Looking to start my own wine business, of course.  Yes.  But how.  Where and how do I start.  Still in the library.  Now would be a good a time as ever to start, right?  Okay… well, need capital to start it.  More than likely a loan, or some partners.  But I want neither.  Calm down, I tell myself.  I’m trying.  But today I feel an urgency that I’ve never fucking felt.  What do I do with it, in starting my own business?  I’m in a tasting room 5 days of the week, which I love, but I have to find a way to scale that..  Write about it, obviously.  Drink more wine, write about every single one, starting with tonight’s.  What do I have in my “cellar”?  Which is really more of a closet.  Read everything wine-associated.  And take a breath!  This won’t happen overnight, and I don’t even know what I want to happen but I know I want my entire written life to be in wine… wine tasting and wineries, wine photography and wine ideas.  Right now I think of my shop, an actual shop you walk into, are greeted by someone—ME—and left to look around, not harassed, or bothered, or talked into or out of buying any one wine.  Thinking I should go from campus, here, straight to wine shop.  Walk around and find something, a set of somethings to write about.  Write bottle to bottle, I’m thinking in this little storming session.  Not sure if I’m brainstorming or brain battering, being a but too harsh on self with my aims.  Wine reminds me, all of us if you’re listening, that life is more than abbreviated.  Wine is an industry and business of fantasies actualized.  So… “GO.” I self order.

My wine diary is compiling, piece by piece….  Wine by wine, I should say.  Last night finishing the rest of that Zinfandel from Elyse, with all its soft symphony and sensory poems from sip to sip, each atmosphere she disclosed had me more bewitched.  Yes… going to skip evening workout and go to wine study, go home and further plan my trek and resplendent trudge to my shop.  Need to taste more, budget, have my cellar inventoried… practice.  Everything, any effort or talk or thought, vision for my family, children, EVERYTHING, need be wine-went.  This morning in the tasting with my brother, Master Sommelier Robert Smith, I saw all the wines like I’ve never seen wines before, like a new invitation to get what I want from the wine world, and if I didn’t have my post in the Foley fold, portfolio, I’m not sure where I’d be.  Grateful, isn’t the word.  Nor is ‘inspired’.  Not sure if there is a word.  I’m in wild and scenic understanding of where I am at Roth, on Chalk Hill.. with a beaming summons to get to where I need be, professionally, creatively, journalistically.

In this new wine journal, I just start writing notes, poetic intersections with the otherwise obligatory of a descriptor list.  I hate that word, descriptor.  So plebeian and, again, expected, known, overused and over-misused.  I list them as quick as they come, with no one varietal in mind, but certain I conjure what I this morning sipped with my co-workers, from across properties.  This told me to start my business.  NOW.  Life, more than short, more than curt or cruelly abbreviated.  It’s gone before it’s here, before you see it and appreciate the views, the people, the glass’ contents.  Just go… wine write into your wine world.  What I have to do, the pours told me.  Are still telling me.

(2/14/18)