Why Is Wine Important?

When I drank the wine that got me – that wine that had me groaning with pleasure at every sip and recalibrating my existence in terms of how I could make this elixir a bigger part of it – I thought I had made an amazing discovery.

One of the biggest illusions of looking out at the world through our eyes is that we think the universe revolves around us.

Excited by my new discovery, I plunged into study of the history and culture and craft of wine and winemaking. I read voraciously and tasted ravenously. The fascination deepened.

I began to buy grapes and make wine from them, chasing the ecstasy of that gateway sip. Each year I made more and more wine in my apartments, and then garages.

I began to write about wine. I wanted to share the joy and the pleasure that it brought me. Writing about it led me to want to learn more.

I began to work in wine, selling it. I got a sommelier pin. I got a WSET pin.

Finally, when I had a house with a yard, I planted my first vineyard. An “experimental vineyard” I called it.

I had no idea how to care for vines. In their fourth year they became so diseased that I had to pull them out.

I studied viticulture. I began to learn how to care for vines properly. I planted again. This time I didn’t call it experimental.

A year later I started a winery – Centralas – with a mission to reconnect consumers to the farming processes behind the wine they drink. I called it an “ecological winery.”

I started the Organic Wine Podcast at the same time. I wanted to connect to people who had the same level of passion about the entire ecosystem of wine. I wanted to build a library of knowledge about how to approach the farming and making of wine from an earth-first perspective.

And then it hit me.

An earth-first perspective is the perspective of the vines.

So I went out in the vineyard. I stood among the vines, looking. I sat down, listening. I laid down, feeling.

The vines were whispering to me.

“Finally, you idiot,” they said. “You thought you discovered a new favorite pleasure, but that was our lure. You thought you were learning and following your passion, but that was just us reeling you in. You thought you had planted a vineyard, but that was us landing you. You don’t farm wine. We farm you.”

My mind flew to the miles of vineyards and wineries that cover the globe, and I began to see them from the vines’ perspective.

Without being able to move, they had gathered rain from hundreds of miles away through irrigation systems, and brought resources from around the globe to sustain themselves… using us.

Without being able to speak, they had created blogs and podcasts and TV channels to promote themselves and their care.

They built schools and universities, businesses and industries, laws and infrastructure dedicated to their vitality and propagation.

I stand now in awe of the wisdom of vines.

They laugh at the hubris of the human-centeredness of names like Director of Vineyard Management or Vine Whisperer. They are the ones who have been managing and whispering.

Somm TV, ha! It’s Vine TV. Somms are just experts in their fishing lures (“humaning” lures?), part of the vines' PR team.

This is why wine is important. It’s the vine’s way of ensnaring us slow-witted humans into their service.

But it’s actually even bigger than that. Because the vines don’t see themselves as separate from their world like us humans do.

Vines see themselves as a process that is connected to all the other processes of life on earth. Caring for them implies caring for an entire planet.

And that’s why wine is really important. Because it teaches us that the way to make the best wine is to make the best earth.

Cheers!
Adam

PS: If you'd like to hear an audio version of this, check out this week's special two-chapter episode of the Organic Wine Podcast.