Max’ Wine Philosophy

An important part of my relationship with wine is their origin. Throughout my work experiences, in northern Spain, northern Italy, Sydney and even London, a short trainride from Champagne and bikeride from Kent, I’ve been exploring vinyards and sampling wines in various cellars.

My excursions alongside work have brought me several times to Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Costers del Segre, Penèdes, Mallorca, Porto, Lombardia, Veneto, Piemonte, Tuscany, Hunter Valley, Southern California, Champagne and Kent. Of course, virtually all of my vacations are linked to exploring new little gems, Tenerife being the absolute standout. Atacama-like desert climate in the south, jungle-fever in the north, and only 30min by car between them.

I’m trying to build up a personal relationship not only with the wine growers but also to understand their cultural and historic context which gives birth to a know-how rather than a know-what.

While I can relate back to my formal academic wine education through many books and courses such as the WSET, Michael Schuster’s Fine Wine class, and a few encounters with brilliant “Masters of Wine” —

Theoretical knowledge — especially tasting notes tend to lack what wine is essentially about:

A sensual experience, historicity, cultural context, and at its core, an inescapable subjectivity when emotions run free.

And woe to the person,

where the wasteland not only grows,

but also hides within.

It is those lived experiences together with the guidance of various educators and mentors crossing my life path who have given me the privilege to start building my own set of values.

In this light, I’m able to incorporate and share with the world around me, a wide-ranging area of wines, regional differences of style, the nuances in meso and micro-climates, vintages, and winemakers’ philosophies.

Marketing Alert: What can I do for you?

Admittedly, a fair part of my skills and knowledge still remain an emulation of my masters.

Apart from their personal support, raw wine knowledge and shared experience, their greatest gift to me, was to further my sense of curiosity. Maybe, and this is more a stab into the dark, it is my tendency to release an excessive count of energy when moving into uncertainty, enabling my curiosity to be transformed through a pinch of courage, out of mere contingency into necessity. A grand play with ambiguity.

And I do believe, that it’s neither strength, nor cleverness or plain endurance, but this necessity to explore and transgress, which helped me to discover my very own, unknown heights and unseen depths, especially when facing the monsters of uncertainty.

And hell yes, while I love to share tears of joy when embracing the wheel of uncertainty, I do occasionally also shed some tears of dread. A small but healthy amount of anxiety goes a long way; so does Sherry and Champagne - entonces, por qué no los dos?

Against this background, my (vinous) individuation process may become an everlasting dance, attempting to harmonize even my most erroneous and arrhythmic sidesteps into a melody.

I continue to stand proudly on the supporting shoulders of giants while concurrently trying to feed my inner sprawling angels and demons equally. And If I cannot reach Heaven, I might just bend Hell.

Just kidding. I really like it here on Earth.

You might have noticed .. I’ve got a soft spot for polemics, akin the same magnitude as Blake’s outcry:‘a fool who persists in his folly will become wise’…