Before I forget, it might make sense to mention how I became such a wine nerd. It will prove relevant, so bear with me (but if you hate back-story you can skip it).
In my happy and worry-free 20s, my best friend Cesar and I decided to go on a European road trip, driving through several cities of Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Germany in an old, yellow Mercedes which we bought second hand outside Hamburg from a fat and mustached man for next to nothing. We had saved up for years, me working for my father’s building business and Cesar setting up basic websites for small companies, something he called “computer whoring”.
It was during our stop in Italy that I had my first date with a beautiful wine. I was mostly a beer drinker then, at least in the capacity a young man in D.C. could get a hold of the stuff (21-year-age limit). I didn’t really know anything about wine and the few glasses I’d tried were sour and vinegary. But when we reached the region of Tuscany and our ugly and battered Mercedes broke down just outside the city of Sienna, this changed forever. While we had our car in for repair with a guy in dusty blue coveralls who just couldn’t stop smoking, we rented an ugly old room with moldy curtains in the first cheap little hotel we could find and hit the streets.
Sienna is a time machine. It’s like you walked straight into medieval times with its narrow cobblestone streets and leaning brick buildings and the feeling of history is so strong you wouldn’t be surprised to see a knight in shining armor pass you on the street. We decided to enjoy it Italian style and ordered a platter in a small restaurant on a side street, but the waiter didn’t have anything besides the yeasty local beer, which we didn’t like, so he recommended a bottle of Tuscan wine. I remember the first sip like yesterday, it hit my taste buds like lightning and filled my whole being with a sense of, I don’t know, romance? Lust? Desire?
It was simply love at first taste.
We ended up finishing the bottle and then another and the owner seemed so happy to have us there he gave us a tour of his wine cellar and started explaining the differences between certain wines and grapes and although my head was starting to get sore, I sucked most of it in like an anteater.
So that was how the dream was formed to have my own wine bar, or enoteca as the Italians call it, a place where customers and other wine enthusiasts can relax in comfortable chairs, enjoy an exquisite glass of wine and listen to some soft live jazz or a classical violinist pouring his soul into a Bach partita. A haven for the cultured.