In my humble view, there are many levels of the wonderful “wine experience”
The first level is being knowledgeable of wine and purchasing, sharing, and enjoying retail wines.
The next level is visiting wineries and wine regions and sampling their product, understanding their wine making philosophy, and at least at a superficial level wine making.
The next level is participating in vineyard and winemaking activities, e.g. planting, harvesting, crushing, pressing, barreling, bottling wine.
The next level is to participate in these previously mentioned activities on a regular basis.
Finally I’d say beyond the above “next levels” is to doing this work part-time or full time. Of course that takes huge amounts of time, money, and gut busting hard work so just purchasing a bottle at the local wine shop may not be so bad after all!!! (wink!).
Until you participate in the spectrum of activities from vineyard dirt – through – an evening on the crushpad – through bottling activities, You’ll never personally feel and understand the hard work that goes into a bottle of wine and…
…the tired but good exhaustion the winemaker and grape grower feels at each day’s end…
It’s a precious thing like friends and family! Ciao!!!
So what do you think – Agree or Disagree???
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I would have to say that the more I learn and experience the wines, the more appreciation I have for them.
– First learning the differences in the Varietals. Then the different Wine Regions.
– Terroir was always just a “wine word” until I learned about Single Vineyard Wines. You can have 2 wines, Same Grape varietal, Same Year, Same Wine Maker, Same Wine Region Different Vineyards and each will have such a unique taste you would swear that they are not related. Subtle differences in the soil and climate can make big differences in the bottle.
I appreciate the grape all the more for experiencing this. The more I learn and experience, the more I Love Wine.
Cheers!