Wood on Wine

Wine is not a pleasure that I prefer experiencing alone. Yes, I have and do drink wine alone - especially when I dine alone - but I would much rather share good wine with good people. Wine, for me, has always been a symbol of love and happiness (real or perceived) and some of my fondest memories of wine are associated with special ladies and special occasions.

As I write this commentary, it is Feb. 14 ... Valentine's Day. Unlike most of my prior Valentine Days, I have no special plans, no special Valentine, no date, no anticipation of love ... alas, no good wine I have been saving for this day. Bah humbug!

I am tempted to take a trip to a new wine store that I have been promising myself that I would explore one of these days. I am in the mood for a fun bottle or two of something different. The more that I focus on this, the more I am convincing myself that this is the cure for my Valentine's Day blahs. This is a time when I may find a "steal."

Who among us would not like to find a bottle of wine that is a "steal"? Who among us can not honestly say that when you find an incredibly special bottle of wine for an incredibly "good" price that the wine somehow seems to taste better?

I don't know about you but this is what does it for me! Just as people scour the streets of their neighborhoods looking for weekend flea market sales, I thoroughly enjoy spending lots of time in wine stores around town looking for that "special deal."

I can vividly recall the essence of the experiences I have enjoyed when I found myself drinking truly exceptional wines over the years. I could share with you those choices to which I allude but their names and vintages are not the point here. Rather, what I remember and savor is the feeling I had while I was enjoying the wine. Perhaps it is also the person with whom I shared the wine as well as the occasion.

I love the thrill of wine. I love the courtship involved in choosing a bottle that I have not had before and anticipating that first look at the color ... the first whiff of fruit or some familiar scent.. that first "kiss" or shall we say the initial moment when my taste buds are gently caressed. You get my point don't you?

In many ways, for me, my love affair with wine is nearly as fulfilling as my love affairs with women I have known in the 55 years I have had the pleasure and privilege to live. There is a definite nexus between wine and love - for me. I can tell you the particular favorites that I enjoyed with some of my past loves. Blue Nun is a wine that reminds me of one of my wives. I shared a brief but passionate relationship with Beringer Chardonnay with another woman with whom I spent some quality times years ago. My last wife and I enjoyed sharing Port on some of our more romantic nights together.

I will tell you this too: the wines I loved and shared during my relationships somehow don't taste as good now. Just as, I suppose, any effort to rekindle those old flames would likely not result in much of a fire. the wine journey is an ongoing one as is life.

I can recall with surprising detail the first time I drank wine as an underage teenager growing up in Philadelphia with my friends. The wine was none other than Thunderbird and four of us were sitting in a friend's backyard passing the bottle from one to to the other and taking cautious swigs and wiping our mouths in a "manly" way after each pass.

My memories of this experience are not all pleasant however, as all of us learned that we had not yet developed the "stomach" for "T-Bird" and, of course, this lesson was learned the hard way. Yet, I still remember the tart, acidic, slightly sour taste of the wine that first time. I also remember thinking that this did not taste like the wine we drank in church on first Sundays ... nor did it even have a grapey taste.

During my college years, I have more fonder memories of drinking countless bottles of Boone's Farm Apple wine and Ripple with ladies with whom I was enamored at the time. The warm and fuzzy glow that usually hit both of us about halfway through the bottle was like nirvana. I learned that ladies preferred sweet wines back then and so did I.

In their book "Love By The Glass" Dorothy Gaiter and her husband John Brecher speak of this same passion thusly:

"It has to do with commitment, hard work, and luck, but ultimately it comes down to passion, and not just for wine. Passion for life, for each other, for journalism, and for the romance and adventure of wine - not so much the liquid in the bottle as the history and the memories. In that sense, a piece of paradise is available with a little effort, to lovers everywhere."

There you have it ... it's "not so much the liquid in the bottle." Indeed, it is the history and memories that are important in the long run.

As I anticipate the promise of new fruits, new experiences, new love, new paradises, I know that when it happens, as it will, I will have a new set of memories and a new chapter in my history to savor and reflect upon down the road of life. I can't imagine waking up in the morning and having nothing pleasurable to look forward to.

So, as I contemplate my dateless Valentine's Day, I do so with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. I am on my way to the wine store with a mission: I intend to buy two bottles of wine - the first will be for me to drink this weekend and the second will be one that I intend to save to share with a new love and another special occasion. Hmmm ... that sounds like the ideal theme for a future column. Let's hope it's not too far in the future.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Feb. 14, 2003

All contents © copyright 1981-2009 by Robin Garr, www.WineLoversPage.com

Cliffwood Organic Works