Thursday 30 October 2014

Water into Wine


No post in over a year -- my first year of marriage. I think that's alright. Want to try and actually live life and not just react to it. A worrying trend in our blogging age? Is this a blogging age?

My wife installed a couple of weddings in Napa Valley recently, so I got to visit again. This, along with the fact my in-laws also live in wine country, means I've been thinking a lot about vino.

I quite like wine. It's good. Like the majority of humans, I have no idea what to do when a waiter hands me the wine list, but I've got the usual nonsense I can bring out for such occasions:

1) "Mmm, such a full body."
2) "That has tons of bouquet, it really does."

and if I'm feeling really dangerous:

3) "So cleansing. So cleansing on the palate, that one."

But, despite having the taste buds of a 12-year-old, I think I can tell the difference between a good bottle and a bad bottle.

Napa Valley is basically a freak of geography. It's about 22 miles long and, at its biggest part, about 2 miles wide. California didn't really take to wine-making until very recently - around the 1970s. For further information, watch 'Bottle Shock' starring Alan Rickman. It tells the story of how a blind taste test against the French (who were pretty much against the idea of Americans producing wine) saw a Californian wine win. That's really what brought wine-making to America.

And Napa Valley is the place. Because of the valley, it means the area gets the scorching heat during the day and the cold at night. The mountains on either side lock in the cold at night - so it gets the perfect cycle for wine making. It gets the heat and it gets the cold. My in-laws live in another area that produces wine, but it's not as famous as Napa because it doesn't have the mountains on either side giving it a more rounded cycle.

Armed with this knowledge, I've been re-reading the story of Jesus turning the water into wine.

John 2:
9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

 

Here's a couple of things I saw:

1) Jesus is in the business of producing good wine.
2) This produce won't arrive in the timing culture might expect.

So many times I've thought I've missed the boat on something only to be proved wrong by a more divine timing. I suddenly made a connection:

Psalm 23:
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,[a]
    I will fear no evil,
for you are with me

 

These valley times that we go through - the lonely times; the confusing times; the horrendous dark nights of the soul - suddenly they turn upside down.

John 15
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

 

More wine language.

Because of the valleys, we get the perfect cycle to produce the best wine. There will be a waiting period - something we do NOT understand in our culture, and there will be pruning - sometimes painful.

So I am going to try my best to stay away from what I am now coining 'Lambrusco Faith'. For Americans, 'Two-Buck-Chuck'.

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