Just a taste...

Over the weekend Janne, Adam, Richard and I journeyed to the Finger Lakes in New York to attend the Watkins Glen Wine Festival. We enjoy finding new vineyards and wineries, talking with the owners, tasting their favorite wines and thought this might be a fun experience. Boy, were we wrong! We assumed that offering people all the wine one can consume for a $30 admission fee would be a huge temptation for a few people and therefore expected some "tipsy" people. I guess we thought most people would be like us- tasters, not party animals. What we didn't expect was a crowd to rival that at a Nascar race (also held at Watkins Glen) and 90% of the people more than legally intoxicated before lunchtime. Noise levels grew until we couldn't hear each other even though we were standing side by side, some of the areas were gridlocked and you couldn't move, and more people poured into the tents making it hotter and hotter despite the fans and breeze from outside. It was time to leave.

We decided to just drive around Seneca Lake and perhaps stop at a few wineries. We are truly "tasters"- we share one tasting glass (not a 4 oz. glass of wine but a sample of about 1.5 oz!) between the four of us. Our goal is not to get plastered but to experience new tastes and find new wines to enjoy in moderation. The beautiful lake, plush foliage and a gentle breeze provided an inviting backdrop to our wine-tasting experience. People (both employees and customers) were pleasant to talk to. We took our time enjoying both the scenery and the tasting.

I walked around the vineyard at one winery and noticed that the vines that were overgrown with weeds and not pruned had produced only small bunches of grapes and not very many of those- like the one in the bottom left photo. But the vines that were well-pruned had produced lots of large bunches of grapes- like the top left photo. This reminded me of John 15:1-8 where Jesus says He is the vine and we are the branches and then talks about pruning the branches so it can produce more and better fruit. It was so easy to see the relationship between the vine, the branches and the fruit in this vineyard! When we allow God to clean out the weeds in our life and to prune the dead wood off our branches as we stay close to the vine, we can produce much fruit for Him.

As I thought about the Wine Festival and the multitudes of very inebriated people, I felt great sadness. There is so much more to life than just drinking for the sake of getting drunk. These people are wasting a precious gift.

Before this trip, when I thought of New York, the first thing to come to mind was a concrete jungle- noisy and crowded (hmm... perhaps the Wine Festival should not have been such a surprise!). This weekend we got to see the softer, gentler side of New York. The sparkling water of the lakes, lots of wildflowers still blooming, deer walking through backyards (we saw 4 or 5 deer during the day!) and the rolling hills were a welcome respite. We found Pennsylvania to be much the same way- acres and acres of corn, barns and silos, horse-drawn buggies and "Plain People," small towns with more American flags flying than are in the entire state of Arizona. 

We couldn't decide whether it would be nicer to live by Seneca Lake in New York or on a farm in Pennsylvania... until we remembered they both get a LOT of snow!

We enjoyed each other's company, good conversations (we learned about Elmira State Prison and why it's famous/important from Janne- you can check her blog for pictures!) and time to relax. It was a good weekend!

We watched magnificent sunsets every night!