What doors has wine opened for you?

As much as I enjoy drinking nice wine, I have to admit it’s only a small part of a larger picture. From my personal experiences, my fondest wine-related memories are of sharing my wines in the good company of other wine lovers. In regards to my personal story, I was able to reconnect with a good childhood friend on the basis of wine. Over the past 4 years, we have been fortunate enough to meet up several hundred times (at least once a week). The wine is all well and good, but it’s the side stories, wine talk, and laughter that makes it so enjoyable. A little over a year ago, my aforementioned friend turned me on to this very website. Through spending countless hours on this site, I have learned more from the collective brain of this community than I ever could have imagined. Through a limited number of WB off-lines, I have also been able to meet some incredibly nice and generous people. I especially thank Charlie for inviting me to partake in the festivities of my first offline a few months back. Through that event, I was able to meet a fair number of fellow Berserkers, as well as a number of non-members who I befriended.

Outside of personal acquaintances, I would also say that wine has greatly expanded my awareness of Europe; I’m hoping the future me can save up the money to take some trips to the old world. I can also attest to finding some awesome restaurants through their ties to favorable byob policies. Fine dining is usually out of my budget, but when I can indulge, fine wine certainly enhances the overall dining experience. Going forward, I find myself quite excited about all the new faces and new places that wine can lead me to.
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Door to the poor house.

Amazing friendships coupled with staggering credit card bills.

  1. a second career
  2. meeting new friends
  3. drinking delicious grape juice on the regular

That’s a lovely post.

I’m on my iPhone, so it’s too hard to type the tale, but I owe my career arc to wine.

Story to follow.

Mark, thank you for your kind words and especially your friendship. I am truly humbled! Can you believe that everything started with a $10 Muscadet all those years ago? Looking forward to our old Pinot tasting!

Doors?

Wine has become:

A means of supporting myself as a newly single mother.

An entree into an entirely new career: working as a grower and producer of Cabernet.

An introduction to many friends across the country, some of whom are my closest friends today.

An introduction to the most amazing man I have ever met. flirtysmile

And that is for starters.

No, thank you. Seriously, it’s been such a blast! Here’s hoping for many more years of wonderful wines and good company! [drinkers.gif]

i’ve met a lot of great people. coupled with my work travel, i’ve been able to go to gatherings in a lot of different cities:

Portland, ME
Hartford, CT
New York, NY
Millburn, NJ
Philadelphia, PA
Washington, DC
Orlando, FL
Nashville, TN
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
Tucson, AZ
Santa Fe, NM
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
San Francisco, CA
Yountville, CA
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Bellingham, WA

it’s made business travel so much better. been lucky enough to meet many of you over the years. reviewing CellarTracker, it’s a bit shocking that i’ve logged 259 tasting events (mostly offlines) since October 2009…that’s just about 1/week for the last 5 years. sheesh!

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Well, it got me a job after the tech boom went bust

  1. It gave me valuable and deep friendships with fellow aficionados such as board members Jay Shampur and Mike Grammer but also with others as well whose knowledge is certainly not as deep but whose enthusiasm definitely is.

  2. It brought me to this board which is a favorite pastime now.

  3. It expanded my knowledge as a foodie.

  4. It made me a valued customer of the LCBO and allowed me to maintain good relations with the stores I regularly haunt.

  5. It unexpectedly awoke a desire to travel and see the world after that had been killed off in my youth.

  6. It allowed me to meet some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever laid eyes on.

  7. It allowed me to network with people in the business and create great relationships and friendships with them.

  8. It allowed me to become a blogger.

I owe a lot to wine.

My journey here, to produce Riesling in the great northwest of Oregon hasn’t been easy. There were Continents crossed, languages learned, cultures explored, friends made. There was love, war, asses and knuckles busted and many, many bottles of wine consumed. I feel blessed to have such a supportive family, great friends all over the world, and amazing little children who don’t even bat an eye at picking up and relocating at the drop of a hat.

There was always wine at the dinner parties my parents threw and sometimes I got to taste it. It was usually red Bordeaux if I recall. I guess I can credit my Dad for introducing me to wine. But even more credit has to be given to a Chardonnay-drinking girlfriend of mine that I had in my early 20’s. For the most part, I had been a beer guy. But I too would buy and drink Chardonnay because she liked it and she was a lot of fun after a couple of glasses. We explored all of the mid-priced California and French Chardonnays that we could find or afford and they were fine –varying degrees of caramel, crème brulee, buttered popcorn and fruit nuances. Moreover, they were wet and got us drunk.

Around this time I had started working at a large wine and liquor store which gave me the opportunity to learn about and taste wine from all over the world. The California wines were the easier to read and comprehend, but I eventually got to the point where the European wines were more interesting to me, both stylistically and academically. At that time you only really had to deal with France, Italy, and a little bit of Spain and even then just a few Appellations from each (there were no Basque whites, Val d’Aosta reds, or Styrian Sauvignon Blanc on wine-shelves in the late 90’s in MN). The German Riesling section was a jungle of indecipherable labels mostly produced by large bottling-firms and co-ops, but nothing much of quality. I didn’t give the section much thought until I had the chance to taste a bottle of 1998 J.J. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese at an in-store tasting. Well this sure as hell wasn’t Chardonnay. There were vivid flavors of fruit, mineral, acidity. It was like tasting a guitar-solo of apples and steel. ALIVE! I had to get to the bottom of it.

I started reading an old Alexis Lichine Encyclopedia of Wine and was as fascinated as I was confused by the complexity of the wine-labelling law in Germany. It takes a certain sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder to undertake study of that sort at age 21, but you can ask anyone: I’m clearly a very sick man. I quickly took it upon myself to invigorate the German wine section of the store. Riesling deserved it. It was during this time that I met Rudi Wiest, one of the top German Wine importers in the US. He introduced me to older German Rieslings and how beautifully they aged. It really opened up a whole new way of looking at white wine for me. Gradually my brain absorbed more information and my body more wine and I became the Wine buyer at several wine shops around the Twin Cities. I dove into wine regions known and obscure, but never lost my passion for Germany and its wines.

After a few years I met my beautiful wife who happens to be German and who was studying here in the States. I’m sure that my enthusiasm for German culture and German wine certainly didn’t hurt my chances and probably provided some smokescreen for at least a couple of my many faults. It was on our yearly travels to Germany that I really got exposed to the diversity and breadth of what that Country has to offer as wine goes. Many of us simply don’t see an accurate or complete picture of German wines based on what is available on US shelves and wine-lists including the many amazing dry Rieslings and excellent Pinot Noir produced there these days

After a year or two, I took a job as a sales-rep for the best wine importer/distributor in Minnesota. The company culture was one that focused on education through tasting, travel and eating well. Along with the rest of the extraordinary selection of wines from around the world, we started to represent the Terry Theise portfolio of excellent German wines. Terry became an invaluable source of information and insight for me and I probably wouldn’t be here without him.

In 2009 on one of our trips to overseas, my wife and I made the decision to sell everything we couldn’t carry on our backs, leave family, friends, and the best company I could ever hope to work for and move to Germany while our children were still young enough to do it (aged 2 and 5 then.) In May 2010 we moved first to Hessen, spent the summer further exploring different regions of the country, and then finally decided upon the Pfalz (just north of Alsace, France) because of the scenery, warmer climate, and the myriad of different wines that are grown there. I found a job at a winery in the Südpfalz and enrolled at the Wine and Agricultural school in Neustadt an der Weinstraße while our children enrolled in Kindergarten. I landed in Germany with only a very basic knowledge of classroom German (from taking a couple of years of night-classes here in the US) but after only a few months had expanded my vocabulary to include much of the local dialect (which is difficult even for other Germans to understand) and the scientific vocabulary required to take Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Technical, and Enology classes all in German, not to mention cuss-words, insults and all sorts of sexual innuendo.

I was extremely impressed with the German apprenticeship system. It is certainly the best, most thorough in the World and the teachers are second to none. Nearly two-thirds of all German winemakers go through the program at one of several colleges around the country. Students are required to take and pass classes relating to all aspects of winemaking, cellar-techniques, equipment operation, farming, and running a business. They are required to work at wineries during this time (normally three wineries in three years to learn different techniques from different philosophies) and to pass written and practical tests conducted by the Chamber of Agriculture. I am quite fortunate to be one of two American Graduates of this school over the past 115 years. It is really quite remarkable to realize that every German resident (even an American) has the opportunity to go to such schools (in most any trade) and not only receive an education, but to get paid to do it. It was truly an incredible experience.

The face of German wine has been changing for the past few decades. There is more focus on organic and Biodynamic vineyard practices, which I was immersed in while apprenticing at Weingut Odinstal, one of the top Biodynamic wineries in Europe. It was there under Andreas Schumann that I learned how to execute the philosophies that I have admired for years –namely less intervention in the cellar, and more care and hard-work in the vineyard. This is the crux of the teachings of Hans-Günter Schwarz, perhaps Germany’s greatest winemaker, who has apprenticed many of the top winemakers in Germany including Andreas. I am fortunate to have gotten to know him during my time at Odinstal and proud to be part of his winemaking-tree.

After my graduation, armed to the teeth with knowledge and confidence (and a mouthful of Polish cusswords to go along with the German ones) we made the difficult decision to move yet again. I felt that in Germany I would be just another German-trained winemaker (of several thousand with more coming every year) so we started a nationwide search of the United States for a suitable climate and geology for the growing of the wines that I had worked with in the Pfalz (especially Riesling, but also Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Silvaner etc.) Oregon was the only place that met all of my criteria and the one with by far the most potential for Riesling. I had previously visited the Willamette Valley when I used to sell many of the best producers’ wines. I loved the area and the people and it wasn’t hard to convince my wife and kids that we needed to be there.

So we sold everything we owned again, landed in Minneapolis and drove out to Oregon where my family finally made it to the west coast from Ellis Island after a one hundred+ year layover in the Midwest. I worked the 2013 harvest at Brooks wines, got a job at a Willamette Valley Vineyard management company farming other wineries vineyards and early this year I decided to rent some space at an existing winery, sign some acreage contracts for Riesling in an area dominated by Pinot Noir and start a new leg of this journey.

Cheers,
Bill

You are the Ironman of this BB! [cheers.gif]

@Bill: Wow. What an incredible life story. Best of luck to you and your family on this great venture.

Very cool Bill. I have followed my career and relocation dreams a couple of times and your path is exciting and hopefully rewarding.

Bill,

Love your story. I’m even more intrigued by the wine you will make. I wish you the best of luck.

This is f-ing awesome.

It has brought friendships through online and offline contacts.
It has enhanced travel to places like Provence and Tuscany and Napa and encouraged travel I might not otherwise have undertaken to the Finger Lakes, Sonoma County, Santa Barbara County and Mendocino, the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the Prosser/Walla Walla area of Washington State and the Charlottesville region of Virginia.
It has allowed me to meet a number of winemakers.
It has contributed greatly to the fun of fine dining in restaurants wherever I find myself.
It has become an expensive but rewarding hobby (money isn’t everything.)
It has prompted me to offer winetasting fundraisers at my Episcopalian church about twice a year to share the fun and knowledge of wine appreciation.

My response is a little different. I would answer: all the wonderful, passionate winemakers I’ve met in my wine explorations, from Paul Draper at Ridge and Steve Edmunds of Edmunds St. John; Sebastian Furst at Rudolph Furst in Franken and Hans Leo Christoffel in the Mosel; to Mauro and Giuseppe Mascarello, Enrico Scavino and the Currado family at Vietti in Barolo; Aubert de Villaine at DRC; and Marius Gentaz in Cote Rotie (I’m showing my age), and August Clape and Thierry Allemand in Cornas; and Pascal Schildt of Three Foxes in South Africa.

The best combine passion and opinionatedness with a deep modesty in the face of nature and the vagaries of winemaking. Visiting cellars in France, Italy and Germany has given me insights into those cultures that’s quite different from what you’d get as an ordinary tourist.

It’s funny… I started buying and drinking wine at 21 because I thought “chicks would dig it”. Stupid… I know this now.

But despite teetotaling parents, I found a passion.

I’m amazed how many CEOs and CFOs love having an in-depth discussion about wine over dinner and on that note (and as a ‘WorldWide Account Manager’ aka: Salesman) it’s been good for business.

But the biggest door opened?

Sitting with my son, enjoying a bottle… Seeing his eyes light up as he takes a sip and says “Wow Dad, this is crazy good”. To see him have a moment, like I did so many years ago, enjoying and sharing that time with him…

Magical. End thread.