My goal here is not to coin yet another cliche concerning wine, rather, it is to share an epiphany I had relating to how making good wine imitates the cultivation of a good life.
Some years ago I quit my “comfortable” job to live what I expected to be a life of quiet obscurity in rural Japan. My wife of 20 years told me that she had had enough of life in the Persian Gulf, where I had been working for the better part of two decades. She told me that she wanted to raise our children in Japan, the country of her birth. I was apathetic about my job at best, so I did not put up much resistance. Little did I know how cathartic the experience of moving to Japan would be for me.
The first 6 months in Japan were an absolute hell for me. I resisted the idea that Japan was where we would live for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t willing to work for less and pay taxes to boot. I felt I would explode if I didn’t get out of the country. You almost always have to hit rock bottom before you can begin to swim back to the surface.
One day, I met a banker, Ogino-san, who’s job it was to assist business owners to improve their prospects. He requested that I visit one of his clients, a temple-inn proprietor, who wanted to attract more non-Japanese customers to her traditional mountainside inn. After spending an enchanting afternoon at her inn tucked away in a thick forest of bamboo, I was inspired to write an article about my experience, but I didn’t know what to do with it. So, I decided to start a blog. Little did I know at the time where this decision would take me.
Over the following years I wrote exclusively about local tourism. Slowly, as I drilled deeper into the rural landscape of Japan, I found precious gems just waiting to be discovered. I wrote about the world’s oldest hot spring hotel which is now being operated by the 53rd generation descendant of the original owner. I wrote about long-lost pilgrimage routes and quirky things like fermented soy beans. In just 2 years, I had appeared on television multiple times. My story had appeared in local magazines and newspapers. My blog even appeared in an international magazine.
However, it wasn’t until I began to write about the local winery scene that I began to appreciate what I had accomplished. While supporting 4 different wineries in the area, I was asked to translate websites, tour information, pamphlets and tasting notes. To do this work, I actually had to learn something about the art of winemaking. I listened to the winery owners explain their passion for a local variety of grape, “Koshu,” that arrived via the silk road from the Caucasus region some 1,300 years ago. I began to understand, albeit superficially, the art of winemaking. I began to see parallels between what the winery owners were doing to produce a good wine, and what it takes to cultivate a “good life”. The following are some of the revelations I have had of late.
First, I learned that good enough just doesn’t cut it in the world of winemaking. If you are going to produce an extraordinary wine, you have to take risks, otherwise, your wine will end up in the bargain bin. Life is pretty much the same. If you play it safe, you are never going to achieve great things. Sure, life will be okay, but is that what you want on your tombstone?
“Life was just okay.”
I had quit a job that was “good enough.” Now, after years of developing this new passion of mine, I cannot imagine how I suffered in that nowhere job for such a long time. My last 5 years of work in the Persian Gulf were unbearable, and I wasn’t doing anyone any favours by holding on for the security of a paycheque. If you have no passion for what you are doing, then quit. Stop torturing yourself and the people around you by holding on to a paycheque.
Second, adversity makes a great tasting wine. Just as scrimping on water makes a sweeter tomato, grapes benefit from less watering, less-than-ideal soil conditions, and tighter spacing. A wine gets its character from adversity and the competition for scarce resources. Again, life is pretty much the same. Adversity develops a person’s character. Anyone can do a descent job as long as there are no real challenges. However, when challenges arise, it is easy to discern who the true leaders are. People worth knowing usually have not had an easy ride their entire lives. Struggle defines the individual. Struggle against adversity develops character.
Third, wineries have good years and bad years, but it is this contrast that marks a vintage as outstanding. If all years were good years, we would’t appreciate an outstanding wine. We need bitter to understand sweet. Contrast in life also gives us a good measure of how things are going. If you have never been poor, you can never really appreciate plenty. Anyone can recount countless anecdotal examples of people who had it all, but whose lives ended tragically. We need pain in order to fully appreciate pleasure. You need the bad to appreciate the good. You must experience all that life can throw at you before you can begin to appreciate life itself.
Fourth, a vintner must be very patient when planting new vines. It can take years to produce fruits from a new vine, and then, once you have harvested the new fruits, it takes months again before you can drink the wine. You have to invest longterm if you want to create a successful winery. Again, is life any different? You often have to invest in something before you know it will bear fruit. We invest in our educations, our marriages and our children, but we do not know what the outcome will be.
Fifth, failure is always a possibility, but it doesn’t mean you should give up. I am sure that most of the best wineries have stumbled on the way to success. Nobody starts out by making a $100 bottle of wine. What most people have to do to succeed in life is to try their absolute best—give that extra 10% when it appears that they have nothing left to give. When your efforts are not appreciated by those you wish to impress, you may feel like a failure, but if you don’t allow disappointment to dampen your spirits, you can redouble your effort again and again. If you believe in yourself so much that you damn near kill yourself in the process of achieving your dream, you will be noticed.
Finally, disaster is always a possibility. Anyone who grows anything for a living knows that his or her livelihood is always at the mercy of nature’s whim. Blight, drought, an early freeze, or any other imaginable malady can and will strike at some point. This doesn’t mean that you close the winery. This is a setback, and as such, you can recover from it. The same happens in every life. We fall flat on our faces, but we don’t stay there. We stand up again and keep moving. Some chapters of our story may be depressing, but we keep reading to find out how the story ends. As long as you have strength left in your body, you have to stand up again.
Begin your adventures off the beaten path by booking a night in my Airbnb property.
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Close to Mount Fuji 