Peering through the mist and smoke, we’ve wondered how we got here, and where we’re going. We look ahead to brighter days, and we’re thankful for our community and the simple pleasures we still enjoy, like wine, bread, and flowers, or the familiar voice of a trusted friend. We are also resentful and bitter that this is our lot, fearing strangers, intimacy, and invisible germs, our smiles carefully hidden from sight. What did we do to deserve this? A world so small and troubled.

If it has not dried up entirely, our work too has changed, sometimes beyond recognition. You may be strapping toothbrushes to fish for a living now, and not asking questions, as jobs are hard to come by. We continue to buy wine from over fifty distributors, and our afternoons were once filled with back-to-back tasting appointments, but I’ve not sat with one of our salespeople since March, and our bar is full of tiny bottles and sample jars, sterilized vessels handed over in bags and boxes, drawn from sample bottles for our assessment, accompanied by emailed tech sheets. The little jars have no jokes for us, no news of harvest, or tales of new love.

We miss spending time with our patrons, our regulars, our wine club members. We miss your fashion, your wit, your dogs, and your joy at finding a promising bottle at the end of a long day’s work. When our people come to pick up wine, we see them now so briefly there on the sidewalk, across the wooden table, with kids in the idling car, or bicycle in hand. Sometimes we ask, “How are you holding up?” And the pauses, the sighs, the eyes rolling to avoid the enormity of the question, are all we need to understand. “Some days are better than others.”

The world is still unimaginably large and full of life and love and wonder. We will see each other through this, or around it, or we’ll meet it head on; however we do it, we will do it together. In fact, we ARE doing this together, even when it feels like we are alone. Along with the sunshine, there’s got to be a little rain sometimes - or just fog and lightning - so let’s step up the singing and dancing, keep counting blessings while we’re counting new cases, and consider every day an opportunity to recognize the bits of goodness in life, and to help others do the same.

Cheers,

Max