Not something handed down. Something discovered.
And I have to admit: I’m probably a bad parent. I let him fall asleep to punk rock. I let him download the fury of Zack de la Rocha. Even though he doesn’t really have the framework for any of it yet.
But honestly, I get it.
Because I remember what it felt like to stumble across something that sounded the way you felt inside even if you didn’t have the vocabulary for it yet. That charge that shows up before you have the words. When I first got into wine, it was the same. I couldn’t explain the difference between structure and weight. I didn’t know what “malolactic” meant. I just knew that some bottles made me feel something. Like music did. Like this song does for him.
When I was not much older than he is now, I started a band. We were loud, unpracticed, and completely convinced we were onto something. Our first real show was at our church, of all places. (Still not sure what they thought they were agreeing to.) A week or so before the gig, our bass player bailed and we were scrambling. Then my dad offered to step in. Just like that. He learned the parts, practiced with us after work. Got up on stage with us. No judgment, no commentary just presence.
We covered a few songs that night, but there was one that really anchored the set. A song we picked because it felt honest, the kind of angsty, melodic yearning that made sense when you were young and trying to find your voice. It was simple, raw, and just the right amount of sad.
Years later, I forgot all about it.
Until now.
Because that song my kid keeps playing?
The one he found on his own, the one he won’t stop listening to?
Not a hit. Not a single. Just a quiet b-side on Kerplunk, an album from before anyone really knew who Green Day was. A song most people might skip. But somehow, that’s the one that caught him.
A song called Christie Road.
Same one I played on that little church stage.
Same one my dad played bass on.
Same one my son has now, unprompted, unknowing, claimed as his own.
And maybe that’s what this is about. Not rebellion, exactly. Not even music. But something quieter and harder to name. Something passed down without anyone meaning to. A thread that runs through us in ways we don’t always recognize at first.
Like the way I still get that shock, that jolt of recognition, when a wine speaks to you. That same charge I felt when I first got into wine, before I had any idea what I was doing. Before I knew what Bordeaux even meant.
It’s not nostalgia. It’s something older than that.
I don’t think it’s really about rage either. I think it’s about resonance. That deep-in-the-bones sense that someone, somewhere, gets it, whatever it is. That you’re not alone. That you don’t have to do it their way.
Even if you don’t yet know what your way is.
Wine, like music, rarely starts with understanding. It starts with that flicker. A gut-level pull. A feeling that something here matters even if you don’t know why yet.
That’s the kind of wine I want to make. Not loud in the same way, but honest. Not perfect. Charged.
Something that stirs something in you before you can explain why.
Like a good b-side.
Like a feeling you didn’t know you inherited.
We played another song that night in the church, too (there were others that are lost in my memory).
It didn’t mean much to me then…just sounded cool, felt restless. Now I wonder if we knew exactly what we were doing, even if we didn’t know why. One song about needing space to feel something real. Another about not quite fitting in. They both landed in that sweet spot of being too young to explain anything, but old enough to feel everything.
And somehow, thirty, some odd, years later, my kid is right there again.
Same age. Same album.
Same quiet questions playing on repeat.
I have the original “Smoothed Out” and “Slappy” EP’s. Get him Inside Out, the best thing Zack has done.