(Forbes) - When I first started learning about wine, the notes in my journal were overrun by gleeful punctuation — my version of written whoa — like double question marks, parentheses (everywhere), and extra periods as pauses for emphasis.

“What if I could figure out how to drink this, like, every day??” And, “There is so.much.happening in this one glass.” And, “If this is possible (then! then!) ANYTHING is possible.”

Ten years later, I wouldn’t say that I’m jaded about wine but I would say that a refresher course on the glee and giddiness of it is in order. And somehow being giddy is tied up with being grateful that wine is part of the world and my slice of it.

Here are the six things that are currently making me giddy, and grateful, about wine.

1. Crazy Grapes from Crazy Places. The boundaries of wine are expanding and blurring and encompassing more and more geography, and that expansion bit-by-bit is attracting lovers of its micro-locality along with it. Riesling from Idaho. Lemberger from Colorado. Villard Noir from Georgia. Johanniter from the Netherlands. Rondo from Belgium. Sign.me.up.
2. Romance vs Grunge. If I was caught up in the romance of wine at the start, I’m now more caught up in the reality of it. If we aspire to the sweet life of wine, we can relate to the grunge of it too (maybe more so) and what it actually takes to put that bottle of wine on the table. Even the bad stuff. Stepping away from the photoshopped version of wine makes it more real, more pliable and accepting to the everyday.
3. Candor. Perhaps an extension of the non-photoshopped versions of wine, I’ve recently noticed an uptick in candid, real writing about wine. An excellent example from just last month is this post by Craig Camp of Troon Vineyards in southern Oregon. Camp commends the Italian tendency toward a touch of bitterness in both their wine and food, in stark contrast to Americans’ ubiquitous taste for sugar. It’s a thoughtful, earnest critique that may or may not rouse objections. But that’s what candor is for.
4. Conversations. As a writer about wine, many of my conversations about it have been with people who DO, grow, make, and sell wine. Lately, though, the conversations have been with people whose only desire is to drink it, and the pleasure of their giddiness is contagious.
5. Mystery. There’s a sense, when you’re first learning about wine, that you need to learn about it and study it and commit certain terms and vintages and producers to memory. Those are all very useful things. But lately I have been drawn more to the mystery of wine and to what is unknown rather than what is known. A recent example, from Sardinia, is called the Mamuthones, which is an ancient, carnival-like festival that, for one day and one day only, turns the culture upside down. What do the Mamuthones have to do with wine? Absolutely nothing. Except it adds to the mystery of that place , my curiosity about it, and my desire to drink more of its wine.
6. Memory. This past week I sat with an old friend who is dying. He and I have long shared a love for Merlot from Washington state but, these past few months, he no longer has a taste or tolerance for it because of his medication. Still, this weekend we shared a bottle, even though it was just one of us who was drinking. I didn’t walk away giddy that night, but I did walk away grateful that my friend and I had Washington Merlot in common.