After Harvest

Harvest has come to an end in Napa. The days of bright green vines bursting with deep purple fruit have given way to leaves of gold and red, and air that’s turning cold. This year’s grapes are resting in barrel, waiting to be bottled and drunk and remind us of late summer days all over again.

As we sip them, we’ll remember early morning pickings before dawn, languid, bright, hot afternoons spent in the shade of old porches, fuchsia sunsets over the distant hills, cool evenings among the vines, and clear nights beneath the stars. We’ll remember days when we hardly knew the place, when we got lost in those hills and wandered through the vines, when we tasted ripe grapes and imagined what sort of wines they would become.