I didn’t begin drinking wine until my mid 20s. I didn’t begin drinking any alcohol at all until my mid 20s, for reasons that are not relevant to this story. I didn’t begin drinking beer for nearly 20 more years, but that is also another story.
Much of my time with the vine was spent in social settings. The drink served as a lubricant for the scene, but then I married someone with a more sophisticated view, and my eyes were opened during my first trip to Healdsburg, in California.
I was never a fan of chardonnay. Chardonnay seems to be is a bit Marmite (as we’d say in the U.K., because Marmite is a spread you either love or hate.) Perhaps my sentiments were formed from living in Australia for a time. I recall ordering a wine in a bar on Sydney’s George Street; “… but not chardonnay,” I said. The bartender’s gaze dropped, and their shoulders slumped – it was the only option. However, two decades later in Healdsburg I tasted a chardonnay that was like nothing I have experienced.
Until that point I had gone through the motions with wine but never really understood what was going on. I’d hear words like ‘varietal,’ and hear people talk about floral notes, lavender, cherry and melon, acid and butter. I look for legs or clarity, and I’d throw my schnoz into the glass trying to taste with my nostrils before I tasted with my mouth. But when it came right down to it I just thought to myself, “hmmm, this is a red, isn’t it?”
The chardonnay in question had been aged in steel barrels rather than oak. The sommelier at the tasting room on Healdsburg’s town square shared the details of how the wine had come to the glass. He told the story of the wine. It was my epiphany.
Every tasting room and vineyard thereafter had a story, from Bella and Seghesio, to Gustafson and Selby. Everything went into the flavor of the wine. The grape was one component, but the climate, the watering, droughts, the processing, the fermentation, aging, bottling. I even tased the effect of a particular wine whose grapes were grown in the shade of a particularly large eucalyptus tree. My experience in Australia came rushing back – our sense of smell is so very closely allied with memory. We are wine.
My journey from Horace to Pliny the Elder, from nunc est bibendum to in vino veritas, was a long one but the truth of wine is that we are the grape. We are most malleable in our formative years, but our shaping never ceases, we remain the average of those with whom we most closely associate.
We are what we eat and drink, although this can evolve as our diet shifts. Our bodies are shaped by the activities we enjoy, pliable with yoga, or strong from weightlifting. The clothes we wear can harden our skin, collapse our soft tissues, and even bend our joints on extreme occasions. Time in the sunshine can leather our skin, and carve deeper laughter lines; time in the cold thickens our blood and can pain our joints. There is much to enjoy in wine because in wine we find ourselves.
I now aspire to life in a sunny clime, with sufficient water to live, but with enough adversity to give my character some flavor. I wish to pass time in lands filled where my nose is blessed with the aromas of lavender and thyme, rosemary and elderflower. I imagine aging in an environment that has aged others before me, so I can benefit from their wisdom. Perhaps I will even spend some time in the shade of a benevolent eucalyptus, with my oxygen delivered on a cooling ocean breeze.
What wine would you be, because I think we are all chardonnay – we are all the same, and we are all unique?
