About a year ago, Chad sent an email out to a number of wine-drinking friends asking something about what wine meant to them or something to that effect. Lamely, I mulled over the question, intended to write a thoughtful response, and never got around to writing it out. Anyway, answering that questions is part of my impetus for writing here. Wine is important to me. It is deeply connected to where I come from and occupies much of my attention. (As Jesse remarked: What is the difference between drunks and alcoholics? We drunks don't have to go to stupid meetings all the time.)
Drinking wine is about community. Its about sitting around the table on the front porch with the people we love (and sometimes people we can barely tolerate - but that's more of a mai tai kind of night), eating a meal we made with our hands, drinking wine from grapes we harvested, and talking -- always talking, usually about everything and nothing, and everybody all at once. Wine evokes memory of people and moments, and it connects us to the same rituals of feasting, celebrating, and relating to our clan that our oldest ancestors engaged in.
That's part of why wine is important to my life. And the people that are around that table are what is even more important to my life. And it is stories about them that I want to write about here.
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