Hello out there. Lately, when I try to pin down how I am, there is less of an answer than a texture….like….jello? Sort of transparent and semisolid, but don’t try to pin it down. Usually, one can shake that feeling by orienting to one’s surroundings, but just at the moment, that is also profoundly difficult. For just here, just within a small circle of family, friends, and colleagues who are safe and hale, if not hale-adjacent, there is much to celebrate, to find endless gratitude for. But a scene is called to mind from Star Wars (1977): immediately, in this exact moment, aside from a monster that we’re fairly sure is swimming around beneath our feet and the fact that the walls of this trash compactor are steadily closing in, we have plenty of garbage to eat, it’s neither too hot nor too cold, etc.
And that generally sums up the feeling I get when someone asks, ‘how are you?’
However this finds you, I am glad that it has. Are you weary? Are you content? Are you seeking? Is that question too…?
Yes. I understand. What interesting times we find ourselves in.
But when we cannot orient to the tangible, we must remind ourselves that orienting to the intangible is what gives us the courage to bring forth what we desire to touch, proferre quod desideramus tangere.
Thus, in my own Stranger Things moment, largely ok but traversing a landscape of endless darkness, I used my one phone call to call in the majesty of my own rejected thoughts, the thoughts that define us but to which we don’t give enough time because, well, they are our thoughts. But in the case of what I would like to share today, this is the Élan vital of Hope Well, and in this moment wherein wine is having an existential crisis along with humanity, it seems just right to grab her like a floatation device. Feel free to float along.
Perhaps surprisingly, I am rarely asked to articulate what Hope Well is and what we are about. I am asked far more often to describe my wines, to name a favorite, but especially now I wonder if that is what people actually want to know. People are drinking less, scrutinizing their choices more, and frankly, I think if people are being more intentional about their decisions, that is very exciting indeed. Anything that pulls people into a conversation with what they are doing about why they are doing it is an opportunity to reclaim inspiration. Do you know why you make wine? Do you know who you make wine for? Do you know what you’re trying to accomplish?
I make wine because I am enchanted by the experience of wine and what it reveals about people and place and love. I make wine because what I learn, daily, weekly, monthly, annually, and over a lifetime, within a fairly scientific framework of observation and interpretation, yearns to dance and make music.
I make wine for Hope Well. I make wine for the spirit that enchants the land we are so extraordinarily fortunate to cohabitate. Hope Well is an enduring force that imbues everything that resides here: the plants, certainly, but the creatures, the rocks, the soil, the wind. All are touched by this wellspring of vitality and pure ‘of this place’-ness. Hope Well is discernible from everything and everywhere else. She is the keenest, kindest, and most ruthless teacher. She teaches me who I am.
As she animates my craft, Hope Well is an unflinching letter of affection and fidelity to fleeting moments with her, a visceral journaling of lives intertwined. There is no demand or expectation in what we create that it resonate with anyone else, but there is hope that it might. I believe her potential is defining in the world.
Wine as I know and hold it is an ancient language that few people have the patience for anymore. But for those who do, it stands as a recognizable form and will stand as long as there are craftspeople who choose to interact with the land in this way. I may be an idealist, but for me there is a soul that speaks through true wines that cannot be extinguished by the shadow of human self-consciousness, by affect of personality, by any corruption, because we are so, so very insignificant compared to that force.
And that, my friends, is a reorientation to who we are and what we are about. You know I care about many, many things, and we will talk about them here. But if you ever wonder how the wine fits in, hopefully we’ve settled that today.
~ Mimi
