Wine Opened Up My Small World
And almost took it over entirely
Corks slid smoothly out of bottles with one confident tug of a wine key, night after night. Sometimes I was pouring for someone paying — $14 for a glass that wholesaled at $15 — and more often I was pouring into my own stemware, glancing at the dog and telling her to mind her business.
Twenty-three and newly single, I was living across the hall from a drug dealer and juggling three jobs. Two were in restaurants, each owned by the same Moroccan man who couldn’t bear to see me go hungry. The third was in a boutique wine store in a strip mall. In addition to my paycheck, I got paid with at least one bottle of wine a week, not to mention the already-opened bottles that would find their way to my apartment when they were on the verge of turning to vinegar. I’d occasionally find time to go to my college classes.
Previous to working at the wine shop, I knew nothing about wine. I was happy to buy the cheapest, prettiest label at the grocery store. Once hired, I was thrown into a world laden with rich history and long lineages, one of specificity balanced by mind-boggling generalities that trip up even the most experienced noses.
Years later I’d take a wine class where the instructor opened by asking us to rate our wine knowledge on a scale of one to ten. Some sixes, sevens, and even eights made their way into the discourse before he swirled his glass, cleared his throat, and said, “well, I’d say I’m at about a three”. With a sip, he humbled his students and reminded us of the vast and ever-evolving world of wine.
All that is to say, once I started learning about wine, I knew I would never learn enough. And in the wine industry, everyone will tell you that the best way to learn about wine is to drink it.
Studying wine means studying maps. Those ten crus of Beaujolais, one stacked on top of the other, become as familiar as the floorplan of your own home. Pointing out Puglia, Catalunya, Mendoza? Second nature.
With all those maps come history, food, culture, and folklore. And debate! Endless, unmitigated debate, usually intensifying as the night progresses; an exercise in who is more intimately versed in the soil composition of the Canary Islands or which grower Champagne is the best buy on the list. Inevitably, someone starts bitching about Robert Parker and that’s the cue to get a Lyft.
The immersion wine provided was a lifeline for someone as poor and incurably hungry as I was. I never had to step foot in Burgundy or Emilia-Romagna in order to hold my own in these conversations. All I had to do was pay attention when wine nerds talked, whether they were sales representatives, coworkers, or visiting winemakers, for my world to expand.
Oh, and drink. Let’s not forget all the drinking.
There’s drinking at sales meetings, industry expos, and wine dinners. There are long lunches, shift drinks, and nights out at the bar. One drink turns to two with ease. Someone has a bottle at home they’ve been meaning to crack open. It’s a special occasion. It’s a Tuesday.
For years, the glamour of toasting winemakers and discussing the merits of various vintages shielded an undercurrent of self-medicating. As trite as it sounds, wine tasted like freedom. It lifted me out of my sad apartment, rented in the aftermath of a failed relationship, with its piles of bills and an empty fridge. My insecurities dissolved in the bottom of the glass; my anger tossed out with the week’s recycling.
One swirl could transport me to sun-baked Côte-Rôtie or conjure up visions of a South African braai, with an overabundance of sausages, steaks, and skewered meats roasting over open fires as far as the eye can see. A wine flight could send me to Chablis, Napa, and the Yarra Valley in the span of three two-ounce pours. For someone passport-deficient, I sure went to a lot of places.
Discontent followed me. I graduated from college, found a good-paying restaurant job, and moved into a better house. I floated past the death of my beloved grandmother on an ocean of booze. My looming thirtieth birthday was drowned in 11 to 15% ABV.
In my quest to soak up more of that irresistible escapism, alcohol turned its back on me. I would drunkenly start loud arguments with anyone around me; I’d vomit in bar bathrooms. There were some late nights that went long past last call, filled with more drinking, occasionally drugs, and, worst of all, cigarettes. I once went to therapy half in the bag and my therapist said it was the most open I’d been in any of our sessions. She told me not to do it again.
So which is more addictive: misery or alcohol?
One often begets the other, making it all the more difficult to claw out from under the oppressiveness of dependency. In my case, there was also this sense of betrayal: so much time, consideration, and study have been devoted to this beverage and now it has the audacity to call my tab?
I’d gradually made a commitment to wine over the last ten years that pain and drinking were a package deal, enmeshed just as acutely with the pursuit to learn more. As a twenty-something, I felt like this was a fair bargain.
With time, encouragement, and therapy, I was able to kick the habit of perpetual melancholy. That’s not to say I don’t still feel sadness from time to time; it just isn’t as all-consuming as I once allowed it to be. And now that I’m not choking on just how sorry I feel for myself, it’s easier to let alcohol return to being a point of interest rather than a fixation.
My own struggle wasn’t even the alcohol itself. It just served as lubricant when I felt the world was really giving it to me. My addiction revolved around the assurance that I wasn’t allowed to be happy. I now know that isn’t true, but it certainly felt true at the time. Self-sabotage looms larger than fear of an empty bar cart.
In my thirties, I’m changing the terms of the agreement. I’m embracing happiness and health. With plenty of help, I’ve built a life that I’d like to see with clear eyes and fewer hangover remedies. Since getting help for the actual high I couldn’t walk away from alone, I can enjoy Champagne and oysters or tilt my head back for txakoli poured from a porron, all in moderation. I’ll raise a glass at New Year’s and playfully debate desert island wines.
Just don’t bring up Robert Parker.
