Today I watched a video of the first Art & Soul of Wine (2005), WINESPIRIT sponsored with Leslie Rudd at the RUDD Estate. I had been away from the wine world for two decades when I discovered WineSpirit co-founded by the 2 Davids – Freed and White.
My first time visiting them in Napa Valley was a beautiful autumn Sunday facing a vineyard, talking, connecting, sharing stories and walking down to the river flowing backwards…. another story. It was a joyful meditative day. I was instantly captivated by their warm energy and conversation, became part of their advisory board.
Anyway, at the Rudd Estate, we tasted 4 wines, and guessed which portrait matched each wine . Playing wine Rorschach, enlightening that most folks could pick out the red from the white, and many could pick out the 2002 Old Vine chardonnay – Bacigalupi Vineyard (the above image) from sauvignon blanc.
Why wine – wine’s molecules gather together in the elixir of water and alcohol. They form patterns and conglomerations, not just random precipitations. [The photographs are basically of the extract of a wine].
Since I’ve now catalogued more than a thousand wines, mostly California, there are patterns and forms that provide clues to a wine’s character. It has been said that the great Andre T remembered wines as personalities.
So here’s a wine portrait from the evening at the Rudd Estate. The friend I tasted the wine with, before I photographed it, said it felt like a lover whose arms were wrapped around her, or was that wishful thinking. Yet look at the flowing ‘arms’ of this wine, embracing, for sure.
The grapes for this chardonnay were old vines (40 years old) from the Russian River (Sonoma County) Bacigalupi Vineyard. Is the form from the vineyard, the winemaker’s alchemy, the soul’s expression?
It just so happens that I had photographed a 1982 chardonnay from that same vineyard when Belvedere owned it in 1984. The portrait on the right is a chardonnay from the same vineyard, twenty years earlier. Both chardonnays here were 2 years old. My pattern-seeking eyes see a similar personality in both these wines.
The famous 1973 Chateau Montelena chardonnay (winemaker Mike Grgich) that won the historic 1976 Paris Tasting was also made with grapes from this same vineyard (vineyard was another decade younger). So why didn’t that put Sonoma County on the map, when most of the grapes were Sonoma-born?
For me, why wine -it is impressionable from the vineyard terroir, winemaker’s palatte and palate.
Wine shows an impressive story of beauty and collaboration, spirit and celebration, birth, death and life. What I know for sure about wine since beginning this adventure (to be continued…)
Wine is alive made by patient people
willing to invest all that they know and have
into making something great for others to enjoy.
