by Richard Harvey
There is a sublime amalgam of feelings that overwhelm me on a wine trip. Tense exits from airports, jet-lagged and stinky, are followed by enervating traffic delays and other obstacles in the way of getting where one wants to be: wine country!
This term for vineyard areas varies in place and definition, and we will not all agree on what Wine Country looks and feels like. For some, it is arriving at your deluxe resort and heading for the hotel’s spa where wine will be imbibed peripherally. Some of the world’s wine regions now offer what is loosely called “vinotherapy”, although I have found the most pleasure inhaling and drinking this wonderful liquid rather than bathing in it.
For me, the entry into wine country starts with my first view of vines as I approach my goal. There’s such a tsunami of feeling that rolls over me that I could simply characterise as salubrious, but sometimes bordering on the lubricious and gorgeously sensual. Rolling into the Burgundian village of Meursault, one feels a stirring in the loins—the joy in arriving enhanced by that moment of being there! (Sometimes I wish I smoked cigarettes as a Hollywood culmination of such a feeling).
Most recently, after several white-knuckle hairpin turns on a sketchy mountain road, the first sight of the stunningly beautiful vineyards of Spain’s Ribeira Sacra region made me smile and laugh while hurling my car around the subsequent, seemingly endless set of curves.
It just happens! As soon as I’m in sight of vines, I feel at home and connected to the earth. Even if I don’t speak the local lingo, I know that I’ll find kindred souls and we’ll connect over our shared appreciation of the place wine holds in our (often very different) worlds. People who see you stop and step into their vineyards are generally surprised and curious about your intrusion, but after whatever patchwork communications, we arrive at a communion of understanding. I love your land, I love your vines, I love your wines, and even when tasted thousands of kilometres away, they connect us.
I especially love the areas that surprise with their sudden advent of vineyards. It’s not driving through kilometre after kilometre of vines, it’s turning that bend in the road and suddenly knowing that you have arrived where you belong. I often feel like some of the evocative paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, where humans and plants combine in an odd harmony, but a harmony nonetheless!
