New Years Resolution 2016: Share 50 different bottles of wine with 50 different people

I’ve never really taken New Years resolutions particularly seriously. They always seemed like the kind of thing that other people did; you’d hear about them and you’d write them off immediately because you knew it was highly unlikely that 30-cigarettes-a-day Chris was likely to go cold turkey anytime soon, it was just a temporary fad that repeats itself every year. The other aspect of it was that, well, if you want something so badly why bother waiting until January 1st to begin? Just get on with it! I’d had a few New Years resolutions myself that I had quite forgotten about by the second week of January, so in general not a great success rate. However, as I get slowly older, these sort of rituals are becoming more important to me, as with things like Christmas and other peoples unscripted achievements; I’m much more likely to invite a friend for dinner after he passes his driving test than I am for a birthday, for example. Hence, this year, I decided to actually give a New Years resolution a go, albeit with a twist: Do something for other people.

Over the last year I’ve discovered that a lot of my happiness is closely related to how much I can study/drink/share wine; it’s a huge part of my life and something I hold very dear. At the same time, I’ve discovered social media as a necessary part of my business plan and whilst some of it is quite nice, the rest is rather obnoxious with big personalities all competing to be heard. In the wine industry, this also involves memes being spammed around the place, usually involving a joke about how much fun it is to drink wine to excess, which apparently are very popular. Sometimes famous quotes about wine are tied in here somehow, and this I found both interesting and irritating. Irritating because these quotes are usually thrown around simply to generate ‘likes’ and interesting because it gave me an idea for my New Years resolution. You see, I really do believe that wine is a great uniter of people, that the right wine can light up your day and that great wine should always be shared. That makes for a nice easy, if expensive, resolution, right? Let’s take 50 different people and share 50 different bottles of wine with them. Well, I got started slightly late due to my January vacation, but it turns out it’s not a difficult resolution to execute! Below are the first 5 people I had the pleasure of opening a bottle with; 45 more to go!

1. Renee. Renee was someone I had met a long time ago at a wine tasting in Barcelona, and I often see her around my local neighbourhood. She works with Devour Barcelona, an excellent food tour company who manage to blend the delights of Spanish culture and culinary arts together for their guests through informative and fun walking tours. We’ve recently been collaborating together for a new project and I consider myself hugely fortunate to have her guidance on the practicalities of the tourism industry in Barcelona, as well as her sense of humour and fun over 10am coffees in the Born. We shared a bottle of Finca Emperatriz 2009, a single estate Tempranillo blend from Rioja, aged in a mixture of French and American oak. Easy, smooth and aromatic drinking with company to match! If you want to find out more about Devour Barcelona, check them out here: http://devourbarcelonafoodtours.com/

2+3. Ashley and Alex. You heard me complaining about social media before? Well, this would be the part that I enjoy the most; meeting new people that I otherwise wouldn’t. Ashley and Alex are the creators of the food and travel blog Inpursuitofadventure.org and happened to be visiting Barcelona as the last stop in their euro trip. They got in touch through twitter whilst I was in Argentina in January, and I promised to let them know when I was back in Barcelona.

We met up in Bodega Maestrazgo and it was the first time I’d met them. What a lovely couple; enthusiastic, passionate and just fun to be around. Both Alex and Ashley had worked for wineries in Sonoma and Napa so had an appreciation for wine but hadn’t had the chance to try many top quality Spanish wines yet. With Ashley I opted for Clos Mogador 2013; a powerful, energetic wine from DOQ Priorat and one of the best expressions to come out of the region; Catalunya in a bottle. With Alex, I chose Clio 2012; he is a big fan of Californian wines and Clio is very much built in the same style, with masses of dense, dark fruit and big soft tannins. During the evening, they told me about their passions, ambitions and dreams which are to write concise, informative and fun travel books to help people really discover local culture. To find out more about these guys, the places they visit and their adventures, make sure you visit: http://www.inpursuitofadventure.org/

4. Ricardo. Ricardo was one of my first ‘wine friends’ in Barcelona. I first met him at one of my tastings and then subsequently at trade tastings around the city. A deeply intelligent (Recent PhD graduate, congratulations!) and hilariously sarcastic Chilean, with a love for Sauvignon Blanc, cats and Star Wars; quite a character! Since then I’ve tried to meet him regularly for glasses of wine whenever I can, as he’s just a very good person to be around. Plus, he has a deep appreciation for the wines of the world and putting the world to rights once tipsy; two things greatly relevant to my interests.

We decided to explore New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from the most iconic wine available: Cloudy Bay 2015. Despite being a Sauvignon Blanc fan, Ricardo had never tried the New World benchmark from Marlborough, and this was the perfect opportunity to introduce it. The 2015 vintage was quite warm in New Zealand, making this bottle particularly accessible. We paired it with soft sheeps cheese from Languedoc in France, fresh bread and sundried tomatoes. Lovely!

5. Rupert. Rupert is one very few English friends I have in the city ;nothing against English people, it’s just worked out that my group of friends tends to be a mixture of people from all over the place. When I started my business I had never had a phone with a camera, never had a Facebook account, twitter, instagram… search engine optimisation? What is that?! Enter, Rupert. Rupert would meet with me once every two weeks to patiently explain the basics of running a business from the online perspective in 2015/16, and how visibility is very important. In return, I would open a bottle of something new and prepare a small lunch for us both. During this time, I learnt a huge amount about social media, online visibility and website design, half of which I very quickly chose to give up on in favour of spending my time studying (there are only 24 hours in the day, after all), whilst focusing hard on the other 50%. I also discovered that Rupert was a big fan of spicy, powerful Tempranillo based wines, hence our choice:

Numanthia 2005. Numanthia is an icon of Toro, a small appellation to the West of Ribera del Duero made famous for its powerful wines made from the Tempranillo clone ‘Tinto del Toro’. In youth it is a bit of a mouthful, to say the least. With 11 years of age, it has mellowed to something truly fantastic; so much so that I’ve organised my next wine tastings around the region so we can finish with this brilliant wine!

It is very early days yet, however, I feel like I’m onto a good thing here. I’m really looking forward to spending time with more people, introducing them to a new wine experience and getting to know them a little better in the process. Wine really can bring people closer together and I’m getting far more satisfaction from sharing these wines than I ever would drinking them by myself. By choosing wines that I think people will really connect with, I’m learning more about wine, more about new people and funnily enough, more about myself. Cheers to that!