The Phoenix Legend

Immortality is timeless precept of ancient mythology. Among these artifacts of our antiquity, none is more obscure or more mystical than the legend of the Phoenix. Thought to take the form of a great bird, crimson in color, that is able to coax life from its own ashes, rising to wing again from death.

The origin of the Phoenix legend is thought by many scholars to be Middle Eastern or Egyptian but the real answers are so arcane that no one really knows. With only partial agreement among academics, a clear mythology or history of the bird's origin remains to be seen. The different versions all share the idea of immortality however; this ancient bird refuses to die.

The legend of the Phoenix has an element of primal spirituality coming from beyond our civilized history and harking to an age when life's mysteries were given identities of a mythical dimension. And nothing intrigues us more than the fundamental nature of our human spirit and its apparent mortality. The Phoenix is the ancient face painted upon this phenomenon of rebirth, of being part of a perpetual cycle of life.

This spirit of rebirth is directly connected to the transformation of life we see upon the Earth every year as winter turns to spring. In the vineyard the vines arise from dormancy to pass the mark of a new vintage into the essence of our wines. Science attempts to find the answers, and has done an admirable job in this case, as to how this happens but the end result is the same regardless of if you try to describe it in legend or in the laboratory. Legends, like wines, have a life all of their own; that is their nature, and part of their mystery.