When the Glass is Raised

 

Wine has always been more than what it seems. To some, it is simply drink...sweet or bitter, light or dark. But to those who pause, who let the glass rest in their hand before it touches their lips, wine is a mirror.

The ancients poured it to honor gods, to seal vows, to speak the words they feared to say sober. Families raise it to remember, lovers to promise, strangers to pretend they are less so. Every glass is an act, a performance, a confession disguised in red.

For what is wine if not memory liquefied? Grapes pressed underfoot, years sealed in a dark barrel, time itself captured and then released into your veins. It makes the past present again, sometimes tender, sometimes reckless, always more honest than you intended to be.

But there is danger too. Wine loosens truth, yet it also blurs it. It binds people in laughter, but it also tempts them to forget. It is the color of celebration... but also of ruin.

So when the glass is raised high and the room glitters with the sound of clinking crystal, one must ask

are we toasting to remember… or drinking to forget?