As I begin my last post of 2007, I must first apologize for the 2-week lull on this blog. I could use the excuses of holidays and illness… for now I’m just going to let it go and hope that there are still a few of you left out there reading this.

I actually did have a vinous topic picked out for this post - the same one that I wrote briefly about last week on The Vines’ Blog, regarding the feeling I sometimes get that prohibition never really ended in the United States. But I’ve realized that year-end summaries seem to be the norm on both blogs and major news sources this last week in December, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to summarize my own year and the birth of this blog. If you really want to hear what I have to say about wine shipping regulations, click here.

Anybody reading this knows that 2007 has been a significant year for me, full of many of changes. Last year at this time I was living in Brooklyn Heights, working hard for Winebow, and looking forward to spending New Year’s Eve in a cold New York City with Noah, who I’ve known since age 4. I was enjoying the life I had - in fact it was one of the best NYEs I ever spent in the city. But already I began to realize that it was time for a change… I was spending too much waiting for the subway, too little time using the languages I’d dedicated all of my schooling to learn, and getting far too many tension headaches. Those of you who haven’t spent a lot of time in New York may not be familiar with irrational ’subway rage,’ but I can tell you that once you start to take it home with you at the end of the day, it’s time to take a break from the rat-race.

So I began to explore my options. I considered traveling the world for a year and working a harvest in each of the major wine regions, and toyed with the idea of formally studying oenology (wine-making) in France. Then, as spring came, I planned a trip to Argentina, to see if the lifestyle was as appealing down here as I’d been led to believe, the economy as accessible, and the growth in the wine business as intense as it seemed to me from my vantage point in NYC. I spent almost 2 weeks here in May/June, and gave my notice at work a week after I got home. I was about to set off on my ‘walkabout’, which would eventually lead me back down to the southern hemisphere.

(As I keep going here, I’m going to be providing links to some of my old posts. I haven’t had the resources to build an archives section on this blog so unfortunately you can’t normally go any farther back than my 10 most recent posts, which at the moment take you only as far as my return to Argentina in October. Assuming that there are people reading this, and that you’re not all in my immediate family, I thought some of you may be interested in how it all began. At its inception, this blog was somewhat of a travelogue as well as being a digital shrine to oenophilia, and it was chronological.)

So I left my bubble in NYC at the end of June, and spent July bumming around the East Coast with friends and family: Brooklyn - Norwalk - Providence - Norwalk - Brooklyn - Cape Cod. Or something like that. I was more tan than I’ve ever been, and more Zen.

I began August with my first real road trip - Norwalk, Connecticut to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where my sister was at the time 8 months pregnant. 4 days alone in the car, 13 states, and a great many playlists, it was an amazing experience. While this blog was not even a thought in my head yet, I did write a bit about this drive when I returned to Albuquerque in October, to meet my niece. Here’s that post - ‘These 50 States of Wine.’

I divided most of August between Albuquerque and San Francisco, with side trips to the Colorado Rockies and Yosemite National Park. When I got back East in early September, just in time for the Jewish New Year, this blog was born. My first real post was timely (if I do say so myself), dispelling some of the myths surrounding Kosher wine. The link of course will take you there.

The second day of the Jewish year 5768 (yes, I had to look that one up) found me on a plane to Paris, where I stopped over before continuing on to Provence and my first harvest, at Domaine de Trevallon. This was certainly the newest of the new experiences I had during my journey; I did manual labor for the first time in my life, lived for 2 weeks in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and learned a great deal about wine. I picked up some blogging momentum as I wrote about my experiences there with ‘Le Journal des Vendanges’ parts 1, 2, and 3, and I had fun painting as clear a picture as I could of my alternate reality amongst the vines with ‘A Day in the Life.’

From there, I went on a short side trip in Italy, which was more about nostalgia and gastronomy than anything else, but all the more valuable for that. 3 days in Milan, a quick stop in Bologna, and 2 days in Rome, then back stateside to meet the little one in Albuquerque (only 2 weeks old at the time!), pack a larger suitcase, and come to Argentina to search for my next step. After a week in Mendoza and then a month in Buenos Aires, I found it here at The Vines of Mendoza… the rest, as they say, is history.

Having said all of that, I’m going to go enjoy the last day of 2007. It’s 80 degrees in Mendoza… all in all, a good end to a great year. May the next one bring each of us all that we seek… and may we all drink too much bubbly tonight.

December 31st, 2007 | vita