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Enjoying Wine
Douglas Jones

Wine is quite a miracle. It's something like the birth of a child. A man and woman mix and then create a being wholly distinct from themselves, yet with deep family traits—new and yet the same. A ripe grape contains two parts, unmarried—an interior sugar juice and an exterior skin full of yeast. But if you marry and mix these parts by crushing a grape, it will start toward creating wine, a third distinct thing, new and yet the same—a "wine that maketh glad the heart of man" (Ps. 104:15). In meditating on Christ's miracle of creating wine, Augustine lamented that we accept normal wine creation as any less miraculous, for even as water "turned into wine by the doing of the Lord, so in like manner also is what the clouds pour forth changed into wine by the doing of the same Lord. It has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence."...

...Enjoying wine involves experimenting with all its varieties, and the most interesting feature of enjoying wine is combining multiple senses—sight, smell, taste, and touch. We miss out on some of the best parts of wine if we concentrate only on the taste....

...Many books are commonly available which can provide much more depth. Christ created a high-quality wine, and so we should at least be able to tell the difference as we obey the divine command, "Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works" (Eccl. 9:7).