So what are you doing after high school? Oh I’m pursuing a degree in Viticulture. *cue blank stare* That would be the art of winemaking. There’s really a degree for that?

And so on.

From what I gather, it must be pretty strange when an eighteen year old kid says he wants to go into winemaking. The main question I usually get is ‘Why?’ Well here goes nothing.

I plan on going to college in California for obvious reasons including radicalness and beautiful oceans and valleys. Also, my extended family mostly resides in the central coast where my college of choice is. Plus the girls are incredible, but we’ll leave that topic for another time. I needed an industry that fit my location but I didn’t want to pick something that would make me want to blow my brains out after five years. After touring a few wineries and witnessing the sheer beauty of these valleys and vineyards, I was hooked. I’m not sure where in the industry I would end up in because it’s so vast and foreign.

Foreignness is also a huge part of the enticement of this degree. I crave a new place filled with new people and new experiences, and wine has been interesting and evolving since the beginning of time. I mean c’mon even Jesus drank wine for God’s sake (ha.) If I lived three lives filled with wine I would still have failed at learning everything there is to learn. From the environment I would be in to the people I would meet on a daily basis, I’d be ecstatic. If anything could hold my attention for the rest of my life it would be this.

Even with all of this, I know that wine is not my only option and I refuse to close myself off to other possibilities. I may very well end up changing my degree one, two or four times. I don’t want to confine myself to one set lifestyle because I know nothing about this giant world and everything in it. And for that same reason I picked an interesting, adventurous industry that I’ll try to thrust myself into completely.