Blending
This week we blended our 2022 vintage. As is often the case, the experience brought more meaning than pure wine making. Under Roberto Alfaro’s guidance, Kittinee and I explored possible variations of how the wine could be blended to achieve the fullest expression of the vineyard and vintage. As we explored possibilities, we began to discuss how each of us have had life experiences that make us feel like foreigners wherever we are. This has fostered a healthy perspective of life and our connections with others. The idea being that if we let down our guard and listen to others not only through their words but where they come from, life is richer and more meaningful. Perception is an abstract concept and not a true reflection of what life really is. Accepting that I am not perfect, nor my counterparts, but that we come from a place where we seek to be good gives me peace and curiosity when reconciling differences I may have with others. By being a foreigner, I can view the world through the culture I was raised and let go my fear of becoming something new so that I can having a deeper connection with the world around me.
How does this connect to blending the wine? As you likely know, blind testing wine by attempts to remove biases of what you expect it to be because the of the price, label, type etc. I often discover I like something I didn’t expect. When blending wine, everything is blind and it can be daunting when others are involved. Kittinee is fearless and tells it like it is. She has a very honest palate. I tease her that she is an external processer. As we were tasting Kittinee was speaking her mind whereas Roberto and I sat in silence not quite ready to say which blend we preferred. After about an hour of deliberation we chose the wine that Kittinee identified in the first 5 minutes of tasting. Getting to the point…the reason it took us so long to make the right choice for the wine was because I had to filter through all of my biases and fears what the others at the table were thinking. I wanted to be aligned with the group, I wanted to be intelligent, I did not want to offend someone. The truth came through when I got to the point where I trusted that everyone wanted me to be honest and that if I was off track, we could discuss and reconcile opposing views as friends.
This got me to reflect on a conversation Kittinee and I had with Susan and Sarah Snyder; dear friends whom we hold in the highest regard. We were navigating the back roads of the Silverado Trail. While the serenity of the country is breath taking, navigating the left turns onto roads where all the big trucks from the vineyards are flying down the road was treacherous. Poor Sarah, who was driving, had many opinions to ignore as we were saying “Go!” “Not yet!” “No!”…Sarah had it under control Having safely made the turn, we were silent for a moment as we took in the blooming mustard and wild flowers throughout the vineyards. We started to discuss how wonderful California is and why there was so much press that makes it seem worse than it actually is. As we discussed this we began to lean on the idea that maybe California is not getting worse but rather going back to the way it was before the dot com boom of the late 1990’s. That the wild west spirit is returning as the people that came for the dot com boom are now leaving and the old guard is re-emerging and those that stayed are embracing it. A lot of the problems being popularized now were a way of life here in many respects prior to the 1990’s. What some may call problems others may call different people learning to live together at the same time acknowledging the reality that the past was unfair to others. There is an unconventional part of the California spirit that is difficult to explain; a certain ethical lawlessness. That being said, I also find that at its foundation, many of us in the world build our views from a very similar notion of family and being good to others.
It can be scary to let go of who you think you are. Wine is a great way to open this conversation up with others. Start with tasting and describe what you think with others. You may start far apart but as the discussion continues, I find that we narrow the range of the differences and find a place where we can accept what others are tasting even though it may not be what we experience. With your guard now safely down, go deeper and get to know the story and what it causes others to believe in.