So I’m having dinner last night at an upscale steakhouse with a great friend of mine, discussing what was going on in our lives as we enjoyed a 1994 Dominus. As the meal went on we started to realize how many terrific bottles of wine we had enjoyed together and when and what they were. What we discovered was that wine, like no other beverage, seems to translate to a sense of time and place. It doesn’t really matter if the wine is a highly respected classified growth Bordeaux or a grocery store level wine; the memory is made by who you were with when you enjoyed the wine. I can’t tell you what I was wearing or sometimes even what we were eating, but I can always tell you what the wine was on almost any given occasion. Why that is I can’t say for sure, but I do know that it happens over and over again. Wine is like no other entity that I can think of that seems to stay in your memory and transport you back in time to relive the good times you had enjoying a particular bottle. I don’t remember every single bottle of wine I’ve ever had, but if a certain bottle comes up in conversation, invariably I instantly recall if I have had it and who with and where I was if I did. There are many times that I have forgotten one of the half dozen or more different passwords I use for everything from banking to downloading an “app”, but just ask me about any wine I have had in the past 25 years. I know I’m far from alone in this selective wine memory that I have and I can’t explain why I have it, but if you have an idea on why this is…send it along.

Ken Amendola, Wine Supervisor, North Florida