life: back to your roots, how I came to love wine
I hope that Lenn doesn’t mind, but my Wine Blog Wednesday is actually going to come on a Thursday. I hope I still make the cut!!
I am a day late, but for good reason. Yesterday was Tom’s and my 3rd anniversary. I was out all night having good wine and good food, and, for once, not blogging. But this was an important WBW for me, because this month’s theme is all about “getting back to your roots”, the wine that gave you that great big AHA moment. I wasn’t able to taste that wine last night, but the theme lead my husband and I on a journey about how we got into one and what that AHA moment was.
The fact is… I can’t even talk about wine without talking about my marriage and my relationship with Tom. They are and forever will be linked. It’s not just because we drank wine as part of our ceremony and received wines from our birth year as wedding presents. It’s not just because we honeymooned in Napa Valley. And it’s not just because all the great wines I’ve enjoyed in my life I’ve enjoyed with Tom. It’s all of those things, but most importantly to this theme, it’s because we experienced that AHA moment together.
It was RODNEY STRONG.
Life before Rodney
We knew we liked dry red wine. We were some of those people. Nothing really stuck, one wine wasn’t really that much better than the other, we just liked it red and not sweet. We were okay with cheap… actually super cheap. I remember how excited we were to buy cases of Crane Lake for $2 a bottle at Meijer. That would last us for a couple weeks. Now we only ever use that stuff for cooking.
Then, we had our first bottle of Rodney Strong Cabernet at my dad’s house. It was magical. We began talking about a particular flavor. We couldn’t really put our finger on it. One thing we did know, however, was that we liked the way it made us feel. The “wine buzz” we called it. It was warm and happy and not like any other buzz you could get. It made the blood rush and food taste better.
Life after Rodney
We started buying Rodney for ourselves. At $16, it was the first “expensive” wine we ever bought regularly. We’d save it for special nights. Whenever I would grab the bottle from atop our fridge (not a good place for wine) we’d have to evaluate whether the night was Rodney-worthy. It was in those days in our apartment where we developed our habit for “wine and cheese” dinners, elaborate snacking that would commence while watching movies together on the couch. Life was good.
Then came our wedding, and it was Rodney Strong we drank with our vows.
The Honeymoon and the 2nd A-HA
We closed out the Rodney story by visiting the vineyard on our honeymoon. But, we also visited a lot of other wineries on that trip… 11 in total. For the first time, we were tasting $30 wines, and mostly Napa Valley Cabs. It was an epiphany.
They were delicious and bold. They were big and fruit forward. And they tasted… expensive. We started talking about flavors and colors and textures. We were becoming wine snobs for the first time.
To this day, there is a certain character that we will find in wines that will have us refer to them as “Honeymoon Wines” whether or not they are from California…
“I taste blackberry in this one with a chocolate finish and a hint of honeymoon”
On our anniversary, it has become a tradition to drink big California Cabernets. First it was Spring Mountain, which coincidentally was featured on Conan O’Brien later that summer. Actually it was Spring Mountain for a couple anniversaries. But last night, since we weren’t dining in Canada, where you are allowed to BYOB, we had a new discovery. It was a big bold California blend from Lail Vineyard called Blueprint.
And though our tastes have changed over the years, though we have gained an appreciation of Pinot Noir and subtle flavors from wines around the world… we always have a place for those Big Cabs and for Rodney Strong. And though I wasn’t able to “get back to my roots” last night, this theme has inspired me to make me realize how I really truly came to love wine, and more importantly WHO I came to love it with.
There is no one in the world I would rather drink with. I love you Tom.
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