It is funny how polarizing our individual tastes in wine can be and just how angry some folks get that one does not share their same opinions. I am talking about wine professionals here; people who know that our own unique palates, noses, and experiences vary by inordinate degrees, yet there remains such a need for our unique capacities to be muted in order to fit into a tiny space of safety with our colleagues. I don't sell wine anymore and while I miss the day-to-day experiences of tasting and especially sharing with the public my discoveries I do not miss the need to keep up with the latest fickle trends set aside by someone we think we should admire when they are very likely just as scared and wretched in thought as we are ourselves. My tastes in wine will change just as my tastes in clothing, art, music, and positions of pleasure have evolved over the years. I like this. I want change. I abhor static almost as much as residual sugar passed off as extraction. We can all have different likes and just because my mom loves Moscato and I prefer Riesling does not mean we cannot like the same Pumpkin Pie or that we have to publicly defile each others' reputations on TWITTER.

My point is more to the tastes of professionals. I am advocating accepting the truth, not only among our colleagues, and also within ourselves. There is an incredible amount of peer pressure in this business and if one lacks the vocabulary and/or tasting acumen or perceives his/herself as being lacking then there is external and internal judgement. Ian McCaffery made a nice point about wine not being a competition and I love that as an ideal. However, it is a daily pissing contest propagated by the very people we place on pedestals even though we may revile their tastes if we openly accepted our own. The competition to find the next great region, next great wine, next great vineyard is actually fierce and social media allows us to vainly display our trophies like heads along a Roman Highway. At 40 I am only now coping with my own insecurities and need to win at all costs. Thanksgiving is just that this year. I have now been a wine consumer for the past year and I cannot recall a time in my life when I have been more excited about wine since I started in the industry in 1996.

‎Sean Beck made some very nice recommendations yesterday for TG wines for Jeremy Parzen (author of do bianchi). I am certain there will be people who will love those and people who will not. The simple advice in all of this is: keep drinking and heartily, merrily, joyfully. Taste the brussels sprouts and if you don't like them this year taste them again the next. Our favorites will change, our sensitivities to sugar, salt, bitter, and sour will change, and our hearts will change over the course of our wine lives. Listen for that switch inside that says, oh, oh yes, I want more of this. We will all choose the course that we decide and whether it is an honest decision or a faddish decision is completely up to each of us.