7 Steps To Make A Stellar Wine
Study for years, search for years, to gather knowledge, and to find the perfect vineyards with the perfect conditions yielding the perfect grapes.
Pick, crush, ferment the wine in small lots, taking intricate and intense care every step of the way, like a 1000-branching choose-your-own-adventure where a mistep at any of the 1000 branches will end your journey.
Split those small lots into even smaller lots, barrels and kegs and carboys of divergent experiments and variations, each a completely unique morsel of unreplicatable creation and flavor.
Spend sleepless nights and furious days agonizing over the wines, smelling and tasting and feeling and listening to them, thinking about them not only scientifically but also artistically, soulfully, personifiably, philosophically. Treat each barrel like a theory, to test and trial and think about, to muse about with a friend, to caress and refine over years.
Create new wines, new inventions, new experiences that test these theories, and not alone. Bring fellow winemakers from around the world to join you in this joyous act of creation. Revel in the beauty of this community creation, of the spirit and love that becomes instilled in wine created with this sort of passion. Play music, barbeque, share food and wine and love, sleepless nights and drunken nights. Wake up with hangovers yes, but also with this strange yet wonderful creation in front of you. Cry because this wine has come to represent all the pains and victories of your life, because this wine reminds you of how thankful you are to be alive in this amazing existence.
Take these components and spend months mixing components, playing with variations of flavor like a perfumist lost in the aromas, like a chef in a maniacal fury of flavor, like a musician in the zone and unaware of anything beyond the layers of sound intertwining and playing off each other to create a song.
Bottle this with love and positive intentions, and let go of controlling the outcome. Try to come to terms with the fact that this is now just a wine, and others will not know what you put into it. They will drink it and perhaps say, amidst laughter and drunken revelry, “who brought this? This is fucking good!” and they’ll swig it back and pour another. Realize with a smile and a surge of pride that this is, in fact, what you have been doing this all for. To be a part of these moments, to spread laughter and drunken revelry, the sharing of good times between good friends. Smile, laugh, cry, and raise your glass to the world in a salute.