The Way of wine A road to Awe Drinking wine is the purpose of our ceremony. Drinking wine, simply, for the first time. Drinking wine is the blessing I wish you... — Thierry Forbois What is the Way of wine The Way of wine, also known as the Wine Ceremony, is a living art created and practised by Thierry Forbois during which the presentation of a great wine becomes the object of an extraordinary ritual for an intimate group of guests. Transfiguring the tasting moment into a secular spiritual experience, the Ritual of this «celebration of wine» includes a prelude and 3 acts, divided into 9 movements through which grace and allegorical language unite in music, opens a path toward the self, an awakening of the senses and a renewal of one’s being. It could be said that the Way of wine is to wine what the Japanese Tea Ceremony is to tea, a sacred moment to take distance from our busy, sometimes frenetic, existences, to experience a higher level of consciousness, but that's where the comparison ends. While the noble art of the Way of tea aims to achieve harmony, respect, purity and tranquility, the Way of wine path is that of rapture and awe, of elation of the senses and of silent joy. In sixteenth century Japan, Sen no Rykiū codified the tea ceremony, setting the essence of the Japanese Way of Tea as it’s still practised today. I like to think that in four hundred years from now, somewhere on Earth, a few eccentric souls will gather around a bottle of wine and, losing themselves in the beauty, grace and delight of the senses, will marvel again, rediscovering the eternal link that unites them to the Universe, the Source of life and the Mystery of things... Then, they will experience a joy beyond words, then they will be children, then they will be gods. That is the Way of Wine. — Thierry Forbois DISCOVER THE RITUAL — Wine Master performing Transmissio during the Way of Wine Ritual A wine, a celebration, an encounter. The Way of wine is a moment that will never return. But while each ceremony is a singular event, they are all supported by the same ideal: to enable guests to live the experience as if every moment of their lives, the most favourable to the most tragic, existed only so they could experience this ultimate moment. — Thierry Forbois An unparalleled tasting experience In 2018, I attended Thierry Forbois’s Way of wine ritual for the first time. At the age of 77, nothing could have prepared me for what I was going to experience during this evening. I never imagined that drinking a glass of wine could become a sensual and aesthetic experience of such depth. One must really have to live this unparalleled moment to feel the intense emotions it awakens in you. The Way of wine Ritual is a living art without precedent in the world. Privileged I feel to have experienced this moment of grace in my lifetime. I kind of feel like if I was a guest attending one the first Tea Ceremonies hundreds of years ago. Is it unusual to witness the emergence of an art form? At the risk of sounding pretentious, I’d hazard that in the history of human achievements, it’s rare. — Michel-Jack Chasseuil MORE ON THE WAY — © Thierry Forbois 2019. All rights reserved.