I am often asked, “What are these pictures, what do they show?” One answer is the hidden universe in wine.
My other answers go from wine Rorschach to the artistic expression of the winemaker or the land. No matter which interpretation, these photographs of wine under the microscope reveal a mysterious display of wine’s molecular collaborations.
There are at least a few hundred different molecules in wine, yet they gather together in simple patterns. Some wines only reveal circles, some lots of jagged sharp forms, while others show ‘butterflies.’ How might the forms represent a footprint or signature of the wine?
As a graduate student in biochemistry, I had to read Pasteur’s Fermentation, in French, so have a special connection to old Louis. His deathbed’s AHA moment – “It wasn’t only the germs or cells that made things happen it’s the internal milieu,” the inner environment influences cellular health. This, too, is what I think the wine portraits exhibit – The internal environment within the wine influences the molecular expression.
I call that ‘inner terroir.’
Still without solid answers, but lots of ideas about these inner universes – Consider that the amazing beauty of wine can be called devas, wine Rorschach, impressionistic art, or wine fractals. Even without further exploration, we can assume a secret bounty in the pictures – for wine making, marketing, and for capturing the art in the bottle, the art of the winemaker.
Don’t they say, a picture is worth a thousand words?
Below, two different Napa Valley cabernets. Do their pictures ‘say’ anything to you?
One is Alpha Omega 2006 Cabernet, the other BV Georges de Latour 1977
