WineSpirit

I have now brought back over 50 tons of grapes to our winery this season.  I drive most of them myself over from the vineyards and I have time to listen to NPR’s local stations and reflect.  Over the course of this harvest I have been reminded once more of the extraordinary miracle of fermentation…the absolute and total transformation of sticky sweet squashed watery orbs to heady new wine.

As I drive over the mountain pass that separates Eastern from Western Washington I have come to wonder if the grapes I’m hauling have any clue what lies ahead for them.  If I were to tell them they will be tortured with a stemming and crushing and they will be made into wine, would any of them willingly come with me?  “Wine” is not a part of what they know and it may not even be a part of their vocabulary (if they have one).  The grape’s reason for being is to be a raisin!  “Wine… what’s that?” my grapes might say to me as I transport them far from their vineyard homes.

Yesterday, was the twelfth anniversary of my mother’s death from early-onset Alzheimer’s.  “Resurrection” of the body as some Creeds ask to believe, is something she would hardly want.  She was a walking pathology textbook for most of her life. 

I think, perhaps, a new wine awaits us that is beyond our mortal abilities to even conceive.  We are grapes without a conception of what wine is.  As I get older with each vintage I am going to try and not become an old raisin and remember that my raison for being lies somewhere in a new wine to come that I cannot begin to fathom.

By Don Corson, WineSpirit Member in Washington State

Founder of Camaraderie Winery

In my younger years I led groups of preteens and teens in cultural programs that were social in the informality of the setting, outside of a formal classroom. I noticed that these kids had just as much fun in their groups as did those in primarily social and recreational programs. It seemed as though the quality of social interchange was higher in the cultural-based programs because kids learned about each other in deeper ways than was the case in pure recreational contexts.

The purpose of WineSpirit is to turn a social moment into a quality moment of exchange and interchange that goes deeper than the cocktail agenda. That is why whenever we gather for any program or activity, we include some question that links life’s enjoyable moments with increased awareness of ongoing shared blessings and specialness happening more often than we realize, subject only to our noticing them.

We take seriously the spirit and intention behind and within the words we exchange in clinking glasses. We all know “words are cheap”, or more accurately, can be cheapened and rendered “just words”. Say what you will, the act of enjoying wine is among the best opportunities to change direction in terms of how people treat each other and listen to one another. Wine’s origins in religious sanctification and its persistence as the beverage of choice for toasting opens us up to pondering the value and merit of our time together.

It begins with “noticing” our “stopping”, the moments of the pouring and the toast. Then we make a choice: is it a rote clink or a thoughtful heartfelt connect? Is it an automatic action and reaction, or a mindful tuning in to the person(s) and the moment? Left to our own patterns we may do it without thinking. Sharing a WineSpirit consciousness to seek a connection between wine and “specialness”/“spirituality”, we will do more than a rote clink; we will catch a moment with someone and turn it into a very special experience.

We can play this “game” every time we open a bottle of wine: along with pouring, along with raising the glass, and along with opening mouths to utter a wish, we can load lots of thought and lots of feeling into the utterance. It is an opening to a deeper level of interchange. All we need do is remember to do so. What happens is something special.