Wine is More Than Just Stories

Wine is not just a beverage but a revelation, almost a spiritual experience for some people. For others, wine is a subject that commands years of deep, sustained study and attention. Why?

The typical answer to this question is that wine is a reflection of where it came from, a connection to a plot of land, or to the past, or to the culture of the people who made it.

All of that is true and is surely part of the attraction of wine

But there is something missing in this explanation.

It is true that wine tells a story about its place of origin or its vintage year written in the flavors and textures of the wine itself. The weather, the soils, the sensibility of a culture and, of course, the decisions of the winemaker all leave their marks that can be tasted in the features of the wine.

But many things have origins and a story. Yet they don’t fascinate the way wine does. Anything from the past—a book, a dish, an old toy—has an origin, and often its story is written in the margins or apparent in the tarnished finish. But these objects don’t necessarily stimulate the imagination. An ordinary book written in 1950 is just a book. In the absence of some personal connection you might have to it, its origin and story are not a matter of significance.

Some wines stimulate the imagination because in addition to having an origin and a story they are  beautiful. Their beauty is not incidental to the story; it is what stimulates us to care about it.

Beauty is what turns the mind toward the story, induces in us that curiosity and exploratory impulse that feeds passion.

Stories are inert, just dead facts, unless they somehow stimulate the imagination, and beauty is one very effective stimulus. Some wines are so articulate at telling stories because their complexity and depth make the story worth telling.

Think about that special bottle from your cellar that you opened last year and the great stories associated with it that connected you to the land and culture that gave birth to the wine. If it had been oxidized, I doubt its story would have seemed all that interesting.

It has become a cliché to extoll the story-telling capacity of wine. But we should not forget that, in the end, it is about flavor.