I was just an ingénue, a naïve young woman ready to travel the world, sample new cuisines, get her heart broken, and stain her lips red permanently from all her aged adult grape juice consumption. Everyone always asks me, “Tori, but where will you travel on your honeymoon? You’ve been everywhere.” I am so grateful for all the journeys I have woven into my passport, and I like to think that the world is small. That we are all one massive patchwork connected with a complicated series of braided threads. Underneath our masks, we are all basically the same. The more I travel the more I realize this, and the more I am able to connect with everyone. Jim would always tell me I was wrong, he would argue that the world is so big, even if we spend our entire life traveling, it is impossible to take everything in, which is also subjectively true. If I do get to experience a real honeymoon with someone in the world, I would love to travel to the mountain of Mendoza in Argentina, where the malbec grapes are bred.
This specific vintage of sensationally tantalizing mauve malbec breaks the barrier of the dalliance that once occurred. It inhabits, “unique character, natural balance, concentration, and a distinct varietal identity,” –Catena Malbec. All the things I strived for in life and to succumb my virgin palate.
Grown at 1,000 m above sea level, in Mendoza, Argentina… these precious grapes gleamed in the sunlight by day and basked in the coolness of the moon off at dusk. This contrast better helped to create its sturdy structure.
Every time this fugacious purple potion swirls my crystal clear glass, I am once again enthralled and mystified.
One glass of violet vivacious wine doesn’t only transcend you in into the very rustic region in which it is lovingly grown and harvested… it also transports you back in time … back to the very vintage in which the grapes were crafted and those succulent vines once entangled itself into the lattice, not only harvesting great grapes, but nostalgically harvesting sweet memories from that very same year. Wine is so personal. Each variety, and family that handpicks the graceful grapes exhibits its own character. Every soil has its own nutrients, which flows into the wine. Just like every home has its own fragrance, and every lover has specific pheromones, each vintage of wine has its own personality.
Finding a veracious love even just once in a lifetime is a lagniappe. It is not laid before us, we are not entitled to it, and it for sure does not last forever, or maybe not even very long at all. But just because the love dies, doesn’t mean traces of it don’t steal linger…
As white wine ages it gains pigment, whilst as red wine ages it becomes void of color. The translucent tendency it possesses represents the clarity it continues to spur out every now and again. All that time bottled up between the years it was corked, and the moment it is reincarnated into your very glass, the clearer the big picture is.
That same sweet year has distinct hearty pheromones that will forever be seeped and stained into the Malbec. Whatever labyrinthine of life I am forwardly thrust upon… I know I can always scrounge dark dusty cellars for this sacred bottle, in order to re-ride for just a brief moment the joyful discrete memories this wine holds for me.
I have traveled long and far, and Catena Malbec is my favorite. I do not know if I will ever get married, nor if I have the guts to. But like a fairy tale princess five-year old planning her dream wedding, of course there are times when I dream up my fantasy honeymoon. Since I have traveled so many romantic and exotic places already, the only place left that surely has a place in my heart is the Andes in Mendoza, Argentina. The pungent Malbec wines that blooms there have allured me for so long. For my fantasy honeymoon, I would be enthralled to pay a romantic visit to these high altitude grapes with whoever you may be. Hope to find you at the end of my glass.
