There are several scenes in the Bible where Jesus associates his new revelation and new covenant to new wine. He is explaining gradual revelation through the analogy of liquids.
New wine doesn’t have the same pleasing taste that old wine does, but it’s still wine. Wine represents a degree of distortion, as alcohol distorts consciousness. What this means is that Jesus was not giving full revelation during his ministry. He says this explicitly in scripture.
In the Word, full revelation is symbolized by both water and blood. When the side of Jesus is pierced, blood and water flow out of him. Before Jesus creates wine at the wedding, he first starts with water and then transforms the water into wine. At the last supper, he says the wine represents his blood.
While new wine doesn’t taste as good as old wine, it’s much more palatable than the taste of blood associated with the water of eternal life. However, if one desires the truth of the Word, they have to be willing to go beyond wine.
In classic symbolism, of the four elements; Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, water is connected to the intellect. Deep and shallow water are analogies to depth of your thought. When I say the Left stays in the shallows they stay on the surface; decide based on race or sex, They do not think about the depth of character; individual case by case. This is over their head and they may drown.
Wine was similar to spirit in the sense that it lowers your inhibitions and can therefore have an impact on the water=thought. If there was a social taboo about things you cannot think or say; restricted to politically correct, the spirit of wine can lower your inhibitions, so one might not care and state what is taboo.
Adding water to wine, has a damping affect, allowing the intellect=water to referee when inhibition get too low, and one is about to make bad impulsive choices.
New wine is about the intellect becoming spirited; thinking outside the box. It is the preliminary time of new thought, which can be intoxicating. However, this is often less desirable, since others have not had time to process the new ideas. But as the wine ages and they have time to think about it and some data appears which supports it, it is easier to drink; allows the mind to lose inhibitions to seek it out.
I used to make wine years ago. New wine may still be sweet and may also have a lingering flavor of yeast, and other yeast created flavors, that need to time to mellow; chemically react. It still has good alcohol content and can do its job, but as it ages the creative process that coverts sugars to alcohol comes to end. The yeast settles and the wine clarifies. New ideas often are inflated with the sweet sugars and the odd tastes of hope, dreams and speculation, but this sweetness mellows with age making the wine; spirit, clear, smoother and easier to swallow.
This type of thinking was more right brain than the left brain, with the latter more common today. Symbolism is more spatial and included emotions, which were understood with intuitions. Today language is more about clarity of thought; differential, and it lacks that ancient ability to integrate through collective human symbolism; similar in all cultures at the time.
Jesus was preaching heresy at the time, which is why the law came after him. His ideas were intoxicating and began to lower inhibitions and taboos. When Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding, with that wine tasting the best, he was revealing ideas that he had processed for some time, which had aged into a smooth and intoxicating spirit. It was new to the guest and hosts, but this wine had been was sitting on the shelf, aging and fine tuning for years. To the guest this was miracle wine. The modern analogy is a new song that you immediately like and know will be a hit. It is new to you but it may have been worked for years and finally it is revealed for the first time. There is excitement with the new song buzzing in your ears and mind, long after the song is done.
