A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter T

Tartrate

Viniculture
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Tartrate refers to crystals of potassium bitartrate (wine diamonds) that precipitate naturally in wine, harmless sediment.

Detailed Definition
Tartrate’s poetic fascination is its crystalline beauty—these clear, jagged deposits form in bottle or on cork, resembling quartz or diamonds. Poets use tartrate to discuss the mineral heritage of wine, the invisible salts that come from the earth. Their formation is a sign of natural winemaking, unsulfured and unadulterated. In verses about purity and honesty, tartrate crystals become symbols of authenticity. They also evoke the cold stabilization process, a modern intervention to prevent them, highlighting the tension between tradition and technology.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tartrate|"Tartrate crystals, or 'wine diamonds,' are the harmless sediment of potassium bitartrate, a poem of the wine's mineral origins."; "The poet finds in tartrate crystals a symbol of the wine's naturalness, a sign that it has not been overly processed."; "Tartrates are a subject for poems about the beauty of the imperfect, the quirks that make a wine unique."; "The poet uses tartrate to discuss the idea of precipitation, the settling out of what is no longer soluble."; "Tartrate crystals are a visual poem, their jagged shapes a reminder of the chemistry of wine."; "The poet compares tartrate to a fossil, a tiny piece of the wine's past preserved in the bottle."
Additional Notes
Tartrate crystals, commonly known as "wine diamonds," are harmless deposits of potassium bitartrate that form naturally in wine, often in the bottle or on the cork. They are a sign of a wine's natural, unadulterated character, as they are more likely to appear in wines that have not been cold-stabilized or heavily filtered. In poetry, tartrates can be a symbol of the mineral essence of a wine, of the hidden, crystalline structure that underlies its surface. Students should consider how these crystals, which are often mistaken for glass or sugar, are a reminder that wine is a living, complex substance that can surprise and puzzle us. Related terms include minerality, sediment, and cold stabilization.
Also Known As
Wine diamonds Crystals
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