When you do, do that. Talk in descriptions, or don’t. Enjoy the experience, enjoy your tasting.. with whom you’re tasting. I’m going on one of my rants, my usual vent-notes, but people of all wine “levels” should know there are no levels with wine. It’s just you and the wine, and the people with whom you sip.

Last time I went wine tasting, I was by myself but I visited a friend of mine at a Russian River winery and I wanted it to be just that. Tasting on Westside Road, listening to the wind gusts in their randomness through branches and maturing Chardonnay vines, and just doing nothing. The wine spoke to me, the moment did, my friend barely spoke to me because he knows me. He knew that I was there for peace, for a conversation with wine… to taste, think, see what happens.

Before starting my book of wine and wine industry and wine tasting rants, I think about what wine is in my life. And it’s significant, it’s prominent, it’s to the right of my typing hands, at the end of the day… before I open the shop, I know what I’d like people to experience. What I’d LIKE them to, hope they do… visitors can do whatever they want of course. It’s their tasting. Their wine, their sign.