The Grape Juice Club
One late night at the restaurant where I work, somewhere between polishing glassware and running checks, I had an idea. I needed to study for my upcoming WSET exam, and get practical tasting experience in a group setting outside the classroom. However, it was difficult to find people who had tasting experience and wanted to learn, especially in the post-COVID world where classes are held online and scheduling time to meet is like pulling teeth. I needed people who, like me, were just starting out and wanted to know more about wine and willing to split the cost of bottles. It was an idea that many a burgeoning wine connoisseur finds themselves asking at some point on their journey: "What if I formed a wine club?"
Over the weeks and months I'd been there, serving customers, learning about wine, and getting to know my coworkers I felt there needed to be an intersection of the three. We needed a place where we could further our relationships professionally, outside the confines of the restaurant where we could learn more about the products we were supposed to be selling. It was as if the proverbial clouds parted and the wine making angels sang. Why not start an informal little group where we could get together and teach each other about wine? Focus on the major varieties, regions, winemakers, and methods that any expert walking in would expect us to know, but without the pressure of required professional development from management. Take turns hosting, bring snacks that share the week's theme, and follow the basic structure of the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine. It seemed like a win, win, wine situation, pun intended.
And more often than not, it is. This isn't just a wine club, but it isn't exactly just a study group either. Most of the members are average wine enthusiasts like myself who have the desire to learn more without feeling obligated to undertake a certificate program from the outset. And to call ourselves "members" is even a bit of a stretch: there are no club fees or dues, there's no formal governing body with overbearing bureaucratic laws. But we're also still more than buddies who go out drinking after work to vent about the egregiously needy tables who go beyond the generous and reasonable accomodations we're happy to see to. In the Venn Diagram of the two, we're right in between: friends with the same job who get together to enjoy a relaxed, fun hang out that happens to be highly educational and generally pretty informative.
The Grape Juice Club was not born out of necessity, but of a hungry desire for more knowledge in an informal environment. Together with my cadre of co-workers, we try to once or twice a month get together and learn a little more about what makes wine so special. We each take turns hosting on a rotational basis, and the host always gets to choose the next subject. Initially, we started with broad countries like France and Italy which had a lot of subject material to cover. Then one of our members chose a wild card and wanted to talk about orange wine, a unique outlier in the retail world, especially in the middle of winter. Whatever the subject though, we always come prepared to be confronted with wines we may not always love, but can agree are technically good, and wines we discover out of thin air to become our favorites. It's the highlight of the pay-period and one of the things I am most proud. Entirely funded and attended by people who are passionate about wine and were searching for that sense of cameraderie we lost during the pandemic. And while the real Grape Juice Club only meets once or twice a month, I thought I could keep that feeling alive longer here. By writing about my studies and my favorite resources, I hope that An Old Wine's Tale can have that same feeling as sitting in a barely lit restaurant, sharing a bottle of wine with people just like me who have a thirst to learn more.