Kakao Brunchbook 6th Publishing Project Special Award Winner
"What did we do at the end of last year?" We live within forgetting. We try to remember but live forgetting most things -- good things and bad alike. No matter how hard we try not to forget, there is no match against passing time. So we use means such as photos and writing to leave records. That I am writing like this now may also be an expression of the internal desire to record. This thought also comes: "Do humans have an instinct to record? Thanks to that, can present-day us access the knowledge and achievements of past us?" Record and wine: wine is inherently a record -- a vintage bottle is a preserved record of a specific year, a specific place, a specific set of decisions by a winemaker; the 2005 Bordeaux records the exceptional growing season of that year; the 2003 Bordeaux records the catastrophic heat wave that cooked the grapes on the vine; the 1945 Bordeaux records the end of World War II and the extraordinary concentration that resulted from wartime vineyard neglect; opening an old bottle is accessing a record that no photograph or writing can replicate -- a direct sensory connection to a moment in time. Value appreciation over time: wine that ages well becomes more valuable not despite time passing but because of it -- the complexity that comes from years in bottle cannot be manufactured quickly; similarly, a life of accumulated experience, relationships, and knowledge becomes richer and more nuanced over time; the person of 50 with decades of diverse experience has a depth that cannot be hurried or shortcut, just as a great wine requires its time in the cellar to become what it is meant to be.
