Redux: Wine Under the Moon

What the Surgeon General missed

Photo by Pixabay

I recently listened to an episode of The Opinions podcast from the New York Times entitled, “There’s More to Wine Than Just the Surgeon General’s Warning.” In this audio segment, a wine aficionado insists the government’s top health officials are misses something very important in the new data on wine consumption—they are missing joy.

The episode explores a much deeper part of the human condition than simply the act of over-consumption or alcohol abuse. Yes, real things. Important things. For some, life-threatening matters. I am not dismissing that. There has been alcoholism in my family. I know it too well. But the audio essay also makes another point—that we keep in mind how sometimes we mistakenly “protect ourselves out of existence,” and inadvertently damage cultural traditions, and yes, exterminate joy.

Here’s a quote from the essay:

“. . . there is so much beauty and meaning in consuming a small amount of wine, that to have that bigfooted by threats and warnings, like the ones we’re seeing now that lack so much nuance, is really disappointing and frustrating because it’s going to drive so many people away from a truly magical experience.”

Below is a post I wrote nearly two years ago, when the weather was warm, and the sky was moonlit, and the wine glasses and our bellies were full.

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THE ABUNDANCE (July 2023)

Wine Under the Moon

Twice in the last few days, my wife and I have sat with friends around the table in our backyard garden, sharing good cheese and olives, a little pasta, and plenty of wine. The nights were mild, star-lit and draped in a half-moon. This is not an uncommon experience for us in the summer months. But it’s certainly not a regular one. These times come infrequently enough to know how special they are.

There are few things as wonderful as sharing wine with friends. They bring a bottle, you supply another. The evening light turns mellow and golden, and soon you’re under an inky sky, as the moon peeks out from behind the high branches of the trees. It is then that you realize that this is what matters.

Wine and night air combine to offer a half-drunk loveliness. It’s a collective beauty that only can be understood in the moment. Anthony Bourdain said of such times: “(This is when) you understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story almost by definition you can’t share.” Meaning, it’s impossible to create. It must instead evolve—it must simply . . . happen.

I read an article in a wine review publication not long ago in which the writer recalled a “fabulous older lady who confessed that the reason she served her guests wine was so they stayed longer and talked more.” Hopefully, they stayed well beyond sundown and talked for hours under the moon.

These moments have little to do with the wine, of course, for the drink is only the elixir. The wine does not have to be grand or expensive. What makes the wine perfect is the stories it produces. It’s the sharing that matters. Combine this with the night sky and you have the ingredients to fully live in the present, and by doing just that, you make the past memorable. Beer cannot do this. Liquor cannot do this. Only wine, only it reveals the mysteries of the shared human capacity for emotion.

Virginia Woolf wrote, “Language is wine upon the lips.” She was certainly celebrating both words and wine in this quote. The two go together. They’re inseparable. In many ways this is what Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is all about. Wine, he wrote, “was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.”

When I consider so many of times I have shared wine with friends and the people I love, I am never disappointed. The memories evoke an enlightenment of the spirit. Memories that are both warm and delightful, shared times that are like dreaming with your eyes open.

On one of those recent nights under the stars, the empty wine bottles on the table, we together realized the late hour it had become. We laughed and spoke of our obligations for tomorrow. But we never regretted any of it. Not once. Pledging, only, to do it again.

“Now is the time for drinking, now is the time to dance footloose upon the earth.” —Horace

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David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning fiction and memoir. His latest, Daylight Saving Time: The power of growing older is available now. His debut poetry collection, Garden Tools is due out in October, 2025 from Finishing Line Press. His novella, American Moon will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2026.