Though a glass of wine often accompanies my meal at supper, I don't know much about wines. So please give me wide berth as I introduce a topic I admit I only just now read about. It's called 'solera'.

I'm especially fond of sherry - and once had a glass of port that was divine. One sip moves your soul to heavenly times and places. The process of solera (or 'fractional blending') is used in the production of both of these. As I understand it from my brief research tonight (using sources that may be reliable or not so reliable), solera requires the use of multiple barrels to age these special wines. Imagine the barrels in a row, from oldest to youngest. Wine is taken from the first barrel, the oldest barrel, and corked in a bottle. That same amount is now removed from the second barrel and added to the first barrel, which thus becomes full again. Wine is now removed from the third barrel into the second, the fourth barrel into the third, the fifth into the sixth, sixth into seventh and so on, until at the last barrel, new wine is added.

No barrel is ever emptied or cleaned. In this way, every bottle of wine corked has aged together with some of the very first batch, which could be from centuries ago, and every bottle contains product from every wine added since. This connects each sip to earth, seasons, and people of long ago, to grapes and berries harvested under many moons, across many cycles around the sun.

If this is accurate, I now understand and appreciate what gives fragrant sherry and port their reach and mystery.