Great news - my youngest daughter, Stacey, passed her exam and became a Certified Sommelier yesterday! My oldest daughter, Lisa, recently changed jobs and is now working hard at a wine shop in Signal Hill, CA, called "Wine Country." Those apples definitely did not fall far from the tree, or perhaps more accurately, grapes from the vine. Not suprisingly, our dinner conversation lately does not go very far without the discussion turning to wine: our new favorite cremant, the wine we should serve with Thanksgiving dinner, or albarino vs. vinho verde.
So, what was I thinking when I bought Lisa a case of 1985 Chateau Pichon LaLande, her birth year, when it was first released to present to her on her 21st? Or when I bought Stacey her 1987 E Guigal Cote Rotie? Or when I decided to write a blog about wine?
Simply, I find wine and everything about it fascinating, always have, starting way back when with my very first bottle of "Pink Catabwa" in 1972 [do they still make that stuff?]. I don't remember who gave our commencement address but I can recall vividly the magnum of '76 Chateau Montelena chardonnay we drank at my graduation from law school. Equally vivid in my memory are the '66 Ch. Lafite at the Heublein rare wine tasting and auction, and the first bottle of a most modest bottle of Kenwood zinfandel that made me a fan of that varietal for life.
My fascination obviously is infectious. I tried just as hard, without success, to pique my daughters interest in equally compelling things like golf and college football, with no success, but at least my fascination with wine rubbed off as did the cultures, history, and geography that shape our tastes and opinions about wine.
This blog has its genesis in my heretofore ignored recent suggestions to my family/ best friends that given their fascination with wine they should write a blog about their wine interests and experiences. Heck, I was so generous as to even tell them what they should write about. When it finally dawned on me that my prodding in this regard was likely to suffer the same fate as did my encouragement of Big Ten football, well, screw it, I decided I should write my own blog, for better or worse.
Since finishing my career as a lawyer seems to be my fate for the time being, writing this blog may be my best outlet for sharing my passion about wine. Please stay tuned.
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