A friend recently turned 50, which gave several of us gals a good reason to get together and celebrate her, friendship and birthdays. There was a limo, and wine tasting, and picnicking and lots and lots and lots of talking and reminiscing and laughing … and it was wonderful.
Julie lives in El Dorado Hills, so the wine tasting was in her neck of the woods, in Amador County. It was a lovely early spring day — cool, but with sunshine — and the rolling hills were simply covered in green as far as the eye could see. The deeper into the hills we drove, the further back in time it felt we went; and I don’t just mean the historical Gold Rush towns of a few weathered buildings.
The whole area reminded me of our wine country, back in the day; the Sonoma County of the 1970s, before sunscreen and seatbelts, when a winery was either 100 years old, or barely two. I had flashbacks of being nine or 10, and going for a drive out in Alexander Valley, and stopping at a winery that was in someone’s barn, with the people pouring the wine being the same people that planted, watered, harvested, blended and bottled the stuff. Back then, everything “wine country” was undiscovered, still forming, finding its way to fame.
There was some of that same quality to the Amador County region. There was a simplicity, an innocence even, to the Gold Country wine industry, a “before” to our “after.” The winemaking itself may have been state of the art, but for me, the experience was like stumbling upon an old photo album and remembering things you’d forgotten.
One winery had a small museum, which featured some interesting old items — some wine-related, some Gold Rush-related, some just a vaguely random collection of: “hey, this is old and cool.”
Another had a wine pairing with local cheeses, made just up the road by local farmers. The third winery had old vines planted by a Gold Rush wife, carried over from the old country (Romania, if I remember correctly) when she followed her husband to an unfamiliar new country in his quest for gold. She eventually had 11 children, and her vineyard yielded income for the family when her husband’s panning did not. (Like most gold country stories, the riches came out of the supplemental industries that supported the miners — the saloons and stores and such.)
Some local contemporary vineyards went away with the onset of Prohibition, their grapevines giving way to walnut orchards, but this vineyard survived by providing the church with sacramental wine — much like a few old timers around here.
Maybe it was the deep connections and memories of decades long gone that put me in such a throwback mood. When you are remembering high school prom dates, or toasts from weddings that have withstood 20 years of time, or those first precious moments when we held our newborn children, time seems to have folded upon itself. Those memories are so vivid and so treasured, they seem still within reach; never mind that those newborn babies we gazed upon are now themselves going to proms!
Sitting on a flagstone patio, overlooking a small valley that gave way to hills that swelled into the Sierras in the distance, we sipped at wine and caught up with each other’s lives.
Some of us had known each other for decades and had stories of high school band trips and prom dates; some of us were new friends, brought together at Christmas parties or engagement parties long since passed. We were mothers to children and young adults, wives, daughters, sisters; but for a few hours, we were just carefree women enjoying easy laughter and genuine empathy.
We’re all getting older — some of us entering a new decade of counting life’s passage — but we are wiser, too. We know now to hold fast to memories, and to be present in the forming of new ones. We know the pleasure of old friends, and the delight of new ones. We sip at wines that stretch back hundreds of years and toast our youth, and the tomorrows to come.
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net.
