18 years 1 month
How a Wine Geek Is Born
Most of us wine geeks have a seminal moment in our wine-drinking careers that we can pin down and say “That’s when I got hooked, that’s when I really caught the wine bug.” I bet most of us didn’t have silver spoons in our mouths, and this moment was probably not borne out of some pretentious snobbery involving a $1000 bottle of Bordeaux that had aromas of gunflint and wet saddle leather. I’m willing to bet that, for most American wine geeks anyway, these wine beginnings were much less formal. For my brother it was during his college years at Ithaca when he visited several local wineries in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. For my friend Sean it was when he and his wife travelled to the Napa Valley on their honeymoon. Wine geeks love to tell their wine stories, and it is these stories, these personal connections and experiences that make wine so special to so many people. I thought an appropriate initial column would be to share with you the experiences that got me hooked on spoiled grape juice.