Father’s Day arrives again this June, and for the first time it arrives without him. I recently lost my father, and as I thought about how to approach this month, I realized I could not really write around it. So, I will write through it. He spoke whisky and I spoke wine, but together we drank both and found common ground as an excuse to spend time together. His bottle of choice, when the budget allowed, was Midleton Very Rare Irish whisky. I only ever poured it when I was sitting across from him, and I plan to share it next with my son when he comes home from graduate school.

My father was born and raised on the South Side of Pittsburgh and spent his working life as a laborer for the Pittsburgh Water Department. He dug holes and repaired broken pipes in Pittsburgh winters that eventually wore down his knees, his back, and his hands over the years. He played pinochle, threw horseshoes, and followed the Steelers in the way that Pittsburgh men do. He treated his dogs like members of the family and loved any body of water he could swim in. He was a simple man in the best sense of that phrase, and a good one.

This Father’s Day I will open four bottles of wine over the course of the month, each one connected to something specific I remember about him. The wines, as it turns out, do not need to be Irish to be appropriate.

Brassfield Estate Eruption Red Blend 2021, High Valley AVA, Lake County, California ($30)

When I was a young boy, my father took me camping. We often returned to Ohio Pyle State Park in western Pennsylvania, where the Youghiogheny River cuts through the mountains. We would camp for a long weekend, and the smell of wet leaves and woodsmoke would live in your clothes for days after. First it was Cub Scouts. Later it was Adventure Club. Eventually it was my friends and his friends together. Some of my best memories of him happened on that dirt around a campfire.

The Eruption is a wine that drinks the way those weekends smelled. The fruit comes from Volcano Ridge Vineyard, planted in the floor of an extinct volcano in the underreported High Valley AVA. The wine carries the sense of place that comes from soil with real character and people who care about it. The blend is a Rhône-leaning combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Malbec, Petite Sirah, Mourvèdre, Grenache, and Zinfandel at 14.9% alcohol, aged 10 months in a mix of French and American oak.

The nose offers a compote-like mix of red, black, and blue fruit alongside a torrefaction note, green peppercorn, freshly chopped fennel, and bay leaf. The palate is dry with a silty texture of well-integrated ripe tannins. Ripe fruit gives the wine a perceptual sweetness, and baking spice carries through to a long, juicy finish.

Stanley Groovy Lip Stinger White Blend 2023, Walla Walla Valley, Washington ($32)

My father’s most proud creation in the kitchen was a seafood-stuffed steak. He said the recipe took him years to perfect, and the ingredients were expensive enough that a blue-collar man only made it for very special occasions. A birthday. An anniversary. A graduation that mattered. The dish was a small marvel of surf and turf compressed into a single plate.

A sturdy, structured white with body handles a dish like that better than a heavy red, because the seafood needs space that tannin would overpower. The Lip Stinger from The Walls Vineyards, made under their Stanley Groovy label in Walla Walla, makes exactly that argument. The blend is 60% Grenache Blanc, 18% Roussanne, 9% Picpoul (the grape whose name literally translates to lip stinger), 9% Viognier, and 4% Marsanne, providing a waxy texture. At 14.6% alcohol, the wine has the stuffing to stand up to a steak knife.

The nose carries orchard fruit, white floral notes, and a perfumed lift. The palate is full-bodied with a hint of residual sugar, more orchard blossom, ripe drippy fruit, citrus blossom, and tangerine rind. The mouthfeel is viscous and almost oily, the kind of textural weight that does serious work at the dinner table.

Adobe Road Blue Dog Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon 2021, Sonoma County and Napa Valley, California ($45)

My father taught me to play pinochle, and years later, he also taught my son. Three generations of men holding the same hands of cards over the years, calling the same melds, arguing over the same questionable bids. Pinochle requires a level of attention you only give the people you love.

Adobe Road is owned by Kevin and Debra Buckler. Kevin is a racing driver who has won the 24 Hours of Daytona four times, which would have made him a man my father would have respected. The Blue Dog Cabernet is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, named after one of the Bucklers’ dogs, which would have earned my father’s approval before he even opened the bottle. The fruit comes from Dry Creek in Sonoma and Rutherford in Napa, with the Sonoma component providing the dark cherry framework and the Napa side adding polish and finesse.

The nose carries baked plum, blackberry, cedar box, and ground tarragon. The alcohol warms the palate gently. The tannins are ripe, integrated, with a chalky texture.

Early Mountain Vineyards Novum 2022, Madison County, Virginia ($60)

My father’s favorite kind of summer afternoon involved horseshoes, a charcoal grill, friends, and cold beer. The horseshoe stakes sat in a vacant lot directly across the alley from his South Side house, close enough that you could still smell something red and dead cooking on the grill while you were heaving those metal shoes across the lot. Cookouts at his place were communal, unfussy, and full of people who had known each other for over forty years.

The Novum from Early Mountain Vineyards is the right bottle for that scene. The blend is 43% Cabernet Franc, 30% Merlot, and 27% Tannat. The Cab Franc brings the earthy herbal aromatics. The Merlot adds a plush mouthfeel and ripe red fruit. The Tannat lays down the structural backbone that handles whatever is coming off the grill. Early Mountain is owned by Jean Case, who chairs the National Geographic Society. Her winemaker, Maya Hood White, has been blending Cab Franc and Tannat with serious results for several years now.

The nose offers ripe black currant and blackberry, peppercorn, anise, marjoram, and a note of fresh potting soil. The palate is dry, with two distinct tannin profiles at work: one slightly angular and coarse, the other integrated and silky. Juicy black fruit persists, with oak nuances slightly more evident on the palate than on the nose. The finish is medium in length and clean.

A small footnote for the readers who have followed this column for a while. Two summers ago, I closed my grandfather’s Father’s Day piece with Yellow Spot Irish whiskey from the Midleton Distillery. My father’s bottle of choice was Midleton Very Rare, from the same Irish house. There is some quiet comfort in knowing the two men in my life who shaped me drank from the same family of whiskies, and that the bottle now moves forward into my son’s hands.

So, this June I will pour these four wines for my father in my own language. He would have looked at the labels, nodded politely, and reached for the whisky. That was the point. The wines are mine. The man was his own. If your father is still here, find an excuse to call him. If he is not, pour something you love and raise a glass. The men who raised us carry more inside them than we ever fully knew. Honoring them, in any language, is the work we have left.