Malbec

You know, it is a delicious grape, if done right.
A Cahors is probably my favorite wine, Malbec, back home in France, not far away from Bordeaux, inky and dark, blended with a little bit of Merlot, with many dimensions.
Elite Wines of Lorton, Virginia, has imported a beauty from Mendoza. Las Perdices, the Patridges. (Were they trying to gather the attention of Hemingway's immortal nature-loving spirit by naming it so?)
Rightly so is Malbec hot. Cahors. Kermit Lynch, the venerable 'old school-adventures of the unfiltered wine trail, has a beauty with a stunning bridge on the label, one the Tour de France passed by in recent years, I think. Didier, the genius of Charlottesville's Simon'n'Cellars has a stellar inky big boy, to bow to. Ed Addiss of Wine Traditions has a depth of Cahors offerings you'll almost want to drink by the wheelbarrow, and also some great lesser known wines from nearby, Marcillac, Gaillac, and other wild towns with their own local varietals that--while being snubbed by the big kings up there in Bordeaux by a, one must readily admit, a beautiful system of nomenclature that is exclusive and venerable--still have that beautiful care of making the grape reflect the terroir, the earth, the DNA, the smell and taste of all things in a valley or a region, such that the earth-feel translates to the mouth's wide range of senses...
Here's a wine that you pour down your throat and your whole blood system says "ahhh," quite happily too, as if it were bringing licorice, green tea, all the anti-oxidant power of lavender, thyme, oregano, a good tomato sauce-gravy. Even your spine has a fondness for it, as if to wag a friendly finger and say, I'll work you out in of kidney and liver in the morning, but in the meantime you are welcome to be anti-inflammatory.
Drinking, I know it's a downfall of half the race, but wine is pretty safe, and seems to have loads of benefits, even if there is the old dry feeling and the headache the next day. Wine is a teacher. Who knows what exactly it is teaching, but it is wise and venerable, and too many hairs are split over enjoying it, when it is, when it feels balanced in the mouth, just basically good old good for you.
It filleth the mouth, contenteth the shoulder, calms one in an hour of need. The belly knows if the weight of the juice is right, and this our old friend Malbec remembers from the French hands who loved and cared for it. With Malbec, you're going to be making a wine that feels right in the mouth, a tactile experience, lingering on back sides of the tongue with a finish like nice clean thread-count cotton sheets of a bed you are happy enough to flop into at the end of a day you've shared with another 60 million worker ants, or however many there are of us, particular legal codes and proximity to tectonic faults set aside. Malbec falls lightly like snow into the corral reef of the palate, and the palate is not far away from inner channel of ear, nor of that tickly part where the good old spine meets that floaty thing behind our teeth full of airs and mystery, hidden within our skull, but pouring out like a mighty ocean in blue sunlight, all the world a sandy beach or tempest rock, our conscious glowing, the brain itself, winged companion, infidel, disciple, xerox machine, tall ship, dog paw, stewardly stenographer, addict of all things healthy and the blizzards that whip up in the high howling winds of life to contrast the normal spoon-fed day that one must let go of.
God wanted someone to look back at the sunlight and water and the earth and the creatures and the vine and see from their own eyes the goodness of it all.