Dust on the Bottle

It as been said that wine is sunshine, held together by water.

A glass of cabernet makes that statement real. A bottle makes that statement inadequate.

Not because you are drunk, mind you. Because you are intoxicated. There is a difference.

Wine is more. Wine is the expression of dreams. It is the expression of hope for something that does not yet exist. Wine is the final product of an emotional equation, the calculus of which is not written in any book of science.

Yet we can find the formula readily in our history, our poetry, our fiction, and perhaps in our heart.

First, lets exclude the mass production $6 a bottle variety of vino. That swill has no place in any meaningful conversation. If you want to get sloshed you can get cheap vodka as easily as Boone's Farm berry wine. Its not the same animal.

Next, lets go ahead and acknowledge that I am, inter alia, a snob of sorts. My coffee and my wine, my steak and my beer, and even the ties I wear, all have strict minimum standards.
Now lets see why that is so.

We all find a dream around 6 or 7 years old. We articulate some great thing we wish to do or be or see as we transit this existence. We do so without knowing the iconoclastic reality of this world and we, for a moment, have a purpose. If you stop and truly remember you will agree with me.

A vine is deliberately placed under stress. To coax the very best out of a grape it is tortured almost. It is starved in dry soils. Water often in abundance is deliberately withheld. All to prevent the berry from becoming lazy. Can you imagine a wine that had a marked sense of entitlement?

If you have never tasted the juice from an oak cask containing a small batch of family grown Zinfandel out of Amador County then I truly feel sorry for you. If you have, you know that the sparkle in Mr. Boitono's eye is distinctly identifiable in the glass. His smile is the warm introduction that covers your palate. And in the afterglow you suddenly see hundreds of years of growth, birth, death, and re-growth. You taste the ancient soil.

Wine is not water. It is tears. Good wine simply will not exist absent a struggle. Such a wine would be passionless, limp and impotent.

And in the end, in the bottle, in the glass, wine is happiness. Wine is peace. Wine is the final answer to the questions that we do not quite understand. It all just makes sense at the bottom of the bottle. But only if that bottle contained the passion and failure of its maker.

Wine represents the quality of the human spirit that will prevent our complete demise - we carry on. We pick ourselves up in the face of a purported failure and we get back into the thrasher. We endure crushing criticism from those that claim to look after our well being. We slowly morph and change and liquify.

We sit dark and cold as time passes, protected perhaps, yet we know ultimately we must soon face our demise. We label ourselves to preserve our faces as if to say "I was here." We cork our emotions at the risk of loosing them entirely.

I am passionate about my wine because it tells my story. I am selective about my wine because I refuse to settle for mediocrity. I savor my wine because I know that one day the bottle will be empty.

And when that day comes frankly I hope my glass is full to the rim with a sweet late harvest Zin that I can sip on into eternity.

There is a reason that the fable tells the story that the water was made into wine. In wine we find our reasons, hopes, desires, and limits.

If all this were true would you really want some cheap ass bottle of crap to represent you?
Rhetorical question. I had enough Cabernet tonight that I already know the answer.