Wine, morality, music, relationships, Experience is the knowledge that delivers us from ignorance
I’m officially a Champagne, Cabernet & Bordeaux drinker, after 26 years of drinking, I can’t shake the need to ingest good food, wine, music & company. I’ll guess that’s a Taurean trait that my star sign claims to command. Truth be known, I don’t really believe in star signs. I regularly get the question, “what is the BEST wine”? and the answer is, “the one that YOU like”. Like morality, music, men or women, your wine choice is based on what you have experienced. The more you try, the more you know what you like and don’t like. The reality is that we are only as adventurous as we allow ourselves to be, thus our individual limit, limits our ability to grow as a wine drinker, morally as a person, music lover, human and global citizen. Allow me to elaborate.
Ignorance can be defined as the lack of knowledge. Recently, I’ve read judgments by Lord Denning while studying a law degree, you truly learn the meaning of words, and understand how to read in or out ideas or principles that can be imported into our jurisdiction. In short, the more words we learn, the more we can say, the deeper our meaning can achieve and the clearer our message can be. The knowledge of more words, raises one from the ignorance of an inability to say what they mean.
In 1993 Sydney, Australia, I first started buying wine, it was my last year of high school and I discovered the internet on a 4880 modem, 486dx2 PC that cost me almost 3 months savings from my enterprises. I saw my pecuniary capacity as meteoric and the need to become an aficionado in wine as imperative to my up and coming fortunes. Hope was high, the stockmarket was raging and my most vivid recollection of the era was purchasing what was viewed as the best champagne of the era, the 1982 Dom Perignon champagne, with its toasty brioche flavours. I had it in the fridge for the moment when I obtained my drivers license. Devoid of proper champagne glasses, my father and I drank the bottle from styrofoam cups, toasting to my good fortune. Sacrilegious I know.
At the time, the regional wineries from the Hunter Valley were reputed to have been “shovelling” oak chips into their chardonnay barrels. My first taste of an aged 1992 Chardy was like a punch in the face with oak, the buttery sweetness of the grape and Malolactic shock from the concoction made me wonder if this was how it was meant to be. Months later, I grew accustomed to flavours and started buying cases of various chardonnays. Over the next year I tried verdelho’s, semillions, reislings and chenin blancs. I was trapped in a world where I ranked the world by what I knew. Little was I to know, that you only grow by discovering more. So that was my aim, to be better, to know more, which unfortunately for my liver, meant to drink more.
Fast forward two years, second year of university, studying an Economics degree, I decided to travel three months in the USA. I discovered the most Australian grape varietal to hit the world since Paul Hogan’s, “that’s not a knife” quote, Shiraz. I thought chardy was a punch in the mouth, the traditional South Australian Barossa Shiraz was the tannin punch that could knock out Chuck Wepner. For the next decade, I would try to knock out the tannins with Malbecs from Argentina, Carmenere from Chile, Cab varietals from Australian regions in Victoria, Western Australia and even Tasmania. The USA wines from Napa were outstanding and I tried South African reds but found them too green. Obviously, they all had their appeal but I was one sided in my view of the world. That decade saw me taste everything from a late 1950’s to mid 90’s Penfolds Grange, Henschke Hill of Grace and some lesser varietals. I swore my undying fealty to Shiraz and its potent powers of persuasive passion. The staple diet which would be imbibed at house parties I attended in Australia was the humble Penfolds 407 or poor mans Grange, a 389.
I had moved to the city of Gold Coast for a time, a coastal town much like Miami Florida where the drinking of room temperature reds was unheard of. Those 4–5 years changed my palate forever. I went from red drinker before leaving Sydney to champagne-aholic in weeks in the Gold Coast. That changed back when I moved back to Sydney. Interestingly, I’d dated brunettes in Sydney and Melbourne, but the new city had an excessive number of gorgeous skinny blondes, maybe it was the warm weather, or the Miami vibe. Either way, I was hooked and as Twain said “Too much or anything is bad, but too much champagne is just right”, or Coco Chanel’s “I only drink Champagne on two occasions, when I am in love and when I am not” or Napoleon Bonaparte who said “I drink champagne when I win, to celebrate… and I drink champagne when I lose, to console myself.” Either way, Champagne was for a time my drink of choice and it made my palate more susceptible to other flavours.
Charlie champagne was born and I chose Mumm, Lois Roederer, Moet Chandon and Veuve Clicquot as my staple drinks. From time to time I had the Ruinart or Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque, but if I had my crew, Lois’ Cristal was flowing like tap water. My best memory was a new years eve, partying in the hotel room next to Justin Timberlake. Suffice to say that way too many celebs and I partied, imbibed and saw the genuine benefits of champagne. There was no better, refreshing, intoxicating drink than the bubbles. I then decided to start getting it by the box and for one birthday I tried Duval Leroy Femme at $225 a bottle. Ten years latter, that bottle was worth almost three times. Then I found a Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill which on one occasion took me and a friend travel that afternoon to another state, physically and mentally. Champagne was certainly an experience of glorious joys.
My tastes expanded from whites to big reds, but I had missed the middle that had so much to offer. I’ve been told, Pinot noir is the most versatile grape. I went from oaky Chardy, to bold Shiraz in the blink of an eye. Much was to change as I soon discovered French Bordeaux. I did battle with the tastes of Cab, Merlot and Cab Franc, once drinking at a tasting almost an entire bottle of Chateau Margaux 2000 which I found too soft and watery, far removed from its supposed celestial throne. I found my home with the terroir of Chateau Figeac, eventually that night finishing almost a bottle with my good friend. My friends and I were well accustomed to top end Australian Shiraz and thought that French reds were soft, mellow and incapable of rendering us “legless”(intoxicated). Little did we know that our legs were slightly buckled by the gentle potency of the French aftermath. I’d heard of people investing in wines, and thought it a silly mistake until fund managers started talking about wine as the next big investment. I had failed in some of my previous investments, but had a reasonable income that kept my lifestyle propped up. Champagne, Bordeaux took priority in my purchasing/investment list.
It would take another decade of “collecting” cases and drinking the cheap quaffables to determine that I made the right choice in trying different varietals, traveling and being content with what was available. As relationships passed through my life and that of my friends, I realised that they too needed to be experienced. While a man can procreate forever, his passion must be succoured, else it dies out, as Martin Luther, Strauss II and many other wrote with “wein, wieb und gesang”, among others. Wine, women/relationships and song/music are three things that bring joy to experience in life and more importantly, teach you or show you what you like and don’t like.
I couldn’t believe my luck at after having drunk glorious reds, champagnes, then discovering the sublime pleasures of the more relaxed and tempered bordeaux’s. At that stage my daughter was 15, and I decided to take her through Europe where we would eventually stop by Veuve Cliquot’s caverns, sipping a La Grande Dame, meeting the owner of Chateau Figeac (pics on my personal FB). That espial moment, I discovered that there was more to life than just one varietal and more to life than one love of wine. I’d given up several “loves” to look after my daughter as a single dad, but it was a pleasure to show her that life was more than one wine, city or anything. Life was to be lived and it needed to be experienced as much as possible.
With music, I recall my life was surrounded by music, from awaking as a pre teen to my dad playing classical music, then being exposed at the parties my parents had to various styles of Latino music. As I grew up in an English speaking land, I listened to the Rock music of the 80’s but still had records of the 70’s, by artists like Kiss, the disco era was filled with the Village People, Bee Gees, Abba, Donna Summers, the Doobie brothers, to name a few. I fell in love with the different genres of the 60’s with Elvis and the Beetles and even the 50’s crooners. For almost a year in secondary, I listened to Reggae with a school friend, becoming fond of Prince Far I. I spent another year learning Tangos and immersing myself in my families heritage and learning Cambalache. My parents took me to see an Italian artist that was very famous in Latin America, Nicola Di Bari, who I learned to appreciate. Years later, I was going to Greek nights with friends and listening to Notis Sfakianakis while driving to the club. However, still to this day I haven’t found a genre that I don’t like, except for death metal, rap post 2010 and anything that’s too cry baby. Music, like wine, and relationships, have to be experienced, you need to cast your net wide and far sometimes, to discover what your palate, ear or heart prefers.
Legal practitioners are advised to put aside their morality when dealing with a client in the aid of equality before the law. Morality essentially comes down to what you have experienced, thus to my earlier point that wine is neither good nor bad, just what YOU like or don’t like. In short, to know more, you need to experience it, immerse yourself and decide if that is for you or not. That “thing” can be experiential like relationships, wine, music, literature even religious. Either way, the more you encounter, the less ignorant you become to those “things” and hopefully, the better human that you become. Come to 2020, years later after collecting dozens of Bordeaux’s and wines from the globe, I consider it a moral right to enjoy a good bottle of wine at any time. A good bottle can be defined by the corresponding company, circumstance, and temperament of that wine. To date, I can’t say that I have a definitive guide on anything, but I have some experience and like the Socratic limitation on knowledge, test my knowledge on what I believe I know as often as possible. In any case, I hope you enjoyed my soliloquy. Now go forth and try something new, expand your horizons.
