Fall 2020 Letter

Fall 2020 Letter

October 15th, 2020

Dear Casa Carmen Family,

Beauty always persists. And despite the chaos, we can never forget Leonard Cohen’s reminder that “Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.” In fact, it is the darkest darkness that makes light shine ever brighter. This is why the simple things, from a passing interaction with another to a morning view of the water, seem to carry more significance than ever before.

Life is made just a little sweeter with the consolation of the land, the water and the sun. As you know, this is why we make wine. We do it because it is slow and because we have the conviction that it is meaningful. The most remarkable thing about wine is precisely its depth, its quiet nuance, its delicate extension, not just in the palate but in history and human life.

It is painfully clear that we are living through a “historical moment,” through a time that future generations will look back and identify as a threshold, as a hinge, that changed the world. But as we wait for better medical treatments, as we struggle to find ways to be better stewards of our environment, as we wait for the results of a contentious election, as we fight for justice and carry out all the important historical tasks, there is an even more important, unhistorical life. Our quiet every day, though unseen, unfolds with as much significance to the whole as the shining moments that make it to the annals of history. In fact, those glaring moments emerge from the persistent reality of our hidden life. As the great Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot) wrote in Middlemarch:

“ . . . for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

We hope our wines help disclose the extraordinary character of the ordinary. We hope they help, even a little, to brighten our hidden life, to make things easier and the world more beautiful, especially as the holidays approach and, no matter what happens, we look around and give thanks for what we already have.

Salud,
Enrique Pallares

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