As a wine speaker who specializes in corporate events, I’ve watched scores of times when a tasting of great wines transforms the audience. An hour before, the group may have been in a business meeting, but once the tasting begins, everything changes.
It’s not just that wine contains alcohol; something deeper is happening. People are feeling connected. Wine, the world’s greatest communal beverage, has always been the beverage of connection, friendship, inclusion, and sharing.
I think of wine as one of the last true things. In a world digitized to distraction, a world where you can barely get out of your pajamas without your cell phone, wine remains utterly primary. Unrushed. The silent music of nature. For eight thousand years, vines clutching the earth have thrust themselves toward the sun and given us juicy berries, and ultimately wine. In every sip taken in the present, we drink in the past—the moment in time when those berries were picked; a moment gone but recaptured—and so vivid that our bond with Nature is welded deep.
Wine matters because of this ineluctable connection. Wine and food cradle us in our own communal humanity. Anthropologically, they are the pleasures that carried life forward and sustained us through the sometimes dark days of our own evolution.
Drinking wine together—as small as that action can seem—is both grounding and transformative. It reminds us of other things that matter, too: love, generosity, friendship.
As one of the top inspirational women speakers, I believe these moments are why wine continues to hold such an extraordinary place in human life.
