Wine makes me happy, not in a crazy alcoholic kind of a way, but the ceremony of taking the cork (or more frequently, stopper) out of the bottle and hearing the gentle glug as it pours into the glass signifying the end of the day.
My day no longer has a beginning and an end, it is a continuum which has different elements, but never is there a time any more when I can fully relax, B could cry at any point, need me to be in a position to drive him to the emergency room or just to hold him and rock him back to sleep, I am "on" 24/7. I would not change that for the world, however for that brief time when I open that bottle and I take that first sip, it is the end of the busy part of the day, and I love it, it signifies that B is in bed and the start of time alone with Chad, the dogs and our dinner, that part of our life that is most similar to life before B, the old normal!
Many a night have I spent with the girlies, putting the world to rights over too much wine, just leading to agony the following morning when it feels as though a rhino ran into your head and your mouth feels as though you have been walking though the Sahara for a few days unable to find an oasis.
Wine is always available at a celebration - I hate dry weddings. There is something about wine that can be sophisticated enough to be celebratory, and yet common enough to be in most peoples every day life, should they choose.
I am no connoisseur - I am happy enough with a bottle of barefoot, but I do like the odd treat now and again to really savor the flavor and to try something new. I have always meant to keep a wine book - bottles under $15 and write my own mini reviews so that when I am back at the store I can make a slightly more informed decision based on my own tastes rather than that of the very knowlegable staff on hand.
I love to visit vineyards to try the wine from the local grapes to experience it with the local people. Picking grapes is tough - I am terrible at it ... I am significantly better at drinking the fermented grapes at the end. I worked in a vineyard in Australia, we woke up early every morning before the sun rose and it was freezing, we would layer up, get in the back of a pickup truck/Ute and be covered up with a blanket as that that way to travel was totally illegal, and somehow the owner of the vineyard thought that if 16 people huddled in the back were covered in a blanket the police would never know! We would start picking wearing our gloves, filling the black buckets with grapes, some people had a knack - I did not, it would get HOT and then the blazing sun would hit your back as you were bent down low to reach the grapes. It was hard work and totally ungratifying. I left that job to pick oranges, which weirdly I was far better at, climbing a ladder with a sack on my front filling it up with oranges and filling 5 huge crates a day, still in the blazing heat. I was out in the orange grove with only my music and some spiders and snakes, and yet that was more enjoyable to me, at least I got to drive a tractor!
There are some vineyards about an hour from us, we visited one about 18 months ago, we sat, at sunset, at a table at the edge of the vineyard watching the light hit the vines and some locals standing chatting together having all been invited to share some wine and nibbles together by the owner. That was one of my favorite times in the Midwest.
Photos to come, iPhoto is messing me around today & everything's gone missing!!
