The Conversation

So you ask what sparked my interest in wine or what first opened my life to the sea of wines? I tried to recall a day or an event that took place where I was certain that wine would be apart of my families rituals at the dinner table. Moments flashed through my mind as I recalled a time while studying abroad in Paris. My friends and I gathered together at a fondue restaurant just off a main street on an old, cobblestone road. There carafes of wine and an arrangement of wholesome foods lined the center of the table on large pewter platters. It was that journey abroad that I felt a true sense of gathering and sharing one another over food, wine and just being.
Or was it the time that a young man approached me in Baltimore at a friend’s soirée? We engaged in some great conversation when he opened a small leather bag by his side and said, “I have something to share with you.” Little did I know a lovely bottle of this man's art awaited my palate? A true back woods style wine that he had made with a collection of grapes from his land in Idaho, I felt honored to be apart of that moment.
Or was it the time I drove across the country with my 4 art student friends in a Volvo station wagon and a 5 man tent. The time we hiked into the Grand Canyon in the scorching sun and my friend’s insistence that we could handle the “Experienced Desert Hiker Trail.” At one point we were unsure if we would make it out alive. I can still recall the sound of the champagne bottle popping that night as a light rain began to fall. We sat around the campfire and sipped on that fine wine in the middle of the woods. I can recall letting the texture of those fine bubbles tickle the end of my tongue.
So it is the beautiful pictures my memory has painted, the souls that I have shared these meals with, and the journey that continues to unfold. To unite at the dinner table and be real with each other, to seek out those small wineries in the cracks and crevices that are making our stories come alive. I leave you with that friend and hope that I have begun to connect you to my soul in some way. I am thankful our paths have crossed.

Rise Above,
Dodee Schmitt