Welcome to my blog, A Weakness for Wine

Hi, I’m Scott. Like you, I have an interest in wine. (Interest is probably a colossal understatement – wine is really more of a passion for me, something I seem powerless to resist…hence the name of my blog.) Let me clarify up front, I have no formal training in wine yet (see below) – though I’ve happily devoted years toward self-study on the matter. (Cue my wife’s jokes about my liver being pickled, me being half-grape, etc.) So, this blog is as much about my thoughts on wine, wine regions and wine-related travel as it is on the development of my own wine knowledge. I see myself on a journey toward enlightenment and I invite you to tag along through this blog.

I’ll share more about who I am and where this blog should go, but it might be humorous to start with the description I created for my Twitter feed:

An oenophile, gourmand and wanderer masquerading as a corporate attorney and musing on everything wine. Married to the lovely Cara. Classic jazz aficionado.

While all of that is basically true – jeez it sounds pretentious when condensed down to Twitter size. Trust me, I do actually know how to speak to people and I haven’t been hidden in my basement since 1984. Also, if you ever hear me use the phrase “one of the little people,” I’m definitely referring to myself. If you subscribe to my blog, I promise you can verbally lambaste me if I inadvertently sound pompous and I’ll post the best chastisements. (How’s that for an incentive to sign up? I can almost hear torch-wielding villagers with French accents chanting “cork it windbag” and “down with wine snobs” as they subscribe.)

For the last twenty years I’ve been an in-house attorney for a large corporation. Not a bad gig, but it doesn’t offer me a lot of opportunity for creativity and no opportunity to incorporate wine into me daily work. (Don’t get me wrong – a nice glass of Chablis would brighten a rewrite of corporate bylaws and a supple Pomerol would certainly improve the review of a boring software license – but despite what you see on Suits alcohol is definitely an after-hours indulgence for this counsel.) So, I was sitting there one weekend with this passion for wine and the left side of my brain crackling with unused creative energy, and I had one of those eureka moments – I could blog about wine. I started ticking off the pros and cons like a good transactional attorney (and then promptly dismissed any cons like most litigators), and was left with this bottom line: a wine blog would indulge my creative side, give me an excuse to drink more wine (admittedly, this was the weakest part of my argument as my wine consumption wasn’t actually suffering) and force me to learn more about wine.

As I mentioned, I love classic jazz. To me, wine is a lot like jazz. It’s evocative, sensual, moving and memorable. Art Blakey, the influential “hard-bop” drummer, could just as easily have been speaking of fine wine when he said “jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.”

Like most wine, jazz also seems to get better with age. Steve Lacy, the great Dixieland saxophonist, seemed to agree: “Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.” Personally, I love anything that is vintage and has stood the test of time. The fact that a jazz arrangement or glass of Madeira or Bordeaux from 50, 60 or 70 years ago can still move me, evoke a mood (whether pleasant, melancholy or nostalgic) or just make the world…stop…for a moment is awe-inspiring.

Rather than give an actual rating to the wines I review in my blog (trust me, if you need a point system to judge your wines there are plenty of places to find those out there), I thought I’d suggest musical pairings from various jazz legends – so expect plenty of references here to Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, etc.

My wife and I are also self-avowed foodies and we love to travel, so I’m sure I’ll throw in a few thoughts on some of our favorite meals, restaurants and destinations from time to time. If not for ol’ Copernicus and Galileo, I would swear that the world revolved around Paris, not the Sun. For my wife, Paris is actually a close third (the heretic) to Dublin and Florence. We also love New York, London, Rome, Rio…

With that background in mind, I should add that I am in the process of pursuing a more formal course of study in wine. I have a WSET® Level 2 Award in Wines and Spirits (with Distinction), and I am now pursuing a WSET® Level 3 Award in Wines and Spirits. I will certainly share any thoughts (read: whine and complain) about that process as I go along. I’ll also share answers to some of those wine-related questions that have stumped me to date. By blogging about those, it will emphasize the answers with me and might answer outstanding questions for you. Win-win, right?

Of course, this blog is ultimately about savoring wine. I intend to do just that, and I invite you to join me by tasting the wines I review, sharing your own wine recommendations and generally appreciating the gift of fine wine. In the end, the memory of wine is more important than the words used to describe it – just like jazz. Thelonious Monk, the legendary improvisational pianist, summed up the experience of jazz this way: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” He could have as easily been talking about wine blogging…so I’ll try not to miss the experience of the wines I eventually describe here.

Cheers!