"Ripe, rich and round, with lots of spicy, earth-scented black cherry and berry flavors, hinting deliciously at chocolate on the smooth finish.”

This weekend was a weekend of wine, as a friend and I went to Temecula, California for wine tastings. And it was gorgeous – warm weather, sunny skies, and the vineyard-covered hills – all within a five-hour drive of Las Vegas. (Add some Billy Joel & Beatles for the drive and it is a completely perfect weekend.)

I wasn’t much of a wine drinker until I met my husband – I have to admit that I used to wrinkle my nose every time I took a sip, but over time I learned to appreciate, and then to enjoy, a nice glass of wine.

Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was never around alcohol very much. My family weren’t major drinkers, but they’d have the occasional beer or glass of wine. I learned that alcohol wasn’t a very big deal. Even my high school & college friends weren’t major partiers – we were theatre people who didn’t need alcohol to be silly.

My first memory of wine was at my Dad’s relatives’ house, when I was offered a small glass of wine at large Thanksgiving dinner. I was probably ten or eleven, and I felt so special! Grown-up! Worldly & cultured! It smelled interesting but didn’t taste very good. It stood by my plate during the whole meal, looking haughty, important, and sophisticated.

Not long after I married my husband, I joined my Dad in Valdivia, Chile where he was sent on business. While he was in meetings I explored the streets, finding pottery studios, coffee shops, and interesting little museums where I was forced to use my Spanish when a nice woman offered to open a closed gallery just for me.

I also found a wonderful wood-paneled wine shop, and I wandered around inside after deciding to bring home a bottle for my husband. I had no idea what to get – a red? A white? Dry? Sweet? I didn’t really know what my husband liked – he always bought the wine. I had almost decided to choose one based on the prettiness of the label when the nice salesman offered to give me a tasting. At his bar by the tallest wall of wine I copied his swirling and sniffing and finally took a taste. “It should taste like vanilla,” he said in his thick accent as he watched me sip. The wine in my mouth, I looked at him in astonishment - I could actually taste the vanilla. Never before had I been able to taste the oak or cedar or tobacco or berry or whatever else I was supposed to taste. But this one went down smooth – deep and red with a very slight hint of vanilla. I bought two bottles.

Since that fun experience in South America, my palate has matured. This weekend I was proud to announce several flavors I detected in the wine. But I have to admit I still get a little giddy when I do so. It’s nice to feel grown up.

Guitars

Family get-togethers on my Mom’s side of the family always involve guitars. After everyone is stuffed from the meal, and the leftovers are sitting on the table waiting to be cleared, one by one someone goes into another room and reappears with a guitar in hand. And soon the living room is full of music and all the toes in the house are tapping.

When I was a kid, the adults used to cram around the piano and sing in harmony to old favorites like the Everly Brothers’ Dream, or any of the Beatles tunes. At Christmas, we always sang The Twelve Days of Christmas, and one family member was assigned to each day. I was always "Nine ladies dancing," and Uncle W.C. always ended each chorus with “and a par-snip in a pan-try,” causing my Grandma to roll her eyes from the kitchen. Every year.

I usually was just a witness for the guitar jam sessions that erupted in the evening, but when I was in seventh grade I learned to play Dan Fogelberg’s Run for the Roses on the flute and got to be a part of the music, at least for one song.

Now we live across the country from my family, but every now and then our house in Las Vegas has that old-home-feeling, because my husband is learning to play the guitar. He will sit on the living room couch and slowly pick out Beatles melodies while I clean up after dinner, his brow furrowed in concentration. He may only know a few chords, but hearing that familiar strumming adds something to our house that nothing else can.

This Thanksgiving was no different from any other get-together among the Wheeler clan. While the leftover turkey cooled, a group of guitars formed in the living room, giving the day its familiar acoustic soundtrack. I tapped my foot from the kitchen table where my aunts and I looked at old family photos, now and then adding a line of harmony to the music in the other room. Grandma snacked on a pumpkin cookie and watched her great-grandkids play with Lincoln Logs on the carpeted floor. Outside the day turned to evening and Christmas lights began to appear on the neighborhood lawns. Anyone passing by on the sidewalk would have heard some rockin’ Duane Eddy coming from the house at the end of Yarmouth Road.