Drink Different – I Fell Back in Love with Wine
I Fell Back in Love with Wine
It turns out I used to like alcohol. Now I love wine.
There is no shortage of articles telling you to stop drinking. My Whoop tells me every single morning. This isn’t one of those articles. It’s the opposite. It’s the story of how I went from drinking to drinking wine, and why that difference matters more than I ever expected.
When the point was volume
In my twenties, alcohol had one job. Get the party going. Loosen everyone up. Give me enough liquid courage to walk across the room and ask a girl for a dance, a date, or whatever the case may be. The objective was simple: drink as much as you can. What was actually in the glass was immaterial.
Case in point. Thirty-six years ago I went to a party at the house of a girl I’d seen around and thought was quite hot. I didn’t really know her. My mates and I pitched up at her fancy party with a five-litre box of wine. I have no idea what it was. White, red, I couldn’t tell you. We proceeded to demolish it, and I ended the night passed out in her lounge. Not my finest introduction. Thirty-six years later, I’m still with her.
Then, slowly, wine crept in. It was a little more romantic, a little more organised, a lot less chaotic. Think about it: how do you ask someone out to a great dinner, or ask them to marry you, if it’s not over a glass of wine or a bottle of bubbly? That’s how it went. But I never gave it much thought.
I did a wine course back in the mid-80s. It was interesting, and it didn’t stick. My wife and I bought whatever was on special at the local shop. Sauvignon Blanc for the whites, Cabernet for the reds. That was about the depth of it.
The trading floor
I grew up on the stock exchange, and for a while I was on the floor, where drinking was practically part of the job description. The better you held it, the more successful you looked. Wine was fuel. Nobody was asking where it came from.
Franschhoek changed the question
When we sold our stockbroking business, we moved to Franschhoek and bought a wine farm. Let’s be honest: in the wine industry, everybody around you is drinking every single day. We got roped into that as anyone would.
But something else started happening. I began to understand the process. Then I began to understand the economy that grows around a bottle: the people in the vineyards and the cellar, the restaurants, the guesthouses, the guides, the tourism, a whole town whose life depends on what grows on those slopes. A bottle stopped being a drink. It became livelihoods, families and a place.
And then came the question: now what?
Less, and better
I’m older now, and I drink less. I’m not keen to get pissed, as they say. I can’t do the hangover anymore, and I can’t recover the next day. It’s simply not the goal. Two glasses of wine, three or four evenings a week. That’s pretty cool. Sit down, watch the sunset, take a deep breath.
I know there’s a strong anti-alcohol movement out there, and I respect it. My Whoop reminds me daily how bad alcohol is for me. I disagree a bit. I think it depends on the individual. Some evenings, after a glass of wine, my recovery score is better than on nights when I don’t have one. I’m not a doctor, and I won’t pretend wine is health food. Maybe it isn’t the wine at all. Maybe it’s the ritual: stopping, breathing, and letting the day’s stress go. But that matters.
A story in a glass
Here’s what most negative articles miss. When you sit with a glass of wine, you go on a journey. You start to understand where it comes from, what it’s about, the season it lived through, the hands that made it, the emotions it brings back. It tells you a story in a glass.
It’s not about the alcohol. There’s alcohol in it, yes, but that’s a very small part of what wine is, and it’s not why I drink it.
Do I like alcohol-free wine? No. They haven’t perfected it yet. You take a natural product and mechanically engineer it to remove part of what it is. I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.
Wine has been around for a very long time. One of the first miracles in the Bible was water turned into wine at a wedding. Fashions and trends will come and go, all over the show. Wine stays.
My amazing grace
For m
e, it’s become a love affair. A love affair with the grapes growing on the vines outside. They survive 365 days a year through heat, cold, wind, rain and disease, and every season they try to produce the best they can.
They’ve been an inspiration, to be honest. Everything gets thrown at their door, and they keep trying to be the best version of themselves. They don’t complain. They just get on with it. They come back every year and try to be better than the year before. As much as I struggle to live like that, it’s a great thing to see, to believe in, and to be pushed by. They’re my amazing grace.
Not in a million years
So, do I drink wine? Most definitely. Am I going to give it up? Not in a million years.
Coming here, I fell back in love with wine. It turns out that before, I liked alcohol. Now I love wine. Big difference. Completely different perspective.
Thirty-six years ago, I passed out in my future wife’s lounge after demolishing a box of wine. Today we make wine. Full circle, from box wine to making wine. Up and down, all over the show, but what a journey. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Happy days, great sunsets, great memories.
Cheers. Enjoy it.
Kevin