Once upon a time, there was a whimsical king in a land. Just as there were all sorts of rules in his kingdom, he had peculiar tastes. The biggest attraction of the kingdom was the royal vineyard and the pure red wine made from it (red grape juice).The king had built a massive vat of wine beneath his palace, deep in the ground. This vat, made of oak wood, was as big as a small room! It could hold nearly twenty thousand liters of wine at once. The king announced that on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his reign, this vat would be opened to everyone.
But just three days before the festival, a great disaster struck! In the middle of the night, the chief guard of the palace noticed a strange sound coming from the tunnel of the wine vat— "Thok... Thok... Thok...". Fearfully, with a torch in hand, the guard went inside and saw that the massive wooden lid of the vat had become loose. Wine was dripping from it and flooding the entire floor. Worse still, the way the lid was stuck, if pulled by hand, it could easily come off and cause all twenty thousand liters of wine to spill out!
The guard thought quickly. He sent word to find a person in the kingdom who was an expert in winemaking and had the courage to handle the situation. A young craftsman named Arian rushed over.Arian immediately assessed the situation and realized that the pressure of the liquid inside the vat could cause the lid to break at any moment. He didn’t use any rope or hammer. Instead, he called the palace cook and said, "Give me a sack of dry wheat right now."
Everyone was surprised! What could wheat possibly do to save the wine vat?Arian stuffed the dry wheat tightly around the cracks in the lid. Within just a few minutes, the soaking wheat absorbed the dripping wine and swelled up to double its size. The inflated wheat sealed the cracks so tightly that the wine completely stopped flowing!
The next morning when the king heard the story of this bravery and cleverness, he embraced Arian. As a reward, the king gifted Arian one thousand liters of wine from the massive vat and made him the chief steward of the royal winery.
