New Vic: June Loon

Right off the bat, strong imperial red fruit. Splashes of sunlight across the crystal waters of the moat. A beacon of incessant longing for days gone by and from the children's stories of other people's children. There's a smokiness that doesn't belong to the front or the back. You may find that the first sip is potent with a power of ten to the crystalline coverings. Snow in a public park. Bundled up children walking shivering dogs. Underneath everything, a goat roasting on a spit in a poorly ventilated stone basement room. The smoke gets in your eyes. The twigs crunch under foot.
Flag waving proud red fruit. Cherries, but red cherries, red grapes, plums, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries, red apples, pomegranates, hunks of raw red dripping bloody meat carcasses hang from balustrades, testifying to both plenty and revenge for the green kingdom.
Alarm! A fifth column of black fruit though, some currants hidden in royal garb. Some kind of old hemp bag of plantation grown trade goods stacked in heaps in the store room beneath the castle. You may think the very woods begin to move as the silent black fruit armies mount their jammy assault, slow at first, only a few ambiguous signs. A shadow across the minty sunrise in the back of the palate. Then fierce with drums and alarums. Banners snapping in the wind, the steady marching of blackberries, black cherries, black plums, stony clear creaks silted with volcano ash.
On the finish you will find a woman weeping for her lost sons, one on each side of the battle, each dead, each killed by the other or by some anonymous solider, there's no way to say, but the twigged out twilight will seem stronger than it is.
This kind of epic battle between the stone strong forces of red fruit and the overzealous and grasping rebel band of black fruit is characteristic of wines from the region, where more often than not, the vines are watered with the blood of the vintners' enemies. The alcohol content is something to be wary of as it will sneak up on you just as you're driving home from the dinner party, cocktail party, oscar party, poker party, superbowl party, barbecue, moon landing party, debate party, election night party, inauguration party, martin luther king junior day party, or some other perfectly appropriate event to which to bring the wine to.
Bring the wine and be sure to be a hit. Perhaps tell a joke or two to get the night flowing. Social lubricant, we were thinking of calling it. The empty bottles can be used to help grow your garden, to mark off the parts of the yard where the rabbits can eat from the parts you are saving for your loving family. Try the wine when you're alone and feeling it. Try the wine when you're with a date you hate. Try the wine if you aren't feeling very pretty today and want to look on the outside the way you think you ought to feel on the inside if you only looked a little different than you do.
The point is that its easy to imagine the red and black fruit are fighting, not for dominance of the kingdom founded on the first sip, but for dominance of your fair heart, truly the greatest prize in all the kingdom. It is easy to understand, on the nose, that it is your oil painting likeness that inspired the romantic bloodshed in the first place, will some day inspire an exquisite peace and ballads of heroism that maybe will even be lectured about at to bored middle schoolers in a country not yet founded or even predicted.

Varietal: Aged zodiac
Food Pairings: Victory, Bitter marmalade