The darkish days started once I realized from a visiting Canadian buddy concerning the dying of one of many kindest, most light and most skilful Pinot winemakers I’ve recognized, Paul Pender of Tawse Vineyard. He died in a mindless and tragic act of violence on the night of three February, outdoors his Lake Erie cottage. A stranger, subsequently charged together with his homicide, had (it appears) knocked on his door, asking for assist. Paul’s sudden, premature loss has left his household, and the broader Canadian wine neighborhood, distraught.
Just below three weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine. By early March, Chernobyl was beneath assault, the agony of Mariupol within the south had begun, and Ukrainian youngsters had been dying, alone, of dehydration and hypothermia in bombed flats in besieged cities. Severe dialogue of ‘World Warfare Three’ surfaced; Europe noticed the most important migration of refugees for the reason that Forties. Thousands and thousands around the globe had been distraught, although awed by the heroism and dignity of Ukraine’s struggle. ‘Why not abandon Mariupol?’ requested a presenter, declaring that the Russians had lowered town to smoke, ruins and rubble. ‘Do you wish to stay as a slave?’ replied town’s deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov.
There isn’t any immunity from tragedy; actually not in wine or within the wine world. Each life is irreplaceable. In struggle, everybody loses; it’s the failure of every part. Its solely spoils are distress.
The open-access ‘Letters from Kyiv’ on jancisrobinson.com assist us perceive simply how complete a disaster struggle is for these operating Ukrainian wine companies and wineries. Russians undergo too, from the identical inexplicable choice of their resentful and remoted dictator. Since fact has lengthy been spoofed in Russia, although, many Russian residents haven’t any technique of greedy this, and think about the dying of their conscripted grandsons, despatched to homicide Ukrainian cousins, as an odd kind of patriotic sacrifice. Disgrace and guilt will come later, when truth-telling can return to Russia.
‘It’s a struggle between two fraternal peoples,’ an expatriate Russian winemaking acquaintance wrote to me. ‘Certainly one of them selected to create its personal younger nation and selected a European democratic approach with all its benefits and downsides. The dictator of the second folks determined that they don’t have a proper to decide on.’ He accepted that he would possibly lose every part. ‘Certainly one of my associates,’ he continued, ‘requested me to name him Sisyphus. Each time he has good leads to enterprise, every part is all of the sudden destroyed and he has to begin once more from zero.’ The fallibilities of dictatorship are flagrant. Eradicating a dictator is dear. Leaving a dictator in place is costlier nonetheless.
Can wine assist us make sense of tragedy? Within the quick time period, it can not; we push our glasses apart. These tragically misplaced should be mourned and grieved over; this course of can’t be hurried. There are not any explanations for tragedy, although justice should take its course, and prevail. The excavation of fact could take a long time.
Wine, although, additionally occurs in very long time, time lengthy sufficient to soften, to re-make and to re-melt all borders and partitions. The primary winemakers alongside the Black Coastline of southern Ukraine, as alongside the Mediterranean coast of southern France, had been Greek colonists; many others have adopted, and can observe within the centuries forward. Solely nature can redeem the ugliness of human destruction, and wine is without doubt one of the most memorable methods through which we are able to really feel that restorative energy – by tracked seasonal change, gathered fruit, autumn’s lots reworked right into a magnificence we are able to odor and style. Wine, too, is a celebration of the individuality of place, and particularly of locations at peace; this touches our souls in addition to refreshing our our bodies.
None of that is any comfort for the struggle crimes and common tragedies unfolding round us. They may finish, although, with the voices of these misplaced urging us to hold on, to replant and to remake. And to recollect them in our brightest, wine-lit moments.
In my glass this month
‘Grapes coming from a peasant collective working naturally in little parcels in the midst of woods within the commune of St-Privat,’ reads the label of Jean-Baptiste Granier’s Les Vignes Oubliées 2019 from Terrasses du Larzac, Languedoc: modest honesty. The mix of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan grown at altitude (300m and better) and partially destemmed is translucent, recent and limpid. A dialog of aromas, all flower and leaf; then a lithe, athletic flavour: clear, pure, sappy, sturdy and truthful. Wine for the instances.
