Well, how lucky am I to have found this intriguing challenge just two days before the deadline? Wine and Writing, two things I love. Who came up with this fascinating idea in the first place? It’s The Drunken Cyclist. If I’d known this, I’d have participated in the earlier competitions. To reverse the mirror and see the shiny side, now that I’ve discovered this writing competition, I have a new aim. Having an aim is a good remedy for a happy healthy life, like my love for wine has been my aim and brought many challenges and luck along the way. Thus, this piece of writing is dedicated to the wine that has helped me stay sane.

The first paragraph pretty much sums up the topic for the Monthly Wine Writing Challenge(#MWWC8), Luck, however, I’ll continue on to share my real lucky story so that my writing meets the criteria.

I find myself pretty lucky to have developed the taste for wine. Or was I born with the lucky genes? The reason I’m saying that is because some people, no matter how much wine they drink, never get to appreciate the joy of drinking wine. However, one thing that is more and more clear each year I study wine is that there is a certain category of people who are drawn to wine, especially red wine, more than others. I can’t say more on the topic since I’m still observing and experimenting the relation between wine and personality at my own pace. For now, I would like to share how wine has transformed my life.

Since I fell in love with wine, I’ve got healthier. I eat in order to enjoy wine versus I drink wine because I eat. I choose carefully what I’m going to eat and how I’m going to cook, in order not to spoil the taste of the wine I’m drinking. I’ve also lost weight due to the goodness in wine that burns calories while you’re eating and drinking. But it’s not all kinds of wine that do the magic trick. I love wines with lots of tannins, but not aggressive in any ways. Good wines stay in the mouth longer and the pleasure of holding the juice in the mouth is so great that you don’t want to let it go. You just keep savouring, swishing around as much as you can. Consequently, the result is that you eat more slowly, which gives your body enough time to digest and feel full.

Since I fell in love with wine, I’ve got wiser. Designer clothes and handbags don’t make me happy but a glass of good wine, more precisely what accompanies a glass of good wine does. Wine always brings foods and conversations, not just chitchats but interesting and thought provoking conversations, which never turn into an argument. I’ve never come across people fighting at a scene where wine is present. While sipping wine, people talk about wine itself for hours and usually wine talks touch on various subjects including history, philosophy, politics, science, nature, music, literature and l’amour. I believe people who like wine are humble beings with a curious mind, wait, I’m not talking about wine snobs and wine investors. True wine enthusiasts are ready, no, they desire to be awed by the magic of nature and simply trying to understand the process of how grapes turn into such powerful juice is just fascinating and addictive.

Since I fell in love with wine, I’ve got here. Yes, here, where I am, close to France, while keeping the enemy at bay, I’m finally in a place where the East, my body, and the West, my soul, find harmony in a glass. Truly, I’ve come a long way in search of my true identity and passion, as the boy did in Alchemist. I didn’t know where I was going until I found myself surrounded by vines and cheese. My life was somewhat artificial before the aromas in wine started to tickle my senses and desires. I chose and ate food as I did books, reading the covers and analysing them. I used to avoid butter, sugar, meat and caffeine; I used to go to supermarkets with my knowledge of nutrition; I was on the verge of being anorexic, fearing fat, fearing getting fat. But France changed it all. Some might argue, as my observation on and experience with the eating habits of French people are different to them. In France, people eat naturally and everything; whatever is given by the nature, they will eat it with pleasure. They simply enjoy what they are eating without counting calories and they don’t waste food. They keep natural flavours or enhance them when cooking. Watching French people indulging in food, making a feast of every occasion even with humble foods changed the previous prejudice I had about the French fussiness the non-French often talk about. Throughout my journey to every corner of France, I learned the joy of eating. Now I don’t shy away from butter on white bread and juicy fat on meat any more.

Since I fell in love with wine, I’ve got happier. The most enjoyable part of drinking wine is between the opening of a bottle and the first sip. You never know what you’re going to get from each bottle. It is like a suspense film and is certainly more pleasant entertainment than running on a treadmill to create endorphin, adrenaline and aphrodisiac, and so on, all that give humans the feeling of happiness. So I wait for the wine to breathe, sniffing away in anticipation while preparing food, and resist tasting the food  before I take my first sip of the wine. I make sure I extend this part to the longest possible time. It’s the art of patience, and the patience gives life a joy and an excitement that can’t be experienced with material things. There is no hurrying in life as is in wine. Wine gets better with age and that’s how we’re meant to be. Whatever’s trapped in a bottle will have a moment to express itself eventually, but it all happens with luck. No wine can guarantee what you will get. It all varies from person to person. Even if what you got wasn’t what you’d expected, do not despair. There will be plenty of wines to drink and you will learn from the good and bad experiences and get wiser. You’d never have thought that wine could be the best life coach, would you?  I might be a slow but deep learner, except for learning foreign languages, and I wish to get mature and better as I age, just like wine. I don’t mind the tannins and the bitterness in wine because it’s what makes wine improve with age. There are sweet and bitter times in life but as long as I take life as wine and stay faithful and patient, I’ll get a lucky drop one day. That’s my goal.

And here is where I am, being present in all kinds of amazing experiences….

Thanks for reading. If you liked my story, please go to this page and vote for me IF you see my post on the final list.