Bottling Wine, Weaving Community

We spent the day helping our friends, the Levins, bottle the contents of three oak barrels of wine. There were about sixteen of us carrying out the operation that involved filling the bottles, corking them, wiping them dry, labeling and packing the bottles into boxes. There is something about falling into a groove doing mild labor among friends with music on, outside on a beautiful day that is deeply satisfying. Details of the tasks, lining up the labels on an almost invisible line on the green glass bottle, stacking the cases of wine to maximize space on the pallet, using simple but ingenious machines like the corker which relies on leverage and a modest amount of physical effort. Some tasks require skill and knowledge, like tasting and timing when to bottle while others are simple and satisfying like peeling off labels printed out from the computer and affixing them to the corked wine. The light banter and occasional gentle remarks about quality control (no better way to figure out the Type-A's in the crowd)create an invisible fabric of relationship that all of us were woven into. I believe that experiences like this create the tensile strength of our life force energy, adding qualities of flexibility, texture and color. Without focusing on the blue of the sky, the white phlox sprouting on the hillside or the subtle shadows cast by the pepper trees, these all become part of me. I am also now part of all those I worked with today. We are made for doing work together, this kind of voluntary service to one another, not paid labor but a gift of time and energy given freely and gratefully received. Both the giving and the receiving are enriching, somehow dignifying. Sharing food together at the end of the work is a form of communion, shows the outlines of what the over used word community grows out of. Over the past several years I have been happy to join in this work, the harvest, even once stomping grapes, and the bottling, all the aspects of this very ancient art. I have seen my friend's operation grow, his accumulation of tools of the trade, more of his property planted with grapevines. It is still a small operation, a sideline, he is still an 'amateur' a winemaker for the love of it. If he crosses the threshold into enterprise, selling his wine, I wonder how this will all change. For now I simply savor the sense of peace that comes with sharing time and space and purpose with friends.