About
I can’t possibly refer to myself in the third person, so I’ll just let you know a bit about how I came to wine and why I write about it.
When I turned 18 my parents bought me a case of German Riesling as a birthday gift. The drinking age in Illinois was 18 at the time, so all was good legal-wise, but it was such an out of character gesture for my folks. They were of the Highball/Manhattan generation and neither of them encouraged me to drink booze, but my father had stumbled upon a group (Pieroth?) that did in-home wine tastings of German wine. He liked ‘em sweet and so when 18 rolled around he bought the box for me so we could have a glass together.
A great guy.
From that point on wine was a part of my life. I passed through infatuation, snobbery and elitism rather quickly. Being broke most of the time knocks that right down to the ground. No, it took time and a million jobs in restaurants and then in retail wine shops to shape my understanding of wine.
Basically, wine, like any other object of desire, is a perfect mirror of our desires, prejudices and expectations. As such, it is a filter on human industry, on longing, satisfaction and aesthetics. It is ritual and solace. A hazard and a dream. If my father had given me a ‘67 Mustang on my 18th birthday I suppose I would be writing about cars in the same way. But it was a box of wine, and so you get to read about wine instead.
That’s it. There ain’t no more. But of course, there is a lot more. You’ll just have to check in once and a while and read about it.
All the best,
Mark Child