Old Vines, Old Bloke

 I had an email a few weeks ago from a friend I met during my days, or rather evenings, at the WSET in 2010 and beyond. She is a brand and marketing professional and had asked me if I would be prepared to take part in an interview connected to some research for a new wine based initiative. So this morning I did just that.

As with everything in 2020 it took place over the internet in a session run by a marketer who interviewed me alongside another former student colleague to gather our thoughts on 'old vine' wines and their potential appeal. We were asked to begin by explaining who we were and what was our relationship to the wine trade.  I am an interested consumer. My fellow interviewee had been a professional sommelier and wine buyer, having spent time working with both Gordon Ramsay and the Galvin Brothers as their head sommelier.  What rarified company.

It was fun, but I found myself feeling a little conflicted between my interest in exploration of the wine world and the love of the idea of supporting small producers and their ways of life, with my increasing cynicism about both marketing in general and the levels of guff that get spouted by experts in the wine community.

Anyway, I am told I will receive some wine in appreciation for my time and so I will look forward to that.

In preparing for the interview I had a brief look back at my wine career, if you can call it that. In particular I looked at my 'Late Harvest' blog, which has again fallen into disuse. I shall start again, indeed have just started again, to taste and comment on wines regularly but may move away form the alphabet disciplines I have used previously. Or not. What struck me is that the blog entries fell away completely and suddenly at the end of 2015 and the only real attempt to pick them up again was at the start of 2019, but they didn't make it past the end of April that year. What is significant about these dates, I wonder?

I think it is this. 2016 was the year in which I travelled the world the most frequently in both professional and personal capacities. This included four, two-week working trips to Australia, one to Hong Kong and Shanghai, and a two week holiday to Vietnam, starting and ending in Hong Kong. There were also a few trips to Belfast, one for an entire week, and the whole lot was followed up in early 2017 with a trip to Johannesburg and my last trip to Australia which was followed by a two week holiday to New Zealand.  During this period I was working constantly and under some pressure and I had little time for anything else.  I was not happy, but too busy to really notice. Four weeks after the last trip I was made redundant which lead to a new way of professional life that ended, by my choosing, in November 2018. I think that explains the 2016 to 2018 hiatus, but why did 2019 fail?

Well, I was doing ok until the end of a very enjoyable three week holiday in Japan. But my mother died whilst we were away and my mother-in-law decided not to live at home with us anymore once we returned. That meant a sudden and dramatic change of life again, a vacuum which has happily filled with holidays in Croatia, Alsace, Peterborough(!), the Lake District and Piedmont.

Looking back, pretty much all of that would have provided opportunities to explore and comment, but I think my mind was elsewhere. So, off we again, especially as the current pandemic means that I have to do something to pass the time!

Locked down again

I write this sitting in the kitchen having recently examined contents of my cheese fridge where there are several hard cheeses, both blues and reds (don't go mixing the reds along with the blues, as the great Fairport Convention once sang on one of their less great tracks) and some soft. Reviewing my output has caused me to ponder on wtf I am doing with my time.

The soft cheeses which are quite young are rather pleasing. The blues are promising and the reds a little bitter. Very much like the emerging outcome of the US Presidential election that is currently failing to conclude.

Any old road up, as an old boss and now older friend had a habit of saying, I notice time has flown by and I have again allowed my pointless blogging to drift into abeyance. 

Given that I am now in my seventh decade and officially more vulnerable to this centuries plague, I think it time to give it another go.

I am at least on paper a qualified bore in both wine and cheese, but as The One has implied she has noticed have done nothing useful with this status. I have shelled out quite a few quid on gaining the certificates so perhaps I should get up off my ageing arse and take a bit of a risk.

What puts me off a little is the sense that the world is already full of similarly qualified dullard and that one more would only add to the surplus. On the other hand, who cares? 

I will spend some time preparing a pilot wine & cheese evening for a small bunch of carefully selected friends who, I hope, will give me their honest comments as to whether others may be interested.

In the meantime.