I’m a geek…but maybe not exactly the kind you are expecting.

I’m an experiential geek. The easy examples are food, wine and coffee. Arguably useless stuff I love. Most everyone has them, simple things they love to dig into, to understand more deeply, things that gets their juices flowing, and often make them smile unexpectedly. ☺ We’re going to hover above, and observe…the progressive journey of appreciation through time, the exploration of a taste curve.

I’m going to use wine but don’t fixate on that, feel free to sub in fashion, photography, nature, movies, books, cars, cycling, whatever…wine is just my metaphor for something you appreciate. I’m going to take a swing at explaining something magical, something wonderful, and something selfish…that when shared, has the potential to make life more fun and rewarding. Something worth investing in.

It often starts when you are young. A blank sheet of paper. And someone older, arguably wiser, tries to “introduce you” to something they love. Or you get curious about something, and “experiment.” LOL…I need to digress for a second. I remember my uncle and father at the dining room table after dinner, indulging together, an exceptional moment, they were smoking cigars. I was probably 8. The smell of the room was intoxicating, and the expressions they wore were unequivocally blissful. They just sat, smoked slowly chatted, and enjoyed. The truth is, neither of them ever smoked as far as I knew. Dad was a physician, so he knew better. Heck, I was 8…and I knew better, but I could also sense their bliss, and it smelled…so…good. So I asked, “Can I try?”

Well, that story didn’t end well. Adults cleaning up vomit from everywhere for hours, but what is intriguing to me is that I remember the lead-up like it was yesterday, and nothing of what happened after I began to wretch. Ha!

Anyway, experimentation or introduction. Two ways to take a meaningful on-ramp and to get onto a taste curve. Clearly, based just on my digression, context is important, and it’s lubricated socially. With wine, for me, it started more than 15 years ago, it was professional. I was paying my way through college by waiting tables at a decent restaurant, and decent wine sales skills were a requirement to real success with high-end dining. How better to know what to recommend, than to leverage experience? Again, just a metaphor.

In this second case, it was an“introduction,” we had a mentor at the restaurant, with a group of peers. We all sat around the table, listening to Glen blather on about regions, terroir, growing conditions, grape varietals, blah, blah, blah. It all sounded like B.S. to me. And then we tasted some wines….meh. Nothing. Nothing but sour grapes to me, confirmation that it was all the self-indulgent journey of wannabes with more money than sense. Pah!

But the restaurant we worked at was committed. Thankfully committed to their crew. I just chalked it up to a seriousness about sales. So I towed the line. Three, maybe four more times, we tasted flights of wines, and all ‘acted’ like something was happening for us, because we wanted Glen to think we were learning. Free booze for college kids right? Awesome. And then it happened.

Glen was showcasing Italian reds on this one particular day. A range that included cheap Chianti and some Super Tuscans (“whatever that was…Ha!”) Our lunch-chef, Danielli…who was 94% brilliant borderline alcoholic passion, and 30% human, had made something tasty to go beside, simple wonderful food…he was a magician. And as I, and another cynical young member of the wait staff approached the table, prepared once again to fake orgasms as we tasted some of these wines, something happened. Something different.

Something any idiot could taste…even me. Something that rang a bell in my being that I didn’t even know existed….that Super Tuscan…Tignanello…transformed my experience. It didn’t just taste different, it changed everything, I mean I really felt it in my feet!? Oh God, the way the food tasted in that moment, the way my mouth felt, and the way I thought about my existence…as a being on the planet….the experience of life. Eyes wide, and in a way embarrassed, I turned to face my associate at that moment, needing to express, wine still burbling across my palette. As she faced me, I swallowed quickly and began to laugh because her face expressed perfectly the same uncomfortable bliss I was experiencing, the same awkward authentic shock and joy that this was happening, and the same thread of dumbfounded embarrassment at cynicism dissolved. Ha! Once again, the memory of that moment is as clear today, as things that happened today.

Memory is important for taste curves. It might even be genetic. My sense is, that memory is actually improved by these experiences, the joy triggering a heightened sense of at least experience, and maybe existence. Ha!

So before my “awakening” and after maybe 6 weeks of training with Glen, I couldn’t have told you a Sauvignon from a Chardonnay…and God help anyone of our crew trying to remember the name of any wine, let alone the grapes, the vintage, the region…forget it. But, from that spikey moment forward, it all got much, much easier. For whatever reason, something in my brain and body had changed, and it all felt sort-of more important. I realized “why” people have been exploring nuance in wine for thousands of years, and why a Sommalier can taste a wine from anywhere in the world, and have a very good chance of telling you all about it. Awesome! I was on the curve. My journey along wine’s taste curve had begun, and it would be life long and wonderful.

To be clear…again…wine is just a metaphor, yours can, and likely will be different. It is just my metaphor…and is not for everyone. Each of us, at least those that are lucky enough, will stumble upon, or be lead to discovery in life, one or a number of discoveries worth pursuing over time. Worth sharing with others. I’m on a number of curves now, some I’m more passionate about than others. And why I’m bothering to write this crazy piece is because there are similarities, consistencies worth noting, there is some predictability, and lots and lots of joy. It feels like I’m investing…a little here to write this down, and a bunch elsewhere because of what I’ve learned.

You see, for the next four years after that first moment, I decided to explore wine. I went to work in the industry, in retail, attended classes, read obsessively, went to tastings, events, I waded all the way in. It was fun, and fulfilling. I met some fabulous people, and had some incredible experiences, and a number of realizations.

The first realization was that the taste curve that existed for wine was both individual, and somewhat linear or at least reasonably predictable. That is to say, that if I knew what someone liked, the wines they really appreciated both historically and now, I could probably help introduce them to a wine that would help them take another fun step in their journey along the curve. And, if they were planning a certain meal, or having a group of friends over with certain preferences, it was surprisingly, consistently possible to pick wines that could improve the shared experience.

The next realization was that a shared experience was almost always of higher value than an individual one. So couples that explored taste curves together, had more fun together. Larger groups that were genuinely interested in wine had loads and loads of fun, exploring together, and sharing the experience. In fact, a natural community started to form up, a group of us from my restaurant got more serious, and recruited new friends from other restaurants, and within a very short period of time there were 50 of us at blind tastings swilling, spitting, and swapping notes. Fun!

A third realization was that money/wealth really didn’t matter. Sure the wealthiest clients had more access, but that didn’t necessarily help them with appreciation. The reality is that it becomes very, very difficult for a winemaker to put more than $50 worth of real cost(retail) into a bottle. Careful harvest, the best grapes, the best barrels, the best maker, the best glass for your bottle, the best storage etc. — very difficult to really invest in a way that warrants more than $50. However, here comes supply and demand, and there is no limit to human demand for beauty. This is where history, prestigious designation, branding, consistency, and limitations to supply all come into play. It turns out, that as a race of beings we’re more than happy to spend more money than something costs, if we’re genuinely excited about the experience we think we’ll have. It turns out, that in the wine world the French have a degree of mastery. No surprise, as a culture, they have invested deeply in mining quality broadly, and frankly I’m grateful because my life is better for it. ☺ I don’t want to get carried away, they also own the word chauvinist for a reason, and my belief is that treating taste curves religiously is terrible. Anyway, people readily spend thousands of dollars for a single bottle of wine. A consumable art form. A metaphor. It’s kinda bizarre, and cool all at the same time, I guess. Certainly no explaining it unless your a ways along your own curve. ☺

The fourth realization, and the last one I’ll share today, was that the wrong experience, I mean one from the wrong place on the taste curve — at the wrong time, was less enjoyable than one might have imagined. So here’s an example. My group of waiters, there were 6 of us. We attended a Burgundy tasting together, eyes’ alight, palettes ready, filled with anticipation. The average bottle pricing was in the hundreds of dollars, the wines, vintages and houses critically acclaimed, and the results consistently disappointing to us all. This same experience proved true repeatedly for customers of my wine store. Wealthy individuals, new to wine, but ambitious, and keen to race to the end-game would throw down on a bottle of Mouton, or Latour (both Bordeaux), and come back disillusioned. Though get them into a bottle of something more approachable, say Caymus, or Leonnetti, and they might still have goosebumps the next day when they returned to buy cases. It was amazing, and I experienced it first hand.

About a year after my first transformational experience with wine, we got an opportunity we couldn’t generally afford. Paul, the son of the owner of our restaurant was going to celebrate a birthday, and splurge. He was going to crack a bottle of 1990 Latour, and we were going to all get a chance to sample it beside a little beef tenderloin. Fuck Me, I can still taste that wine today more than 15 years later. Black purple cassis, and lead pencils and a little worn saddle leather. A full-but-lean muscular, deep, dark complex, maybe masculine wine that coated my tongue and refused to leave for minutes. A life changing experience, one I still think of as a favorite after thousands of glasses since. [shrug]. C’est ca.

Taste curves are wonderful. It generally takes some persistence…some combination of learning and experience, through an introductory or exploratory phase. The experience is ultimately moving, physically, mentally, emotionally; passion explored! It’s more fun with people who care, and magnified by caring creators . Money helps, but guarantees nothing beyond access. Experience, openness, curiosity and passion are your tools. Patience truly can be a virtue, but there really is no wrong experience, if it furthers one’s understanding and fuels ones desire.

There is no predicting which taste curve you’ll discover, and honestly there is no limit to your bliss as far as I can tell. Commit, and you’ll find a community of fools like you, and celebrate life. Because exploration, experience and expression are deep coded into our mojo. They are one guaranteed pathway to joy.

M

Oh…and PS….about 3 years later, I did visit a 15 year-old bottle of Faively with my father, dining at that same restaurant. Together, we sat stunned by the bouquet of rose petals that poured out of that bottle, delighting as we rapidily learned why apprecianados will spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on what they know will be great Burgundy. I laugh as I write, fully aware of how silly, and yet fulfilling it all is. My happy ending, likely foolish in front of a die-hard NASCAR fan…who is likely just on another taste curve.

and PPS…this is part of what we’re on about at www.playswell.com We’re trying to create a place, where people can talk about things they love….record experiences, share passion using multimedia, and discover other genuinely wonderful things. It’s not about ideas, or aspirations, it’s about experiences with stuff you love. So come visit, and tell us about what you love. ☺