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.

I am a cave man

The new life, if not yet into the full Late Harvest, is going well, thank you for not asking. I have been on duty in the community shop 23 times since early December and have found that very enjoyable and a complete change from the last 40 years of proper work.

I have just invested £15.36 (plus £35 carriage) in a used wine fridge which will become my cheese cave. That is, the place where all the cheese I pan to make will be put to wait until it is ready to be eaten.

So much to learn but, by more judgement than luck, plenty of time in which to learn it.

Open All Hours

I have donned my pinny and greeted the locals with what I hope is a welcoming smile.

I have taken deliveries from the butcher and the baker, but am still awaiting the chandler. I have used the till, coffee machine & dishwasher, but not yet the oven or the hob. As a result I have almost completely forgotten what I used to think of as real work.

Just before starting the Third Age, I went along to an evening at the WSET school in Bermondsey where the Academy of Cheese was hosting an event entitled 'Tipsy Cheeses'. This was a tasting illustrating a range of cheeses that involve alcohol in either their make or post-make stages. (The Academy of Cheese uses the 'make/post-make' model to define how stages in the development of any given cheese allow it to be broadly classified.)

This was a great evening and it has spurred on my enthusiasm for my own artisan micro-dairy, such that last week I made two cheeses and this morning waxed the latest batch of Chiltern Crumbler.  I say batch but this is really one 850gm wheel which will need a few months to develop before I will know if it is any better or worse than previous attempts. The other cheese is experimental and much smaller, weighing in at only 140gm.  The difference between the two, apart from the size, is that the smaller (unnamed until I eat it) cheese was made by putting the curds into a mould and allowing it to drain under its own weight, whereas the Chiltern Crumbler was put into a cheese press for more than 12 hours. I am hoping that the smaller, unpressed cheese will be softer and creamier, but only time will tell.

Today, apart from trying to find the discipline to pay attention to the Christmas shopping, I will be learning how to use my pH meter that The One kindly gave me too long ago. I am very grateful for such a generous gift and feel guilty that I have yet to learn how to use it but, as with other potentially complicated things, I have been a little too cautious and not have enough courage to make mistakes.

The same is true of my digital audio interface, but more of that on another day.

Safe with food

I have not even made the transition from full-time wage-slavery, yet, but have already picked up my first third age qualification.

I am delighted to report that I can now be trusted with food, as I am the proud possessor of a Level 2 Award in Food Safety and Hygiene for Catering.  To achieve this Herculean success I had to endure three hours of well-intentioned lecture, which reminded me so much of the episode of The Office where Gareth explained to a new female recruit how to correctly lift a box, and ninety minutes of on-line instruction from a robotic Northern lass who I imagine had been briefed to speak kindly to the educationally challenged folk wrongly anticipated to making up the majority of her audience, followed by 30 multiple choice questions, two of which I got wrong. One of these was about blue sticking plasters and the other about the effect water has on bacterial pathogens when heated to 82 degrees. On the former, I have no idea what the question actually asked and on the latter I was too optimistic about the power of wet heat.

All of the above will be put into practice for the first time next Tuesday. What larks.

Time for the Late Harvest?

I fell out of the bloggersphere a little while ago, but have a sudden urge to splurge as it were.

Today is 1st November 2018 and I have just entered what looks like it will be the last month of my 40 years of proper jobs.

What to do? Well, I am looking forward to embracing 'the Third Age' and building what some people call a portfolio career. This means that I no longer have to answer tedious questions, such as 'what do you do?' with a reference to my means of making ends meet.  I find it curious that this exchange is a social norm, implying that the most interesting detail we expect to learn about  each other is how we make money, or that this is the characteristic that most clearly defines who a person is.

The first item in my third age portfolio will be participation in a community endeavour to establish and staff a shop in our home village. I will be trained before the month is over and will don my apron in December to undertake whatever duties may come my way. Making coffee? Selling bread? Cleaning the toilet? Probably all of that and more. I will let you know.

I plan to restart my golfing career. I last held a CONGU recognised handicap in 2003 and am keen to pick up the challenge again. My last handicap was 22 and I had spent ten years trying, but failing, to get it down into the teens; I still think I can do it which is a perfect example of the triumph of optimism over experience.

November 2003 was also the month in which I retired from the Royal Borough Band after 25 years very enjoyable service. I am both proud of my bandmates for still performing 15 years later, but also rather irritated that the whole thing didn't collapse in response to my departure. Perhaps they never needed a banjo player in the first place? But then, who would?  I have had some musical activity since those days, but almost none since late 2008. First step on this road is to find local venues and go, as audience, to those. The Blues Bar, Tring, is high on my agenda.

So, what of wine? I am still keen and still exploring. A part time role in retail? Some further efforts towards delivering tastings and even education, perhaps? I had a minor setback when I was dropped as an associate at the IWC, but it's their party and they can invite whosoever they wish and it has not diminished my enthusiasm. (See the theme?)

Holidays, gardening, exercise, bees and cheese all offer opportunities that I will relish, as will spending more time with those that I love, both near and far.

Keep safe.

A bit of reflection

I started this blog at the time I signed up to study for the WSET Diploma. That was in September 2010. It was supposed to take two years to complete but, in fact took me nearly three. Six months of the overrun was down to me taking a break when the day job unexpectedly offered me a chance to take on a senior role I never thought I would experience. I enjoyed it but failed to keep the job. I rushed back to study and found that I had a mountain to climb. Once I had failed one half of the biggest of the exam I sensibly allowed myself a year to prepare for the resit.

If you read my posts from that time you will see that even with that time to study it was not a foregone conclusion. I successfully took the last exam in June 2013 and enjoyed the graduation ceremony in the Guildhall in January 2014.

So here I am two years after that wondering how to feel about it all.

Mostly good, to paraphrase Douglas Adams.  Throughout the long study period and almost until now I have told anyone who has cared to ask that I was laying down the foundations for a second career, post eventual retirement from the current one, but now as the reality of retirement is vaguely visible over the horizon of my 60th birthday,  itself still just over four years away, I wonder if that is at all realistic.

The wine business is an interesting place when viewed from just inside the touchline. It has a range of cliques, if that's not offensive, such as the world authorities who publish so many written words every month it's impossible to imagine them ever not typing but yet they love to write about the 1500 new Burgundies they have tasted and assessed in detail, so they must take a break sometimes.  You also get the trendy wannabee iconoclasts who love faddy things like natural wine, orange wine and obscure producers who they once met at a secret tasting. They tend to be young and either penniless or early retired hedge fund managers.

So where could I fit? Hmm, ....