What is Wine?

A Dictionary Definition

Wine is an alcoholic beverage made with the fermented juice of grapes. In its simplest form, that’s all there is to it.

Except that’s not quite all there is, is it?

Wine is Pretence

I don’t know about you but from a distance wine seems pretty daunting to me. It’s a lot of words that are difficult to pronounce and to understand. It’s very expensive and there seems to be so many rules about what should be drank with what, and when. It’s surrounded by so many rituals and traditions I get scared of doing wine ‘wrong’. It’s mainly a profession for rich, white, men whilst also being wrongly branded as a drink that women will prefer over beer. 

All of this to say that the first time I was introduced to the world of wine my initial response was not ‘hell yeah, I love this energy, another round of this please!’ Perhaps your introduction went similarly. It seems to be a running theme with wine and that angers me. No one should be made to feel shame or insecurity or that you’re not worthy over a drink.

I’m here to tell you that, in its essence that's not what wine is. Layers of socialised, patriarchal, white moral complexity have been added to wine in the 9000 years since the human race realised that an alcoholic beverage could be made with the fermented juice of grapes. But it’s still exactly that. Fermented alcoholic grape juice. Nothing to be scared of.

Wine is Magic 

Because here’s the thing. If you can remove yourself from all of that. If you can take yourself and some wine to a quiet corner that is safe and free from judgement and where no one will tell you that you’re wrong, you may see that wine is, in fact, magic.

There is an alchemy to wine that I have not found anywhere else. A specific grape is grown in a specific place under the guidance of a specific person who uses specific techniques and the result? A taste that can be replicated in no other circumstance. Each wine is unique. Each wine tells you a story. One of the coming together of individual specifics to create combined magic.

Wine is language and wine is the ability to travel from your dining table. Wine is culture and history and unwinding after a long day. Wine is chemistry and geology and humanity. Wine is sharing joy and forming connections. Wine is having ‘holy fuck’ as your immediate reaction to drinking and seeing that response replicated in another. Wine is a whole world, one unlike any other.

Wine lives and it breathes in such a way that it has the power to teach you about the way that you live and breathe too. 

I hope, through what we have planned with Burum Basics, that we can help to give you the tools and the confidence to access some of that and see it for yourself, to wade through the pretence, to reach the magic.