The Peony Experiment: What Indiana's State Flower Taught Us About Hidden Things in Wine & Faith

If you've been around us for a bit, you know we love to experiment. Whether we are checking wine chemistry in the cellar or playing around with seasonal ingredients behind the bar, there is always a bit of courageous curiosity happening at The Rejoicing Vine.

A few weeks ago, as we prepared for the Indiana Peony Festival, we decided to experiment with a new wine cocktail inspired by our state flower. I mean, what better way to celebrate the arrival of spring in Indianapolis than with a sparkling peony-flavored wine cocktail! We are calling it "Pink Peony Club" and it's creation taught us some things we wanted to share.

Unexpected Results

The idea was relatively simple. Harvest peony flowers from our garden (grown regeneratively and organically of course!) and use the petals to make a simple syrup. The hot water when making the syrup should extract the color from the pink petals, yielding a wonderful pink color. We gathered fresh peony petals, added sugar and boiling water, and steeped the petals.

We expected a jar of brilliant, eye-catching pink liquid. Instead, when we strained it, we were left with a jar of dull, plain yellow syrup.

It looked like a failed experiment. But then came the magic trick. Something I had learned in my coursework on winemaking with UC Davis AND something I learned when making our Purple Rain cocktail - namely the color of wine (and cocktails) can depend greatly the acidity of the liquid.

So we squeezed a splash of fresh, tart lemon juice into the jar. In an instant, right before our eyes, the syrup flashed from that boring yellow into a vibrant, stunning magenta pink.

Color Changing Magic

As a winemaker and certified cork dork I was gitty with the "magic" I had just witnessed because it's integral to understanding color in wine, particularly reds and rosés.

You see, peony petals, the skins of the red grapes, and much of the plant kingdom contain natural color pigments called anthocyanins. You can think of these little molecules like nature's mood rings. They change their appearance entirely based on the acidity, or pH, of their environment.

When the syrup was just water, sugar, and petals, the environment was neutral. The 'mood' of the color pigments was a yellow hue. But when the lemon juice was added, the environment became acidic and the 'mood' of those pigments changes from yellow to pink.

In the wine world, the color you see in your glass depends on both the amount of these pigments in the glass AND the acidity of the wine. Grapes grown in cooler climates naturally retain much higher levels of acid, which gives the resulting wine a brighter, more vibrant, red color. Grapes grown in hot, sun-drenched climates lose much of their acid during ripening, causing the wine to take on a duller and more purple and orangish hues. It may come as no surprise if you read our article on why your grocery store wine probably isn't vegan that the industrial wine industry has developed an additive to improve color in these dull colored wines that they do not legally have to disclose. More on that another time.

The Lesson

As we watched our peony syrup transform naturally with just a splash of lemon, a deeper realization hit us. The lemon juice did not create the pink color. The pink was not missing from the jar. It was already fully present in every drop of the syrup. It was just hidden, waiting for the right environment to be revealed and it reminded us of a story and a lesson for life.

Overlooked in the Field

That moment in our kitchen brought to mind the story in 1 Samuel 16.

The prophet Samuel had been sent by God to Bethlehem to anoint the next king of Israel from the family of a man named Jesse. Jesse lined up his sons. He brought out his oldest, tallest, most athletic and impressive boys - seven in total. At the impressive sight of the first son, Samuel thought surely this is the one. But he was not. In fact, none of the seven Jesse had brought out were the one. Had the Lord misled him? Of course not.

Jesse had one other son who wasn't there I the room. By external appearances David must have been appeared so unlikely to be king compared to his brothers that Jesse didn't even bother bringing him in to Samuel for the selection. He left David out in the fields tending the sheep. To his own family, David looked like that first batch of peony syrup, ordinary, plain, and completely overlooked.

But God stopped Samuel and gave him a piece of timeless wisdom:

"The LORD doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

When they finally brought David in from the field, God told Samuel to anoint him because he was the one. God did not wait for David to grow older or taller. God saw the vibrant, beautiful heart of a king that was hidden inside the shepherd boy just waiting for the right environment to shine.

Denting the Ceiling

It is easy to read David's story and think of it as a historical anomaly, but the truth is that God still calls the unseen and unqualified today.

I know this from personal experience. When we decided to launch The Rejoicing Vine here in Indianapolis, I did not feel or appear to be qualified to run a winery. I had never worked in the wine industry. I had never run a business. I had never produced wine in a commercial setting.

To make matters wilder, we felt called not just to make wine but to focus on sparkling wine, one of the most notoriously difficult styles of wine to make. And if that wasn't enough, until we opened the business I had only ever made one small six-gallon batch of bubbly in my life. And that first batch wasn't exactly a success. The very first bottle we opened, the cork flew off with so much force that it left a permanent dent in the ceiling. YIKES!

Talk about feeling like plain yellow syrup. I had plenty of moments of doubt, and still do if I'm honest. But the thing the Bible is filled with stories of unqualified people stepping out in faith and having God give them the environment, the people, the support to make them qualified. After all if God is for us, who can be against us?

It is only because of the faith we've been given and the calling we've received that we have had the courageous curiosity to pursue regenerative farming, to source our fruit only from regional growers, to specialize in sparkling wine, and to build a space for community right here in Indianapolis. We had to trust that God's ways and thoughts are higher than our own. We had to follow the call even when we could not see how the final product would turn out.

Your Turn to Step Out

Is there an area in your life where you feel unqualified, but you feel a quiet nudge to step out anyway? Do not let the fear of a dented ceiling keep you from the calling.

Remember, sometimes we stay hidden in our comfort zones because we only see our current, ordinary color. But your Creator knows the hidden gifts, the latent resilience, and the unique strength He has already placed inside of you. He knows exactly how to use your life to bring out something beautiful if you are willing to answer the call.

Still Overlooked, Still Called

Or maybe you answered the call, stepped out in faith, and still feel overlooked. Well you might think that after being anointed by the prophet of God, David would have walked onto the next scene with a little more credibility. Not quite.

Turn the page to 1 Samuel 17 and David shows up to the battlefield where a giant named Goliath has the entire Israelite army frozen in fear. David, still a young shepherd, hears Goliath taunting God's people and something rises up in him. He wants to fight.

His own brother Eliab, one of those impressive older brothers Jesse had paraded before Samuel, hears David speaking up and cuts him down immediately. He tells David he is arrogant, wicked, and should go back to his sheep. Then David goes before King Saul and Saul's response is essentially the same. You are just a boy. You are not qualified for this.

Your just plain yellow syrup. Again. Even after being secretly anointed king, David is still being told he is not enough.

But David does not argue from his own credentials. He argues from his history with God. He tells Saul about the lion and the bear he had already killed while protecting his flock. He does not say trust me. He says trust the God who has already been faithful to me.

And then he walks into the valley with a sling and five smooth stones and changes the course of history.

The pink was already in the jar.

The Long Walk Between Anointed and Recognized

Here is the part of David's story that does not always make it into the highlight reel: after Goliath, things did not get easier. He didn't strut onto the thrown. In fact, things got harder.

King Saul, threatened by David's growing reputation, turned against him. David spent years as a fugitive, hunted through the wilderness by the very king he had served faithfully. He hid in caves. He lost friends. He was betrayed by the Ziphites, people from his own tribe of Judah, who handed his location over to Saul not once but twice. The man God had already chosen and anointed as king was sleeping in caves and running for his life.

And here is where it gets really beautiful. It is from inside those caves that David wrote some of the most honest, anguished, and ultimately triumphant words in all of Scripture.

Psalm 13, believed to be written during this wilderness period, opens with raw desperation. David cries out, How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? This is not a man who has it all figured out. This is a man sitting in the dark wondering if God has abandoned the very promise He made.

But Psalm 13 does not end there. Just a few verses later, in the same breath, David writes, But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praise, for he has been good to me.

Psalm 57 is even more striking because the heading tells us exactly where David was when he wrote it: in a cave, hiding from Saul. He is not writing from a palace looking back fondly on a difficult season. He is writing from the dirt floor of a hiding place in real time. And he writes, I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. My heart, O God, is steadfast. I will sing and make music. I pray that we would all have this sort of posture in difficult times, times when we feel abandoned.

Worship from a cave. Trust from a place of total uncertainty. That is not a fairy tale faith. That is not hunky dory unicorn and rainbows after answering the call. That is the gritty, costly, beautiful reality of walking with God between the promise and the fulfillment.

It took more than twenty years from the moment Samuel poured oil on David's head in Bethlehem to the moment the people of Israel declared him their king. Twenty years of lemon juice, added slowly, drop by drop. But God knew what He had placed inside that shepherd boy, and He was not finished bringing out the color.

Isaiah 55 reminds us why. His ways and His thoughts are higher than our own. He sees the color in the jar long before the lemon juice arrives.

Raise a Glass: Reflections Over an Indiana Peony Wine Cocktail

The next time you feel that quiet nudge toward something that feels too big for you, take the first step anyway. Hold on tight to your Savior, because you are in for an amazing ride. A challenging one, absolutely, but one that is absolutely worth it. David would tell you the same.

And when you need a moment to catch your breath along the way, come find us at our Indianapolis tasting room to try our new Pink Peony Club Wine Cocktail, take a look at that gorgeous magenta pink hue in your glass. Let it be a little reminder that you are never ordinary, you are never truly overlooked, and your Creator is always ready to unlock the beautiful, hidden colors inside you.

We would love for you to come share your story with us over a glass. That is exactly the kind of community we set out to build. Until then, God bless!