The Real Thing

You can't buy a good bottle wine for twelve dollars, but you can buy a reasonable six pack of beer. It was hard to ignore that logic during the early days of my campaign for quality. But, while some very nice lagers and ales did enjoy temporary residence in my fridge, I was also earnestly afoot plumbing liquor stores for that jewel in the rough that didn't offend the parity I thought should exist between wine and beer. Wines above that critical threshold of common sense, about twelve bucks, were in my mind reserved for the upper echelons of society, to which I clearly had no connection. Nevertheless, onwards I soldiered through countless bottles of mediocrity. At a certain point, where my taste buds were thoroughly dulled and likely atrophied, I came to an all-too-common conclusion that good wine must in fact taste awful. Either I had no sense of taste (of course not, I'd killed it), or I simply hadn't worked my way through enough brands to expand my pallet and develop an appreciation that didn't include pucker and grimace on every sip.

Too many people are scared of wine. I wasn't alone in believing that my own personal failings (lack of taste, ignorance, 80's hair) were behind my inability to enjoy cheap wine. Others plainly found themselves equally deceived by bad and expensive wines that they were compelled to enjoy or discretely empty in the nearest planter box. On this note, I had the good fortune to share a meal with a prominent wine writer at a conference we both attended last year. I was curious about the true story behind a favourable, yet politely cloaked, review he'd written on a winery well known for its 'rustic' style in winemaking. It appeared we shared opinions on the unconventional taste of their product, and I wasn't surprised when he related a story about a tourist who, in spite of tasting an oxidised & vinegar laden sample, put on a brave face and happily shelled out for a whole case! We tend to think that wine is somehow above us and, in doing so, totally ignore that most basic and natural premise: our own good taste!

"All that matters is that the wine either tastes good to you or it doesn't" - those were the simple words of a French winemaker from Bordeaux, who's cellar I had earlier toured and who's wine I was then drinking. Had I only known or believed this nugget of insight a decade earlier...

Back then, I had worked hard to become a connoisseur of uninspired wines and was rudely shocked one day to taste the most unexpected thing - fruit! - but without nail dissolving acidity or chalk board screeching bitterness. Forget about sublime herbal and under-ripe green, I'd stumbled across the Andes and found the most luscious and therefore peculiar merlot. It was downright yummy and easily within the means of a semi-employed software developer who's tastes had never yet left the country.

Inspired by my new found drinking enjoyment, I found the will to spend a bit more on different wines, even read a few reviews, and invest in some snazzy coffee table books. A modest increase in my budget also put the world of varietal wines (those made with identifiable or single grape types) packaged in quantities fewer than a million cases into a new and happy focus. I was a freed man seeing sunlight for the first time, armed with another new outlook on wine, and friends that would actually drink what I served them.

In Vino Sanitas - Wine is Health

In my mid twenties, the shocking realisation set in that (i) my academic career needed a bit more commitment for a happy conclusion (i.e., the university senate, in their generous glory, allowing me to graduate), (ii) my burgeoning consulting company was burgeoning my blood pressure and overall stress level, and (iii) my once athletic teens had succumbed to an ever increasing nicotine requirement and a penchant for wine served in one gallon jugs. The crown jewel of this demise was pneumonia in both lungs, and the subsequent need to sit down to catch my breath, before I could light the next smoke. I had hit a sour and descending middle age before some provinces and states would even rent me cars.

Change came pretty quickly once the deafening rattle in my lungs ceased and city courtesy benches were no longer oases for my sickly ambulations. I was probably listening to too much John Mellencamp & Midnight Oil, too, and I started having these earthy thoughts, which eventually drove me to better health and a membership in greenpeace. It was my own romantic rebellion to the frenetic appendages of modern life, and suddenly ciggies and plonk didn't seem nearly as attractive as fat old cedar trees growing in the rainforest.

A consequence of my newfound quest for oneness in the universe was an ever increasing belief in the "body as temple" doctrine coupled with a sense of connectedness (is that a word?) throughout all people and life. Wieners and ketchup were supplanted by pasta and chicken in the kitchen, and beer on the supper table suddenly lost out to wine that came in what-I-then-thought were incredibly small bottles. I also took up residence with a Californian research scientist who loved her cat, her wine, and long loopy discussions about places with great grapes and greater wines. Our discourse often touched on anthropology, cultures, history, and their ever present relationships with what Galileo called "sunshine held together by water" - wine! Wine was the blood that ran through most of humanity's veins, it was the communion with which families and friends partook while breaking bread, it was our common history, and it was suddenly something new to me so vast, deep, and calling.

Why?

Why make wine and why write a blog about wine? Somewhere in my journey of the past few years, I came to believe that wine is an intersection of art, science, and humanity. I also came to think that on this basis creating fine wine was something of a virtue, something that brings all of us closer together. Okay, that’s a bit corny, but a true philosophy that underlies this obsession of mine. As for writing, well that’s catharsis and the need to share a story that will chronicle where I’m coming from, where I’m at, and where my family and I are headed.

My interest in wine was decidedly not inspired by lofty visions of beautiful bordelaise vineyards, historic chateaux, intellectual communion, or even a taste that bordered on anything approaching refined.

About fifteen years ago, during the torment of my undergraduate years (there were many), I decided that the perfect compliment to Mr. Noodles and Kraft dinner would be home made beer. In an oddly detached and remote way, like many of my erstwhile thoughts, I considered that it would be fulfilling to someday make beer commercially.

Haute cuisine didn’t exactly figure into my then lifestyle (no, not zen), but in some way those home bottles of high-test Danish Pilsner made me realise that quality didn’t come from a can of Old Stock. It came from your own labour, your own failure, success, and your own ideas bubbling about on your tongue like cold beer. It would just take me another decade to find out how much and what the pursuit of quality really meant.