I’m simplifying matters a bit, but if you are living in America right now, there is an energy, a fire that has been lit, and we’re not talking about an arsonist in the Sierra Nevada, or Burning Man, which is imminent. No, this is a larger upheaval. And while it might be a communally driven one, I’ve also been thinking about our individual climbs.
This was precipitated by the death of a long-time friend who battled DLB for the past five years. My friend was a world traveler, an art lover, a wine and food enthusiast and a love-magnet for beautiful, accomplished and fiercely independent women. Oh, and he loved to climb mountains.
I won’t mention his name here, for his influence and
his inspiration is really what this piece is about. No, it’s not about his
legacy. Anyone who knows me well enough knows I don’t buy into the legacy conceit.
Do your stuff while you are alive, I say, and when you are no longer here, so
what? Does it matter that anyone remembers you? And if so, for how long? Who remembers
their great-great grandparents’ legacy, unless your name is Washington,
Jefferson, Lincoln or Roosevelt? And even then, who cares? No, let’s talk about
climbing your mountain.
It might be to finally taste all the red and white wines from the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. That would surely be a nice ascent. Or it might be to taste a complete vertical of Sassicaia or Solaia. That could be a fun hike. Or it might be to finally understand what wine really means to you in your lifetime.
I recently had an epiphany about wine. It was a Lugana, which is my current summer white wine. It was brutally hot outside, and I’d been putzing around in the garden. I showered and headed out to the store to buy fixings for dinner. When I got home, I was once again drenched in sweat. Triple digit time in Texas. So, I got under a fan with a wet towel and cooled down. Once I got to a point where I wasn’t hyperventilating, I set about making dinner. I prepped everything and got it ready and voilà, I had a free moment. In the fridge was a bottle of Lugana, so I poured a glass. And then I went into the freezer and grabbed a piece of ice. I know what you’re thinking.
Sitting down, again under a fan, I took a sip. The wine was cool, refreshing, slightly citric. It was like drinking a Verdicchio that had just had its alkaline batteries replaced with lithium ones (if that even means anything to anyone else other than myself).
And the ice? It was as if that small piece made all the difference in the world. What? That’s blasphemy!
No, that was a carabiner – a coupling link. It caused a connection between the wine and me to be more fully realized. The dilution of the wine was minimal, while the addition of coolness made so much of a difference. It was uncanny, and totally unplanned. But it made me sit up and take notice.
Now, that was a cardinal rule of wine that I broke. And because of it, I got more from the experience than purists would probably give credence to.
It wasn’t a mountain, but it was an encounter with synergy that came totally out of the blue.
How many times do we have pre-conceived notions of what it is we can and should expect from a wine experience? So often, in these times, folks are so obsessed with numbers – How well did it score? How many points did Parker or Suckling give it? How many wines in the vertical? How far back in time does it go? How many people have had this experience? And so on, to the point that sometimes a simple occurrence can be as transcendent as those highly sought after once-in-a-lifetime ones. It may not be Everest, but the view from Mt. Tamalpais is pretty damn inspiring too.
That was something I learned from my dearly departed friend. Before he died, he invited me over to his house. “I have some things for you.” When I got there, several boxes of wine were sitting on his counter. “I want you to have them. I can no longer drink wine, the medications will not let me.” Of course, I took the wines, if only to get them out of his way. But over time I have been popping corks and thinking about my friend and all his adventures while he was on Earth. He saw places I will never see. He climbed peaks I will never climb. He lived and loved, and laughed and cried, and was happy and sad, and confused and yes, enlightened while he was here in his life. How many of us can say we’ve summited all the mountains we have set out to climb?
