Impossible, in this dark house, in the quiet of the night’s middle, not to think about that night that gave rise to these wines; to one brilliant moment that illuminated the imagined perimeter within which possible is positioned, surrounded by its opposite.

In the afternoon of April 14th, 2022, Mimi asked me if I was worried about the forecast. I looked at her like she just asked me if I had two legs or if I wanted a glass of Selosse. Um, duh, yes, Mimi, I’m worried. Then she asked the harder question:

So, what are we going to do?

I calmly explained, as you would to a dim or small child, that I, while real scrappy and spirited, did not actually have the power or ability to change the weather. She looked at me with an expression somewhere between disappointment and confusion, opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. Looked at me like she couldn’t recognize me. And I can see why.

It is our practice, in every moment and faced with every obstacle, to figure out how to stay high (figuratively, not pharmacologically.) She brought me an obstacle — that the pre-dawn temperatures were going to drop well below freezing at the most perilous, precious, pre-bloom moment of the season — and I shrugged. What do you want me to do? She squinted her eyes at me and said, give me an hour.

One hour later, Mimi delivered sixteen steel barrels and a cord of wood to the vineyard. She ran to her house, got her impact drill (because, if you’ve met her, of course she has an impact drill) made the steel barrels into giant, perforated, steel luminaria and placed them around the perimeter of the vineyard, packed with hay, with wood. At one in the morning, she lit a fire in each, and we joined her, Will, Jessica and I, each of us starting at the northern, southern, eastern and westernmost points of the vineyard, walking, clockwise, in an all-night, eighteen-mile circle, feeding each fire a log or two as we passed. This was not, like the smudge pots of Burgundy, to create warmth or smoke, but to create light. The pilot needed to see where he was going.

Just before dawn, in the hour before the lowest forecasted temperature, a single-person, light helicopter appeared on the horizon and propelled itself over our vineyard, making lazy figure-eights from light to light, sharing its downwash, gently moving the warmer air closer to the ground.

At dawn we began to hear what we already expected but were hoping not to confirm, that the frost had dealt a punishing blow to our verdant valley, to the water-filled buds and young grapevines. One of our neighbors lost sixty percent of their primary buds, another all of the primary and a third of the secondary. Early estimates opined that the valley had lost a full half of its fruit bearing capacity.

These wines exist today because the sun rose golden on a vineyard unscathed and intact, but the light of the lesson is brighter still. If we shrug when faced with the hard questions, we will never get to do anything other than shake our dumb little fists at the fates. But if we keep all channels open, glowing, if we lead with curiosity and maintain its radiance, enter every situation with radiance, radiance will, we can trust, oftentimes follow. Re-learning that lesson daily, remembering it tonight, because of that night, this wine, and this ongoing conversation. With you.

~Maggie