Above: The amazing Hawk Wakawaka posted this wonderful depiction of our family yesterday on her blog. Click the image to enlarge.

For many years now, I’ve thought of enogastronomy as an exegetic tool that can be mustered to achieve a deeper and greater understanding of the human experience and condition.

And over the course of nearly five years that I’ve maintained my blog, I’ve discovered that above and beyond the epistemological discourse spurred through the enoblogosphere’s hypertext, wine blogging has also unexpectedly delivered other rewards through intensely and intrinsically meaningful friendships with other wine bloggers across the world.

Alfonso (Dallas) is one such friend. Brookyn Guy (Brooklyn) another. And there are so many others, many of them in Italy, France, Britain, and even Australia.

Of course, Tracie P and I met through wine blogging (here’s the post on the story of how we met). Our union ultimately led to the birth of our beautiful daughter, Georgia P (who, as you can imagine, already has a blog).

Earlier this year, when Alfonso suggested that I contact Hawk Wakawaka and ask her to join the Colli Orientali del Friuli blogger project, I knew that I would find in her a friend, colleague, and peer: our tightly knit community of wine bloggers prizes collegiality and camaraderie, professionalism and courtesy, brilliance and acumen.

You can imagine my joy this morning when I awoke to discover that Hawk Wakawaka had depicted me as a Knight of Malta and a protector of my family (in the image above).

I’ll point you to her post for the story behind the drawing and our experience together in Friuli.

And I’ll send her a heartfelt thanks for helping me to understand the human condition and experience in a new and newly meaningful way… all thanks to wine blogging…