The New Year is a good time for reflection - looking back at where we've been and where we hope to be in the coming year. The wine business is always evolving, presenting a new set of challenges each year. Some are beyond our control, in the case of what Mother Nature will provide us in the growing and harvest seasons. Others are always high priorities, such as finding ways to perfect our winemaking and viticultural practices in order to make the best wines possible.
What remains constant is our love of wine and the joy we have in sharing what we create with friends and family. The love of, or some would say the passion for, winemaking is both an intensely personal and yet a communal pursuit which connects us to the earth in a very fundamental way.
So the New Year is also a time to simply relax, sit back and appreciate what wine represents in our lives. One of the best reflections on the subject was written in 2011 by Karen MacNeil, award-winning wine author, educator and consultant. We think that Karen's blog post entitled "Why Wine Matters" pretty much says it all. Here is an excerpt (for the full article, go to her website).
We hope you enjoy Karen's tribute. Let's raise a New Year's toast to reaffirming our bond with the noble grape in 2012!
Cheers, Bob & Lynn
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Why Wine Matters – One Woman's View
Karen MacNeil
"So what is it about wine?
I’ve come to think it is this: wine is one of the last true things. In a world mechanized to madness, a world where you can’t do anything without overhearing somebody’s cell phone conversation, a world where innocuous emails all exude infuriatingly false urgency–in this world, wine remains utterly unrushed. Still (thankfully) mysterious. The silent music of nature. For seven thousand years, vines clutching the earth have thrust themselves upward toward the sun and given us a transformative liquid in return. And so it is that wine ineluctably connects us to that earth. We don’t have to do anything. We drink… and the bond is there.
Wine matters because of this connection. Wine (and food) cradle us in our own humanity. Drinking wine–small as that action may seem–is an affirmation. It reminds us of other things that matter: love, friendship, generosity."
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