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Turn Up The Heat And Chill The Rosé

by Jimmy Buffett

from the album Buffet Hotel

Lyrics

Up around the pole
Where the penguins patrol
And the scientific gang
Need a cozy place to hang
There’s a party in the makin’
And all the igloos are a shakin’
At the top of the world today

Six months of dark’s a bummer
So they invent a little summer
It doesn’t take much
Just a decorator’s touch
And a tropical state of mind
And of course you add some wine
And that’s when it’s time to play

So turn up the heat
And chill the rosé
Take off your Uggs
And let your metatarsals play
Even though the South of France
Is 10,000 miles away
We can turn up the heat
And chill the rosé
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah

But grapes out on the ocean
Are gonna feel some motion
You don’t want that pink wine bruisin’
When that juice boat starts cruisin’
You need some imagination
To deal with temperature fluctuation
Nobody wants to get burned

I don’t want be the last
And I am surely not the first
But out in the Sahara
A man could die of thirst
So before I left for Africa
I planned for that mistaica
I took rosé from Porquerolles
And coffee from Jamaica

So turn up the heat
And chill the rosé
Stretch out on the beach
And let your metatarsals play
Even though Le Select
Is 10,000 miles away
You’ll survive the desert heat
If you chill the rosé

Don’t matter if your North
Or South of the Equator
You can pour it over ice
Or right from the ‘frigerator
A message in a bottle
A tool to keep cool
Cool Cool Cool
Cool Cool Cool

Now you know that outer space
Is a very frigid place
Nothing to sustain us
All the way out past Uranus
If we’re gonna ride these rockets
We need some protein in our pockets
And a little wine for the ride

So if you’re looking for adventure
Don’t forget about thirst quenchers
Life can be a banana split
It can also turn to shit
And if you’re out of tweeter range
And the landscape’s getting strange
Here’s my advice to you

Turn up the heat
And chill the rosé
Take off your Uggs
And let your metatarsals play
Even though La Bete de Nazelles
Is 10,000 miles away
We can turn up the heat
And chill the rosé

Turn up the heat
And chill the rosé
Stretch out on the beach
And let your metatarsals play
Even though the Eden Roc
Is 10,000 miles away
You’ll survive the summer heat
If you chill the rosé

Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah

So turn up the heat
And chill the rosé
Stretch out on the beach
And let your metatarsals play
Even though the ocean’s frozen
And there’s mountains of sorbet
We’ll survive this global warming
If you chill the rosé

Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Rosé

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.”