Wine is the vehicle. Discernment is the destination. 11 years as a sommelier → now teaching you to trust your own palate. Newsletter 👇
Houston, TX
Joined October 2020
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A reader asked me if it was "too late" to take wine seriously without going back to school.
She's 47, drinks wine four nights a week, has never taken a class.
She's better positioned than half the Diploma candidates I sat with in London.
The credential gates a career, not a palate. I failed WSET Unit 6 in 2019, passed Unit 1 with merit the same year, walked away. Seven years on, I'm more sure than ever: nobody is checking your papers when you pour a glass at home.
You don't need an exam. You need a bottle and the nerve to trust what you notice.
The method I built after I quit, with the three experiments that train it, is in this week's issue:
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There's a quiet club at every dinner.
The people who taste with conviction find each other inside fifteen minutes.
Not by naming the most regions. By ordering without flinching. By pausing before they speak.
The membership card is the honest version of you at the table.
How sovereign palates read each other like a handshake:
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"Wet stone in the sun."
That's what I told a sommelier in Brooklyn the glass tasted like. He poured Chablis Premier Cru. I'd described the soil in two words I learned in kindergarten.
The trade vocabulary is a lagging indicator, not a prerequisite.
Notice what's in the glass. The word arrives on its own. Sometimes it's "lactic." Sometimes it's "wet stone." Both are correct. Only one is yours.
The fluency follows the attention, not the other way around.
The three experiments I'd run to train the attention, no flashcards involved, are in this week's issue:
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Champagne's brioche, Muscadet's weight, and Burgundy's silk all trace to one quiet winemaking decision. The wine sat on dead yeast cells, and patience did what the grape couldn't.
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$260 Napa Cab at Bourbon Steak. The principal asks what I think.
Honest answer: it tastes like a competent $40 California Cab.
I said "structure." Walked home thinking I had a palate problem.
Three years and $2,000 of 95-point bottles later, I learned: every prestige bottle I'd been buying was funding research into someone else's palate.
The cheaper data is your own.
The three-move method I now use to build my own taste record, this week:
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I tried to learn wine by drinking a hundred bottles.
One that resonated and three side-by-sides taught me more.
A map of taste starts in your mouth, not someone else's vocabulary.
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A borrowed palate gets you a credential. It does not get you a relationship with the bottle.
The work feels different when the palate is actually yours.
Why I walked away from the Diploma in 2019 and never regretted it:
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Two Pinots. Same vineyard. Same hands.
One felt like silk. The other felt like a blade.
Thirteen degrees apart in the fermenter. Cool gives you flowers and zest. Warm gives you stone fruit and weight.
The grape gets the credit. The fermenter does the work.
The short list of f
Two glasses on a Tuesday night beats two weeks of flashcards.
I spent a year studying for WSET Diploma in London. Passed Unit 6, failed Unit 1, walked away.
What moved me further, faster: side-by-sides at my kitchen table. Two Loire Sauvignons. Two Pinots, Oregon vs. Burgundy. Twenty minutes, no textbook.
The exam path optimizes for a finish line that isn't pleasure.
The fastest way to a trustworthy palate is the one that costs nothing and starts tonight.
The exact three side-by-sides I'd run if I were starting over, with the bottle pairings:
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I spent a year buying a different bottle every Friday. By December I had tasted over fifty wines and could tell you nothing useful about any of them.
One evening a friend poured two Sancerres side by side. Same village, same vintage, different producer. One was chalky and bright. The other had a saline finish that lingered for thirty seconds.
That comparison taught me more about Sauvignon Blanc than the entire year of browsing.
Three directions from one wine you love: vertical (vintages), horizontal (producers), axial (regions). That is the kind of variety that compounds.
The full method, with three ready-to-buy comparisons under $60 each:
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Most drinkers think blending is assembly. Cabernet plus Merlot, stir.
That's the last 5% of what a blender actually does.
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I was 27 when Sideways made me walk into a wine shop for the first time. 22 years later, I still reach for Santa Barbara Pinot when I watch it.
Sideways moved Pinot 170% because it attached a feeling to a grape. The trade keeps asking which varietal Uncorked will spike. Cabernet already owns U.S. premium acreage and the highest average bottle price in the country. There is nothing for a Sideways-style lift to fall into.
What Uncorked will move is a feeling. And the bottle you reach for a decade from now will be the one that reminds you of who you were when you first watched it.
I mapped the five things Uncorked could actually move in the American wine market, and none of them are Cabernet.
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A wine that resonates is a piece of evidence about you.
The wine a critic picks is a piece of evidence about the critic.
The first signal is rarer than people think. Worth following.
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A 2014 Dujac stopped me mid-conversation.
The next week I bought a "highly rated" bottle and learned nothing.
Curiosity is a method. Three moves to deepen on a wine you love:
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A wine collection is a slow self-portrait.
The wines you stop buying tell you more about your taste than the wines you order.
So do the bottles you finish guiltily and quietly remove from rotation.
Producers edit at the bench.
You edit every time you open a bottle.
The 1/2/3 grading system top producers use to cut 26 wines out of 30:
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A 100% varietal wine is an edited bottle.
The selection just happened earlier.
Three ways to read a back label most drinkers skip:
1. The dominant grape is the structural spine.
2. The minor grapes are deliberate choices.
3. Varietal labels are edits too.
Stop ordering by the name you know. Ask what got cut:
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Three Chenin Blancs.
Same producer. Same vineyard. Same vintage.
The only variable: steel, concrete, foudre.
By the third pour, the binary in my head was gone.
What I learned about "oaked" wines that day:
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