My Story. Wine and Me. Me and Wine.
The starting line
My relationship with wine started in El Agarrobal, Mendoza, Argentina, where I was born. My grandfather, the original “Juan”, introduced me to the world of wine. With my brother, I played in his winery and vineyard, and with him, I tasted wine for the first time. His house was my playground for the first 6 years of my life.
Every Sunday, my grandma cooked “tallarines con tuco” (pasta in a meaty tomato sauce), which was duly paired with a few drops of my grandfather’s red wine inside a glass of sparkling water. Stained water or watered down wine, it worked both ways. Even with the dilution, the first aromas and flavours of wine were there in that pinky coloured glass, indistinguishable red fruitiness mixed with fizzy water. Not at all bad.
However, my first real encounter with wine was with its aroma, yet not the pleasant ones. The winemaking process discarded all the pressed skins, seeds and stalks outside the winery. The vertical press created massive round cakes piled one over the other, like big hills of “orujo de uva”. I recall the vinegary, cooked, raisiny smell of grape skins baking under the sun. Volatile acidity paradise. (perhaps a nod to my fascination with wine faults later on in my life)
I remember climbing the piled-up “orujo de uva”, with my brother Diego, playing and rolling down like in a sand dune. To this day, every time I drink a glass of old Pedro Ximénez Sherry, I associate the raisiny, sticky and pungent smell with those orujo climbing moments, my first memories of wine.
Leaving Mendoza
After University, following a short (and eventful) stint in a family winery in Mendoza, I found my way to the UK. By chance, and perhaps by destiny, I found a job in a cool wine shop in Oxford and my personal love affair with wine started. Literally and metaphorically because through the shop, I also found my wife. (A story I can gladly share over a glass of wine!)
I entered an Oddbins wine store on Oxford High Street; I asked for a job and got it on the same day. With zero wine experience (unless 15 days count!) and half-decent English.
At Oddbins, I experienced for the first time the feeling of making people happy with wine. Giving recommendations. Making people taste and discover new wines, stories, grapes and areas. It was incredible. For the first time in my life, I felt valued. Accepted. I was never a foreigner in a foreign land. All that, thanks to wine.
Wine growing… and losing it.
After Oddbins, I joined Argentinean wineries for international sales and brand ambassador roles.
I did all my WSET journey and finished WSET Level 4 Diploma in 2008. Overall, my wine sales career spanned 15 years in international management roles in Asia, Europe and Canada, where I experienced the world of wine from every angle: producers, distributors/importers, markets, brand development and consumers.
But, somehow, over those years the wine business started to feel anything but about wine. Profit, volumes, and the stern reality of the wine business were not attractive to me anymore.
The glass was empty and my relationship with wine got broken.
The leap of faith
By 2014, with a mighty mid-life crisis kicking strongly, I found this picture from my friend Grace on Facebook. She took it in the vineyards of Valle de Uco, in Mendoza. I saw how this brave Gorrion (House sparrow) was fearless enough to jump into the unknown.
Bravely taking a leap of faith. So I also did.
My appetite for change was luckily shared by my wife, and we moved with our young kids from England to Alsace, in France, closer to the border with Switzerland, to start a new life, closer to vineyards again. Ready for new challenges, curious and open to learn about wine, again.
Finding the wine guy and the human inside
I founded the Wine Guru on Wheels in 2016, as a kind of “wine shop on wheels” with immense naivety and hope. Trying to reconnect again with my lost relationship with wine and to learn also from the experience of creating something new from scratch.
The pedalling and the rollercoaster have had their very lows (financially and emotionally) plus those intoxicating, rewarding highs that only something that you, on your own, with your effort and limitations, can make you have.
You are the source of brilliance and shit, all in the same glass.
In the end, you soon find out the entrepreneurial reward is not business (or money) success but learning how to be comfortable with uncertainty and being forced to dig deep to discover who you truly are, what you truly believe in and what impact you want to make in this world.
The human side has been a priceless find for the wine guy.
Wine, outside the glass, the coming years
In the future, I’ll let the more confident wine guy expand on his artistic side.
After all these years of wine adventures, I cannot help but see more outside than inside the glass.
Like many of us, for a long time I only thought of selling it and communicating the terroir aspects, grape varieties, and production techniques, the usual industry way of talking about wine.
But as time passes, it’s clear it feels more personal.
It gave me a life I had never thought I'd have and has proved to be a magnet tool for good people.
I see the creation, the emotional side. I see wine as a messenger, a brilliant communication and learning tool.
It builds relationships among people. It’s a testament to the relationship between humans and nature. It is a cultural expression. It showcases the immense work, dedication and the many decisions taken by the humans behind its creation.
It shares life teachings from the grapevines (they make constant life decisions the same as we do) and represents a window that opens into the human stories of the people behind it.
Without these stories, we cannot relate emotionally to any wine
And wine without emotions attached is a simple commodity. It gets reduced to its mere liquid value. A drink, a standard beverage that, even worse in our times today, is carrying the stigma of having alcohol.
Its consumption and sales are decreasing globally as a consequence.
In all my experiences, teaching activities, my wine and in my future children's books, wine has something more to give and say.
I’ll invite you to share with me the world of wine I’ve created.
On one of his great days, the original Juan said something with words that he then emphasized with a smile: “Wine is, above all, a bonding human experience.” …and who am I to disagree with my grandad?
