There’s no better place to drink wine than at a winery, the place that brought it to life. Cellars are better than the tasting rooms, if you ask me, and vineyards are best of all, when the weather is good.
Part of why wine is best at a winery is because it hasn’t traveled, hasn’t been exposed to heat or cold, hasn’t been jostled or hit by light. It’s just been sitting there, in the equivalent of a wine nursery, waiting for you to pick it up and adore it. (The other part is that you’re probably on vacation; everything will taste better in the spot you’ve chosen for your time away from the hustle and scrape of your life.)
With the proper care and attention, wine can also travel well, and it usually does just fine away from the safety and comfort of the nursery. Still, I prefer to consume local wine when I’m on the road, or as close to local as I can.
This is easy to do in most of Europe because everything over there is packed in tight. If you’re in the good ol’ USA, though, and there are no wineries close by, at least try to find some wine that was made in the state. People grew grapes there, and turned them into wine. This is what they’re doing with their lives in the place you are enjoying at your leisure. My guess is that in more than half of the states, you’re not going to be blown away by the local wine. You might not even be satisfied by it. But the other almost-half? There’s a chance you might make a nice discovery — a good or at least decent wine from an unexpected locale.
Earlier this year, some of the men in my family met in Arizona to commune in the desert, burn things, share philosophies, do the one-arm hug and generally bro-down. There was grilling, too. I thought we could use some wine. So at the edge of town, before we ventured out into endless sand, my brother and I collected rations at a supermarket. I had trouble finding any Arizona wines, so I flagged down a store employee who spent the next 30 minutes with me, walking up and down the wine aisles looking for Arizona bottles, calling people on his cellphone for help — even leading me to another part of the store, where he was sure there had been an Arizona food products display.
The display was gone, but a maintenance man joined our search party. While my brother went off to hunt down more meat, the three of us walked the aisles and looked, bottle by bottle, for any wine with the word Arizona on it. The maintenance man did label research on his phone. I urged the first man, who was holding a bag of food the entire time, to please go take his break. But he insisted on continuing to help. It was then that I noticed he was the store manager. One at a time, in different spots, the maintenance man found three 2015 Arizona blends: a red and a white from Provisioner, and a red from Arizona Stronghold. We bought all three.
At the burn site, the men of the clan were intrigued by the Arizona wines, and as we drank from plastic cups, I looked out over the desert and its uncharacteristic greenness. Flying in a day earlier, I had been struck by the landscape below. The brown and orange mountains of Arizona looked like they were on their way to becoming the green hills of Vermont. It was like nothing I had ever seen in that part of the country — a pleasant surprise due to unseasonal rains.
It was strange and cool, a clear example of the overwhelming power and unstoppable-ness of nature. Another strange and pleasant surprise was drinking good wine from Arizona. We could have given up the supermarket search and just bought wine from California or Italy. It would have been fine, and the male fellowship would have been no less rewarding. But for me, and possibly some of the others, sipping the Arizona wines created a 1+1=3 scenario.
It was like saying thank you to the place that was hosting us. It was honoring the people who spent so much effort making the wine, and the shopkeepers who spent so much time helping two random customers find it. Making those wines a part of our night gave us a taste of what the earth had to offer in that part of the world.
The desert was in full bloom all around us. As dusk faded, and the temperature and darkness fell, a little here and a little there, some of the men of the clan sampled the Arizona wine and gently shook their heads without saying much, or sometimes saying nothing at all.
Maybe they tasted the wines and said things to themselves. Doesn’t matter. I didn’t need to hear any of it. Those wines, born of that place, consumed in that place, were exactly right. Drink at the winery if you can, but if you can’t, get as close to the source as possible. Surrender to the place you’re in. Enjoy what it has to offer, and be grateful. It will feel right, it will feel good.
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