Hard to establish the moment at which this story begins; everything, always, has already begun before. Maybe then there are no true beginnings, only reminder and foreshadowing, only picking up in the middle of life’s great sweep of uncertainty. This wine, from that year, shrouded by smoke and bad news, when we were once again reminded how randomly our lives are jostled and spun around; that nothing is fixed; that even the ground we stand on is in motion. Underneath us, there is only instability, beyond us, only chance. But in between, in the slender core of our conscious, as we walk the line between the expected and the unforeseen, we function only by falling in love.

All we had was this: seven-fiftieths of the fruit we typically harvest, all white when typically mostly red. A production hall typically filled with fermenters now empty, no splashing, no treading, no timers, all time. And space. The very air, typically blushed with the scent of all the world’s redness, now delicate, saline, littoral. The barrels typically stacked, now spread out in long lines, claiming the horizon. Our work, typically noisy with conversation, now quiet behind the pandemic’s mask and shield. Distractions disappeared and left in their place, their opposite – a mindful possession, in clear and vivid form.

Falling in love is a phenomenon of attention and our work a kind of record of the moments of our collective attention. Here then, for a brief moment, in a reduced world, our conscious life more concentrated, the forces of our hearts and of our work converging to act upon one single point. This chardonnay, that point; the object of our undivided attention. All of us, in love.

Walking with this wine from barrel to blending table, from tank to bottle, to this desk for this letter to you today is to emerge, finally, from the somnambulant state of in-loveness into deepened trustworthiness of a calm and steady love. This story our forever story, that season our constant reminder, this wine our most fervent love letter. Again. To you.

Maggie