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I laughed and thanked her. A few minutes later everyone was gone and I was left alone
with the chaos remaining after a fifteen-person wine tasting. Between trips carrying glasses
down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen I read the comments on my feedback forms.
'Your passion for organically produced wine is inspiring. You make great wine and have a
zest for life and knowledge. I hope to be able to attend your classes more often.'
'Thanks for taking the fear out and adding some mystery to the art of wine appreciation.
We really enjoyed the class.'
'Excellent class. What clarity.'
'Awesome wines.'
I attacked my clean-up with renewed vigour. In the background, the sounds of Bruce
Springsteenfloatedthroughthesquare.Hewasgivingaliveconcertandhispoignantsongs
filled the room. The streets were quiet with the odd couple wandering back from dinner
in town. I returned Andrew's boardroom to a pristine state and let myself out through the
massive door of their Georgian building.
Stepping onto the pavement I was transported back to my mid twenties and my arrival in
the city. A decade of memories washed over me in a delicious wave. I carried the tools of
my new trade - wine glasses, wine bottles, corkscrew and wine education booklets - back
to my car and prepared to head back to Aideen and Barry. Before taking off I opened the
window of the car and paused for a few minutes to listen and soak up the place. It was one
of those moments in my life I would never forget. A turning point, the moment where I felt
comfortable in my new professional skin. I had made the transition from consultant to wine
professional.
The classes were window dressing; selling our wines to wine shops was critical. Dave,
our largest wine buyer at the time, was my most important meeting of the week.
I went in to his offices with a hammering heart. After fifteen minutes of waiting he invited
me in to meet one of their Australian winemakers, known as the 'Baron of Barossa', from
one of the oldest winegrowing families in Australia. I felt sidelined, shoehorned in along-
side a famous winegrower. We tasted his sémillon sauvignon blanc blend alongside our
own, then his merlot alongside our merlot.
'That's a lovely sém-sauv,' said the Baron. My heart swelled with pride.
'Yours is delicious too,' I said.
'So how much wine do you produce, Caro?' he asked.
'We're small: 20,000 bottles.'
'Oh,yeah,smalllikeus.Weproduce25,000.'Hechokedonhiswine.'Didyousaybottles?
We produce 25,000 cases.'
For him 25,000 cases, almost fifteen times what we produced, was a small producer. It
gave me a sense of the difference in scale between Australian and French producers. In
France, we were close to the norm with many of our neighbours a similar size to us. In
neighbouring St Émilion, the average farm was around 15 acres, about half our size. The
