What's in a Bottle?

It’s a sad day when you are standing in the checkout line buying a bottle of wine and the cashier asks for your license for the wrong reason.  Momentarily, you think  “How great is this!?  They are still carding me!”  But, then your heart sinks.  They do not want it to verify my age.  I am writing a check.  They are getting my correct address.  Come to think of it, when the wine bottle passed over the bar code scanner, the cashier did not even look up.  I even got my license out for her to look at just to be sure. I held it in my hand, but she didn't look up.  She punched in a few numbers to override the code that asks, “Does this person look old enough to be over 21?”  She had obviously already appraised my age and decided that there was no need to bother. 

But, the point of this story is that I got the bottle of wine, and it got me to thinking – “What makes a bottle of wine so good?” 

Wine is a bottle of fruit juice, yes.  But, it is not just bottled grape juice.  It is someone’s passion, hard work, purposed intentions, specific choices of grapes, when to pick them off the vines, time spent in fermentation, method of storage…  A bottle of wine is a winemakers’ masterpiece.    . 

As I was sitting on the veranda of a winery this weekend, I observed different groups of people with various bottles of open wine on their tables celebrating occasions.  One table had someone turning 50.  Another table had someone turning 30.  Another table was quietly enjoying the bluegrass band. 

They were moments to be bottled. 

Have you ever had those moments that you just want to bottle and save forever?  I had one driving home from the winery… listening to music… watching my son drift off to sleep in the rearview mirror. 

What makes these moments special?    

It bottles something of balance, flavor, uniqueness that all come together to make us go – “Wow. I wish I could keep this moment forever.”

I think the moments that we want to bottle are like the best bottles of wine.  They contain just the right amount of balance, flavor and uniqueness.

They are a glimpse of the embodiment of a heart’s desires and our true selves.  These moments of time that we want to bottle are the moments of realizing who we really are and what our true passion is.      

How do we fill our cellars with more bottles of these moments of happiness?

We find out what makes our life balanced.  A good wine is always balanced.  There may be a lot of good healthy and ripe grapes ready to be harvested, but they cannot all go in one bottle.  Our job is to pick the right “grapes” for what we want in our bottles.  

We find the best ground to plant ourselves in.  Different grapes grow better in different environments.  And if we don’t start growing in the environment most suitable for our varietal, we are not going to get any ripe fruit for harvest time. 

A good wine has just the right amount of sun and shade.  Some grapes like it hot.  Some like it wet and breezy.  We find out which one we are.

But, most of all we find our passion and pursue it.  No good bottle of wine was created without someone’s passion to make it the best bottle of wine possible.

We are all blends of emotions, past experiences, abilities, and dreams.  It takes the right blend to get the right bottle.  When moments in life come up that you just want to bottle and cherish, act like a winemaker.  Break it down like a great bottle of wine.  What blend made this so good?  What were the key ingredients?  What environment made the grapes thrive?  Chances are those answers are what make up what you really are and what you really care about.  

And those fleeting moments you want to bottle can become genuine realities you can embody.