47 Friends

47 Friends

At a yearly summer gathering of college friends, held on the Sonoma coast, I took this table wine and christened it “47 Friends.” Whether there were 47 friends present or we had 47 bottles of wine, no one can quite remember.

This is how it happened.

Students arrive at college – laden with poetry, philosophy, mathematical proofs, chemical formulae, and a thirst for knowledge – and leave with all of this enhanced and knit-together in a beautiful body of knowledge. Longer-lasting than any of the bits of knowledge and insight gained, however, are the relationships developed.

That was my experience.

These are my original 47 Friends. They can tell stories: late nights when a corn puppet made an appearance, helping me survive organic chemistry, kayaking a pristine lake in northern Idaho, re-building a house on the Oregon coast, swimming in the lazy Russian River, playing bocce on the Sonoma coast, and cooking and eating countless meals and drinking countless glasses of wine together. This fellowship – knit together by enjoyment of food and wine – is deeply satisfying.

47 Friends wines was born.

I wanted to make a wine that I – and all of my 47 Friends – could afford to enjoy regularly. Oh, we loved to savor a $60 Cab, but what about a wine that we could drink every night – without playing roulette with our local supermarket’s “value wines”…some decent and some terrible? So I made a blend of Cabernet, Zinfandel, and Syrah, bottled it, and brought it with me to the Sonoma coast to see what my friends thought. They all loved it – and asked how they could get some.

We all can have 47 friends.

These circles of friends can be made, and added to, generously. You can find them at work, school, the tennis court, a local wine bar, the co-op grocery, online…anywhere you go with an open spirit. To knit them into your life, nothing works like the sharing of food and drink. The 47 Friends wines were made for just this purpose.

Grab your 47 Friends – and enjoy!