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Home Sippin' Tasting Room Newest Sips The Raison/Raisin for Being?

The Raison/Raisin for Being?

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vinyard dead tree

I have now brought back over 50 tons of grapes to our winery this season.  I drive most of them myself over from the vineyards and I have time to listen to NPR’s local stations and reflect.  Over the course of this harvest I have been reminded once more of the extraordinary miracle of fermentation…the absolute and total transformation of sticky sweet squashed watery orbs to heady new wine.

As I drive over the mountain pass that separates Eastern from Western Washington I have come to wonder if the grapes I’m hauling have any clue what lies ahead for them.  If I were to tell them they will be tortured with a stemming and crushing and they will be made into wine, would any of them willingly come with me?  “Wine” is not a part of what they know and it may not even be a part of their vocabulary (if they have one).  The grape’s reason for being is to be a raisin!  “Wine… what’s that?” my grapes might say to me as I transport them far from their vineyard homes.

Yesterday, was the twelfth anniversary of my mother’s death from early-onset Alzheimer’s.  “Resurrection” of the body as some Creeds ask to believe, is something she would hardly want.  She was a walking pathology textbook for most of her life. 

I think, perhaps, a new wine awaits us that is beyond our mortal abilities to even conceive.  We are grapes without a conception of what wine is.  As I get older with each vintage I am going to try and not become an old raisin and remember that my raison for being lies somewhere in a new wine to come that I cannot begin to fathom.

 

By Don Corson, WineSpirit Member in Washington State

Founder of Camaraderie Winery

 

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