The Making of Wine

A more luscious wine is now served--the fruit of my pruning

Photo by Kym Ellis on Unsplash

We enjoyed watching a series called, “Drops of God.” It’s the story of a winemaker and the tensions of the family dynamics as an obsession with wine becomes an international journey of intrigue. I recommend the series! Isn’t it always good to hear of something you may have not seen yet? I recommend this series to you.

In the series, I got lost in the passion for wine making and how the smells and tastes of wines became the fascinating plot that allowed me to escape the news and political tensions.  In our new mountain town, we’ve met some wine connoisseurs and we’ve learned from them much that we did not know.  It’s been fun to learn and expand our horizons on yet, another topic that we know so little about.

In the series, a competition develops where two people are trying to discern the year, make, country and region of a wine—simply by smell and taste.  It’s a learning curve from someone who grew up a Baptist and then broke all the rules by drinking Boones Farm and calling it delicious.  What did I know?  What do I still know?

The series, “Drops of God” and my own schooling in wines, became a way for me to put a poem together.  It’s about more than wine, though. It’s about my own journey that I’ve been telling you about in recent years—my transition—my pruning—my new life now.  The poem, offered me a way to distill my own aging process of my soul. 

As you read the poem, you’ll hopefully find my own life as a mirror to your own.  Is life good now for you? I wonder as I write these words.

What makes a good life—good?

What are the needed ingredients to make life good? 

How would you answer these two questions? Go ahead and put a few ingredients in your comments and let’s see what comes of this…

What is luscious wine to you right now? You can be literal or metaphorical…

As I try to answer the questions for myself, you’ll see that it has take pruning—an unwanted season of being cut back and now, a season that I never thought possible—a time of greening and the making of new wine—a better wine—a more luscious wine that I ever imagined.

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Gwen and I want to invite you, our family at Substack to join us for a long weekend retreat called, “The Annual Soul Care Gathering” in the NC Blue Ridge mountains, September 12-15, 2024. We’re inviting those who know our message through retreats, books, podcast and now through Substack to gather with us . We’ll have a wonderful time of living slow, moving intentional through our shared days together. We’ve invited some wonderful musicians, along with our dear friends, Jimm and Kayleen Derksen of the Soul Care Institute to join us. Here’s the link for more information.

Space is limited this year and you’ll need to go ahead and register to save your place with us. A highlight will be a picnic together by a lovely mountain stream in the forests of beauty and emerald green. I can’t wait. We hope you’ll join us!

Now, here’s my poem about “The Making of Wine.” I’m eager to see what you think of this one. You may need to scroll back, if you’re new to Substack to read more of my attempts to explain my pruning and my greening.