Wine is Work

I may be one of the only people I know that considers wine tastings work. Now, I know, it is still a very pleasurable kind of work, an enjoyable experience especially so because I love wine passionately, but nevertheless, it is work. Yesterday I went to three (three!) wine tastings, the first a small in-house tasting for my fellow reps at our company, the other two to help my friend Michael who's wine shop I frequent and help out on the weekends. There was some very good wine - beautiful French wines and some great Spanish, a gorgeous Madeira, and more good Greek wine than I have ever had in my life. Vin Santo? Yes, please, and if there is anything more hedonistic than that, I don't want to know what it is.

Well, I can think of a few things, but I probably ought not mention them.

Wine tastings are an occupational hazard for me. I trudge blearily on, smiling and sniffing and sipping, and by the end of the day my liver hurts, well, in a metaphorical sense, and my temples are pulsing, and I feel like laying down in the leaves under magnificent trees to shield me from some overripe Mediterranean sun. I tell all of this to my girlfriend, who is the most dedicated, hardest worker in the world, and she raises her eyebrow suspiciously. Okay, okay, so graduate school and teaching a university course MAY be more difficult than drinking wine all day. But it isn't drinking!

Tasting, it's tasting. I do spit, not swallow.

Right. I've stumbled onto sexual humor, so this is as good a time as any to wrap this up. Life is pretty good, and I'm doing everything I can to work hard and make it better.

Glass by glass.