It is the 3rd Thursday of November every year. A special birthday, because it is not fixed, it is similar to "Mother's Day" in the US. I was lucky the first time I went to France to attend an international poetry festival in Paris in 2003. I had the chance to drink a bottle of fresh Beaujolais Nouveau wine on the birthday of French wine, the 3rd Thursday of November that year. It was the day of the wine festival, but I did not attend the festival, but drank fresh Beaujolais Nouveau wine at the Foyer Viet Nam restaurant at 80 Monge street, district 5, Paris. With the owner Vo Van Than, with the writer Dang Tien, with two mathematics professors Nguyen Ngoc Giao and Ha Duong Tuong, we opened several bottles of fresh wine at once... steaming cold, and drank it the way fresh wine is drunk: in a large jar, like drinking fresh beer. The first feeling when drinking a bottle of fresh wine is so strange: it's like the whole French grape season is rushing into my throat. So much freshness, peace, and coolness that it makes me... dizzy. The birthday of a bottle of wine, of the French grape fields, is so full of emotions! In just 10 days, from bunches of fresh grapes with whole fruits and stems from the French fields, the wine has been bottled and served to wine connoisseurs all over the world. I looked closely at the bottle of fresh Beaujolais wine, it was so simple, just like the simplicity of a bunch of fresh grapes. It's autumn in France! Who dares to say autumn is sad? Autumn is the birthday of wine, it's so joyful! The whole of France is ecstatic in the festive atmosphere, ecstatic in the familiar and seductive scent of fresh wine. Only simple labor, only simple workers can create festivals, birthdays like the birthday of fresh wine "Beaujolais Nouveau". With fresh wine, the French autumn is not only about the yellow leaves falling on the green grass of the parks, but also the excitement that comes only once a year. Just that "drop of wine", combined with the sky and clouds of autumn, has given me a lot of life energy. Suddenly I remembered, in Vietnam, in the past, there was also a festival typical of an agricultural country, of rice fields. That is "Tet com moi", celebrating the harvest. When I was in the North, when I was still a student, I enjoyed these new rice festivals. Simple, but also very happy. Because rice, even new rice, cannot be eaten alone, like drinking wine. There must be a tray of rice, food, even if it is modest, first to worship the ancestors, then the whole family eats the new rice meal together. I cannot forget the aroma of new rice back then. Now, it is very difficult to find that truly seductive aroma, because modern rice varieties combined with the land of this time have minimized that wild natural aroma. Farmers, whether grape growers or rice farmers, have an innate innocence to the products they grow. That innocence is imbued in the aroma of wine and new rice. Is that the "country soul"?

Thanhnien.vn

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