Wine and the City Revamped!
Written By: Romany Reagan on Thu, Nov 8th 2007
Meet our new Wine and the City columnist - Romany Reagan...
I had moved to New York to pursue my acting career and was enjoying varying degrees of success. However as with all lives in art, we all need a day job - and cubicles have never been good for my soul's complexion. I began to realize acting was taking a backseat to said day job, my time was taxed and I was finding a more satisfying outlet in playwriting - a development which suddenly flung wide my options for job locale. Navigating the pavement in New York, you get as much thinking done as in the shower. I then asked myself, what has always been my other love, my mistress? What made me joyously happy on my sojourns to Florence and Paris? What never failed to add a dose of magic to everyday affairs? Wine. And right there, as I slide between towers of glass it hit me - go west young woman!
Anything worth doing is worth doing well. So I enrolled in a program at UC Davis, the top Viticulture & Enology school in the nation - and arguably the world. I have been an armchair appreciator for years, taking pride in escorting, if admittedly rather lamely, my friends through wine lists at restaurants - but there is so much more to learn than, "Hmm... hits of blackberry and petrol." (And thankfully so, no?)
Oh, wine wine wine. You minx you. What is this powerful drug (and no, I don't mean alcohol, honey) that lures us in? The romance of it, the intangible transformation of it entices us. When people say they "love wine," the weighty subtext of that is a love of life. Because wine is a package deal. It's a fully furnished room, an all-inclusive resort; it transforms everyday moments and heightens milestones. It's a bit of Tuscany in your living room, a little Reims on your veranda.
It's magic. And even though we're all adults and gave up ghost stories, we all still watch TLC's Most Haunted Hotels, and we still feel like Grace Kelly at Lake Como when with a glass in hand.
A life in wine is an adventure - with as much history, rivalry and dramatic intrigue as the theatre. Every glass for me tells a story, every label excites my imagination as to the inner lives of those living in the label's little sketched chateau. Have I turned my back on a life in art? Hardly.
Watch out New York - looking at the texture and precision that surrounds me, I'm realizing my artistic apprenticeship has just begun.
