Wine Tasting Notes (without the notes?)

I am beginning to think that my forgetfulness is due more to an overwhelming realization that there is so much to take in and process in life. As many things life, this is mirrored by my recent experience with wine...like the bottles that line the wall of Astoria Wine & Spirits - my recent venture (and my own personal pot of gold.)
Even with a month of Friday night wine tastings under my belt (though some of you reading may scoff, given that my wine daze started a little over two years ago at the ripe age of 21 - in France, appropriately) I still look at this wall - not to mention the three wooden "racks" that so beautifully display the bottles (each unique in their own right) by region, by country, ordered from light to "lourd" as the elder Frenchman reminded me last Saturday as we marvelled at "les grands vins de France - in particular les Bordeaux (qui sont bien sur plus lourds) and am suddenly overwhelmed by how much I have yet to learn.
This sort of realization can, of course, release a sudden feeling of exhiliration - much like the aromas and flavors that release after a swift swirl of the glass. But if you're like me - easily intimidated by everything you don't know and highly forgetful of what I do know and what I have accomplished - then the very thought of trying to describe - let alone know - the hundreds of bottles that are in front of of my eyes , your thought processing immobilizes. If there is one thing I have learned in life, it's that in moments - or situations - like these, the only thing you can do is take it ine day at a time, one wine at a time...
Tonight, I return for another glass at my most favorite Mojave in hopes of giving a full report on the Friday night tasting at Astoria Wine & Spirits...only to realize that my tasting notebook is still sitting behind the counter where it all happened: a night of new wines introduced, new customers met, and many, many sips of wine "degustes."
My memoru is piqued by a theme for the evening - "blending." Blending grapes, blending nationalities, languages, walks of life; mixing it up with new customers and old, familiat wines and those so unique and remote they merit a name known only to those from the region - Passerina - the standout shining star of the evening, the soul white that helped us bid adieu to the warm days of fall, leading us into the chill of an approaching winter and the season of merriment.
Une Quebecoise, un Francais, une Americaine who listens intently to the French conversation happening behind tasting central, longing for the ability she once had to converse freely and fluently with the French. In tune with a night of risk-taking, I delve into the conversation and join the other risktakers of the evening: Red drinkers who are leary of white, white drinkers that thought they swore off the red; Brooklynites in Astoria, hard drinkers in a cultivated wine shop, tasting this so-called juice of the gods; you get the picture.

Kristin