My story. Wine and me. Me and wine. Part Two.
The experience journey
My first encounter with wine was with its aroma, yet not the pleasant ones. I recall the vinegary, cooked, raisiny smell of grape skins baking under the sun. Volatile acidity paradise. It was the smell of my grandfather’s winery in El Algarrobal, Mendoza, Argentina. My house and my playground for the first 6 years of my life.
This is the vineyard next to the winery at harvest time. There were 6 hectares in total. Sadly, all the vineyards have gone now. Without my granddad around, the land had more value for other purposes rather than the laborious and badly paid work of the land. The old vines of Tempranillo and native Criolla have been pulled out, only pictures and memories remain of my childhood playground.
The winemaking process discarded all the pressed skins, seeds and stalks outside the winery. The vertical press created massive round cakes piled one over the other, like big hills of “orujo de uva”. I remember climbing them up, age four or five, with my brother Diego, playing and rolling down like in a sand dune. Sharing great laughs. Up and down. Up and down. Then, walking home completely covered with grape skins attached to my legs and arms, dirty and sticky. A pleasure for my mother to bathe us.
To this day, every time I drink a glass of old Pedro Ximénez Sherry, I associate the raisiny, sticky and pungent smell with those orujo climbing moments, my first memories of wine.
On Sundays, every Sunday without exception, we had pasta. My Abuela was a great cook. Her culinary abilities were legendary for close and distant family alike. Before every lunch, she allowed me a treat. I used to grab a piece of bread and dipped it into the “tuco”, the simmering boiling rich tomato sauce with a big piece of meat inside. It was my personal “amuse-bouche”, but I also felt great joy to have the honourable job of tasting her food before everyone else in the family. My Abuela never failed to deliver a tasty punch.
The plate of “tallarines” (homemade spaghetti) was always extra abundant. Like other grannies, mine was also a natural-born feeder. She was born in Argentina but her Italian side always showed up when it came to express love to us, from her plates directly to our hearts.
The pasta was matched with a few drops of my grandfather’s red wine inside a glass of sparkling water. Stained water or watered down wine, it worked both ways. Even with the dilution, the first aromas and flavours of wine were there in that pinky coloured glass, indistinguishable red fruitiness mixed with fizzy water. Not at all bad.
In the annual “carneo” (pig slaughter day), I had another occasion for a wine experience but this time with less dilution.
It was a very long day for the family and relatives. I never knew where they all came from, but they religiously materialized like magic every year. They all collaborated though. Helping with the unsavoury tasks but also with the cooking, cleaning, preparing the many sausages: salami, various types of chorizo and black puddings (morcillas). We also made proper legs of ham, pork jellies (not my favourite) and different pork meat cuts. The best meat parts never lasted much, my father was the barbecue man. Grilled beef was the norm but a good “asado” with pork meat was a delicacy at the time. None of the relatives would allow that opportunity to pass.
During those carneo meals, my Abuelo Juan (the original Juan) used to say: “you cannot drink water with pork, fat and water don’t bind well in the belly”.
Who was I to disagree with my grandad? The world of wine and its rites were alien to me at that time, but its close proximity did not make it appealing either. In fact, I never chose it as a career after University because I thought it was a boring industry. It has been there since I was born. Many people I knew worked in it. It had no mystery or excitement to me.
***
I have always had ants in my pants. My mum used to comment that I frequently escaped my crib even before I started to walk. I was restless, energetic, always told off at school for chatting too much. Staying quiet on a chair, for long periods of time, was a monumental challenge.
It seems I was bound to be on the move and I actually needed to leave Mendoza and Argentina to take wine seriously.
One day, I discovered a bottle of “Pica Juan Peak'' (an absurd name for an Argentinian wine) in a Sainbury’s supermarket on my first trip to the UK in 1998. £3.99. Cheap as chips. I was 24, attempting to study English in Cheltenham. That Malbec was one of the pioneers of Argentina wines in the supermarket channel in the UK, produced by one of today’s famous wineries of Mendoza.
After school one evening, my brother called me. My mother was ill and that first exploratory trip to Europe was cut short abruptly, but it opened another door.
When I returned home, I got the possibility to work for that very winery of “Pica Juan Peak”. Destiny was calling. My first important job after graduation. My first ever job as a professional. I had high hopes for the opportunity and it was exciting, but it ended up badly. Very fast.
After 15 days I got fired.
In a tight family-run company you do not disagree with the owners. I was asked to do the very silly task of putting price stickers on wine glasses. A rite of passage perhaps, but my early professional pride did not take it well and I answered grumpily when asked to do another task that same day, which was similarly silly in my books. I was out of line and I deserved a kick in the butt.
It did not help that my mother was terminally ill by that time. My patience was very thin and my emotions deranged, like a train without brakes.
In hindsight, I would have never made it far in that particular work environment but the bad experience made me react negatively. I closed the door to the industry as a whole and moved into a new sector: technology, internet, far away from wine.
On the morning of the 13th of April 2000 at 8:00, my mum died. I was an adult but still needed her. Apart from the sadness and the pain something else happened. I felt like an air balloon. Weightless, mobile, with no rope anchoring me to the land. The umbilical cord that kept me tied to my place of birth got cut. I could go anywhere, move everywhere, there was nothing to lose. I was light.
In January 2001, a high altitude trekking to the “Aconcagua” reaffirmed my feelings about my future. At 5,570 mts. a.s.l in “Nido de Condores”, I cried for a long while the tears I’ve never cried before. Those that really needed to come out. I climbed there alone. I needed the “me” time. When the tears dried out, I left the note I was carrying under a rock, with the dried yellow flowers inside. I sat there motionless for a long time, to contemplate the beginning of the sunset over the immense snow caps.
The long Aconcagua walks and the “Nido” tears brought a new resolve, as soon as I went back down to Mendoza, I started to make plans to depart.
This is a picture of me (in electric blue) and my dear friend Lucas at Playa Ancha, walking towards Base Camp “Plaza de Mulas”, stopping for the selfies of the time (camera with timer supported over a rock).
***
In January 2002, amid one of the most famous Argentina economic crises called “El Corralito”, I said my goodbyes.
First, it was Barcelona to study for one year, then it was Oxford, by chance, to start a new life.
It was there, back in the UK, when the wine door opened for the second time.
I entered an Oddbins wine store on the High Street, I asked for a job and got it on the same day. With zero wine experience (unless 15 days count!) and half-decent English. I still remember the speed of my pedalling going home. I tried, but did not make it. My bicycle could not fly.
I knew a new chapter was opening in my life, not only in wine but also in the country. For the first time, I had a real chance of survival in a new land. Fifteen thousand miles away from where I thought it was home at that time.
At Oddbins, I experienced for the first time the feeling of making people happy with wine. Giving recommendations. Making people taste and discover new wines, stories, grapes and areas. It was incredible.
For the first time in my life, I felt valued. Accepted. More for my efforts than for my wine experience and knowledge but anyhow. Those early feeling are still tattooed inside. I cannot remove them, they kept me going from that moment and permeated into everything I did next with wine.
That wine shop also got me together with my wife. I owed it that much.
I first met her at a random birthday party at Number 17 Bullington Road, around the Cowley Road side of Oxford. That night, we danced for a bit but I did not get her phone number or even remembered her name. Yes, I was that drunk. After we parted separate ways, she only knew where I worked: “Oddbins”.
Oddbins, Oxford High Street 2005. That very bottle of South African Obikwa wine, was the one my future wife bought, the second time she ever saw me, when she popped in to “pretend” to buy wine.
To my surprise, she found me there 3 months after and the rest is history as they say.
In wine, I found professional and personal development. New emotions. The link to my origins: home, Mendoza, my family history, grew stronger. The umbilical cord that got cut healed somehow.
Thanks to wine I never felt a foreigner in a new land. Because it made a lot of sense to be a wine guy, in the wine industry, from a wine region, selling wine in the UK. It saved me from feeling out-rooted, misplaced or an outsider. It gave me a solid base to build a life abroad, not only financially but also emotionally.
Then came a long stint of working for Argentinian wineries based in London which made even more sense and provided travelling opportunities to visit my father, family and friends frequently. I also travelled extensively to a good part of the world. Every corner of Asia, Canada and Europe. It was a very good period that lasted almost 8 years. I got married (twice, with the same wife). We bought our first house and the cherry of the cake was the birth of our son, Emiliano. Things could not get any better.
Until the crude reality of business for profits spoiled the fun.
The company got sold. It changed hands to immerse itself in a long period of managers’ politics, half-truths and uncertainty. They also increased the pressure for selling things I did not believe in, which I reluctantly obliged to keep the salary coming.
I lost the family feeling at work, the togetherness, the happiness to be part of a team and I felt empty. The emotional link that made me love wine went out of the window. I crashed-landed into a corporate world I did not want to be part of.
My disenchantment with the wine industry got even worse when I moved to another wine distribution company based in North London. My mid-life crisis started to kick in with full force.
Something needed to change, but it took another two years to figure out what.
During the numbing cycle-train-overground-cycle commute I was doing every day, I started to give more serious thought to my old freshman university dream of creating my own business. However, at that time I was not entirely sure it would be wine-related, but somehow being on my own started to feel more real, but where to begin?
This picture from my friend Grace from Mendoza appeared one day on her Facebook feed, it gave me the push I needed. It is a “Gorrion” (house sparrow), one of the most spread wild birds in the world. I saw it being brave, jumping into the unknown, a real leap of faith, over the watching backdrop of the Andes and the vineyards of the Valle de Uco.
I showed this picture to my boss when I resigned soon after, but he did not get it. I needed to pass the formal letter of resignation to be more precise.
My wife (Thank God for our timings to sync) was experiencing similar needs for a big change, so we teamed up and got things moving.
And by moving, I do not mean to a new house in the same town. We decided to uproot the whole family after 13 years in the UK to find a new country, a new language, where we could both have new growth opportunities, also for the kid”s” (yeap! one more, Emma was 3 years old by then)
We did it also to leave the wonderful British weather behind!
I needed to start a new wine chapter in my life, close again to vineyards, wine production, simple wine consumers and away from the commercial circus of the industry as such.
I wanted to heal my lost relationship with wine.
I also fancied to let myself exercise curiosity and naivety like a child. Play, create, experiment, learn. I was so disappointed with the “adult” corporate world. Perhaps it sounds infantile but I needed to create something on my own: a happier place to work, develop and learn new things.
It felt a lot like a tantrum, that urge to do things your way, and only your way.
So, yes, it was infantile, I accept that.
We landed in Alsace, France, one of my favourite regions in the world which I had never had the chance to visit before. Bordering Baden in Germany and the North of Switzerland, which also produces wine, believe it or not. I got three wine regions for the price of one.
With the helping hand of Carlos and Laurence from the Happy Startup School, my “Wine Guru on Wheels” project started to walk at the end of 2016. They provided guidance and support to make the whole solo entrepreneurial journey less scary. Without them, I would have never known where to start.
The brand concept popped up in my mind while holding a microphone in my hand. I was explaining nervously my sketchy thoughts to the eclectic audience of my first Summercamp. I have never felt alone since that talk to that crowd. Somewhere in the world, there is someone like me, enduring the ups and downs of the same rollercoaster that I ride.
Today, looking from the distance of time, that initial starting line looks simple, it was the easy part.