I recently wrote that our craft, in its essence, demands an undying curiosity towards the ‘familiar’ turn of the seasons and openness towards unforeseen results, and that when working with Nature - especially in Niagara - one really has no other choice apart from living on the edge and trusting forces bigger than us. At the time, the topic in question was a showcase of two new vintages of cuvées that are relatively new to us. One of them was the 2019 Irrévérence – a blended white wine. Here, however, I want to expand a bit further on the process of blending that is behind this cuvée and our other blended wine - the Roselana.
Initially born out of whimsical moments in a couple of flights of fancy, these two wines have proven to be some of our wisest teachers through the last few years. We never really intend to make them in the ways they shape themselves each vintage. It would be silly, however - to say the least - to argue with the balanced ways in which their components fuse together. Despite often breaking all the rules known to us, the emerging blends are harmonious, irreverent and undeniably delicious. So, we follow them along unchartered paths and try to learn from them about what C. Jung described as “circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection” – Synchronicity.
What does Synchronicity and blending have to do with each other, you ask?
A lot, at least in the way we work. As mentioned earlier, these are not premeditated blends – rather, they arise spontaneously. This is not to say they do not require work. In fact, they require the deepest of work – letting go of accepted ideas that we may otherwise try to impose onto the wines and being receptive to gathering information without relying on your mind to put the pieces together in a comfortable fit. Comfortable can be great, but it is not exquisite. Comfort, for all its plump coziness, also has a true - and very high - price. It often involves all-encompassing obviousness, lack of mystery and magic, plain boredom, absence of synchronicity – or, all of the above.
To each their own, as it is said. But this is not the way we work.
Blending, the way we see it, is not a process of assembly, but one of continuity, of bringing multiplicity into unity. A blend can be as mindless and obvious as A+B=C; or sometimes - a simple balance of opposites like in a see-saw; or maybe an assemblage of bricks that layer into a solid, pretty house; or as simple as using leftovers to whip up something delicious. There’s nothing wrong with any of these, of course – as I said, comfort is cozy and plump. Yet, blending can also be a much more demanding and contemplative process - a symphonic balance of subtle hidden harmonies, the silence between the notes, “the highest possible answer to a growing season”.
Much like with the rest of life, we all have powerful internal compasses to guide us in the search for and towards the recognition of the Exquisite: Courage, Curiosity and Intuition. But in wine, just like with the rest of life, the hardest of tasks is letting go of the simply good and employing this triad of allies in the pursuit of things and experiences that get your nervous system humming and your senses buzzing.
It takes a lot of work that often feels much like soul-searching. One has to quiet oneself, one’s biases and ego in order to be able to taste the hidden bridges that exist within the elements of the blend, the mysterious and acausal interconnectedness, the potential for the as-of-yet unimagined. And then, of course, you have to trust and jump in.
I wrote this at the time of release for our first Irrévérence (2017) – and a first ever white blend - a few years ago:
What do we talk about when we talk about our wines?
Where does the balance in each wine lie? What does a certain vintage bring to each cuvée? How about different methods of fermentation?
And most importantly - what moves us? Which metamorphosis of beauty is the one that gives us emotion?
You see, for us, it has never been about colour and any other outward strokes in the wines. We care little about 'styles', any particular flavour, or how the world tries to classify our work. What we do cherish and strive to capture in each of our cuvées, however, is the ever-shifting crux between the beauty we inhabit and the beauty we hope will inhabit us. We believe it is at this fugitive of an intersection, identities are born – identities of unanticipated harmonies and marvels yet not known. It is the wines that have it in their core that trigger not only our imagination and curiosity, but the deeper strings of our human emotions as well.
2017 Irrévérence came to be during the search of this elusive nexus. Maybe that’s how one stumbles upon the magic we’re all looking for – by being ready to get one’s own pre-existing beliefs pilloried and one’s eyes opened by reality itself, even if we can’t understand it just yet.
It is funny to read it now and realize we were already not only on to something, but also at the beginning of comprehension. We were few steps in on a path that we’ve since walked for 4 years and we will continue to do so - the process of blending that requires the exploration of being versus the performance of such.
Faced with the unknown - especially when one has a certain amount of knowledge and happens to be surrounded by many old adages and prescriptive approaches, both to wine and life - one can be anxious and want to close the opening gap between the heavy cloak of the omnipresently approved and one’s own senses. As in the words of the wonderful Anne Lamott one can want to continually “redecorate the abyss”, and to establish the familiar and approved in that space. Or,… maybe, just maybe - you can leave that space open and respond to it with curiosity and courage. In my experience, the exquisite seems to like open space and often walks in where and when there’s freedom to be as one is.
A great blend makes the invisible visible. It rings like a laugh, rising from the depths of your core and reverberating steadily through your every cell, making you wonder how it is possible that you didn’t see the connections before.
A great blend is pure synchronicity. One gets there, one sees it, but only if we’re open and willing to let go of the stories we’ve believed for a while and the biases we don’t even know we hold, the invisible chains around our necks. You’ll recognize it easily, because just like in those moments of synchronicity, it’ll send your nervous system buzzing. It feels both assertive like a jolt and complete like a gentle exhale. The light fractures through the liquid in the glass with a gasp surprised by its own beauty, and the wine floods you with its aliveness. In that moment, you’ll know you have it – no causal connection at hand to explain how or why things are relating in the ways of the exquisite, not just the simply good. For yet another year, you had found the courage in yourself to give the wine not what you want from it, but what it wants - and that deeply-roosted physical and emotional quality of aliveness is the response. It will stream back at you with joy and it’ll beget hope, desire, possibility, freedom.
A blend can simply be an assembly of parts, or it can be a reach for and into the unknown - that’s where the exquisite lies. The presence of the invisible will always reveal itself, albeit very subtly sometimes, but one always knows. Hermann Hesse put it so poignantly in “Narcicuss and Goldmund” even if in a completely different context. There’s nothing obvious, clear or comfortable about the real and the great things. Something is real and true and deep, even if we can’t see it or don’t know it yet - only when it stirs your emotions and when it is “an experience, a taste on the tongue, a ring around the heart”.
