Daily Motivator Special Feature
Cloudy wine
by Ralph Marston
It is an incredible evening. I’m sitting out by the pool in February and the temperature at 9:30 pm is 66 degrees. Perfect. A little while ago I grilled some sirloin steaks and we enjoyed a delightful dinner. Now I’m outside, writing.
A couple of weeks ago we visited a small winery in the Texas Hill County and purchased a bottle of Pinot Grigio at the steeply discounted price of $4.75. They were offering it at a discount because something had gone wrong during the winemaking process and the wine was cloudy. There was nothing at all wrong with the quality of the wine itself. It just didn’t look quite right. Because it was cloudy they could not sell it through the normal retail channels, so they were offering it to winery visitors at a deep discount. I bought one bottle. I wish now that I had bought a whole case.
Tonight, I am drinking a few glasses from that bottle. It is amazing. It is, without a doubt, the very best Pinot Grigio I have ever tasted. Yes, it is cloudy in appearance. Yet when I raise the glass to my lips and drink, that absolutely does not matter. It tastes so fresh and vibrant and wonderful that I could care less what it looks like. And actually, it doesn’t really look that bad. No, it’s not crystal clear like you would expect a white wine to be. But the more I look at it in the glass, the more appealing it appears, cloudiness and all.
We tend to think that perfection is something to be desired. But in fact, there are a lot of things that are not perfect that are nonetheless perfectly wonderful and incredibly delightful. This wine I’m drinking has a flaw in its appearance, but I absolutely don’t care because it tastes so great.
There was a very impressive and enthusiastic young lady at the winery who gave us a detailed explanation of why the wine had turned cloudy. I must say can I can’t remember all the details of what she said (we visited several other wineries that day). But I’m thankful she convinced me to buy that bottle.
We often demand perfection, but is that what we really want? It just may be that in some cases, perfection is overrated. I’m thrilled to be enjoying a magnificent bottle of wine tonight that, by any objective definition, is far short of perfect. And yet, it is perfectly wonderful. In fact, I’m beginning to think that its flaws are what make it so good.
Perfection is an admirable goal. However, even if you don’t hit it, you can have something truly marvelous. Do all you can to be your best. Even if it is not perfect, it can bring real enjoyment and magnificent blessings to life. Cheers!
Copyright © Ralph S. Marston, Jr. All Rights Reserved. The Daily Motivator is provided for your personal, non-commercial use only. Other than personal sharing, please do not re-distribute without permission.
