Strip it all the way down and wine is simply fermented grape juice. That's true, but it's also the least interesting thing you can say about it.
Because there's a difference between a gathering around a bottle of wine vs. a bottle of cola. People sit a little longer. The conversation loosens, and the meal starts turning into an evening. Maybe you've felt it, a long lunch with family that somehow runs deep into the afternoon, a dinner with friends where nobody's in any hurry to leave. Wine didn't cause that exactly, but it tends to be there when it happens.
The Psalms talk about wine that gladdens the heart of man. Not numbing it, not drowning it. Gladdens it. That's a specific kind of joy, the warm and human kind, the kind that opens you up to the people in front of you instead of closing you off from them.
Which is also where the line is. The same gift that can open an evening can wreck one. The Church has never been confused about this, it has blessed the cup for two thousand years and condemned drunkenness the entire time, and there's no contradiction in holding both. The joy is in the savoring, the slowing down, the sharing. The moment it becomes about the effect, about getting somewhere, you've left the good part behind, and you usually know it.
So the real value of wine was never really in the wine. It's in what it gathers around itself. A table, a few people you love, an hour where nobody is rushing. That's the thing worth protecting, and worth understanding well enough to do properly.
