When all my happiness came crashing back into me, it was in the middle of East Sussex, and there were curly-haired pigs snorting in the background. They snuffled in the dirt right behind the well-dressed Tillingham winemaker, who was busy regaling us about the tenets of biodynamics—the tinctures and herbs, the cow horns packed with manure and buried on a winter’s evening.
I gamely stuck my nose into the glass and swirled as each new wine was sloshed into it, but my attention wandered: to the wasps and bees that had bloomed out of the sudden sun; to the two oast houses standing sentry, no longer used for drying hops, now home to buried qvevri and amphorae. And to the pigs, who squealed and rubbed their sheepy curls along the fence and flung themselves into a sucking patch of mud with abandon.
What a way to greet pleasure, giving into the immediacy of cooling earth and warm sun and a fragrant breeze without a fight. What a way to inhabit a body, the present-tense-ness of it all. I ran a thumb along my glass’ smooth stem and thought about sensation, about the joy that’s folded into noticing, and small things. There it was, as we stood over the neat marching lines of young vines, of Pinot Noir and Ortega and Pinot Meunier interspersed with a brain-purring, geometric perfection. There again, in the surprise of chickens emerging from between parked cars to scratch in the dust. Of course it was in the wine, of course in the summer meal that followed, in a warm hand held, in a final glass of Macvin du Jura.
That night, as the taxi flowed liquid through the countryside’s dark channels, taking us back to the city, I felt something in my body unclasp and slacken. Some new interior space opened up, for the first time in many months, and I greeted that sudden arrival with all the joy it deserved.
Words + Photoby Claire Bullen