Wine: A Life Cycle

Wine: A Life Cycle

Wine is born of water, light and soil. As in raising a child, we can provide optimum opportunities but the outcome is never fully within our control. When tasted in the barrel, we can see what the wine will become. When we drink it on release can also see this more clearly. Then the wine slowly matures and reaches the peak of its power.

If all has gone well, the wine may offer that rare transcendent experience. A complexity beyond words. Nuances, shadows, suggestions. Was it really there or did you just imagine it? Fleeting, ephemeral sense memories long forgotten. A cherry coke at a drugstore soda fountain. Aromatic baking spices in Grandma’s kitchen. Old leather shoes in the back of the closet. A tobacco barn redolent with 75 years of harvest. Road tar on a summer day. Pencil sharpening in first grade.

Drinking such a wine can change you…. like your life flashing before you. In old age, the harshness and aggressiveness of youth are now long gone, the wine mellowed, taste faded, now only hinting at what once was. The bright red is brown, the structure weakened, the finish lacking stamina. It is still possible to appreciate and enjoy this faded beauty, but a sense of melancholy is present. Its glory days are over.

So…… drink up and enjoy. For there is light and soil and water. Last year’s harvest is in the barrel, and a new crop is ripening on the vine.

Cheers,