I remember the first time I saw a four-leaf clover. I was five. It was gifted to me by a kind lady called June, a childhood friend of my mother. She explained to me that they are rare, considered charms by some, lucky for sure, and likely to be kept close by those who find them. She chose to share it with me, a little girl who believed in magic. I pressed it and kept it. I still have it. A tiny part perhaps of the mantel of protection my mother and her sisterhood, my godmothers, wove quietly for me, present today in their absence.

Generosity takes so many shapes. It never fails to leave an impression, pressed, gathered in a scrapbook, or held somewhere close to our hearts. It’s a trait I have witnessed time and again over three decades in the wine industry. It is what I have come to see as being the best thing about it. In a world of greedy functionality, the traditions of wine forge communion and give us moments of grace. I have witnessed extraordinary philanthropy that is rarely tallied. Multi millions raised for communities, charities and individual causes. We have a product that softens the edges, creates a glow, raises hands, and opens wallets. For centuries, wine has not only provided the sacrament, it has also supported the secular.

It is a business of course, but one in which humanity remains a positive influence. My working life in wine has been filled with charms, received unexpectedly, in the form of interactions. Were they to be illustrated, I would depict them as the night sky viewed from Mars; a galaxy of pure light. They far, far outweigh the years of graft and difficult encounters. These acts of kindness may have happened had I followed a different profession. But I believe it is the chaos and creation of the individuals and family visionaries I have worked for, and the geographical scope provided by the history of wine and Nature itself, that have put me in unusual places, in front of so many different people. I am not sure any other industry would have trusted me, nor compelled me so completely to pursue the paths a little less trodden. The most important lesson I have learned along the way is that the world is full of gift givers, that giving is the only universal language, and that wine creates an abundance of opportunities to do just that.

Thanks to wine, I have amassed a cast of characters, as colour-rich as Glass beach on a summer’s day, shot through with a type of kindness as soft and honeyed as golden hour in the valleys. I have in mind a man in a blue shirt, and one in pink shorts, one with a paint brush and a woman in leopard, making my sides ache with laughter. One in boots with strong arms lifting me over flood waters in a Chablis courtyard making me safe. A joyful group in evening dress dancing every night for a week in Champagne, buoyed by bubbles, making me beautiful and in love. I remember fondly the family offering me a slow-cooked meal, served in childhood bowls at their kitchen table, mending my heart, when I was so far from my own. Two taxi drivers, one in Shanghai and one in Moscow, laughing, who used sign-language to take me safely back to a place I could neither pronounce nor spell; my unlikely knights. A gentle lady in Hong Kong who tied a jade health bracelet around my wrist mid-meeting which I have subsequently passed on to another in need, like a care chain letter.

Wine people love sharing all that nourishes the body as long as it marks the mind. The coldest bottle of beer shared on the Dune de Pyla at sunset. Thick, maple-rich bacon rashers, breakfast in Toronto. A viking feast in Copenhagen. Chicken claws on Hainan, dumplings on a Shanghai side-street.  The finest macaroons in a Paris apartment. There are people all over the world who do not just sip their own glass, and finish their own plate, but share every last drop with strangers. The wine world is full of people who know there is peace in dappled sunlight, calm in concrete vessels, quality in discourse, and chaos on the dance floor.

Of course there have been as many curious and surprising bottles as there have been curious and interesting people. The wines are preserved, like the clover leaf, between the covers of notebooks in my reams of tasting notes. The people I hope are charming even more strangers and living their life in colour. A Pinot Meunier from mountain vines; a Cabernet Sauvignon from ash-pocked soil; Champagne from the war-torn oyster beds that seemed to create thunder and lightning on the tongue; a Riesling so driven, it soared as it seared; a spherical Musigny, so complex, my memory cannot contain it so has turned it instead into a mournful lullaby. The wines have excited and perplexed me, so many I’ve forgotten, many more I’ve remembered. But by far the greatest influence has been the Adams and Eves that made them, or opened them, or shared them, or gifted their time to me as our paths crossed on trips, dance floors, and dinner tables.

As we continue to look for ways to renew and refresh our industry, we could do worse than remember we have in our hands a product that is thoughtfully wrought and carefully packaged. We have the perfect gift which serves its purpose only if shared. We have something rare and charming in an ocean of common alcohol. We have the equivalent of the four leaf clover in a grass meadow,

Photo by Alex Bransky on Unsplash