The wine moment I’ll never forget

I would be lying if I said I instantly knew which wine moment was the one that I’ll never forget. In fact, I drew a blank.

I grew up in a household where the only thing I was allowed to drink with bubbles was Champagne. I was opening corks before I knew how to drive. It doesn’t matter who I’m out for dinner with, the wine list has always been sent in my direction. When I left my corporate career with no plans of what was next, the only decision I made was to enrol myself in WSET level 3. Now, working part-time as a Sommelier, the majority of my life revolves around wine. I even recently started hosting private tastings, to break down wine and make it more accessible.

Everyone I know associates me with wine. So much so, a few years back when I applied for a job on a vineyard in California, the application brief was to send a video of why you were the person for the job. I sent people in my life a request. “Please can you send me a video with three words that you would use to describe me. I’ll tell you why, after you send it”. They all said ‘wine’. Every. Single. Person.

How was it possible that no moments sprung to mind? In the words of Alanis Morsiette, “isn’t it ironic”!?

The clock was ticking and I needed a little inspiration. I turned to my cousin, with whom I’ve drunk plenty of bottles and visited multiple vineyards across the world. “What the h*ll am I going to write about?!”

“Don’t you remember St Emilion?!” she asked. “I think it was before you even started studying. I saw a spark in your eyes. An excitement. You were at the front of the tour, asking all the questions, taking notes.”

Of course I remembered the trip, but it wasn’t the wine moment that I wanted to write about. She continued, “so, you must have had a moment at some point, where you had a spark? The spark when you discovered your love for wine.”

Queenstown, New Zealand. 2015.

The story of how I ended up in Queenstown involved my snowboard, a casino and a guy. But that’s one for another time. I had just been fired, the first and only time, as a waitress at a fine(ish) dining restaurant on the waterfront. I had run out of money and desperately needed a job. I managed to secure a new role in a quaint little seafood restaurant / wine bar. One of the owners looked after the kitchen and the other, front of house. The latter lived between New Zealand and Spain, and when he was in Queenstown, he would spend the summers training the front of house staff, imparting his knowledge and sharing his passion for wine.

Spoiler alert: there was no individual spark moment. What came to mind when my cousin asked me that question was, in fact, an amalgamation of memories in this incredible neighbourhood restaurant. Every service we would try a new wine, blind. It didn’t matter what was happening in service at that moment. We would stop. We would smell. We would taste. We then had to describe what we tasted. 

My wine knowledge at the time was limited to Sancerre, Chablis and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. And, of course, the Champagne that I grew up on. I could tell you that Malbec from Argentina was velvety and deep in colour, and I probably thought that Rioja was a grape. But these moments, with five front of house staff tightly squeezed into a bar area, guessing which fruit we could taste, are what I remember. The smells. The travels. The sheer happiness when we got a characteristic correct. The tricks we learnt to distinguish the grapes. Sauvignon Blanc will always smell like cat’s pee. The food we were taught to pair with these wines. Still to this day, I remember tasting a 1996 Marc Bredif in that bar, and as I write this, I recall the tastes of the apricots and honey.

I often get asked how I started my wine journey. It isn’t a journey that’s as straightforward as most, so my response tends to be, “how much time do you have?!” However, this is always the starting point I refer to. This incredible restaurant, a fantastic mentor and an assembly of moments stopping, smelling and describing.

I wouldn’t classify these compounded moments that took place in that small seafood restaurant / wine bar in Queenstown as a ‘spark’ moment or something life changing. But it did lead me on a journey to discover wine. And what I love about wine is it tells you a story. It tells you about the climate and history of a vineyard. The country and language of where the grapes are grown. The passion and legacy of the winemaker.

In my quest to pinpoint the wine moment I’ll never forget and initially having no luck, I’ve reflected on the last nine years and found so many moments that I will, now, never forget.

The second date who showed me his 3-bottle wine collection that had been open for over six months, and he was still drinking the bottles. There wasn’t a third date. The first time I tried a PX and all I could think of was soft brown muscovado sugar. Last week, when I tried a Madeira from 1856. My first contribution to a wine list, in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Being asked for a tasting note, blind, and describing a white Burgundy as a thin-crusted, decadent and delicate lemon curd and cream tart. The American family who asked me to sign their menu. Being accepted on the Ruinart Sommelier Challenge. Visiting vineyards from all corners of the world. The moments that possibly aren’t so positive. And of course, some of my favourite wine moments are when I’ve possibly had a bit too much. So I’ve forgotten.

(as written in June 2024 for Jancis Robinson’s wine writing competition)