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Pretentious though it may sound, the three items that comprise the title of this blog are three of my favorite things.  Moreover, all three share a single, unexpected attribute: they are completely and utterly unsubstantial-- that is to say my favorite things can’t be tied up in a brown paper package.

I can imagine what you’re saying to yourself: He’s nuts, right?  Everything about those things is physical: words come from a book, wine comes from a bottle and wisdom from a fortune cookie.

That is where I disagree.

What you see on the page of a book is ink.  It may look like letters and words, but its really just a stain on a piece of paper.  The ‘Word’ itself exists somewhere between the page and your eyes and your brain; between my lips and my tongue and your ears.  A word isn’t physical or finite-- its eternal and etherial.  It is really just a concept: a certain shape to a certain demographic caries with it certain meaning; the shape of my tongue and the force of my breath creates a sound that is interpreted by tiny little hairs in your ear canal which, in turn, stimulate nerves that send a signal to your brain which tickle neurons associated with a previous experience...and so on.

But wine is a liquid, isn’t it?  Not quite.  Juice is a liquid.  Fermented juice is alcoholic liquid.  Furthermore, it’s hardly enough to define ‘Wine’ as fermented grape juice: the increasing popularity of rice wine, apple wine, plum wine, barelywine and nearly every other kind of fermented (but not distilled!) sugary liquid has thrown a wrench in that definition.  So where does that leave us?  For my part, wine is as experiential as words are cultural.  Wine exists from the moment you pull out the cork or unscrew the cap until the last drop hits your tongue.  It exists among the olfactory sensors in your nose, the deceptively powerful taste-buds, your retina and your hippocampus; it is in the look, smell, taste and memory of the experience.  It can be shared with loved ones, business partners, or strangers.  It can be enjoyed alone, marking a special occasion or creating one by opening that special bottle-- and even if you have the same vintage of Barolo from the same vineyard and producer today and in ten years, the experience will be completely different, which is to say the wine will be completely different and vice versa.

And wisdom...well you could argue that wisdom is contained by phrases, aphorisms and adages; by “quips and other paper-bullets of the brain”, but I will challenge even that.  ‘Wisdom’ is less than that and it’s greater than that.  It is an occurrence...an event.   It is the moment of realization when something is experienced for the very first time-- when a stimulus strikes the brain and creates a new synapse between two previously unrelated dendrites.  And it spreads like a virus: the first synapse electrifying a series of realizations and growths, each new dendrite connecting with another and encouraging connections that had never been possible, never even conceived of.  Wisdom might be inspired by a bible phrase or a song lyric, but it could not possibly be contained within it-- those ink-stained pages and lilting sound waves are only the spark that lights the fuse of your brain’s potential to receive and create wisdom.

I’ve recently been granted an opportunity to pursue all three of these items while working in the one field that I truly love: Theater.  I’ll get to the full story eventually, but for the moment satisfy your curiosity with the fact that I am involved in a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ to be performed in Dijon and Bordeaux.  Words rich with history in two of France’s best wine regions.  I can’t help but feel that a certain store of wisdom awaits me.