The Wine Fairy

I’m 40 years old tomorrow, and I’m starting off my birthday weekend with a short pour of midlife angst.

At first, I thought I’d celebrate with a special bottle. But there are no 1986 wines in stock at the local shop. (They laughed.) So instead of uncorking a birthday vintage tonight, I’m looking back at 30 years of wine appreciation.

I remember the first wine I ever tasted. It’s a very early memory, but I can almost be certain it was a Beringer white Zinfandel that my parents had chilling in the refrigerator door.

Some parents expose their young kids to cigarettes and alcohol, hoping they’ll be repulsed by the taste and stay away. But for me (age 10-ish), when they let me pour myself a tiny glass, it was the opposite. I couldn’t believe how intense the strawberry flavors were, how vivid the pink color was, how it had a tartness that was better than candy.

The alcohol, too, was a new sensation. I didn’t drink enough wine to get a buzz–just a sip or two–but the heat and the dryness affected me emotionally.

Rather than a gateway to addiction and misery, I remember my first taste of wine as a magical passageway opening. Something was unlocked deep in my body’s memory, like, “Oh, this is the good stuff. Adults have been keeping this from me.” (I still won’t say no to a little splash of white Zin.)

In college, I studied hard and partied hard. I drank boxed wine and grocery store wine as a means to an end. I probably drank too much, honestly–trying to keep up with all the freshmen boozehounds at my university. I had some favorite wine styles and varieties. (Zinfandel again, always thick and red this time.) But I don’t think I ever paid much attention to what was in the glass.

After graduation, I went to culinary school and became a chef. I studied the mechanics of tasting and began to take my palate more seriously. I’m pretty sure my college offered wine classes–but I was underage at the time so I wasn’t able to take advantage of them.

I specialized as a saucier, which helped me a lot when I eventually came around to wine. In a classical kitchen, stocks and sauces form the basis of nearly every dish. You have to calibrate your perception of salt and acid and aromatics and texture…skills that are also entirely relevant to wine tasting.

I worked long, early-morning shifts in kitchens and I stopped drinking, mostly. There wasn’t time. Besides, hangovers and the combination of fluorescent lights and eggy smells at 5 AM just don’t mix.

Eight or nine years went by as I trudged through a series of culinary jobs. As a chef, I created wine pairings and wine lists for holidays and parties–but I was often faking both enthusiasm and knowledge. The wine program was usually completely separate from the kitchen. Boring and profit-driven. The same five varieties for every list and every event, year in and year out. Ultimately, I left the industry for work that was more creative and less grueling.

In my 30s, I became a lover of whiskey, then gin. I got very into beer when craft beer was at its peak, and souvenirs from brewery gift shops still cover my office walls. I learned to taste coffee and tea and even water with precision and respect. Then eventually–inevitably–wine.

I say that I love wine. But I suspect what I really love is tasting–and tasting language. It scratches a peculiar itch, the dual-hemisphere exercise of sensing something and then trying to articulate it. With its infinite forms and its responsiveness to environment, wine is the final boss in the game of communicating taste.

And so, a love of flavor, a love of words, and a love of learning have all converged here: A late-onset wine bug that’s probably incurable.

At 39, I started studying wine formally and took my first beverage industry job. There is a pang of regret, an occasional wish that I’d started wine earlier. I’m relishing the trajectory and the momentum of my wine career, but I can’t un-taste the opportunity costs.

The hardest birthday before 40 was 25. At 25, you have to confront the fact that some jobs and life paths are permanently closed off. You’ll likely never be a model or a ballerina or an Olympian. The world no longer lets you blame shortcomings on your age. It no longer sees you as a promising young person, either. You’re just…a person, with all the responsibilities (and the invisibility) that go along with that.

Being born in 1986 means that, from now on, if I want to taste a birthday wine I’ll probably have to get it at auction or from a rare-wine dealer.

And maybe beginning seriously at 40 means there are versions of wine success that won’t happen for me. There are people a decade younger than I am with deeper cellars, sharper tasting skills, more service experience, and more years ahead of them.

Wine, like most consumer industries, is always chasing youth. Marketers are itching to move past us–past the earnest and cautious millennial generation–and on to the uncertain future of courting fickle Gen-Z drinkers.

It stings. But when I look back at the past decades with a kinder eye, every road I took seems to lead here anyway.

The pots full of simmering beef shins and bay leaves. The meager hotel wine lists. The distillery-tour debates over whiskey mash bills. Learning acid structure through brown ales and sours, and extraction through over-steeped tea. Even the writing itself–the endless attempt to translate sensory experience into language that is both accurate and brave.

In moments of frustration, I think of wine as something I discovered late. Now I think it may have been waiting quietly in the background of my life the entire time. Perhaps turning 40 isn’t a story about running out of time. It’s about experience compounding, wide spirals of avocation tightening, wisdom and ambition harmonizing like ingredients in a well-made stock.

And maybe it’s about finding the right moment. Wine culture is more abundant now than it ever has been–and there are more and better bottles to choose from, too. Maybe there is no time like now to begin a lifetime of exploring wine.

And so, a birthday wish: I hope that my life is like a bottle of Sauternes, with a huge span of time between “too young to enjoy” and “past its best.” Tomorrow, I’ll open something good–and try to taste not the bitterness of regret, but the sweetness of maturity.