A Love Letter to Wine: How Taste Matures Like a Good Life

I loved you too early.

At eighteen—barely legal in Europe, entirely illegal in America—I met you at a long dinner table in Madrid. You were Rioja, and I was wide-eyed and foreign. I tried to love you fast, slurping and smiling, pretending to understand your structure. I didn’t. But I wanted to. You were earthy, bold, and slightly beyond me. I took you in anyway.

In those days, I wanted wine like I wanted life: bright, fast, with obvious charm. Sauvignon Blanc. Something cold, floral, crisp, and easy. Something I could drink while dancing in the kitchen or flirting from a rooftop bar. I didn’t know then that ease wasn’t the same as depth, that clarity sometimes overshadows complexity. I didn’t know how to wait for the second glass to speak.

But time, as it does, aged me. Softened some edges, sharpened others. And somewhere along the way—between heartbreaks and birthdays, between moving apartments and marrying into a military life—I found myself reaching for a different bottle.

I stopped craving the sweetness of immediacy and started craving the quiet hush of something oak-aged. I fell for Grenache. For rustic Nebbiolo. For the wines that didn’t ask for my attention, but held it. Wines that whispered instead of shouted. Wines with patience.

And so it is with life.

The things we fall in love with at first sip—people, places, dreams—are often light and loud and easy to love. But over time, we come to admire what’s more textured. We learn to appreciate restraint. We fall for nuance. We begin to see that pleasure doesn’t always come wrapped in brightness, but in balance—that elusive middle note where everything aligns, even briefly.

There are wines I’ve outgrown, and some that have waited patiently for me to return. I no longer drink to feel something new. I drink to remember. Or to mark something. Or to be present with what is.

I suppose that’s the difference between wanting wine and loving it.

I loved you when I didn’t understand you. I love you more now that I do.

And still—like all good love stories—you keep surprising me.