The key turns. 

Tasting room exhales. 

Morning light drifts across the wood bar and climbs the wall of bottles like it has done this a thousand times before.

I stand there for a moment and look at them.

Rows of quiet glass. Dark shoulders. Patient corks. Each one holding its weather, its year, its long argument with the sun.

I always wonder the same thing…

What will you say today?

A bottle is never just a bottle. Inside a landscape waiting to wake. 

A wind across vines. Stubborn patch of soil. Heat that pushed sugar into skins. Cold nights that sharpened the edges.

I pull one forward and turn it.

Some arrive loud. They spill themselves immediately. Fruit first. Spice after. They enjoy an entrance.

Others are slower, watching the room before speaking. 

You taste them once, then again, and something rearranges itself.

Those are the ones I trust.

I set out the glasses. The quiet choreography begins. Bottle. Corkscrew. Light through red liquid.

Even before the first guest walks through the door, the room feels inhabited.

Today each wine will tell strangers about rainstorms that passed through September. About dusty vineyard roads. 

About heat lingering in the stones long after sunset.

My job is simple.

Open the door.

Listen.

Pour the stories.