Wine is many things. Boring is not one of them, generally.
I might go so far as to say that wine is the opposite of water.
An entire profession is built around growing the grapes. Another around making the wine. It’s this almost mystical skill to pair the right wine with the right food. There are critics and magazines dedicated to this one little drink. Entire books are written about it. Bottles go for thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Can you imagine this much of a to-do around water? “Hello, I’m the water critic for the L.A. times…” “Would you recomend the Poland Springs be paired with the Salmon, or the Evian?” “We’re putting a new water cellar in the basement. It’ll keep the water chilled to the ideal temperature and monitor the humidity.”
In a film, the guy holding the wine glass is the one who enjoys all the best things out of life.
And this isn’t all just perception: I am quite the opposite of educated in areas around wine. But I tell you something: when I’m drinking a glass of reasonably good stuff, there is nothing quite like it. It seems to do different things to different parts of my tongue. It’s like there’s so much going on, even though it’s just one thing (and a liquid at that) it’s like a medley: a bite of good salad, or a forkfull of stir fry. It takes the edge off my day.
Having said all that, I do wish to clarify a few things: Lots of evil has resulted from alchohol. Drunkness is not a good thing. I am not advocating that anybody get drunk, nor am I suggesting that everybody should drink wine. These warnings aside, what I’m really trying to say is that wine is the opposite of water.
And if water is a metaphor for what our lives are at their worst, then wine, I’d submit, is a metaphor for what our lives are at their best.
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