Wineau?
by Seema Tikare
Regardless of my role as a wineau, I never know what to tell people when they ask me what I do. My answer tends to vary. “Wine expert?” Too pompous, but it gets the message across. “Wine writer?” Well yes, but I have not yet written any books or published long form articles, so is that actually true? “Wine educator?” I love teaching about wine and thrive in that environment, but I have never really written a test for my students or graded it as such. I usually end up saying “Wine consultant,” which sometimes seems like the perfect vague answer to say both that I am a scholar of wines but also do a strange mix of work – writing, working in retail sometimes, marketing, teaching and as always, reading, studying and learning.
People do tend to be particular sometimes. I am often asked, “are you a sommelier?” That is one question I can categorically say “no” to. I do not work in a restaurant. I have never created a wine list or sold wine to suit a client’s meal or mood. In other words, I do pour wine when I am working as a teacher or in a marketing setting, but I have never “served” wine. Sommeliers also do not like it when someone like me is called a somm. I am not sure where that sensitivity comes from, but it exists.
Basically, there are a few paths through the wine world. First of course, is being a wine producer. If you are a vineyard worker / owner, you can study and work in the vineyard, you farm vines, study soils, climate conditions, vine varieties, rootstocks, vine diseases and pests and so forth. I romanticize this pathway a great deal. I realize it is hard, back-breaking work, but it seems so visceral and satisfying to dig and cultivate and nurture something in the ground. And it is also a relatively short distance to working in a winery, which is also a dream job. I love listening to people talking about the harvest and “the crush.” They don’t talk about “the ferment” or “the maceration,” it is simply the crush. And being in a winery during the hustle of receiving grapes, sorting them, putting them through the de-stemmer and crusher, smelling the fermenting juices, watching the CO2 bubbling up through the detectors – it is all so exciting.
Viticulturists and Enologists (the wine makers) of course usually study these subjects in college or grow up on farms and vineyards, do internships, work harvests as seasonal workers and so forth. I, by contrast, studied economics and political science in my youth and traveled the world over working on international poverty reduction programs. It was a wonderful vocation and wonderful lifestyle, and it is only to say that I came to wine as a second career. So, while I would have loved to be in production, it did not seem realistic to me for a mid-career switch with a family.
Therefore, I went for the more scholarly route with no clear idea of where I would end up, but with some vague ideas about writing, teaching and maybe opening a wine bar someday. Fortunately for me, I began my wine studies with perhaps the most scholarly of wine experts, a Master of Wine. It is the Ph.D of the wine world with only fewer than 420 of them in the world. The Harvard Business School alone has 300 professors, as a comparison. That was 7 years ago and I have loved every minute of it. And I still feel like I could (and do) shovel in wine knowledge for decades more. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 known vine varieties, with thousands more clones and biotypes. There are hundreds of appellations all over the world with unique requirements, climates, soils and wine laws. There are tens of thousands of producers, some with very unique approaches to wine making. There is so much to know – and so much to do.
So, what do I do exactly? It is actually a great question. I basically thank the lucky stars that I can have a career in the wine industry and I greedily grab at any experience I can get. And I occasionally call myself a “wineau.”
Are you interested in beginning a serious course of study in wine? Our three-week, Introduction to Wine: Foundational Wine Course begins May 3rd.
