Bacchus
I first discovered wine through food. My love of food started at an early age, growing up in an Italian-American household. At the table my grandfather always had a jug of unmarked homemade wine by his chair, which he would drink out of a small green juice glass. As I got older and learned more about wine, this glass seemed inappropriate. However, after traveling throughout Italy for three months, I found out how wrong I was. This is a theme that persists in wine and should be dispelled. There should be no pretense to wine. Everyone should be able to afford and enjoy wine, be it in an exquisitely labeled bottle, or an unmarked jug.
I love wine because it is an opportunity to travel around the world in a glass. Being able to taste different grapes from different countries, and even different regions within those countries. I get to taste tradition, and history, and see the effects of time on a wine. I also love having wine with food and seeing how each one compliments and changes the other. Wine is a great opportunity to bring people together, to talk, and laugh, and eat.
Another aspect of wine that intrigues me is the whole process of how it’s made. I have been a home brewer for years and my interest of process led me to the Willamette Valley in Oregon to work a grape harvest. There I was able to participate in every aspect of winemaking, from receiving the fruit, to crushing, pumping, barreling and bottling the wine. I have traveled throughout California, in Napa and Sonoma as well as Santa Ynez and the Santa Lucia Highlands, glass in hand all the way. I recently spent three months in Italy, working the grape harvest in Avellino, and Piedmont, as well as tasting Barolo while standing on a hillside in Barolo.
When I buy wine, it is from a diverse list of locations. It may be Vons, or Whole Foods or it could be a corner liquor store, or a well stocked wine store. Regardless of location, I usually walk out with a descent bottle of wine. This is where knowing about wine has come in most handy. If you’re only going to spend ten bucks on a bottle, there are a lot of options, and most of them are not very good. Ten dollar Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, hmmm, will that be good? Probably not, but a ten dollar Primitivo from the Puglia region of Italy will most likely be great. This is the kind of knowledge that I want to pass on a s the Wine Buyer at Whole Foods. To be able to find out what kind of wine people like, and considering their budget, find a great wine for them.
