Paris, France
February dragged. Grey skies. Cold mornings. Short days. Paris felt heavy.
It’s that time of year when the seasons shift, when you start seeing lonely gloves on the pavement—dropped by someone rushing through a morning chill, a midday thaw, and another freezing night. The trees are still bare, but the city is waking up, ready to shed winter’s weight.
There’s a certain damp, metallic scent in the air. The kind that lingers after rain. Mixed with the faint bitterness of last night’s extinguished cigarettes and the first whiff of bakery doors opening in the early morning. It smells like spring is near—but not quite here yet.
We had very little sun in February. The headlines confirmed it: “During the entire month of February, the sun only made an appearance for 38 hours in the capital.” The lowest since 1991. And you could feel it. Not just in the way people carried the weight of world events—wars, elections, crises—but in the city itself. A little more drained. A little more on edge. Or was it only me?
I think back to my first northern winter—Tilburg, Netherlands, a university exchange that tested my grit. Grey, soggy, relentless. My dad, a doctor who knew the body’s quiet rebellions, handed me one nugget: “Take Vitamin D, kid.” I shrugged it off—dumb youth. Then the clouds piled up, the sun turned stranger, and I got it. It’s not just a glow we miss—it’s a lifeline. Sleep, bones, mood—it all hinges on that light. Skimp on it, and you’re a shadow of yourself. Doctors in these dim corners push the pills for a reason.
And grape vines are no different. Wine’s a sun story, plain and simple. Too much, and the grapes go soft—flabby, overly sweet, like a dessert gone wrong. Too little, and they’re thin, green, bitter as a bad debt. Winemakers dance with it every day—trim the leaves for more rays, or let ‘em shield the fruit? Space the vines wide or huddle ‘em close? It’s a craft, a gamble, a brushstroke on dirt.
California’s got sun on lock—big, plush wines, fruit that hits like a spotlight. Burgundy’s moodier—less light, more bite, a glass with tension you can chew on. Then there’s Salta, Argentina—345 days of blazing sun, high up where the air’s thin, with wild swings: 83°F to 55°F in summer, 33°F to 60°F in winter. That push-pull keeps the acidity sharp, the tannins deep. A Torrontés explodes with perfume; a Malbec marries ripe power to a streak of freshness. Sunlight, bottled.
We’re like those vines, aren’t we? When the sun hides, we wilt. Maybe that’s why so many of you bolt south when winter digs in—Florida, Arizona, anywhere the light still burns. Chasing it, just like the grapes.
Galileo, the stargazer, nailed it: “Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” After a grey Paris February, I’d say he’s right. A glass of Salta Malbec tastes like defiance against the gloom.
The world’s a mess, as usual—wars, markets, politicians tripping over themselves. But the sun?
It’s still up there, doing its job, even when we can’t see it. Maybe the vines have it figured out: keep growing, keep reaching, even through the grey.
Nature is wiser than we think—we’d do well to look at her more often.
Pour yourself a glass tonight. It’s cheaper than a plane ticket south—and almost as good.
Yours in skepticism and sunshine,
Diego
