A Dispersing Joy: Wine, Evening and Desire

I have the most trouble with the passing of time. There is inside me this grievous difficulty, a rebellion but also a petulant child screaming to re-exist in a certain moment and cherish the evolving echo of its passing. . 

I long for the recapture of a given moment. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than the joy of thinking that somewhere in our lives there is a door, an entrance into which we can briefly  re-enter the previous places we have seen, been, encountered and experienced.

Don't let time go, don't. 

But it does. It runs through our hands like flowing water from a tap, like wine across our palates. We pick up drops here and there but the flow is unkind, it is heavy and we are given only the wherewithal to indulge what we touch. Everything else seems to be meant for something, a somewhere else we can only imagine. Just as the water slips around us, just as the wine escapes into our bodies, all of it ends up in the drain, into the void after the present.

This evening I went to a trade tasting at Ravine winery. I got there shortly after six and slowly more people arrived from different wineries throughout Niagara-on-the-Lake. We stood outside amidst cast iron bar stools surrounding an outside bar. Wine bottles arrived, placed on the bar or in the steel ice cooler. Bottles from Cattail Creek, Marynissen, Josephs, Pillitteri, Konzelman, Coyote's Run. The green vines, the dark sky. The winery owners brought out various foods - pizza, deli meats, different cheeses and artisan breads. The vineyard fell away below us. Wine after wine, the creamy chardonnays traveled over my palates followed by the buxom and hearty red currant reds. My eyes felt softer, my brain and soul kinder in the enveloping spell of wine. (I fell in love with Pillittteri's meritage, Exclamation and Konzelmann's Heritage along with Strewn's and Stonechurch's Chardonnays.)

I chatted with co-workers, I watched the sky. It had been overcast for several hours. Then, throughout the tasting it burst here and there. The sky sobbed, the drops like pebbles. We scurried to one side of the bar to avoid getting wet. I didn't care. I got lost for a moment. Brown eyes blinked. They haunted me and I flirted with their owner the one in the white shirt, a beautiful brunette here and there during the tasting. Oh, her eyes and her high cheeks that infuriated me with longing. I thought of Madalena in La Dolce Vita, how close, how far, the woman lost in the castle. Her lips seemed innocent, unaware of the affect of her eyes and cheeks. Yes, she worked at the winery, yes, she recognized me from before and when she noticed the wind was picking up, she rushed inside to flip a switch and bring the delicate green awnings in.

Why do women do such wondrous things, say what they say and disappear? She asked me about the kind of songs I played. I talked and talked but being drunk, I only knew half of what I was saying. My heart sped after her, to find a way in. That's all I wanted. A doorway to her approval. But it's as if my soul had run out of breath in the pursuit.

She disappeared, the girl with the brown eyes who rescued the awning. She went away with her white shirt and black cargo pants. I saw her feet in the sandals, I saw her amidst the other heads but little else. Gone. First she left me for the other side of the bar. Then truly gone. In her wake, I spoke in German with a girl from another winery. I understood her words and spoke the best I could. But the brunette with the almond eyes had left and that was that.

But I know where she works but I don't want to chase her like dreams I can't get back into.

Yes she left and I went inside the bar area with three co-workers, one an older gentleman and two young ladies I work with. In my secret heart I have a spiritual crush on both of them and desired their nearness. One, yes, another brunette with a gentle face, the sweet, kind expression of someone who wants to listen but you want to put your head on her shoulder. And the other, a red head with a voice that could take you into both the future and the past. We talked and the rain fell, we four and the older gentleman told us about  a previous wedding at our winery, restaurants in New York, meeting Mr. Antinori, concerts he drove his daughter to. We listened.

The red sky crept down below the vineyards. The rain chatted with the grass.I wanted more wine and more wine but it was getting closer to going. Someone stoked a fire at the far end of the outside bar, the flames shooting up, the shadows scattering and wandering back along our faces as the fire settled. The rain pelted on the iron roof and the lull of conversation felt like an ocean going back and forth above our words.

The last of the red sky blinked away and the black-blue fade of rain blew wet misted kisses at our skin. A rain that continues and disperses a crowd.

Let me go back in time, just once, just once. Let me. There is no one there to caress or hold but the nearness is like a heartbeat outside of my chest. I feel this ongoing burst of dreams, a drunkeness, a melancholy, a wonder, a wistfulness, a tenderness that merges goodbyes with the ensuing gasp of downpour.

So it goes. I would have liked to kiss the hands of those two girls, and also the brunette.  I could have and I couldn't. I can't. But it's not like that. I don't want to give the kiss of taking and having, of chivalry. Not a kiss that signals possession, a boyfriend's gesture but a kiss that speaks about letting go, letting others stay extraordinary, who they are. Like tasting a wine and knowing its beauty but not drinking it. I want to experience a brief bridge to beauty. 

Sometimes, when I'm a little drunk I want to walk up to strangers in the streets, in the malls and let them know how much magic exists in their skin. How often are we told how wonderful we are? 

These faces, all these faces, I wanted to watch them leave, as if I could be a god and let them go. But the skin, skin haunts me, a human fabric that wafts and waves, the scent, a lavish bouquet conspiring to both lead me on and push me away.

I wish I could be detached but the desire that seeped into me this evening cannot be readily dispelled. The lights of cars in the gravel drive flicker through me. The vineyards are behind the darkness, the sky rains and the elaborate past comes back to me, taunting me like a song whose title I cannot recall but the verse is fresh, fiery and filled with another memory I will never access. The past is in the void, a wine we dimly remember but I retain it, my imagination and memory fighting for the truth because not everything we remember is what was.

And so it goes, here I am, writing and writing and the words I write only insult my longing to have what is eternally gone, retained in the fragments I crush and ferment in my sleepy mind.

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A Philosophical Passion for Wine

A finger of grapevine

and a beam of sunlight

point to the spot

where my heart is

Federico García Lorca - "Granada 1850"

 This morning I went to do some lab work for an upcoming physical. Some blood was taken but I had to fast  for at least twelve hours beforehand. Basically, all I could really have was water.

Now water is great, don't get me wrong. When you're lacking, when you've been sweating after a workout at the gym or been cooped up in a dry office, cubically contained, drinking too much coffee, water is perfect. 

But I have to say, with a smirk of genuine honesty, wine is always perfect. Last night, I would have had a glass or two but I had to follow my doctor's instructions. And you know, maybe I'm a little grumpy  today because I haven't had my wine. 

ADDICTION VS. PASSION

I often wonder about the nature of addiction and the idea of a surrogate. The alcoholic is told  to treat his  or her addiction like a disease. In recovery he or she must reflect on the reasons why they turned to alcohol. Is there a hole inside? Why do they choose whiskey or beer to fulfill them; what is or maybe better yet, who is replaced by the drinking? Is the alcoholic mourning a loss in childhood or the misery of a failed relationship? Instead of getting past the missed opportunity or healing the nameless wound, the drink is the surrogate, misleading the addict, letting them think they are healing their reality by escaping. The drink is the blinding distraction.

Certainly, there are other addictions: gambling, drugs, sex etc... 

I'm wondering, is wine my addiction? Where is the line between passion and addiction? Can such a line be safely drawn? Is passion a form of dependence? Can wine be a distraction, misleading the imbiber?

I can get through a day without wine. Sure. No problem. But can a musician or music lover get through a day without music and still be in a good mood? Listening to Beethoven's late piano sonatas or the softy, husky melancholy of a Ray Lamontagne song can, depending on your tastes, bring the spirit up after a long, wearied day. 

I love wine and music equally. Music is wine, wine is music. Music isn't an addiction, no but it can be a necessity for some of us. And as for wine, a glass of day is fine; great for health apparently.

For myself, I definitely look forward to a glass, probably more than others. I love the bouquet and flavours of different wines, - the teasing richness of a robust Rioja or the verdant but chilled charm of a Chenin from Vouvray. When I treat myself, I move past the Champagnes, past the Bordeaux and Burgundies to the Mosel and Rheinhessen Rieslings: I prefer Prüm to an overpriced bubbly or a mediocre Médoc (because you have to spend a lot to get something good in France's most famous wine regions). 

It's not an addiction. It is reverence. It's a means of creating beauty, letting it flood the moment.

SACRED VS. PROFANE
Even though the wine consumer doesn't produce the wine, doesn't grow the grapes, he or she is a creator of the moment. By taking a glass we are involved in a tradition that has gone on for thousands of years. To borrow from the late Mircea Eliade, famous mythologist and philosopher, we are  in some way participating in the hierophany, the sacred space that is the eternal realm of tradition and ritual.

The profane involves linear time and is opposite the sacred. Profane time is daily time, historical, made up of dates continuously succeeding each other, one moment dissolving the next, one event replacing the previous.  It is the time of work, bureaucracy, governments, backyards, bars - social, polical and otherwise. By re-enacting the gods, their myths, an individual in an archaic tribe could find himself stepping into the illo tempore, the time before.

This is why the Greeks and later the Christians associated the resurrection god with the vine. By drinking Dionysus or Christ, the worshiper took the god within. Both gods were born in unique and miraculous circumstances (Dionysus was sewn into Zeus's calf following his mother's death by lightning; Mary was a virgin) and both performed miracles. Both were sacrificed and experienced equally grueling deaths. 

The nature of the vine represents the sacred nature of life.

THE FLEETING AND THE DESIRE
Life is born. It is nothing short of a miracle that in the vastness of the universe, this Earth exists and supports life. Trees are green in the summer, mountains rise, oceans fall against their shore lines, wildlife floods the wilderness, in the air, on the ground and in the sea. 

But life is not long and death haunts all our horizons. The vine produces beautiful fruit just as we produce children, works of art, accomplishing various daily tasks like gardening, carpentry - even conversation and the relationships founded on them are a production of our hidden divinity. 

When we die the vine is like us and we are like the vine. We have struggled to bring something out of the nothing, bringing purpose to the naked canvas of existence. We have our religions, our myths, our deities, desires, duties, morals and responsibilities but they are all created by us. Our dying is our dormancy. Dionysus and Christ both die but they are resurrected. 

We drink this hope that we too won't end with our last breaths. We drink a glass of wine because it is more than just a beverage. Hope is beauty and we desire it. 

There are so many things we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our hands, smell with our noises but taste is by far the most intimate. The Mona Lisa smiles at us but we are distant from her. The scent of the flower belongs in the liminal realm of space and petals while the music of Beethoven haunts our ears. Wine flows in us, it meets us. It is intimate like a lover's long awaited kiss. This is the intoxication.

Wine is our consolation. At the end of our profane hours, when we need to step back from the parade, the often hopeless journey that is life, wine brings us a comfort. Sipping a wine is either done in silence or with others. Just as we can enjoy our solitude, sitting with a book we can drink wine in whatever company so long as it is kind. When we can't have what we want, when the one we love is not going to love us or the passing face is not going to stop on the street, their beauty leaving the moment broken in two, wine is there to sew up the wake of the unfulfilled. 

This is what wine represents to me but maybe to others. This is my passion and this is how I feel.

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Savour Niagara, September 2009

My thoughts and memories beat against my head in the early morning light. Yes, I’m hung over. I had a lot to drink last night but I met some wonderful people, drank some wonderful wines and ate some wonderful food. Laughing, drinking, eating, meeting, shaking hands, this is what wine events are for.

And this blog entry will be less focused on wine (although I mention a lot of it) and more subject, basedon my personal experience and is dedicated to my family. 

MEETING THE FAMILY
Yesterday afternoon, I arrived at the Sheraton for the 13th Annual Savour Niagara to first meet up with my step-sister, Shannon, my father Peter and my step-mother Gay in the latter’s hotel room. Gay Douglas-Broerse is the President of the Board of Small Business Club Niagara. Not only is she an amazing entrepreneur, co-founder of One Source Solutions but perhaps the best ‘evil step-mother’ (her words not mine) in the world.

In the hotel room, the four of us enjoyed a few appetizers, also polished off a bottle of Henry of Pelham Pinot Noir I had picked up at that winery a few weeks back.

Around 6, we headed down to the lobby. I couldn’t have been accompanied by a more fashionable entourage. Gay and Shan were both dressed in black, sophisticated but also beautifully stylish. I’m sure they turned a lot of heads. As for my father, he cleaned up good with a casual grey blazer over a black t and blue jeans to match, what I call his Kaiser haircut and trimmed beard. (I too looked stunning.)

There was a small line-up and we met my step-brother, Aaron, stewing and cursing over some personal matters – he is in the midst of moving and the painters were a no-show for him yesterday afternoon.

“Things happen,” his mother told him. “Moving is not fun.”
"Oh [insert expletive] don't get me started," he said in his deep, bass voice.
With a smile, Gay replied, "We'll try not to."

But we all knew he had to catch up (being slightly in the sauce, it's hard to relate to those still anchored in sobriety.)

WORKING THE ROOM
Starting in the Brock Room, my first healthy gulp of wine came from Cave Spring Cellars, a beautiful and bountiful glass of their 2006 Chardonnay Estate. A hint of buttery apples, beautiful acidity, lush but light.

I was in for a good evening.

Mark, my brother, arrived shortly after, looking pensive, intimidating and ready to take on a night of wine. The six of us found a table to linger around for the first bit, where I sampled the delicious honey-melon 2008 Sauvignon-Chardonnay blend from Reif Estate (I did a lot of white wine drinking last night).

I met up with another notable and lovely entourage, the ladies of Women in Finance: Renee Bermel, Linda Herkel and Connie Materno with their friend Nikki Enkellar of SendOutCards and JE Indoor/Outdoor Services. We headed over to the Herdner table where I had a chance to sip the 2007 Riesling. Excellent is all I can say (not to mention beautiful apples, some petrol and tropical fruit). Renee fell in love with their Iced Pear wine and paired it (yes, yes, yes, a pun) with the Thai Vegetable Curry on Kaffi-Scented Basmati Rice from Hospitality on Hand. They were heading over to Reif before I wished them a good evening and re-joined my family.

Mark, Aaron and I headed out into the corridor to Atrium I at the other end. There, they fell in love with the Colio Estate 2005 CEV Cabernet Franc - a full-bodied, deep,wine with notes of brooding green pepper, chocolate and black berry - while I indulged in 2008 CEV Pinot Grigio. A bit of old world and new in the glass – lemon and tropical fruit with a hint of banana. We feasted on Zee’s Grill offerings – a Capon Drummette Lightly Breaded and glazed in truffled honey and roasted garlic. The guy’s at Zee's got to know our faces (as did Arleen and Doug of Colio).

Being of Dutch background, I have a sweet tooth. For myself, the Chocolate Brownie with the slightly singed Marshmallow frosting of Zee’s Grill made my night. I had quite few of those, I can admit.


SOME OTHER HIGHLIGHTS:
Stoney Ridge Estate Winery’s 2008 Reserve Gewurtztraminer – a bit of Alsace but with a sparkling bright acidity and a balance of lychee and roses.

Maleta Winery’s 2007 View Old Vines Dry Riesling – petrol and apple and just perfect.

Strewn Winery 2005 Riesling Terroir - a lovely, viscous wine with peachy apples.

Kacaba Vineyards 2008 Reserve Riesling - I just visited their winery the other week - excellent wines.

Calamus Estate Winery’s 2008 and 2007 Riesling – after drinking these wines, I truly have to visit the winery; I know, haven’t yet. (I know, I know, I’m a bad wine educator.)

THE MOMENTS
But I have to say, we all kept coming back to Zee’s Grill and Colio Estates in the 1st Atrium. I think it was the way the room was set up, a nice little nook, very open and less busy than the Brock Room. It was also the entertainment. I’m not a lover of Jazz but when the lovely  Juliet Dunn (a popular compliment to many wine events in Niagara) croons Bésame Mucho, her voice easy on the ears and her beauty easy on the eyes, its easy to understand why we lingered.

Piensa que tal vez mañana                                                          
Yo ya estaré lejos, muy lejos de tí.                     

(I think that maybe tomorrow

I'll be far, far away from you.)  

The evening felt like many evenings all together, all at once, the music everywhere. I remember looking at my cell phone and saying, no, it can’t be just 7:30. Wine slows down time, changes it, one moment a myriad of moments  Aaron and Gay both felt the same. I sat sluggish with wine on a bell hop hotel cart sipping on a Palatine Hill 2008 Gewurztraminer - lovely lychee and grapefruit. 

After laughing and finishing her cell phone call, Shannon sat down beside me. I felt a little sentimental. With a silly, drunken fist I punched her tanned shoulder and told her it was great to have her as my step-sibling. She felt the same. We talked about relationships, that confusing line between passion and love. I confessed to a few situations where it was easy to want, but not, love.

(Ella in Victoria, you crossed my mind. A beautiful, wine-soaked regret. Black curly hair and carnation-white cheeks, red lips, green blue eyes. I shook my head. I can’t believe you almost got me into a fight with that bouncer.)

Gay, being the very intuitive mother, checked up on her daughter, brought over a coffee from Starbucks. I offered my seat.

“Going on your date?” Gay asked her daughter.
“Yep.”
Responding with tough maternal love, “I want to check him out. I want to approve.”

My father also headed out, shaking our hands, kissing his wife goodbye.

CLOSING TIME
Aaron, my brother and I met up with a co-worker, Tim and the three government workers (my brother works for Canada Pension) griped about the real world. We had a few laughs and the wine had definitely lightened my step-brother up for the course of the night.

I have to say, Aaron is quite a character. By the end of the evening, as the crowd dispersed and the agents cleaned their tables, while all the women were innocently nabbing flowers off the tables, a woman sidled up to ours.

"You guys look like a nice bunch."
"We are," my step-brother formally and mischievously replied, his tone on the cusp of sarcasm.
Aaron introduced himself and us. The woman said hello and it turned out they had a mutual friend.
"John. Of course."
"You know him?" she asked.
"We worked together. He trained me for my position."
"He's a fantastic guy."
"Yeah, he's a great kisser."

That just got everyone. My brother chuckled, Gay burst into a hearty laugh. My lids swallowed my eyes, my head sunk and my shoulders bounced -I started and couldn't stop quietly howling for ten minutes.

The woman, concerned, asked if I was crying.

I shook my head, breaking into more laughter. I eventually composed myself, finishing my apple-citrus Wayne Gretzky Estate 2007 unoaked Chardonnay.

But we were all gone. Time had finally caught up to us. I tried to steal a glass on my way out but I couldn't. The ladies had taken all the flowers. The songs sung by the lovely Juliet whispered through my mind...

Piensa que tal vez mañana

My brother and I stayed in my step-mother's suite - she had the pull out, we crashed in the beds. On the way up, I waved goodbye to Aaron in the lobby, drunkenly telling him he too was a great kisser.

As I finish this blog entry, I look over at my bed, my body swimming with the faint remains of last night's wine. My head still hurts but the memories will be some of my happiest.

(I also want to add it was great meeting you Ashley - Gay is lucky to have you around. Don and Susan, I hope to see you guys at the next Savour Niagara.  Don, I've tried and I've tried but I can't remember the wine you recommended. A Pinot Noir from Oregon... ? I shake my head, memories washed in wine. It was great meeting you guys.)

Wineries:

Calamus Estate Winery
Cattail Creek Estate Winery
Chateau des Charmes Wines
Colio Estate Wines
Coyote's Run Estate Winery
Herdner Estate Wine
Kacaba Vineyards
Konzelmann Estate Winery
Maleta Winery
Niagara College Teaching Winery
Palatine Hills Estate Winery
Reif Estate Winery
Rockway Glen Estate Winery
Southbrook Vineyard
Stoney Ridge Estate Winery
Strewn
Wayne Gretzky Estate Winery

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A Glass of Riesling and Time

In the novel, In Search of Lost Time, after the narrator Marcel soaks his Madeleine cake into a cup of tea, he takes a sip. He doesn’t expect anything from his day but suddenly, tasting the tea blended with the crumbs of the cake, his mind brings forth a volume of intellectual and emotional sensations. “And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disaster innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation had the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me.”

And from this sip and another, the narrator embarks on an entire journey of memories: houses, an aunt in the country, streets he ran errands upon, Monsieur Swan, the Square where he ate lunch, country lanes his family walked - the entire village of his childhood. All is brought to life.

There is such a strong link between our senses and our memories - to time itself. Sometimes I find myself smelling the wet dust before a storm and I see myself in my father’s garage, awaiting a thunder storm. A few month ago, I dropped my head down to take in the aromas of an Okanagan Pinot Noir and suddenly, I’m 11 years old, at the end of a fishing dock on Rice Lake, outside Peterborough, Ontario. I could even see the rose-tinted sunset in the glass and then closing my eyes, the violet waters. It was evening; I’d stared so long at the water drifting and became so captivated, I fell in (to the comic surprise of my parents looking on).

Perhaps this explains our relationship with wine. Like wine, we are exposed to not only the elements, the seasons, but to the hours and years. We are tenuously connected to time. Vintages mean the world to many expert wine buyers. For wine producers, the time to pick the grapes is key. If they wait too long, they risk harvest rains, if they pick too early, under-ripe grapes. Time is a factor.

And then there is the time of fermentation, racking (separating the wine from sediment), the time spent in oak and bottles. The time shipped, the time in the wine store, the time of anticipation before opening a bottle, the time we enjoy it with friends and family, and the time we pause and wonder at the different aromas that in turn ask us to search and return to our sensory memories for the corresponding scents and tastes. Wine challenges us to remember, to think, to name, because the aura of these flavours cannot go on namelessly.

With time these flavours and characteristics develop just as we develop our own memories throughout the duration of our lives.

These thoughts come to me this evening. I take home a bottle of 1992 Riesling Spätlese from the Rheingau. I decide to make schnitzel, slicing up the pork loin, pounding it down, getting the panko crumbs ready, the seasoned flour – rosemary, thyme, basil and a dash of cinnamon. In the background I can hear Beethoven’s Sonata, no.30.

I find myself pouring a glass and staring long at the label, not expecting anything. 1992. I taste the honeyed-lemon, the kerosene apple and lush, viscous lemon.

The label fascinates me. It is obviously new, placed perhaps within the last few months. But the wine inside.

Where was I in 1992? What was I doing when these grapes were harvested?

I count back the years. I know I entered high school in 1994 (grade nine). So that meant, I was just entering Junior High Grade 7. The wine is a Spätlese so yes, this means the grapes were harvested later in the season, in mid-to-late October. I was born in October. What was I doing before my birthday? I seem to recall a girl named Erica with whom I walked home one evening. Her mother and mine had been friends once.

Memory shifts into memory. I see the autumn swathed streets, fallen leaves, Erica and me. It is the first time I ever walk a girl home. But she isn’t meant to be. At the Hallowe’en dance, a week later, she dances several times with another boy. But - no problem. There’s Sara waiting.

I sip the wine and continue to think about the past. For me, Riesling is the wine of harvest. It is the gold of autumn, the apples in their baskets, a sky scented with a far off smell of spices, a mineral soaked wind at a childhood brook. When I drink Riesling, I see only twilights of burnt leaves and suburban sidewalks muted with light afternoon rain.

Memory is the colour of gold.

At the dance, I hold Sara at arm’s length. It is the awkward dance of early adolescence

I pause, No, that doesn’t seem right. I couldn’t have been that young. It doesn’t make sense.

Shaking my head, recalculating the years, I suddenly realize I'm off a year, it wasn’t grade 7, it was grade 8. The remembrance shifts a year ahead. I’m in my parent’s rec room and it’s my birthday party. I am holding a girl named Lori in my arms. She sinks her head down on my shoulder. My eyes briefly water. The song “One” by U2 surrounds us in this brief interlude, flowing through us both as a hermetic guide and a ominous limit to our dance. Bono’s brooding, wincing vocals turn us and my other birthday guests clockwise.

It is not like with Sara (I can’t even remember the first song we danced to), in which I awkwardly held her hips, two flat hands against her sides while her limp hands rested on my shoulders, our heads averted; never once did we look into each other’s eyes. No, this is a dance I have lost myself into, the brief respite from my longing for Lori. I am still holding her.

How strange to find the year 1992 is still alive in a glass of wine. That such a liquid from grapes grown 17 years ago have found their way into my life and with it, the questions of those years. There’s nothing in my body from 1992. All the cells from that time have died. There are books in libraries published in 1992, but the pages aren’t alive.

What is?

Memories, yes, but even they change, become distorted, smoothed out because the details are hazed and we only want to remember the good – not the bullies, the tests, the crabby teachers.

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata re-enters the room. I know I should be finishing dinner

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Some wine, some strawberries and a little bit of moonlight

I drink alone, no friend with me.

I raise my cup to invite the moon.

He and my shadow and I make three.

Li Bai (701 - 761)

I already know that the wine has gone to my head and that the strawberries are not perfectly matched with my wine. It is a Gamay from Henry of Pelham, a bit rustic, a bit candied fruit, but wonderful for this moment.

There is a crescent moon across the way, over the trees. I put my feet up against the balcony, sitting back, listening to the wind run its fingers through the leaves, watching the giant trees sway back and forth.

It was a humid day today but then the sky darkened and the rain fell. Wet torrents of sky came down on my shoulder as I raced to the car.

I had another wine earlier today, a Cabernet Franc from Featherstone of Vineland. I had one glass with my lunch and listened to Chopin because on a rainy day, nothing beats his Nocturnes.

A friend came by and I poured wine for her and some more for me. She is stressed out looking for a job and I can understand, I can relate.

But now I’m here, unwinding, thinking, getting lost, sipping the wine, dropping another strawberry into my mouth.

The Spanish have a saying: Beber este vino es como hablar con Dios. “Drinking this wine is like talking with God.” Sometimes I feel that way when the wine and the moment pair well together.

The strawberries are finished. I place the bowl down beside my chair.

Watching the moon, taking another sip, I go through my day, flipping back pages of memories, falling nearly asleep. Closing my eyes, my chin drops against my right shoulder as I go back in time, thinking of a girl at winery I met in Victoria. She was blonde, beautiful, and she laughed at a few of my jokes. What happened to her?

I remember the windy days in Victoria, how the door banged at the liquor store I worked at. How many years ago now? There was a woman who lost both her husband and best friend to cancer in the same year. She drank a bottle of Jackson Triggs Chardonnay everyday. She would stand directly in front of the counter and request the bottle even though it was sitting in the cooler, just two feet to her right. Nonetheless, I’d come around to get it because maybe in some way it helped her feel cared for.

But the moon, the moon is taking me back. My colleagues and I are sitting at high tables draped in black cloth amongst barrels of wine in a winery cellar. The flames from the candles reflect along the crescent curve of our glasses. I smell the wood and the cold cement floor. We have asparagus wrapped in bacon.

The blonde girl appears again, holding a bottle of wine, the glint of candlelight running along the glass neck, along her neck. I can retrieve her but only briefly, drinking the wine she pours, a Pinot Noir from the Okanagan and quite good. Not knowing the contours of her hand, the wine running wild and silly through my veins, she comes back to me, bringing me something else to try.

We start talking. I ask her what she is doing in the wine business. She replies that she started out in graphic design. Interesting the way things go.

It is far away now. I open my eyes. I think I was drunk that night. A glass fell on the floor and the moment ended between us.

I was almost dreaming.

The moon and the wine are bringing me back. The night is just right. It is cool, lovely. And the wine is perfect. I don’t want to go back inside. Let me linger here.

I take another sip of this beautiful wine.

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