With the year wrapping up, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned this year. I’ll share my thoughts below, but I’d like to hear from others as well What have you learned this year? Or for a more targeted answer, what is the most important thing about the world of wine that you learned this year?
As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I’m new-ish to wine. My fiancee got me into wine about four years ago, and about two years ago somewhere inside my brain a switch was flipped that basically took wine from being a thing I did to spend time with her, to an obsession that consumes a healthy chunk of my free time. Major learnings this year include:
*A wealth of information - There’s just so much amazing information that I’ve stumbled upon this year, and just learning of its existence has been a huge help to growing my knowledge.
Wineberserkers - I stumbled upon Wineberserkers back in May '14 when I was reading about Rudy Kurniawan. It has been an eye opener for me in so many ways. After reading all (at the time) 190 pages or so of the Rudy thread over the course of May and June, I read the first 15 pages or so of current threads, then went to the very end of the archives and started working my way back. Any thread that had ~20-30+ posts and looked like it might catch my fancy I dug into; I’ve worked my way back to around page 600 over the last five months. I’ve received about a lifetime’s worth of knowledge already, and I can’t wait to see what you teach me next.
World Atlas of Wine - I’ve read through Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the Mosel. As I’ve had a bottle from one of those areas, it’s been fun to go back and look at the map and determine where specifically it came from. That’s really helped me connect the dots in this big wine world of ours, and also taught me that I really value the story behind the wine; where it came from, who made it, and how they made it. For me, that adds a lot of satisfaction while I’m enjoying a glass of wine.
*What I like (or, like at the moment) - Both in terms of variety, style, and age.
This board helped me understand the idea that different wines have different aging curves, and within a variety there can be many different styles.
I’d been Pobega-ing so much of my wine when in reality some of it was wine that shouldn’t have been touched for a couple years or more, based on what I believed my preferences to be. Upon learning that I started experimenting with wine that had more secondary/tertiary notes, and discovered that I’m a huge fan.
I also discovered I’m fan of New World Pinot, but in a lighter, more restrained style. This led me to…
*New producers - Before Wineberserkers I’d been exposed to a very narrow slice of the wine world; primarily Sonoma and Napa. I literally had no idea that good (great) Pinot was made in California in any region outside of Sonoma. And despite multiple trips to Sonoma, I’d also somehow never heard of some of the producers of more restrained styles, i.e. Copain and Wind Gap.
Learning about Pinot outside of Sonoma, I learned about Rhys, decided to get on the list, and was lucky enough to get an allocation for some of their fall '14 offering. I’ve also picked up some Copain to see if that strikes my fancy as well.
Thanks all for the learning experience in 2014; this board has taught me more in a year than I thought I’d learn in a lifetime. I can’t wait to see what awaits in 2015!
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