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Welcome

About this site

Simply put this is my wine website, intended to be low brow and tacky for the kid at heart who prefers wine without the pretension.  The inspiration for this site comes from certain "Well-Traveled, Cellar-Endowed" types who attempt to assess my "wine knowledge" in a trivializing manner, e.g. "Have you had wine from this region?" "What do you think of the soil?"  "When we were there, you know, the place that you were not, we ate the soil and found it to be a divine measure of the grape quality?"  "How do you measure your grapes?"  So to many, the sommelier represents the opportunity for those of wealth to engage in a pissing match with those who represent the everyday;  And that's my point. 

Most sommeliers represent the everyday wine drinker, so the focus isn't on knowing every trivializing aspect of wine.  There may be a need to specialize in certain wine regions if one seeks to assess wine on an investment basis.  However, most sommeliers are not this.  Rather, they are generalist seeking to give people the tools to assess wine for themselves.  Do any of us need to assess the wine?  Nope! Which then begs the question why do it?  Easy, diners are paying money for a product, and many of them, who do not sample various tastings like service employees who undertake tastings for wine menus, will likely request assistance in understanding the bottle they are drinking.  That's why I am a sommelier.  It's part of my job.  I've worked with large wine cellars, and took the first level, just to ensure I had a good working breadth of knowledge. This does not mean I am a walking dictionary of wine knowledge.  No one is!  So why carry on as if I am a dictionary, when such an orientation to the "sommelier" is unreasonable?  Easy, some people just enjoy partaking in the bigotries of classism.  Yes, I am not going to be cellar-endowed or well-traveled (which in my case this is a choice I have made, being that the "Edinburgh" tradition had its desires of me that I am thoroughly rejecting and not by way of philosophy, but rather by way of informatic production).  However, unlike most drinkers, I work with wine methodically, on the basis of a professional framework.  That is I try not to know the particulars of wine, but rather tour guide someone through the tasting experience, quickly (while doing a million other things in real-time), so one who has paid for a bottle can assess the value of that bottle for themselves, and hopefully over time, to know the good bottles from the bad bottles, the one notes from the dynamic orchestrations. But let's do talk about wine, so I can give all of the wrong answers, outright lie, or simply not know, in the process of engaging one who elects to trivialize who I am and my job.  Somm is the result of years of grunt work in the service industry.  Beyond the surface, I just don't find the "Sommelier" to be a romantic profession.  In fact, other than assessing wine for investment (A Specialized Master Sommelier), I don't see the "Sommelier" being a profession at all.  It's just a consequence of working in the service industry for a long time. 

XOXO

Wine Punk