"GOD MADE ONLY WATER, BUT MAN MADE WINE."

There are no good wines; there are no bad wines either.
If you befriend a wine, and are able to be its better half, you are a blessed soul indeed.
Or so I have discovered.
Making wine is and art. Because wine is such an individualistic person.
You may have a happy cheerful wine, a dark grave wine, an elegant smooth one, a naughty spicy wine, a fruity playful wine. A Wine that may be earthy, or wine that could be summer greens, a wine that has been bred in the country side, a wine that has been fashionably sculpted.
You have a wine that is criminally off, or one that is distastefully ill bred, or one that over a lifetime of harshness, has become alarmingly acrid.
You may find a oaky forester, or wet wood. You may find a runny, bitter wine.

I have never parented anything but animals and books, but parenting wine beats anything. And loving parenting is exactly what a wine needs.
Consider the grape as the gene. “ Blood is thicker that water”….well the wine too. The variety, the origin, if it has been a cross or a pure bred…. The gene determines the entire make up and the fundamental character.
The treatment henceforth, is tricky. Just as much schooling, society and back ground and social factors influence a dog, or child…. a wine similarly given shape. It is like raising a child. You have to be sensitive to its delicate mood, give it freedom and time to find and develop its character, to age, monitor it so that it doesn’t get into “bad “company. It deserves the most elite schooling with the correct inoculate. The most select treatments and co curricular.
One can only monitor, and watch. Patiently.
Like a book, a wine can be a product of the imagination, or technically engineered. It could be a perfect text book example….. Correct, but boringly lacking the liveliness. It could be a deep mystery, or a biographical saga spanning a few generations… from the Italian slopes and the sunny Californian.
The book can be a bestseller, or not. It could be shallow.
Wine, like poetry…. May have rhythm and romance, or the lucidity of Walt Whitman.
It may be exotic like Saki, colorful like O’Henry.
Or like me… may blissfully ignore all rules of prose or poetry. Impulsive, passionate and in cheerful denial. (My writing not me).

Later, when the wine is grown, it will develop wings. Blend with company, but select its own type. It will sweeten, mature, earn a reputation for the wine that it has come to be… and like every individual person, there can never be two same wines…. Even if they are from the same family, genes, or even background.
You can’t fight the gene. You can’t modify its social backdrop. You can’t change its compatibility with another wine in the blend.
The wine will grow wings…. But will always stay with the wine maker.

A wind, an endless expanse of sky, unhurried time. ….appreciated by every wine and every dog
The above five elements are all that is need to keep a man satisfied; and at peace.