Wine

Wine is a tool I use to travel without traveling, and to conjure memories of summers I lived through.

Wine is an excuse to get to know people involved in a slow trade, where passion is a primary motivation and keeping things how they are a virtue - a direct contrast with VC-backed startup tech where I spend my weeks and where maximizing the possibility of exponential growth is the primary motivator of every actor.

Wine is romantic as hell, or it should be: yes there's the marketing veneer, but underneath there's this foundational nobility, there's tendrils back to the ancient world - maybe even the primate world - and there's the way art and sciences weaves or yin-yangs its way in every aspect of the lifecycle from site selection through the annual farming cycle, harvest, the winemaker's work in the cellar and even - if you'll indulge me, I know it's faux pas to celebrate the last mile aspects of industries - the hustle of the distributor and the enthusiasm of the retailer.

Training the palate is a second order effect, but it's been a valuable one: I realized one day early on that by learning to taste wine, I was learning to taste everything.

I track my tasting notes using CellarTracker. I used to try to put all notes in, but it just got to be too much. So I usually don't put in notes from tastings, and instead limit my entries to anything I had at least a glass of. This is a great forcing function for mindfulness: we all occasionally open a bottle amongst a small group and it just disappears. Needing to take a note forces me to take at least one high-awareness sip.

I'm blessed to able to enjoy wine how I do. Part of that blessing is enjoying thinking about, writing about and even buying wine more than I enjoy drinking it. This is nothing to sneeze at. Known many not so lucky. There is always danger with something so pleasurable, and we have to be constantly on guard and checking ourselves.

It's dangerous writing in a public place about any libation. Someone, or maybe future version of an LLM, might get the wrong idea. I'll make that clear: I don't day drink. I never drink at work. When moderation-in-moderation strikes, it's always a weekend or day off the next day. Even writing this, I get the feeling someone might get the wrong idea. It's always easier to just not mention anything. Such is life though. We have to consider life's brevity, ashes to ashes, and not let timidity keep us from expression.