Good Friendships Are Like Fine Bordeaux Wine

 

The meaning of friendship is one of the hard truths learned as an adult. As a kid, a bond is formed simply because two children live next door to each other or because they both like unicorns. In high school and college, a friend base is commonly made from the people who are in the same extracurricular groups. Out of school, work friends become the norm. Then life happens. People become busy with families, careers, the day-to-day, and what was once 20 friends in a group text dwindles down to a close few. Large gatherings after work for cocktails become monthly brunch and yoga get togethers with that one great friend, and a dinner or two throughout the year with a couple of others. Just like a bottle of wine, friendships change with age, and only a few can withstand the test of time.

              The meaning of friendship has been on my mind for the last few years as I have slowly watched my own friend base slowly eek down to a couple of ladies I don’t think I could live without. The first few times a friend exited from my life I was devastated. However, as time slipped right on by, quicker and quicker with each passing day, I got into my own groove and placed my focus on spending my free time doing the things that make me happy and being with the people who lift me up and love me for all of my quirks, the good and the bad. During this time of enlightenment, a couple more friends left, but that original feeling of sadness was replaced with relief. This feeling of relief seemed weird to me at first, but after some serious thought a realization came to me. Some friendships are like a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau, amazing for a short period of time, but with age it loses its structure and vibrancy. All of the things that made it great are no longer there.  Good and quality friendships, however, are like a fine Bordeaux. They get better and better each year, and they can age for a lifetime. This is how I feel about my best friend of fifteen years.

Though we had worked at a newspaper together, and had a mutual friend, our friendship really didn’t start until one day when she and I had got into a random conversation about running. Learning that I also liked to run, she had asked me if I wanted to join her and a couple of friends for the Dirty Girl Mud Run. This was an obstacle course race that featured, you guessed it, mud. Swallowing my fear of having never done any type of race I agreed. I had recently been pushing myself to try new things and make new friends, and this was a golden opportunity.

A few weeks later we were off to some remote part of Colorado a couple of hours away. Driving up together, we chatted the entire way as if we had known each other forever, and it was clear a friendship was sprouting. This newly found friendship continued to grow throughout the event, and it completely blossomed on the way back to civilization when we both discovered just how directionally challenged we are when we ended up in Colorado Springs. We had been trying to get back to Longmont, the complete opposite direction down I-25. From that moment on we were inseparable.

              As all things in life do, our friendship has shaped and reformed, but it has always remained steady. Both single when we first met, many of our weekends were packed full of hiking and bar hopping. As jobs became more serious and we each met our husbands – we honestly met our husbands within a month of each other and then married them within a month of each other – multiple hikes on a weekend became a hike or two a month. Bar hopping was a thing of the past, replaced with brunch or winery visits. The friendship grew up, just like we did.

              These days, besides our weekly phone or text chats, we try to get together once or twice a month. With both of us having a deep love of wine, these visits tend to be at one of our favorite local tasting rooms. Living in a state with a thriving wine industry is great because there’s always a winery to be found. The downside is that by becoming comfortable with our normal haunts, we have limited our experiences to mostly Colorado wines. Jonesing for a change, I started to mull over some ideas to help us expand our wine adventures to new regions and varieties.

It was in early December, a few days before my bestie and I were to meet up at our most frequented tasting room for our annual Christmas gift exchange, that I finally had an epiphany. Stretching in my library after a run, I was thinking about how excited I was for the get together and the delicious wines we were going to have, but I once again couldn’t help but wonder if there was something we could do to mix things up. As I stretched and stared at the large collection of books my husband and I had collected over the years, I got an idea. A nerdy idea, but an idea nonetheless. My best friend and I both love to read, and we both love to drink and learn about wine, so what if we formed our own two-person wine and book club?

              Halfway through our Christmas tastings, I presented my idea to see what her thoughts were and how she felt about this silly, yet fun, possibility. She absolutely loved it, and right then and there The Bordeaux Babes Book Club was created. Hashing out the details, we decided to make it a quarterly meeting, alternating who’s house it would be held at. The person who was hosting would choose the book, provide the lunch, and pick the type of wine each of us would contribute a bottle or two of. This adventure was going to give each of us the opportunity to discover new books and new wines. It was going to be the perfect get together for two busy, book loving, wine drinking besties.

              The Bordeaux Babes Book Club first official meeting was held a couple of weeks ago, and it was exactly what we had hoped it would be. For our reading pleasure, I chose “How to Solve Your Own Murder” by Kristen Perrin, as anyone who knows me knows I love a good mystery. For the wine, I just had to go Spanish red thanks to my current obsession with wines from Spain. I paired both with a Catalina dressing taco salad, Marcona almonds, Castelvetrano olives, and strawberries. Book. Wine. Food. We had all of the ingredients for an enjoyable afternoon.

“How to Solve Your Own Murder,” followed a woman who was competing for an inheritance from a great-aunt she had never met. The competition? She had to be the first one to solve who had killed the mysterious relative. The great-aunt, after receiving a fortune teller’s premonition in her teenage years that she would one day be murdered, had spent her entire life trying to figure out who would be the person that would ultimately kill her. She wanted her heir to be the person who solved her murder. Through the great-aunt’s journal, murder boards and files, and with some general sleuthing, the story followed our main character as she raced against the clock to find out who had murdered the older woman. While discussing the book, my best friend and I both decided that it was a quick and delightful read. We enjoyed the fact that neither of us had suspected it would end the way it did, even though all of the clues had been there. It had everything it needed to be a perfect mystery and the perfect first read for our little club.

              Now, for the most important part, the wine. The bottle I chose was the Akilia Villa de San Lorenzo Bierzo 2019, a wine made from the Mencía grape in the Bierzo area of Spain. A grape variety only grown in Spain and Portugal, I thought this would fit nicely into our goal of trying something new. This ended up being the crowd pleaser in terms of taste with its flavors of brambly strawberry, earth, oak notes and a touch of creamy cherry. It reminded me of a Chianti, and we enjoyed every sip.

              The wine that stimulated the most conversation was the Bodegas Mas Que Vinos Los Conejos Malditos Tempranillo Carbonico that my best friend brought. A Cencibel, as Tempranillo is called in the Castilla La Mancha area of Spain, we were expecting a full-bodied wine with high tannins and oak notes. We got something else entirely. Our taste buds were rocked by its fruity flavor, light body, and tannins just reaching towards medium. This was like no Tempranillo we had tried before. Intrigued, we began analyzing the bottle where we quickly noticed the term “carbonico.” What did carbonico mean? We just had to know.

Researching, we learned that the term carbonico on a label meant the wine went through a most unique process known as carbonic maceration. This is where whole bunches of grapes are sealed into a tank or other vessel with carbon dioxide. Being locked in with the carbon dioxide causes the grapes to ferment from the inside-out, naturally bursting without being pressed, releasing the juices within. Afterwards, the juice is inoculated with yeast. This winemaking technique is used to make light-colored red wines with low acidity and tannin levels. It also gives it a very fruity profile. Upon reading the information and taking another sip, we realized this was the absolute definition of what we were drinking, and we both gained a whole new level of respect for this fruity fun quaff.

              All in all, The Bordeaux Babes Book Club is exactly what we hoped it would be and more. We got to read and discuss a book, we learned about and explored some new wines, and most importantly, we found a new way to make some time to get together. In this crazy world, it is important to take the time to be with those who are like a fine bottle of Bordeaux wine, and I think that is something we can all raise a glass to. Cheers!