Tolosa Winery

Just because you were born in a manger doesn’t mean you are a horse. I stumbled upon that bit of proverbial wisdom several times in the buildup to Christmas last year. It seems somehow applicable to a recent visit to Arizona where, despite the non-vinous-friendly environs, I had some amazing wines. On the Cabernet front, I finally had the opportunity to taste Alpha Omega. I mentioned this storied Napa Valley wine back in July when I wrote about the wines from its San Luis Obispo cousin, Tolosa Winery. I was with friends at an undisclosed, semi-secure venue, pursuing a plot for world conquest. As a result, my attention was not as focused on this excellent wine as it should have been.

Writing about and — the necessary preliminary — drinking wine is a voyage of discovery. I won’t say that any new vineyard has made me feel quite like “stout Cortez” who, according to Keats, “star’d at the Pacific — and all his men/ Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—/ Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” But wine is in a deep sense about more than the fermented juice of the grape. It is about place — terroir, of course, but also place in a larger sense: place as habitation, place as community, which means place as the stage whereon manners, romance, technique and custom perform for the gods of pleasure. It is also about history and personality and their distillate: money, which ushers in snobbery and its accoutrements.