There's been lots of news on resveratrol in red wine that influences our health. Hooray for the grape! Of course to reproduce the results in animals we'd need to drink an amount of wine that would kill us. The reported health potential includes delaying or preventing "Oldtimers," lowering our risks for heart disease and cancer, and it's said to even make women's memory better.

Incredible BUT and..... are the health benefits only due to the molecules in wine? Could it possibly be the social situations in which we share wine that contribute to our well-being?

My idea about wine's contribution to health is that the community aspect is a major component. To explain the difference between French and American health we might just consider the social situations around meals, drink, and relaxation.

To add to my learning, when do you drink wine, is it usually alone or with other people?

Happy new year and may this be a vintage year for all of us.

The first chardonnay that offered me a taste to remember was this bejeweled beauty, one of Jess Jackson’s first chardonnays. This is a portrait of his 1983 Vintner’s Reserve, at two years. It showed a consistency and depth of microscopic design seen only in chardonnays that underwent malolactic fermentation. Everywhere I looked on the microscopic terrain, this pattern was evident.

A consistency in quality was also born out in the KJ chardonnays themselves. When traveling to teach in the backwaters of the US of A, I could usually find a KJ char on the menu to order. I knew it would be pleasurable to drink and I could afford it.

Jess Jackson’s first wine was released in 1983 – 1982 Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay. His intent was to make the best chardonnay in the United States and to popularize the idea of varietal wines. His 1983 Chardonnay won the first platinum award ever presented by the American Wine competition.

Take a look at this wine expression, what does it look like to you? A sea creature, a pile of crystals, snowflakes? A jewel, was the great Andre Tschelitcheff’s interpretation. Chardonnay is a more feminine wine (in mouth and microscopic design) when it undergoes malolactic fermentation. The KJ chardonnays undergo secondary malolactic fermentation, Grgich’s chardonnays do not. Is that reflected in their wine portraits?

Something to ruminate on with the next sip of wine – is it possible that the microscopic constellation of wine molecules offer telltale clues to its personality or character?

Cheers! BTW, all wine portraits on this blog and website are available as limited edition giclee reproductions.

Yesterday I enjoyed a wonderfully fun educational lunch with the "Swami of Umami" Tim Hanni.

Tim served up a variety of foods (steak, shrimp, asparagus, spaghetti squash) with and without magic seasonings. And I got first hand how we can basically drink any wine with any food, provided we know the remedies. A wine too tannic is softened if you add salt or a squeeze of lemon on the food. And we all know what happens if we have something sweet before sipping a dry wine - yuck, the wine becomes sharp and biting. Tim explains it this way - if you eat something sweet it diminishes any softness from coming out from the wine. The remedy, the salty sour trick.

The Robert Mondavi Winery also has these culinary tricks written up.

This sure makes me happy to be able to enjoy red wine with the whitest of foods, a no-no in the past.

And one last bit of taste education here - what is umami? Umami is the 5th taste of savory and comes from amino acids, especially glutamate, as seen here in MSG, also in nucleotides. The foods containing these constituents are meats, cheeses, soy sauce, mushrooms, anchovies, lots more.

Isn't it great to discover how to enjoy any wine with any food?

How do you remember a wine? How do you describe your tasting experience? This wine is a Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

I am intrigued with the words people use to convey their impressions of a wine, and their memory. One expert talks about what their nose knows while another speaks to mouth sensations. I have limited vocabulary to talk about wine other than textural. That's probably why I continue to take pictures through the microscope. The images serve as a symbolic vocabulary that may someday be useful to all of us to remember wine.

It always surprises me how wine expresses itself in pictures and taste. I enjoy it without words and still would like a larger lexicon, any suggestions how to create wine language?

Some wine 'impressionistic art' on my website SondraBarrett.com Drink in the beauty.

My latest 'wine gig' was to photograph two special chardonnays from Grgich Hills Cellars including their very first, the 1977 chardonnay. Naturally I taste everything.

Though the 1977 didn't have the vibrancy of younger wines, nor did it have any nose left, it still held its chardonnay structure intact. You knew you were sipping a chardonnay.

What a delightful surprise to see its exquisite inner views.

This was the oldest chardonnay I've ever tasted (or photographed). Would you expect California chardonnays to last 30 years, what about white Burgundies? What of the chardonnay character lasts?

Biodynamic wine is a controversial yet ever-growing approach to viticulture. Top winemakers are not only experimenting with these labor-intensive practices, more and more are embracing them 100%. Biodynamic, at its most essential, is SUSTAINABLE VITICULTURE. Pioneering biodynamics in California are Benziger, Grgich, Sinskey, Bonnie Doon, Quintessa, a slew in Mendocino - Jeriko, Pattiano, the whole Fetzer family. You can see these are respected producers of fine wines. Of course, in France and Germany another huge round of excellent wines are made biodynamically. Nicolas Joly, pioneer of modern BD viticulture of the Coulee de Serrant, produces highly esteemed wines. Read his "Wine from Sky to Earth" if you want to learn more.

I will explore Biodynamics in this blog and welcome feedback from any of you who have explored these and organic wines.



This is an image of GRGICH HILLS' first 100% biodynamic cabernet - a barrel sample 3 months old. PRESS the lovely image to learn more about BD viticulture which is ORGANIC PLUS sacred cosmic forces.

Well I was able to get a small sample of the 2002 BV Georges de Latour -

Just imagine a grown woman going around with tiny test tubes....Got Wine?

Emmy wines. THE EMMYS

This 2002 BV will be opened at the Governor's Ball for the Emmy's. Of course, my compadre A. Zabayoni thought this wine should be looked at.....

And what did I see? Some of the same slender structures as in older BV GLT... what does that mean? Who knows except - none of those structures were in the delicious 2002 Sterling Coastal Coast Merlot.

I don't know how delicious the 2002 BV was since I only got a 'thimble full' - the amount needed to photograph. .

How does this help you learn about or enjoy wine? It gives a picture for an experience. A picture is worth a thousand words.

When I first started drinking wine I never understood the descriptions on the label - briary, leather, tar, bold, seductive..... When the first winemaker I worked with, Theo Rosenbrand, said a portrait looked like his wine tasted, the idea blinked on - maybe the images would help me as visual symbols of my experience even if I couldn't name it. I'm better now but not much....

Only through grape's partnership with yeast, does the alchemical process called fermentation begin.

Yeast loves sugar in the sweet grape juice, chews it up and converts it into carbon dioxide and spirited alcohol. When alcohol levels reach about 15%, the yeast, 'too drunk' to work anymore, stop the process.

In wine's creation story, what is evident, yeast adds something essential to the mix of juice, acids, tannins and pigments. They not only transform the sugar into new mood-altering molecules, they bring more 'light' into the microscopic display.

This image of fermenting chardonnay reveals the tiny Montrachet yeast along with larger forms which are likely tartrates, the acid unique to the grape.

The hieroglyphics in the center are from an ancient wine jar seal, the earliest version of a wine label.

You could begin to see the wine designs uncovered with the microscope as glyphs or symbols of style. Or you might begin to think these are simply pretty pictures or that the person who took them had a wee bit more to drink than you have.

When we think of personal transformation it usually means a major spiritual change, so too with the grape.