”Wine is bottled poetry.”
~Robert Louis Stevenson
📷: Rainbow over Paris on an ashen day by Simone
🍷 This upload is a cri de coeur, a song of love and farewell to ”Ruby”. Hopefully, at the same time, it opens as a small window into the wonderfully-magnificent poetry of literature Nobel laureate, Wislawa Szymborska. 🍷
🍇 Last night, I enjoyed my last glass of a delicious French ruby red. As I slowly savoured my last sip, the taste and feeling were both semi-sweet. My nose became immediately assaulted afterwards by the expressive aroma lingering on the empty glass of a fruity bouquet with just a hint of spice. Drinking wine has been one of my life’s infinitesimal pleasures. Every night, I transform into a mystical ancient priestess who officiated and participated in an intimate, sacred ritual. It is my small reward in the quiet of the night after a day of hard work. Wine to me has become a good friend that wondrously came in different shapes and sizes but always red and formidably the same, not ever-changing—visiting without remiss in the evening time over the course of several years to quietly listen to my woes, frustrations, cheery stories, and aspirations as if it perfectly, unprejudicially understood. Unfortunately, since the start of 2021, due to unprecedented hot temperatures, my asthma worsened. It has become so bad in that it consequently led to peripheral cyanosis on some occasions. Wine contains ingredients which can exacerbate asthma. And in these extraordinary times, my immune health must be taken into consideration esp. since fairly recently, I have begun taking a necessary but very hepatotoxic medication. Parting with Ruby has thus become a sad and painful inevitability.
🍇 The quote imposed on the photo may seem trivial on first reading. Though it undeniably paints a charming vignette, it likewise broods on the philosophical. It is actually just a fragment from the bigger tapestry that is the beautiful and deeply-rich poem entitled ”Drinking Wine” ( by Wislawa Szymborska (d. 2012). Szymborska was born in Poland in 1923. Per her biography on my copy of a book on her poems, she worked as a ”poetry editor, a translator, and a columnist”. In 1996, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Worth reading is her gem of a speech at the Nobel Prize banquet ( Living eminent poet laureates have this to say about the late Nobel laureate: ”A subtle, even a subversive muse of vulnerability and a great European poet.” (Richard Howard); ”Accessible and deeply human … A poet to live with.” (Robert Hass); and ”She teaches us how the world defies and evades the names we give it.” (Edward Hirsch). If these intrigued you, a link is hereinafter attached to my copy of her poems translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak (2015):
”Wislawa Szymborska
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE
MAP
COLLECTED
AND LAST
POEMS” which I highly recommend for its completeness and clear translation (
🍇 On a light-hearted note, it’s been barely a day, but I already sorely miss my Ruby. Please thus allow me to reminisce on wine once more and later on, I will share some of my tried and tested tips on how you can best enjoy drinking it. Red is my most favourite and the most outstanding wines for me are the ones from France esp. those that come the Loire and Rhone valleys. Wines have 3 main types: natural/still/table wines; fortified (e.g., sherry, vermouth, port, madeira); and sparkling or effervescent (e.g. champagne). Wines are characterised by: colour; flavour or character; bouquet or aroma; and alcohol content. Succinctly, the wine is red when the whole crushed grape is used; white – when only the juice is used; and rose – when the grape skins are removed after fermentation has begun. Wine is dry – when grape sugar ferments completely, hence the absence of sweetness and sweet or with dulcet flavour – when some sugar remains.
To be continued in the comment section for lack of space…
MUSIC: Sad French Accordion by Dana Boulé ( under a
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) -(