Intention. An aim or a plan.
I read something this morning that really struck a chord with me. “Food and culture cannot be separated, and how we access food creates culture. The industrial agriculture of the twentieth century, which carries over to our own time, has no heart. The heartless agriculture does not honor or value the life forces in any being-soil, plant, animal, or human.” This was written by Karen Davis-Brown, editor of the Biodynamics Journal. It’s time we sit down with our wine and get to know it more, really feel it instead of just mindlessly drinking it.
I am guilty, so totally guilty of not paying attention. I am guilty of walking into a wine store, or supermarket or Costco and grabbing whatever wine “looks good.” Sometimes my kids are going nuts or about to knock over every bottle on the shelf, or I am just super overwhelmed with the choices, or there’s a really bad song on in the store, and I have to get out of there so I just pick something. Your first question might be, why is she buying wine at the grocery store? Well, just like everyone else I am busy, I have a job, kids, a husband, baseball practice, art classes, pets, kid sleepovers, and birthday parties to name just a few things. Oh yeah, we also should stay in shape and eat healthy, which means exercising and preparing meals for your family.
There is also enjoying time with friends and extended family and it seems like now there is a celebration for everything and you get an invite to a million things that you never thought you’d be invited to. New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl, the Grammy’s, the Oscars, Easter, Equinox, Earth Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Bastille Day, national wine day, national red wine day, national rose day, national pizza day, national drink with your pet day…..well, you get the point. Sometimes I need to just get a bottle of wine and down a glass to deal with the messiness of life!
Why don’t I just drink my own wine? Because, that would be a disservice to the people I make wine for. You. You who also really needs that glass (or bottle of wine sometimes). I taste other wines because you also have a choice and I want to make sure that our wines are a worthy, and cost effective choice for you. Yes, I am guilty of not having an intention or even shred of presence when buying wine. No longer. That is changing. With such little time there seems to have a peaceful moment to enjoy that glass of wine, I now want that glass of wine to have meaning. I want to be much more mindful about it.
I am the person that believes there is good in everything, who believes that what you see is what you get. Wine is fermented grapes, right? That used to be true, but unfortunately it’s not the case anymore. Wine can have so many things added to it to make it that “perfect bottle.” If you know anything about Hedges we are not after the perfect bottle. Our wines reflect the land, reflect the vintage, they reflect the people who work here and their families. Our wines reflect a place, a story, a family struggle, a husband and wife who had a dream and risked everything. Our wines have feeling, they have heart and sometimes even the laughter of the people who stomped them with their feet. Our wines take you back to the past, they slow life down.
They. Slow. Life. Down. I think in this modern day we could all use a little slowing down and those are the wines I will intentionally look for from now on. A wine with a story. I want to know where the grapes came from, who picked them, who made the wine, what’s in the wine. How can I tell from the label? Look for the words “estate bottled”, “estate grown and bottled”, or “grown, produced and bottled by.” That will a good start on your path to finding an authentic wine.
Intention is everything. If you intend to go to the store to get a bottle of wine, then you will get a bottle of wine. The choices are endless. The different bottle shapes, the labels with either no information or a ton of information. Labels can be colorful, plain, confusing, or simple. They can have stories on the back, pictures of the winery, pictures of the family, and even pictures of things that I never want to see again. However, if you intend to go to the store and pick up a bottle of produced and bottled by, or estate grown and bottled, family-owned and operated, Biodynamically and organically-farmed, Biodynamically-made wine, your choices have infinitely narrowed. The choice actually becomes much easier.
The factory wines all seem to blur together and all of a sudden, like a beacon of light through the homogenous fog, you see what you intended to purchase. Maybe it’s Hedges, maybe it’s a wine from Corsica or Argentina. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is when you narrow your field to your intention. Shop with intention, support wineries that support the land, choose for your health and the future. Access the wine that creates the culture. Intentionally purchase wines with heart. We all have the power to influence the world through our enthusiastic intention. The more we can get others to participate with those same enthusiastic intentions the more powerful the influence will be. Intentional wine is life, and I choose life.
- Sarah
