People enjoy wine tasting at the Oak Mountain Winery's wine cave in Temecula's wine country. The Oak Mountain Winery wine cave is the only mined wine cave in southern California. Valley News/Shane Gibson photo
The Mystery WinoSpecial to Valley NewsDoes it get much better than springtime in wine country? Buds break, sap rises, fruit sets and green grass bedecks the vineyard rows. Spring always reminds me that wine is the world’s most romantic beverage. I don’t mean simply its renowned properties as a social lubricant or its pride of place at weddings and hot dates. It is romantic in the classical sense. It inspires one’s imagination. It appeals emotionally to what is heroic, adventurous, mysterious and idealized in life. In the words of Eduardo Galeano, “We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”Your Mystery Wino is not normally given to such reveries, but he was reminded of the romance of wine by the subject of this week’s column – Oak Mountai
