I have a theory that if I'm reading about wine, it's only right that I drink wine too.
I know you agree.
When I decided to take wine more seriously, I didn't want it to exist only in the pages of a textbook. I wanted to submerge myself in it.
I've always believed in thinking it, doing it and then, eventually, being it.
So I tasted wine. Studied wine. Read about wine. Watched films about wine. Talked about wine. Stalked wine shops. Researched wine. Drew wine maps. Made wine flashcard games. Yes, you heard right. And probably bored more than a few friends by talking about wine when nobody had actually asked.
I even dreamed about wine.
And books became a big part of that journey.
Wine Wars
One of the books that has travelled with me is Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists by Mike Veseth.
I've had this book for years. In fact, my wine books have followed me from Los Angeles to Jamaica, then Madrid and now Malta.
My life would undoubtedly be easier if I bought books on Kindle, but alas, I must have the physical copy.
I love books as objects almost as much as I love reading them. I love the weight of them. The tactile feeling of turning a page. The tooth of the paper. The smell. I like finding beautiful scraps of paper and turning them into bookmarks.
And I particularly love when a book has been around for a while and starts becoming slightly battered, misshapen and unmistakably yours.
Wine Wars is that kind of book for me.
It explores the business and culture of wine, including the tension between globalisation and the idea of terroir. It looks beyond what is in the glass and asks questions about how wine is made, marketed, sold and understood.
I decided recently to read it again. It had been so long that picking up where I'd left off seemed slightly optimistic, so I went right back to page one.
I don't mind starting from the beginning.
Wine has a funny way of teaching you that there is always something you missed the first time.
Cork Dork
Then there is Cork Dork: A Wine-Fuelled Journey into the Art of Sommeliers and the Science of Taste by Bianca Bosker.
This book takes immersion rather literally.
Bosker, a journalist, throws herself into the world of sommeliers to understand what makes them capable of smelling, tasting and remembering wine at an extraordinary level.
Naturally, I loved the idea.
There is something fascinating about discovering that tasting isn't simply some mysterious gift bestowed upon a chosen few who can detect wet forest floor on a Tuesday morning in a glass of Pinot Noir.
You can learn.
You can train your senses.
You can pay more attention.
That idea resonates enormously with me and with what would eventually become Vinlore. Learning wine doesn't have to mean memorising increasingly terrifying lists of facts. You can interact with it, experience it, practise it and find your own ways of making the information stick.
Gold in the Vineyards
And sometimes I fall for a wine book simply because it is beautiful.
Gold in the Vineyards: Illustrated Stories of the World's Most Celebrated Vineyards by Laura Catena is exactly that kind of book.
It brings together two things I already love, wine and illustration. Through beautiful drawings and stories, it explores some of the world's celebrated vineyards and the people and places behind them.
Beautiful illustration and wine are a particularly dangerous combination for an interior designer. I'm interested in the information, obviously, but I'm also looking at the paper, typography, drawings, composition and the way someone has chosen to visually tell the story.
That way of communicating wine has had a huge influence on how I think about Vinlore.
Wine knowledge can be rigorous and still be beautiful.
A book, a glass and nowhere to be
Of course, there is another reason I love wine books.
The ritual.
A quiet weekend evening. A book you've been looking forward to. A bottle you've been curious about. A proper wine glass.
One evening it was a new Palomino I wanted to try, which I poured into my Gabriel-Glas, my beloved universal glass, which probably deserves an article of its own at some point.
There is something wonderfully indulgent about pouring a glass and disappearing into a book about the very thing you're drinking.
You read something.
You taste.
You start wondering.
You look something up.
One glass mysteriously becomes two.
Suddenly it's midnight and you're researching soil types in northern Spain.
Perfectly normal.
More than studying
Looking back, these books were doing more than teaching me about wine.
They were helping me figure out how I like to learn.
I want the facts, but I also want the stories. I want history, people, places, maps, illustrations and strange little details I'll remember months later.
Most importantly, I want to be involved in what I'm learning.
Think it. Do it. Be it.
That philosophy eventually found its way into Vinlore.
So yes, I read about wine while drinking wine.
I'm calling it immersive learning.
