Terroir
Excerpt from Isaiah 5:1-7
"Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill."
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
They say that an expert can tell a great deal about a good wine just by tasting it. Those with a sophisticated enough palate can tell you something about the age of the wine, the process used to make it, the weather conditions under which the grapes grew. They can even tell you something about the soil and the location of the vineyard. Wines take up something of the land in which their grapes grew, and express it through subtle differences in taste, savor, and odor. Since the French have a word for everything, they have a word for this: it’s called the wine’s terroir, from the Latin word for land.
In today’s passage, Isaiah imagines the people as grapevines planted and carefully tended by God. What flavors, savors, and subtleties would an expert detect in the wine of your life? What have you picked up from the place(s) in which you grew, and how do you express it? What’s your terroir?
Jesus offered his wine to the world, and the world tasted in him the beauty, mercy, and justice he’d picked up from the soil and the God in which he grew. Were God, who is surely an expert, to sip your life, what would make her smack her lips in appreciation?
Prayer
God, grant that I might take up and express only the best flavors of the place in which I grow. And if you should detect any off notes, grant that they might mellow as I age. Amen
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