Viva el Vino

Vino Viva translates to "Came Alive". Vino also means wine, which is a living product. It is alive and changing from the time the grapes are planted until they are drank as wine. The wine is constantly changing. Getting better or worse, or just different. We are changing to, and this blog is perhaps also about me changing my career. Let me explain a bit more.

The idea for this blog came from another blog post from an author who I really admire - Tim Ferriss. When I first read Tim’s book, the 4 hour workweek, I dismissed him for a crazy sensationalist only out to sell books. A few years later I revisited the book, and got huge value from it. It was a case of the student needing to be ready for the teacher. I’ve followed Tim Ferriss’ blog now for a few years and find him to have insightful and creative ideas in the areas of lifestyle and entrepreneurial design. On October 4th, just as I was pondering how I might break into the wine business in some way with no formal training, and the only experience of really liking to drink wine... this post came into my email in-box: “8 steps to getting what you want without formal credentials”. So... this blog is my attempt at step 2 of Tim’s 8 step process.

By the time I read this, Step 1 (choose a field you wish to hack) was basically done. I want to become a sort of “sommelier light”. I don’t want to be a wine judge, or a sommelier at a famous restaurant, or a wine critic, but I know I would like to explore doing something entrepreneurial related to wine. And, I know I’m going to need to be more of an expert than I am today. I would like the business to have something to do with education - helping regular people who don’t want to be wine geeks, but think they could get more enjoyment from buying and drinking wine if they knew a little more about it.

So, according to Tim’s step 2, I am to read 1 book a week. I’ve purchased 8 books and skimmed several of them. I am now in the process of reading them. On October 15-16, I attended a 2 day intensive class from the UC Davis Extension college called “Introduction to the Sensory Evaluation of Wine”. I have to say that although the class was excellent, I left liking wine a lot less than before the class began. Becoming analytical about a sensory experience like music or wine can tend to reduce the pure, uneducated sense of enjoyment. So, I don’t necessarily want to ruin the wine experience for anyone, and I see there is value in learning more. But, I want to keep it in perspective, realizing that wine is made to be enjoyed, not analyzed.

I am thinking about how to approach this blog - how to get started, what to write that will have value for other people. Which is hard because I feel that I am just learning myself -- how can I write something of value? Well, maybe I can’t, yet. But I’m just going to start and let the writing take me where it will. Perhaps by writing what I’m doing in my learning, I’ll discover something along the way that will help make sense of the random bits of learning that I’m doing now. That is typically how these things work, I think.