Thinking of classic wines in the new year

It has been many years since I began this site. I find I have more than ever to write about, yet neither the time nor the inclination to do much writing. What are blogs now in the age of Twitter anyway? So I wonder, and delay.

I suppose blogs are what they've always been, a way to write in long(er) form about, in this case, wine. I never solicited much traffic for this site, joking at one point on the old Wine Therapy site that I was aiming for more people leaving my site than coming to it.

I've never quite managed that but a new year brings new hope, and perhaps new resolve to do something that's good for me and that I still avoid at times like the plague - write. No matter who reads, if anyone.

So where am I with wine these days? I think I largely drink the same kinds of wines as I did from the earliest days here, then already well into my wine evolution that settled on what we might have called "real" wines then. That movement seems to have morphed fully and expanded well beyond into what we now call "natural" wines, with much more vigilance (over the top?) on every move in the vineyard and cellar.

More and more though, I think my interest has been and remains most in what I'd call "classic" wines. Those of old school producers the world over, producers new and old, with perhaps a lutte raisonnee approach to their craft. These are producers who capture their regions best in the wines they make, who I'd say work in a "real" way if not 100% "natural" (doing nothing, not even sulfur - let's be real if we want the term to mean anything).

I'm thinking of the Chave, Bize and Lapierre of France, the Vajra, Conterno and Bruno Giacosa of Italy, Tahbilk and Chambers of Australia, Edmunds St. John, Mt. Eden and Ridge of California, among many others in their areas. And that's not to mention so many legends old and new here in Oregon and in pretty much every region of the world if you get right down to it.

The wine world sees trends come and go, but there are so many producers making wines of place without dogma. Those are the ones I've always loved the most, and I suppose in this new year, as I drink the 2012 Domaine Eden Chardonnay Santa Cruz Mountains - from the old Cinnabar vineyard acquired some years back by Mt. Eden - I feel a renewed energy to take up my education in wine again, my elevage. Wish me luck.