Every person I saw this weekend had, has, a story.  I only learned a couple of them.  College students taking a break to taste wine, many of them to excess, but others coming to learn of new releases, wines in barrels and in their crucial developmental steps and crawls, skips and blips.  I’m fine with not knowing hardly any of the stories, I just appreciate the nearness of those characters I didn’t know, with glass in hand and walking around seeing what else they could taste, talking to me often asking what my favorites are.  Seriocomic, the whole progression.  Both ethos and pathos, in a cup, for me and them to sip.  My story, the academic in a tasting room pouring wines and talking of them as I do, and here this morning collecting whatever energy I have to write, write my day and story, from wine to the classroom and back.

Enough of my tzimmes.  Into my paper, on wine and its essay-like posture, and delivery if successful.  Or maybe not “successful”, but composed, assembled and narrating clearly its character and general figure and gravity.  Wine has always presented itself to me as a literary and thought-lit entity.  I collect this morning knowing what I am, a professor or teacher in wine’s world.  Should have followed my sister-in-law’s advice a long time ago, about blogging about wine, solely, from my literary groundings.  Me, wine, a story, right here this morning listening to my jazz and drinking what’s left of the 4-shot mocha.

Truth.  Finding truth in what I saw this weekend, the younger college students and the older wine-walkers that keep adding to their cellar and laying down wines for some occasion, not even sure they know.  Time punctuated in the days three past.  Tasting from a barrel, where the wine is at this time.  Then in later-time in bottle, then on a table or counter, in glass, drank, gone.  Like us.

(3/5/18)