Nurse the Hate: MW Update

 

I have been remiss in writing on the blog.  Almost all of my time is now committed to this Master of Wine program.  I wake up, start reading while eating breakfast, walk the dogs, go to work, eat, get back to wine work I started in the morning, and then have about 35 minutes of "free time" until I fall asleep and start the cycle all over again.  When I sleep, I often dream about writing accurate tasting notes about wines, beating myself up over the exact wording of descriptors for a Prosecco that suburban moms don't think about at all as they slurp it down at lunchtime patios.  This is the personal hell I'm in that is 100% of my own creation.  I am like one of those people that destroy their lives by training for a marathon except I changed the details.  In both cases, there is no justifiable payoff beyond a sense of personal achievement, which I think might be true of almost everything.  Those people that won medals in the Olympics for fringe sports like bobsledding and speed skating dedicated their lives to something that essentially is TV programming.  They win their medal, hop on a plane to go home, get a quick burst of local media attention, and then it's over.  It's you sitting on a couch with a medal.  

It is this realization I am continually trying to balance when my day is ruined because I failed to blindly identify the exact village where a French chardonnay originated from.  Beyond the 50 or so people across the entire planet beating themselves up in a similar fashion, NO ONE CARES.  I saw someone that had crossed the magical threshold of passing the MW exam a couple weeks ago pouring wine samples at a table at a wine event.  A man walked up and said "I'll have some of that.  It's not sweet, is it?  I don't like sweet wine.".  She could have spoken to him for three hours about the specific fermentation techniques, oak aging protocols, differing soils of the vineyards and resulting impact on the grapes, history of the region and recent DOCG rule changes and potential impact to this bottling in the future, and on and on and on.  The guy took a swig of the wine sample, said "That's pretty good", and walked away.  Like most people, he DOESN'T CARE.  This woman spent her life amassing a level of expertise in her field that would put most people to shame, and in the end she was like a wedding bartender giving some Rube a buzz.  She was the olympic bobsled champ pushing a child down a toboggan run at a Kid's Fun Kamp.

I am trying to keep a sense of perspective on this quest.  I am naturally competitive, so when I don't know an answer that someone else does, I get pissed off.  I should keep in mind that every single other person involved in this has a career 100% focused in the wine trade, and I'm just some guy.  It's like I showed up in a room full of airline pilots and I'm pissed off that I can't land on the aircraft carrier deck as well as they do.  I've never flown a plane before for God's sake.  I'm doing my best and working hard.  I had someone get a little snotty with me a couple weeks ago via email.  One on hand, I am willing to look past this perceived slight because most people are very poor at expressing themselves with the written word.  On the other hand, I'm standing here at the apex of this subject and it's not even my field, so cut me some slack.  This is all you do, and it's a side gig for me. 

There is no reason why I can't just "enjoy the journey", though I become irritated at even typing the word "journey" as it is a word that has become synonymous to me as "self-important way of making a chosen task sound epic because you believe the entire world rotates around you".  I was on a Zoom call recently where a woman said "her journey in marketing began with blah blah blah".  I think what would have been more accurate would have been "I took a job out of college and then got a higher paying job shortly afterwards".  In her case her "journey" was "working for one shitty TV station and then going to another shitty TV station".  Get a hold of yourself.  I am not on a journey.  I am just learning way too much about something that interests me.  I need to stay in my shoes, though I'm still pissed off that I recently thought a very identifiable wine was instead a Cornas.  How did I miss that?  (Man hits self in head yelling out "stupid!  stupid! stupid!)

I have been writing only wine essays and tasting notes.  It does feel a bit robotic to write "a traditional cava blend of xarel.lo, macabeo and parellada with distinctive citrus and new tennis ball aromas with slight autolytic character.  The acidity is elevated with a rounded waxy texture on the pithy citrus fruit profile and a moderate finish".  What would be more accurate would have been to say "This is a good sparkling wine to show up with for a group of people that call anything with bubbles "champagne" and can't tell the difference between really good stuff and shit.  They will however drink an ocean of wine when they show up, so this at about $11 makes a lot more sense than busting out the good stuff.  I mean, it's not great, but it's acceptable, so you won't feel like an idiot when your buddy's wife pours a bunch of it into a Red Bull and calls it a "mimosa"."

I'd love to keep writing, but I have used up my 34 minutes of "free time" this morning.  I need to figure out what has to be done to re-plant a vineyard, which is ironic as I'm not sure how to plant grass in six foot radius dead spot in my backyard.  Cheers and be back soon.