It seems like it has been forever since I’ve had a chance to blog. Recently I’ve been doing a lot more reading and a lot more thinking, and I’ve been protecting the free time that I have before I start work every morning.
The reading has been interesting despite being somewhat remedial. I’ve spent time reading more about France’s wine regions, and also studying more about Food Science.
Back when I was studying winemaking in university, I had the bad habit of discarding information not directly related to California, on the premise that I just wanted to concentrate on the information that directly would affect me as a California winemaker.
This turned out to be a very short-sighted strategy. While I’m sure I was able to free up more time to study (or more likely, party) I was missing out on some of the more interesting places in the world to make wine. If I think back to that time I kind of took for granted a place in the California winemaking world, and the study of other regions didn’t seem like a priority.
So with some of the free time that I’ve carved out these days, I’m going back to round out my learning. I’ve been reading “The Wine Bible” by Karen MacNeil, and “The World Atlas of Wine” by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. These two hefty tomes are filled with more than enough information to fill a wine course. It is far more interesting to read about these wine regions when I have some kind of tangible connection to them. Recently we’ve had a chance to spend some time in Europe on holiday and through those experiences in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy it is easier to conceptualize these wine growing regions beyond the written word.
Somewhat related is my study of Food Science. I’ve been reading Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking”, as well as “The Making of a Chef” by Michael Ruhlman. I know absolutely that I would never be interested in cooking professionally, but I am always interested in cooking for ourselves. My winemaking degree is actually a Food Science degree, and although I took many courses in sanitation, biochemistry, and food chemistry, I have since forgotten much of it. Luckily there are a lot of materials out there for foodies to study up on exactly why things are (or aren’t) delicious. The science of food is treated with much more respect these days in America it seems. Although I haven’t picked up much practical knowledge, I have enjoyed learning how cheese is made (at the molecular level) and how meat flavor changes under different kinds of cooking methods.
So a lot of selfish topics have kept me away from blogging, but I’ll try to remedy that in the future and spend a few more minutes every now and then to jot down my thoughts and news.
