We Were Here: On Wine, Memory, and the Urge to Leave a Mark

There's something that happens in an old wine cellar — the temperature drops, the world goes quiet, and if you're paying attention, time does something strange.

We were at a Pouilly-Fuissé winery in Burgundy this past December, on our annual wine (and castles) getaway. Deep in the cellar of a small domaine, surrounded by barrels new and old, we swirled recently barreled Chardonnay and listened to the winemaker talk through her work. But my eyes kept drifting upward.

The low wooden beams above us were covered in names. Marked with chalk on the old timber — some legible, some not — were the records of people who had stood in that very spot. A name, a year. Another name, another year. Decades of workers, winemakers, wanderers. The wood had held them all.

Past cellar hands leaving their mark - Domaine Pouilly

It pulled me straight back to a cabin in the Sierra Nevada, beside a California lake, where my family spent summers when I was growing up. The walls of that cabin were alive in the same way. Names and dates scrawled in every direction. Trout outlines traced in pencil with notes like "Caught this on July 14, 1971" as if the fish itself needed to be remembered. Every summer, we'd find where we'd written our names the year before, marvel at how we'd grown, and then add ourselves to the story again.

Gull Lake, CA - definitely the 70s, judging by hair

I haven't been back in over thirty years. That's California lakefront property. I'd be surprised if the cabin still stands.

Last trip to Gull Lake, CA - definitely 80s, judging by hair and Swatch Watch

Back at Pouilly-Fuissé, I thought about the people whose names I was reading.

Alex

Pascal

Cyril

Caroline

Antoine

Who were they? Where are they now? But they were there, in that cellar, perhaps pulled forward by the same desire as us: to create something, to leave a mark that says I was here, and I cared about this. (Or maybe this just plain needed a job.)

At Skyhaven, our very first harvest is practically around the corner. Despite the dead heat of summer and never-ending farming tasks, there's definitely an electricity — a feeling of imminence, of nature nudging us forward whether we're ready or not. The racer in me says, "We are in the chute!" and I try not to panic. Much like my running days, memories are made fast in this wine life: the exhaustion, the laughter, the challenges overcome, the instant friends made. These are the stories we'll tell later.

Sunset means one day closer...

We don't have old wooden beams to scratch our names into. We have Instagram and Facebook, and before long, we'll have posts that read "Can you believe it's been a year since harvest?" For all of the noise those sites churn up, that's us leaving our marks. That's us saying we were here.

So, as we watch our vines do their slow, reliable work, come find us in the tasting room each weekend and on social media, of course. Leave a comment. Share a memory. Add your name to "the wall," even if it's digital. Hopefully, you have a glass of Skyhaven in your hands!

Here, we'll raise a glass to the names we know and the ones we haven't met yet.

Stay cool, and cheers from Skyhaven. ⚔️🍷