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Posted in rantings and ravings on August 26th, 2016 by skeeter

It’s easy to come back to the place of your youth and fall into a nostalgic reverie, long flashbacks to the good old days. You know, if they were actually good, not mostly memories of hard struggles and forlorn winter glooms. But looking back from these years future, though bittersweet, reveals a winding road you might not care to travel again, still, you wouldn’t want to have missed that detour.

Old age, so they say, brings wisdom. Youth, I say from experience, was a frenzied search for some kind of meaning, maybe any kind. The monks, and the zen masters, they removed themselves from the distractions of the world to contemplate, to synchronize with the OM, to hear the one hand clapping. When they had reached satori, when their breathing was one with the cosmos, when the koan of a tree falling in the forest without them there to hear was solved, they emerged back into the world, exemplars of purity of thought.

I wonder if they wished they had stayed. I wonder if what they learned in solitude and meditation was that they were one with what they had left, that the sound of the one hand was the same sound as the tree falling as the same sound as the OM as the same sound of their breathing which is the same exact sound of everyone’s breathing and that the journey we take is the journey they took without our distractions but the distractions are actually the one hand clapping after all.

Maybe they know the answer to that and I don’t. But … what I think, looking back from the road I started on, is the answer to that is that the road is never the same. We are never the same. The sound of the one hand clapping, don’t kid yourself, it sounds different the next time. Be glad to be IN the world, don’t try to BE your own hermetically sealed world. And that one hand clap, by the way, it won’t be the sound of applause, more like a sigh of relief. . Visit the Skeeter Diaries Site 

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In America, we often purchase wine by the grape (Merlot, Chardonnay, etc.) but there are many wines not labeled as a single grape…these are called blends.

In the Unites States, a blend is any wine consisting of two or more grapes with less than 75% of each grape. For example, a wine with 55% Cabernet Sauvignon and 45% Merlot is considered a blend. Many blends have 3, 5, even 13 different grapes.

Our blends in the U.S. have origins back to Europe. Let’s take a look at some of these and set you up nicely for your next trip to the wine store:

BORDEAUX BLEND~

RED...
A red blend generally consists of 5 grapes. They are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot. Often you will see wines with the first three grapes in any order. Spring Valley Vineyard in Walla Walla produces “Uriah” that is a Merlot predominant Bordeaux blend.

WHITE...
A white blend generally consists of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. DeLille Cellars produces a 95 point representation called “Chaleur Estate Blanc.”

SOUTHERN RHONE BLEND ~

RED...
A red blend generally consists of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvédre (commonly referred to as GSM). The famous Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine from this region consists of a whopping 13 grapes! Rôtie Cellars produces an excellent representation of a GSM with their “Southern Blend.”

WHITE...
A white blend that is easily accessible is Viognier rounded out with any combination of Rousanne, Marsanne, and/or Ugni Blanc. Yakima Valley’s Airfield Estates prouduces “Lightening White” consisting of Viognier, Rousanne and a small amount of Marsanne.

CHIANTI or SUPER TUSCAN BLEND ~
Generally speaking Chianti consists predominantly Sangiovese with a couple other (sometimes white) grapes. A Super Tuscan is a red wine that can be 100% Cabernet Sauvignon as it started but now-a-days is often seen as a blend using Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese, Cabernet Franc and other obscure grapes. Brian Carter Cellars produces “Tuttorosso” which is a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

For more wine-centric fun, follow me on instagram: @deepredcellar