The Day I Wanted To Become Like Wine Mold

December 3 — If you are not familiar with how wine is made and stored you probably don’t realize the importance of mold in cellars. Learning this is completely new to me. No one ever talks about mold when they speak of wine. Prior to my knowledge now, if someone approached me and spoke of the mold in a wine cellar before handing me a glass I wouldn’t have drank the wine. Mold, to me, had been associated with dirty bathrooms.

Light and temperature play a huge part in the storing process which is why the cellars are created. (This I knew). Often they can be several flights below ground with low ceilings. (Didn’t totally know this). The temperature is kept at around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. (I knew there are specific temperatures for wine but couldn’t have told you what they are). However, a cellar without mold is incomplete. (Floored when I heard this).

The mold that grows in a cellar of aging wine is what sets the climate. It changes from white to black and lets you know that it’s doing its job. A winemaker enjoys seeing it. They understand both the science and art of winemaking. Which means they appreciate and respect what could be seen to others as hazardous or simply ugly is, in fact, beautiful. Another reason why winemakers are artists.

It’s not glamorous but watching this process I fall in love with the mold. It would be more likely to fall in love with the wine or the winemaker. That’s too obvious. It’s boring. Anyone can do that. It’s the desire to be known, be at the center of attention.

I could desire to be the storyteller, the historian, or the sommelier. That is not risky enough. It’s sitting back, admiring someone’s labor and then transferring information. They narrate a story that’s not their own. I have no desire to do that.

My desire is to live, labor and experience. That is how I can be forever connected to something or someone.

Why mold? It works with the wine. One does not exist without the other. At least, not a great wine. Mold does not take the spotlight. It can only be appreciated by an artist. The wine gives back to the mold by releasing its vapors. They feed off one another. As the wine continues to age and the secondary flavors arise it’s the mold that helped make it happen.

I don’t desire to be glamorous. I desire to be a worthy giver. I don’t desire to be the center of attention. I desire to make the center of attention shine bright. Mold is nature’s assistant to the wine. I am an actual assistant to my clients. Who knew I would have such a strong connection to mold and take pride in it?

There is a passion to what I do. More importantly, there is an art and a science to what I do as well. Anyone can be an assistant. Non-living things like computers, bots, and apps are called assistants. That is all science and no art. When the two meet is when the magic is created.

How does the artist, the chef, or the winemaker begin? They begin with the best ingredients and tools. The next step is inspiration. How can their work shine brighter than they do? How can they delight the senses? Could this be their next masterpiece? Still, there are forces working against them.

The artist doesn’t resist self-torment, rejection, and heartbreak he embraces them. A chef works with a crop that is not at its peak to find the flavor that it was meant to provide. The winemaker crushes a bad harvest and knows that if it doesn’t produce as many fine bottles as it should then he has just created a vintage.

I am an assistant. I serve. Whether like a muse to the artist, ingredients to the chef, or mold to cellar wine I am the often unseen laborer. My titles and duties change. My mission remains the same — to get my clients from where they are to where they want to be. Each time requires new finesse.

Client needs are never quite the same so neither can I serve the same way. Serving someone in a manner you desire and they don’t appreciate makes you feel good and makes them frustrated. The art of serving as an assistant is not “treat people how you want to be treated”. It’s treat people how they want to be treated. When you accomplish this you have achieved the art of service.

Not everyone can appreciate service or an assistant. Not everyone appreciates art, food, and wine either. Fortunately, I have realized who I am called to serve. I’m in search of the artist looking for his muse, the chef looking for ingredients to speak to him, and the winemaker looking for the mold to change color.

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I wrote that at 4 o’clock this morning. Like most Friday nights, I stayed at home. Now that I’m preparing to leave I have little desire to go out. Friday is supposed to be a date night with myself. Last night I treated myself to a bowl of cereal and was asleep by 9pm which means I was up at 3am.

There was no way I could force myself back to sleep so I started watching a documentary on wine. When they told the story of the relationship between wine and mold I began to cry, grabbed my laptop and starting typing.

The rest of my day has been fairly routine. Running errands and cleaning. For the first time I have been comfortable wearing walking shoes. I’ve never owned a pair of walking shoes and none of my heels, boots, or flats will be making the trip. I don’t own a lot of shoes, but I’m fond of what I have.

Knowing that I would be uncomfortable and less confident in these new shoes I have begun wearing them as often as I can to get used to them. Finally, today, it happened. The last thing I need to be on this trip is uncomfortable or unconfident.

It might seem trivial to you, but imagine you had to wear something that you would never normally purchase for yourself. Are you a t-shirt guy and you have to wear a sport coat? Or woman that has to wear skirts instead of pants? You’d be surprised what a big difference it makes.

My Saturday night was spent cleaning the office. Preparing for taxes, getting 2017 file folders together, and shredding old documents. Isn’t that what everyone does on a Saturday night?

My end of day gratitude:

1. Books. I’m reading two at a time right now because I can’t pack all I own. It will be hard to leave them behind.
2. Paper. I thought I was pretty “green”. Turns out I’m not. I cherish paper and the words written on them.
3. That today is not any day in 2009. I shredded files from 2009 tonight. It was a pretty awful year. Going through so many delinquent and past due bills that I would pay at the last minute to keep the lights on, cars insured, a roof over our heads and food on the table was hard. We couldn’t afford heat and the house was freezing. We were fortunate enough to sell the house with a small profit. It didn’t feel like it because we lost so much in the process. That year at Christmas we only had a small decorative tree that was given as a gift (I still have it). Our church gave us $150 to get gifts for the kids. They wanted shoes so that’s what I bought. With no money or energy to wrap them I hid each shoe separately and created a scavenger hunt. It was a hard time for so many but we made it. Thinking about it still makes me tear up and I know that our family wasn’t the only one struggling. Our entire country was struggling financially. Yep, definitely grateful it’s not 2009.

Check out my reason for making this trip here.