5 Wine Words, for me… from me to you…..

I’ll get right into it.

1….  Music.  I’ve found that all wines have a certain intrinsic music about their approaches and presences.  They speak in distinguished and varying rhythms.  They play and change tempos, change their chords and tonal consistencies.  Wine sings to us and then at other times just syncopates in shapely instrumental.  After you sip… let oxygen assimilate while the puddle’s about your tongue.  Jazz— rock— classical— spoken word.  Always present in music form.  How do we recognize its metered momentums?  Take our time.. listen to the wine.  Don’t just taste.  If wine is the Earth, we also have to recognize human existence on Earth, and how throughout cultures and their yesterdays music has always been present, realized in all reaches of the terrestrial.  So, naturally, what reifies can only message musically.

2…. Language.  The syllables of wine.  Its mechanics in communicating with us.  What it says.  Its dialects, whether old-world or new, whether Pinot or Cabernet, all wines have their own language.  Some speak passively, some aggressive, some poetic while others stretch rather straightforwardly.  Wine will always tell us something, approaching our senses and saying something to them.  Quite simply, wine wants a listener, wants an audience.  To listen, and yes taste, its story.  Hear about where its from.  The dialects of wine are so innumerable that a wine lover will never run out of pursuits.  Think of the descriptions you read on tasting room menus, or in publications…. Those are only some of the interpretations of the vino lingual.  What does what you sip say to you?

3….  Geography.  Where it lands on your tongue.  Where the wine takes you.  Where is it from.  If your wine is prominent enough to give you a sense of place, it offers a taste of that place.  It takes you somewhere, away from where you sip it.  Even away from where it’s from.  It takes you to a thoughtful plain where you think about your life, where you’re going, where you’ve been.  The geography I’m referring is not just tangible, map-molded and noted geography, but cognitive and sensory.  You’re tasting roughness in the texture, or a certain floral and red fruit frolic about the feel.. then you’re take to a shore, or a rocky view overlooking some vineyard stretch into a horizon.  The last wine I tasted, or drank, last night, took me to a couch, in the mountains, in front of a fireplace, realizing where I am in life— my age, my goals, my direction, those around me.  My story.

4….  Singularity.  Does it stand on its own?  Is it sovereign in its placement?  Or, is it all over the place?  Does it lack coherence?  Wines that are or have been stamped into my collection have always had a punctuation of presence— been individual, individualistic in their mentalities and voices.  Their convinced, convicted, convincing.  Is what you’re sipping stand on its own?  Is it self-personifying?  Frankly, does it have character?

5….  Atmosphere, or ‘feel’ of the wine.  Wines are known to wrap you in some blazon of feeling, or mood.  Or, they give off some kind of mood, or feel, actuating some angle of atmosphere.  I had a wine the other day that just relaxed me in a way that no wine I can recall ever has.  It had a calculated poetic sensibility that kept me, taught me, had me in a calm and equalized mode that made the day more manageable.  All wines have a ‘feel’ to them, create a mood and/or atmosphere.

Just some thoughts, some, many, I’ve scribbled with seismic dote in the past few months, years, on wine and its literary, psychological, philosophy-thrown tendencies and qualities.  What do you notice about what you sip?  Share your notes with us…

(4/1/17)