Wine for Vacation Planning

I am a planner. It is how I manage uncertainty and anxiety. I plan, I make lists. I derive great satisfaction from crossing items off and watching a list of things to do grow smaller. I like crossing things off so much that when I was in high school, I would actually write "wake up" on my to-do list, so that as soon as I got out of bed I could immediately feel as if I had accomplished something.

This trip is no different; there is so much to do, I have this massive list, and I am desperate to cross things off of it. I have planned segments of the trip: one week in Paris, one week in Newcastle, a friend's wedding in the Cotswolds, a week in London, two weeks in Lake Como, two weeks in Tuscany, two and a half weeks in Norway. But there are chunks of time, six weeks here, a week there, that we are just leaving open to see where the wind takes us. And while that is exhilarating in many ways, it is also a little scary.

But it is scary in the way that symbolically this entire adventure is scary: it is a leap into the unknown. Planning a move is always stressful, but to plan a move without actually knowing where, in the end, we might be moving to is even more stressful. And please know, I am not complaining, because I know that this kind of a trip is the stuff of fantasies.

But when fantasy becomes reality, that's when a lot of the fear can set in. We are uprooting ourselves, putting everything we own, our home, our sense of stability and safety, into storage, and leaving. We won't know anyone most of the places we are going; we are spending money we have worked for and saved without knowing for certain whether or not we will be able to make it back; we have faith that we will be able to both get jobs in the Bay Area when we return, but there are no guarantees.

The uncertainty makes me want to plan, every last moment, every last detail. But I am forcing myself not to, because in spite of my fear of the unknown, I believe that there is a kind of magic in going where life and the universe are leading you. It is the philosophy with which I began this year, and I am trying to follow it through in every area of my life. I am going to try and approach this period of our lives with a spirit of openness, adventure and joy, and I am going to to try to not obsess about what will or will not happen in the future, and just focus on what is actually happening now.

My "Wine for Vacation Planning" is the Ty Caton Upper Bench Merlot, Sonoma Valley-Caton Vineyard 2008. This is a wine that was given to me by a great online wine sales site called The Wine Spies, for whom I am now reviewing and writing wine tasting notes.

This wine is rich and medium to full-bodied, with a nose and palate of black and red cherry, boysenberry syrup, raspberry and chocolate-covered cherry. This wine has a nice balance of fruit and acidity, and it is delicious by itself, or with a meal like pork loin with fruit compote or duck. It's also nice to drink while hoping to be able to cross one more item off a to-do list!