There's always been distinct, albeit quickly fading differences between mine and Greg's goals in the pursuit of wine. At the outset, my draw was oenology, viticulture, and what essentially amounts to farming. Romantic visions of the rolling green and orange landscapes, dotted with distant, sun-baked rock outcroppings and neatly-laid rows of vines from all vantage points; the oft oppressive midday heat of the California Sun, occasionally relieved by cool oceanic breezes carrying the sweet, earthy scents of grass, vines, hay and soil; long, laborious days of field work that would reward me with bucketloads of grapes, loosely packed into a small, but sufficient Gator-driven work cart, primed for one-way trip to the destemmer and crushpad. A whole lot of dirt under my fingernails that I wouldn't care to clean out anytime soon. This West Coast farmer-cum-cowboy wanderlust barely takes my passion for the red and white stuff into account... It has a joyfully unstable potential to bloom into full-on obsession any day now. The x-particle, quietly locked away inside a mass of steel and wire, forever dancing, and eagerly awaiting it's curtain call, it's own fission reaction, to explode and become all-encompassing. All will know it.
Greg's passions were never far from this, but his interests in owning an operating a wine bar held priority. He's an econ geek, so these bar dreams never surprised me. He knows money and wants to make money. When we start our business, he'll make sure we're making money. And short of having my unofficial "accountant" from NYC run the numbers, the only person I'd ever trust on the money side of this endeavor is Greg. It's not that he didn't share my viticultural interests... Make no mistakes: this guy has a real problem when it comes to his overwhelming love of wine. But it's my belief that his good business sense pushed him more towards an outlet that could actually generate money right away, as opposed to the loftier plan of harvesting for a while and then taking it from there.
So, after months of planning, meeting, applying, and most importantly, drinking, our goals naturally coalesced into a hybrid pursuit. Now hell-bent on attaining harvest intern positions, we both hope to learn the wine-making process from the ground up, and then plan to roll it into further business ventures that could entail a wine bar, a bar-bar, or full time vineyard work in some capacity (tasting room, operations, or owning that motherfucker). He helped me realize that I too have a burning desire to sling wine, charcuterie, and gobs of satisfaction to our soon-to-be customership.
But it's not that simple... Come to find out, we pressed ahead with a bit of green naivete, not realizing that throngs of other like-minded individuals of a young and similarly distressed ilk, miserable about the thought of wasting another day at their god-awful desk jobs, also happened to be clawing away for the same jobs we wanted. Stay tuned for my next entry, in which I explain why a California vinter states "You want to be a migrant worker? Migrant workers don't even want to be migrant workers..." when asked about harvest internships.
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