Wine and Words
Last weekend I went with Lori, John and our friend Jamie (sadly her husband Cortney was ill and couldn’t join us) to Granville Winery in the Willamette Valley for a special wine experience. We stayed in their lovely guest house and drank glasses of their lovely Chardonnay.
Then Saturday morning we walked the vineyard with Jackson, the winemaker. I had no idea what walking the vineyard would mean other than a stroll through the fields. But no, this turned out to be an educational experience. Jackson showed us how he and his crew strip leaves from the vines to expose the grape to the sun. Then he counted the canes and the clusters of grapes to make calculations of how many clusters to leave on the vines to ripen.
I had never really thought before about the farming aspect to wine-making. As the daughter of my farm-girl mother, I loved this part of the tour. And it reminded me of what I do as a writer, snipping words and phrases here and there to leave the best ones.
After the fields, we did barrel-tasting which meant drinking wine that is not really ready so when we drank we had to imagine what the wine would become. Not unlike how a writer works on her first draft, trying to envision the book it will become.
By the time we were done, unlike my wine-loving brother-in-law and Jamie who is studying to become a sommelier, I was pretty wined out. But there was more to come.
The next part of the experience was eating lunch with the winery crew. A simple meal of sandwiches, salad and potato chips. And of course wine. On the table sat two bottles in black sleeves. I know enough about wine to realize what was going to happen. Oh boy, a blind tasting. Don’t get me wrong I like wine, I like very good wine, and sometimes I can even make sort-of intelligent observations about what I am drinking. But to try to identify what type of grape, New World or Old World, the region – no way.
Unable to participate, I focused on my lunch. Luckily there were potato chips - special potato chips at that. Torres Selecta. Crisp and salty.
And, as I did as a child eating my morning cereal with nothing else to read, I started to peruse the packaging.
Torres are manufactured in Spain and the information on the back is written in several different languages.
Of course I recognized the first language right away - Spanish. But the second one? It was kind of like Spanish but not quite. I took a guess - Catalan. I got out my trusty iPhone and punched in Google Translate. And yes, I was right. It is Catalan.
After that I was off. While everyone else sipped and pondered and expounded about the wine, I sat with Google trying to figure out the rest of the languages listed on that bag.
Of course, English was easy. And I’ve studied French, Italian and Portuguese as well so I recognized them. But then I got into the more Germanic side. I was sure German was the first one and Google told me I was correct. After that, I had to keep guessing and punching in possibilities until I identified Danish, Swedish and Dutch.
And all that time, the wine talk had gone on without me.
Later in the day, when I told my friends what I’d been doing they laughed. I said I love language and Jamie asked me, Why?
I told them the story of me as a little girl after I’d learned to read. I have a very distinct memory of sitting in the backseat of my parents’ big black car as my father drove us somewhere. I was proud of my new power over words and I read out every sign we passed until my father growled at me to stop.
And here I am almost six decades later doing the same thing. Loving language just for the sake of its beauty and power.
Why do we love what we love? Why wine for them and words for me? I know there really is no answer to that question and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we grab onto what we love to do and keep on doing it until the end.
Book Recommendation
I’m so pleased to see my friend, Jodi Lorimer’s book out in the world. Based on the French legend of the faerie Melusine and her human lover Raymond, this is a great read for fantasy lovers.
You can buy it HERE from Bookshop.org.
Do you have passions you’ve carried with you through your life? I’d love to hear about them.