The road to wine: the very beginning

Why this blog and my first interactions with wine

The purpose of this blog is to record my own experience and thoughts about wine more widely than I do it in Vivino. Maybe someone finds it also interesting or useful to read.

As the name of the blog says, it’s about everyday wining (there could be also some whining if situation demands). So I will be writing about whatever wines I drink regardless if it’s a special occasion or not. But first, a short introduction to how I discovered my love for wine.

I have often wondered, how do people in the wine world find their way into it.

Has it been their family business? Have they inherited vineyards, wine shops? Have their parents been interested in wine and passed the interest on? How early people understand that they are interested in wine? Does the interest just appear and grow over time or has it always been there? How does it begin?

I have to mention already now that during my journey to wine, both lack of knowledge and money played a big role.

My road has not been straightforward. My parents did not have a vineyard nor were they interested in wine more than any other type of drink. In small Estonia situated unfavourably for grapes on 59° latitude, even someone growing table grapes was quite rare.

I cannot remember the first time I tried wine. Probably it was from my mom’s glass during some birthday. My family has never been conscious about wine. There was more or less same selection on the table during Christmas or birthdays. Those were the only occasions I remember us having wine. I do remember that at some point, the reference for sparkling wine was either Sovetskoje Polusladkoje from Lithuania or Törley wines from Hungary. Everything sparkling was called Champagne (in Estonian šampanja or šampus). Little did we know that the real Champagne comes only from France and is limited to Champagne wine region. Still now I often have to explain the difference between Champagne and other types of sparkling wines.

I could say that my first conscious introductions to wine started in high school. As a rather poor student I drank what every other student at that time could afford. I did not prefer wine to beer or cider. I drank what was affordable and mostly before or during parties.

I liked white Late Harvest dessert wines that were introduced to me by my high school classmate and still a very good friend Mari. I only found out last December, before Christmas, that it’s a Romanian wine when I used a red one to make mulled wine, but it’s not really suitable for that purpose. I hadn’t cared about its origins earlier.

I didn’t like wines like Bollino and Monte Cristo but if nothing else was at hand, either of them had to do. I liked sweet wines, even sweet fortified wines (not anything fancy like Port wine, Eastern European fruit wines were good enough). There was one sweet and strong cherry wine from Hungary or Bulgaria that tasted like syrup. That was one of my favourites together with sweet Estonian berry wines (Vaarikamusi - Raspberry Kiss and Kirsisuudlus - Cherry Kiss). I also remember drinking very cheap local black currant wine that came in a plastic bottle. Once I even took it to my secondary school reunion. Not that anyone cared but thinking back I just cannot believe that I was not willing to buy at least something in a glass bottle. Even more embarrassing is to think that it happened only 10 years ago. A bit later I bought it again, but it had already gone bad in the shop. I truly hope, that was the last time I bought it.

Thinking back to my horrible taste I feel ashamed. But then again, I only bought what I could afford and I was not raised to appreciate wine. It was a means to get into the party mood and we did not care much if it was enjoyable or not (of course it was great when wine was also pleasant to drink like white Late Harvest at the time).