I have been bad about blogging lately. My excuse is that I have been bottling. I am not myself when I bottle. I don’t enjoy it. If you are a mother of a 12 year old, you know exactly how I feel. It is similar to taking your sweet innocent child to his or her first day in seventh grade. You sit in your car, sadly watching as your loving angel walks away from you. They are entering a new world, one you cannot enter. You know in your heart you have done everything you can. Problem is you also know in your heart that your angel, alone in that environment will probably be returned to you a demon. You ask yourself, “I wonder who is going to come back.” You wonder if you will ever see your old child again. All you can do is wait. You hope and you trust in a higher force to help you. You may have to wait eight years to see "your" child again (when they are an adult!)

Bottling destroys wine. It makes it what we call “sick”. You pull a sample from the bottling line and take into the lab. You taste it. Your heart drops. Yeah, it is your wine, you recognize some of it, but it is just not the same. Once I bottle I don’t taste the wine again for six months. I have that luxury. Usually, your wine begins to come back in six months. Our sales reps don’t understand that. “What does it taste like?” they ask. “I don’t know,” I answer. “I haven’t tasted it. Ask me again in three months.” They roll their eyes at me. I just smile.

Sometimes the wine surprises me. The aging process has given it more complexity. It comes back to you your child, but more interesting. You get excited to see how it is going to fare in the world. Sometimes it makes you proud.