Sip 38: How Do You Celebrate Spring’s Promise of Renewal?
The wine world has a wonderful holiday of spring, celebrated on different days in the spring season, depending on terroir and growing conditions: budbreak, when new growth emerges from the vines. As a Napa Valley newspaper heralded, “Budbreak is here. Let’s count our blessings and lift our glass to a new season of cheer!”
Spring is a time of renewal, of opportunities to celebrate new possibilities, to elevate life and rejoice in all we have.
The Christian community during this season welcomes Easter, opening up to deeper renewed relationships with the Power that gives life and love. In the Jewish community Passover commemorates release from all kinds of enslavement beyond the physical—to time and scheduling, to ideas (because “that’s the way it’s done”), or to money—all symbolized by escaping from “Egypt,” which in Hebrew means “constriction”.
There are so many ways to celebrate this season of life, love, and freedom to begin anew: the Easter Feast, the Passover Seder, the rejoicing in budbreak.
The Seder, with its four glasses of wine that accompany a festive meal and the telling of a story, has its parallel in every occasion where people gather for an evening of fine dining and fellowship. The enjoyment of a multi-course meal might include pairing wines with different courses. Changes in tastes of food and wine blend with the ebb and flow of conversation.
Whether it be a vintner’s dinner, business people celebrating the close of an arduous deal, couples celebrating their anniversary, winegrowers rejoicing in budbreak, or folks enjoying a special meal to welcome spring, these festive banquets and feasts become significant events to savor and cherish as you bask in the warmth and glow of renewal and welcome the lighter time of year.
What a wonderful season, filled with renewal, rebirth, new light, renewed hopes, optimism, and the joy and blessing of freedom. Choose to notice and celebrate spring and the fruits thereof.
May the growing light of this time of year add spring to your steps, and may all your glasses be full and overflowing with the blessings of renewal and the planting of seeds that will yield wonderful harvests in all that awaits you, as the year continues to unfold.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS FOR SIPPIN’:
1. Which is your favorite season, and what makes it special?
2. What special seasonal activity do you enjoy, particularly in spring?
3. How does understanding the life cycle of the vineyard contribute to your awareness and appreciation of the cycles of the year?
4.
