Ten years before the wine rack

May 15, 2003

Dear Julie,

Last weekend as DC and I were leaving the winery in the nearby town of Commerce, the owner/winemaker stopped our car and handed us a bottle of his Cynthiana. We have known Jerry Smith and his wife, Joni, for years, and every time we see them we all promise to have dinner together sometime. We never have.

They are busy running two businesses. DC has a practice and teaches. I don't have any businesses or practices, but I do have an occupation with golf.

The Cynthiana was bottled in 2000. It will improve with age, Jerry said, and proposed that the four of us meet in 10 years to drink it.

We happily agreed, enjoying the irony and the idea of making a date with someone for a decade into the future.

These days people have a hard enough time committing to next week.

In the work I do, the results are usually seen the next day. A winemaker has a different perspective. The grapevines take years to produce. The grapes must be harvested, crushed, the juice strained and siphoned before the weeks of fermentation and the months and in some cases years of aging before the wine is ready to drink.

The winemaker must have the patience and dedication of a novelist, toiling and pruning and waiting, testing and trying it out on the tongue. The rest of us drink wine. The winemaker understands it.

Looking up Cynthiana, I read that it is a robust red wine, full-bodied, a bit dry and yet spicy. It does indeed age beautifully. The anticipation of tasting that wine in 10 years is already starting to build.

Coincidentally, my yoga teacher, Amy, led the class on a guided meditation this week that had us imagining what we will be like in the future. She chose 20 years.

It's easy to imagine yourself younger. In our culture, most everyone but 20-year-olds wants to look younger than we are. Besides, we already know what it's like to be younger. We don't know what older feels like until we get there.

Imagining yourself 10 or 20 years older is a jolt at first. You wonder which of your family members and friends and dogs will still be around to talk to and hug. Nobody knows. You wonder what parts of life will get better with age and what parts will refuse to function.

This future is a very instructive place to visit. You are confronted with the truth that life is a state of flux and time is not unlimited. Best to spend it doing exactly what you want to do.

We're very good at reliving the past. How would our lives change if we lived from the future? If you decide how and who you want to be in that future, the present becomes a matter of working out the details.

DC wants to be in Montana on a big piece of land with nobody else around. I take that "nobody" not to exclude me. I like Montana, too.

In 10 years, I want to be beating 50-year-old whippersnappers all over the golf course, armed only with the skill of a Zen master and my Great Big Jumbo Gartantuan Immense Stupendous Bertha driver.

I want to begin taking on the grizzled, ageless look of Sean Connery. I expect to be robust, full-bodied, a bit dry and yet spicy.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.