Wine Running Through my Veins!

What with all the wine I've drunk, I probably have wine running through my veins, actually that’s quite a nice thought, if I went to donate blood they'd get a litre of Franconian Domina. Yes, it’s a bit of an unfortunate name, Domina is the German word for Dominatrix; Domina grapes are a cross between Portugieser and Pinot Noir, the resulting wine is dark in colour, with a smoky/fruity/berry taste and popular in Franconia which really is a white wine growing area. 

Remember I gave you a sneak peek of this large graphite drawing a few weeks ago in my post ''That’s nice, what is it?'' Well, now you see the finished piece! Yes, I did mention wanting to enter for a local drawing competition but I've decided to enter another piece but based on the same theme, vines. 

As I walk through the vineyards most days, I have become fascinated by vines, their texture like sinews, sometimes they look like old men and women, bowed by age, twisted into amazing shapes and yet still productive; sprouting green each year. 

Vines usually bear fruit till about 40, after that they produce fewer grapes  but often of a richer and finer quality (now that sounds like a description of me, although substitute the 40 with 50+), the oldest vines to be found in Germany are about 400 years old. 

My drawing explores the textures of the vines, almost like an anatomical illustration, intentionally because I feel that wine growing is the heart of Franconia, the body, the muscles, the sinews, wine growing, is synonymous with Franconia. 

And here we've got some of the grapes hanging on the vines. Don’t ask me what kind of wine this will turn out to be because the vines here weren’t labelled, and to be quite honest, the sight of red and green grapes on the same bunch confused me. I'm even informed that some of the grapes used in white wine have red skins, so this could be anything. 

I'm sure the sight of me taking this photo was confusing too, I was lying down underneath the vine, to see things from a different perspective, passers by probably thought I'd had too much Domina …. or as one of the German sayings for being drunk goes, ''I'd looked too deeply into my glass'', now that is an elegant way of putting it!