The Dinner Party

Reflection No. 10

Imagine you are at a dinner party with great friends, where really good wines are being poured, the table is animated, and conversations are flowing in every direction. You reach for your glass without thinking. It is an action like brushing your hair off your face or your pushing glasses back up the bridge of your nose. You take a sip, and the whole room recedes into the background, frozen in another time and space, like something from the Twilight Zone. The only thing you have with you is the sensation of the wine, which has just awakened your palate. You stop. You notice. But the experience is so unexpected that you let the moment pass and return to the place where you left your friends.

It happens again and you realize it was no altered state. It is real. There is something truly special about this wine. The wine is talking to you but you cannot quite make out its language. Wine speaks in a language of the senses. It can be as simple as black fruits and spice, but in moments like this it is something more. It is a story about life. The life of the grape – the vine that grew it, the soil, the climate, the hearts and hands of the people who nurtured it. It is an awakening of something deep inside you. 

Not every wine can stir such movements at your core, stopping a party and causing it to fade into the background so you can be alone with the moment and the wine. In the words of Joseph Campbell, “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”