Long time no chat, internet.

Since we last spoke, I have retired from selling wine at a respectable boutique. Our fling lasted three tumultuous years. She took this lost archaeologist into her inebriating embrace. I returned her love with an unwavering-ish promotion of her wares.

Simply, I sold the hell out of wine. I studied it and drank it daily. Windows, placards, and displays I hand-dressed in painted advertisements.

See! It’s a heart made out of bottles. Genius!

Days disappeared beneath mountains of forty pound cases stacked, restacked, opened, and crushed along their destination to recycling heaven.

My head disappeared amongst the pages of Jancis Robinson’s wine Encyclopedia, Decanter or Wine Spectator’s magazines, or into the cut and paste gibberish of Wikipedia and other internet sites. I read myself numb through the Wine and Spirits Education Trust’s Intermediate and Advanced courses.

In turn, I unleashed that information on customers. No soul escaped the store without learning about cold stabilization or the difference between Slavonian oaks. Half my shoppers and coworkers wanted me to shut it or ran away. But my enthusiasm infected a few victims, and rendered the world a drunker and better place.

Yet something was incomplete. I would try to describe Bordeaux’s Landes forest. I mentioned its influence as a windbreak. Customers would nod and smile. But it seemed as real as describing Atlantis.

Neither of us had a clue what a bordelaise tree looked like or really did. For what was I making my moderately meager paycheck? I didn’t need a Maserati GranTurismo MC Stradale. Probably. No.

*SLAP* Stay focussed.

In order to make flesh my thoughts on wine, I have become a traveler again. Not for a few days, weeks, or months. But a year. Or at least until money ran out.

This journal is titled waywardwine after all. Bottles should not be found on shelves alone. They must be hunted out of their native hovels, cornered, and imbibed amidst the soil, people, waters, traditions, and especially cheeses that raised them. Otherwise, I can only describe, and will only enjoy, the things I already expected or knew.

So follow me. The journey may get rough. All I have is my spouse, a tent, a corkscrew, a portable cappuccino maker, and an insatiable thirst for all things new and alcoholic.

Ceramic cat ensures auspicious cappuccino.

Fair warning: poetry of this quality is rarely composed by thumbs alone. Yet all I have is this iPod Touch and a free app. So kind be you if gammar get jumbled.

Internet may also be hard to find, so updates may come in waves. My advice? Subscribe to this blog. There’s a button somewhere.