“What is wine?” asks an asteroid, as it careens past me at 40,000 miles per hour. As if said asteroid even had time to consider a deeper dive, such as “What is Italian wine?”
“No matter,” I reply, although I would imagine the asteroid did not hear me, as it was long out of shouting range. And so, I found myself alone, in a cold sector of the Milky Way, pondering how I got there and where in Heaven’s name I was going.
Imagine, on earth, standing still. You’re not. The earth is turning at 66,000 miles per hour, in a solar system that is moving at 450,000 miles per hour. As we are doing that, within the gravitational pull of the sun, we are also moving at 43,000 miles per hour, in the direction of the star Vega in the constellation of Lyra. In addition to that, the galaxy we are in, the Milky Way, is moving at 1.3 million miles per hour. We are never standing still.
“Where are you going with this, Cowboy?” my imaginary friend asks. Indeed, where. Well, we did recently have a total eclipse coming by our way. And there are always the Perseid meteor showers this time of year. And if celestial occurrences aren’t your thing, we’ve got a bevy of volcanoes going off right now on Spaceship Earth. Lots going on.
[Going macro now] It seems we all have an idea of what Italy, and by extension, Italian wine is. To some it’s an everyday drink, something to go with their Penne alla Vodka or Cotoletta alla Milanese. To others, it’s a trophy, like a Ferrari Berlinetta f12 or a Maria Grazia Cucinotta. You know, Sassicaia, Masseto, Ornellaia. Just like places.
To some, the cities are where it’s at. Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice. To others, the secluded countryside - Val d'Arno di Sopra, Positano, Como.
Just like the planets and the galaxies, we are affixed to some point of longing, and then spin our wheel to get the magic carpet ride to the destiny of our dreams. Wine is fine with that. Humans, we do it all the time, not just with wine. With food. With relationships. With the choices we make.
When I fell to earth, many years ago, I landed in California. It was a wonderful place, a paradise. Years later, I moved to Texas. It was, and remains, a challenge. In between, I traveled to Italy as much as I could. Too much. Now, I know Italy better than America, at least from the point of view of getting around the place and experiencing life there. But I might as well have traveled to the other side of the galaxy, our Milky Way, for what I think I know about any of these places. California. Texas. Italy.
That’s one of the fabulous things about living long enough. You really do learn that you’ve only just scratched the surface of knowledge. Of anything.
So, to my fellow Italian wine lovers and to those who want to be experts in the field , or to those who already think they are, happy trails. We know nothing. And we’re going nowhere fast. And while that might sound a bit nihilistic, look around you. Look up. Do you know where we are in the universe right now? In the time it takes to read this, we’ve already traveled further than any of us can ever travel, on earth, in a lifetime of lifetimes. We are not standing still.
Nor does knowledge, or expertise, for that matter. In the past three months of digging into Italian wine, for a project I was on, I realized, again, that Italy and Italian wine is moving forward rapidly. If you were an expert in 2014, now you might be a novice. That’s nothing to shy away from, for the opportunity to keep learning is high.
A few nights ago, I went outside and looked up at the meteor showers which show up in the skies this time of year. And I thought, “Wow, this is like Italian wine – new impressions, explosions, sensations keep showing up over our heads.” And it is up to those of us with an open mind to see that not as daunting but as prompting. We will never, any of us, conquer Italian wine. It isn’t there for us in that way, any more than the Milky Way over our heads is there for the taking. What both of them are there, for us, is to enjoy, to learn and to bask in their light and energy – which ultimately is as life-affirming as it gets.
