My Philosophy of the Art of Winemaking....Part One......Section A

This is a sizeable topic, and I expect it'll take many years for me to finish it out. But for now, having been making wines for over a decade, I am starting to understand why I am a winemaker.

I come from a family of artists. Most of them disgruntled for one reason or another. One left his home country of Sweden. One became an engineer. My brother is a story unto himself. Each one of us seems to have been firstly hindered by a commitment to a certain medium. Pen-and-ink, oil, watercolor, ceramics, motorcycles, woodworking.

I don't draw. Doesn't mean I can't. But I never spent the effort and put in the time to learn how. But I did know how to drink. As a teenager, you go through all sorts of phases, most of them preoccupied with quantity rather than quality. But somehow early on I was attracted to the taste of really good beer. I started homebrewing when I was 23, with many failed batches of pilsners, IPAs, and meads to learn from. All homebrewers--if you didn't know it already--will drink just about anything. And I was a homebrewer, I had paid good money for that barley and hops, and damn it, it was going to be drunk.

Unfortunately, my palate couldn't handle it after a while.

Comments

  1. Thank goodness you came to your senses! We enjoy your more mature artistic talents. I'll plan to enjoy a bit of Sangiovese this evening myself.

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  2. I would want to be clear about one thing. There's a saying in the wine industry--I think it was perfected during harvest--that goes, "It takes a lot of beer to make good wine." I have to admit it's very true....just come by our crushpad some night in October when it's 45F at 9 PM after working 12 hours already, and you'll understand the need for cheap calories and beer's analgesic effect on pain.

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  3. That beer saying makes me respect winemaking, or envy winemakers, all the more! I have no wine production to show for my beer consumption. I do love Victory Brewing's Hop Wallop. I think it scorched my palate though, because I no longer enjoy Troeg's Nugget Nectar since I got hooked on Hop Wallop.

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