When we taste an older wine, the year in which it was made provides a base. In that, I mean the conditions of that year offer the basic building blocks by which the grapes grew and matured and ultimately were crushed and turned into wine. But along with that comes the more intangible attributes by which we sometimes measure the quality and the impact of the wine, often from the comfort of our crèche, in a safe place, with or without friends or loved ones. That is when the wine takes on all sorts of cockamamie facets. That is when one’s imagination may supplant the data on the fact sheets. That is when the fun begins, as we run the bus off the road.
So it has been this year, drinking older wines in the (1st) year of the coronavirus. Now when I drink a 1990, I think of the run-up to the first Gulf War. Now when I drink a 2008, I think about the economic meltdown that was happening at the same time the grapes were being transmuted into wine. Now when I drink a 2016, I think about narrowly escaping death in Sicily in summertime only to face the asteroid of the fall when our world went into free-fall for many of us in the autumn. 
Now, intangible has been usurped by insatiable. We must run for the exits of 2020 and flee to a new year, a new order and a new hope. The alacrity of hope.
It is such a personal view, wine. it really is a mirror into one’s credibility. What one says about any particular wine leaves a tell-tale stain on the holiday table cloth, often impermeable. The red wine of Ravera from 2010 lies next to the lighter, blanched stain of Vermentino from Liguria. Off to the corner a blemish from an older Vin Santo competes with the splotch from a raisin dropped while eating the panettone. Our human stains recalling the work of others, their passions, their mistakes, all laid out on the 4x8 foot table top, as if a recreation of the battle of Waterloo.
But along with the carnage there is also the promise that this decimated plane will generate new life, new plans, new ambitions. And yes, more hope. 
I’d love to be able to tell you which Champagne you should be drinking right now. But if you’re on an oxygen machine, how could it matter to you? I’d relish showing you pictures of the opulent array of meats and cheeses, roasts and robiolas, that might adorn the table in the upcoming days. But if you’re hunkered down in your home or in an ICU, how would that benefit you? Or any of us? Not to dwell on the maudlin, but we’re not all in the same boat here. And the sea has gotten very, very choppy, of late.
We are facing a slew of Viking funerals lately. From family to friends, the storm is passing by a little more closely and with renewed rigorousness. One must keep the sword of vigilance swathed within the blanket of optimism. But one must keep their eyes wide open.
How will we think about the wines of 2020, those of us who will have survived, in 5, 10, 20 years? Will we forget? Will the wines be opened by souls who were not here when we went through this patch? Will any of the energy, the passion, the fear, the ongoing, the dread, be passed on to the person with the glass of wine in their hand? I don’t know. But I do know that wine is more than the sum of fruit and acid and tannin and water and everything tangible that goes into making it. There is that unseen aspect, the imaginative dollop, that makes every bottle a new and unexpected experience. And that my friends, is what I am looking forward to. And hoping like hell for.
