Turn Up The Heat And Chill The Rosé

by Jimmy Buffett

from the album Buffet Hotel

Jimmy’s Note:

A year after the trip to the desert, I was in Jamaica in Oracabessa and on my way to breakfast when I ran into the great record producer and writer Danile Lanois. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time and did a little catching up. Later that day, we had drinks and were talking about our respective travels and projects, and somewhere in the course of the conversation the subject of the popularity of rosé these days came up.

I mentioned taking a supply to Timbuktu as part of our rations, which prompted a story from Daniel of a tale he attributed to Robbie Robertson, about the ingredients of a party, especially in colder climates, being to turn up the heat and chill the rosé. I said, “that’s a song title.”

For travelers who profess to be writers, we all know that listening and remembering are necessary attributes but follow-through is the key. We also know how much we owe to bar conversations, but a line or a joke left in a bar is only that and eventually wil be swept away by the passage of time. You have to learn to squirell away those ideas in your treasure chest where you can keep an eye on them, care and fertilize them until they flower into a story or a song.

Those several bottles of Domaine De L’Isle Rosé which I had carted from St. Barth to Timbuktu were the fertilizer that made the line from Jamaica blossom into a song. Nowhere were they more appreciated by some of the Buktu Brothers than when we arrived in the hot dusty surroundings of the city on our first day. Many people I have related this story to are shocked that there actually is a place called Timbuktu. I tell them they need to brush up on their geography or at least look it up on Google Earth.

Timbuktu, like a lot of ancient cities, has seen better days. The Timbuktu of old was a center of Islamic culture and the Wall Street of the desert, where trade goods and salt from the Mediterranean were exchanged for gold from the desert. Today there is more sand than gold in Timbuktu. It is in your clothes, your bed, your food, your guitar case and always on your mind.

From Porquerolles to Jamaica, to Mali, to Montauk, the idea for this song rode in the treasure box until it was time to be opened. I hope it gives you both interesting and funny observations about life with and without wine. So for my friends who live a good distance north or south of the equator, there is no need to deny yourself the joy. Daniel and Robbie were right. These days you can ship anything almost anywhere, so call your local UPS or FedEx office and just remember: “Even though the south of France may be 10,000 miles away you can turn up the heat and chill the rosé. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”