I caught the wine bug the way people fall asleep, or - per Hemingway - go bankrupt: slowly, and then all at once.

The slow phase was roughly my-mid to late 20s to roughly age 36. Got a real job and could afford a bottle or two a week, then I found a wine shop I liked and started taste exploring. I knew a few regions really well, especially the Edna Valley where I'd spent a lot of time hanging with friends on long weekend trips. I'd lived in San Diego for my 20s, then moved to Portland and was getting to know and really appreciate Willamette Valley pinot noir and these magical places like the Eola-Amity, the Ribbon Ridge, Worden Hill Road...

At 36 I found myself splitting time between Portland and Palo Alto, racking up miles on Alaska Airlines, living Monday through Thursday in that magical little rectangle directly across from Stanford University and bounded by California Avenue, the El, Park Boulevard and the Caltrain tracks. I was working on a startup, and I needed something I could play with and contrast my work against. Wine didn't seem like too bad of an idea. I wanted to pivot from drinking wine for relaxation to really understanding wine, appreciating its complexities as the first-class citizen, and relegating the intoxication factor to a secondary role.

So I became a regular at this wine shop on California Avenue called Vin Vino Wine. They had a crazy tasting list that they charged for by the glass, usually a dozen at a time, often the cheapest tasting being like $2-3 and also often a multi-hundred dollar bottle for $20, $40, even $50 a taste. Many of the wines were old world. I didn't know anything about old world wines. Yet.

The tastings were casual as it gets. You'd belly up to the long bar, look at the menu, and then ask for as many as you'd like by number. Sometimes you'd come in and a guest had gotten one of each, and they'd be standing there trying to contain their joy over having a dozen glasses with splashes of wine set out for them, the everyday afternoon transformed into a glimpse at royalty.

Whenever the lineup was especially deep - if I remember right, they were posted weeks if not months ahead of time - there was this group of guys who'd be there at their spot at the end of the bar, third base. ~30ish years my senior, and obviously having had success in their lives, you'd know they were there by the cars parked in front. Often I'd go over around 3:30 or 4, and it would just be them and I. They looked at me as some cross between a jester whose naivety was for their amusement, and a protégé. I've never been one who takes insults easy, but I'm also wily enough to trade a little localized shame in exchange for wisdom.

Once the laughter over me not knowing a Barolo from Brunello from Barbarosa subsided, they patiently taught me a lot about all sorts of old world wines. Three stand out:

Piedmontese Nebbiolo: If wines can be thought of as collections of elements - fruit flavor and character, elemental and earthy flavors, tanin, acidity, body, texture, intensity, length - then surely the nebbiolo-based wines of Langhe, Ghemme, Roero, and especially Barbaresco and Barolo are kings. Often even the entry-level priced wines around $20 (edit from 2025: $30 now) show poistive in many if not all of these elements.

Burgundy. Naturally, being into Oregon Pinot, I should get to know the original. More structure, more balance, such variance between villages. Beaune, Volnay, Aloxe-Corton, Gevrey, Nuits-Saint-Georges, and how they differ. Also the whites, the Chards, and their great acidity and chalky salinity.

Riesling. Woah. I had no idea white wines got the this complex or produced this kind of movement across the palate. And then the distinctions between the German regions: The Mosel with bright flavors of apricots and spice, the Saar with its dense minerality and cutting acidity, the green flavors of the Pfalz.

Ramping up my knowledge of old world wines probably would have happened somewhere and some time else, but it happened there at Vin Vino, and I'm grateful for both my mentors and for the shop and its tasting format.

Edit from 2025: Vin Vino Wine was sold in 2018. I've been in a few times since, and it's still great but also not the same. The group of guys with their cars have seemingly moved on.