The grape pre-dates humans, so it's hard to know who discovered wine. However, archeological and other discoveries have made it easier to find this out since wine was used to meet spiritual needs. At least, this is the story that is usually told. But when civilization began about 8,000 years ago it didn't take long for wine to move from an instrument of spirituality to a dominant economic power; all it took was the development of trade. Thereafter, the life and death of certain cultures often depended upon the fortunes of wine trading. Wine may have even sparked the earliest wars. Presenting its history from a commercial perspective, Wine reveals how the historically powerful wine trade has been a catalyst in many important developments throughout the ages such as sea mercantilism, early glass blowing, cooperage and cork production, trade fairs and festivals, advertising and promotion, the survival of civilization during the so-called Dark Ages, war financing, placating or pacifying troops, tranquilizing marauders, politics, literature and more.
My writing life began at age 12, after a teacher read one of my compositions to the class and said it was the best in the class. He held me after class to encourage me to be a writer.
Over the years, I wrote poems and stories, and wrote for newsletters at work. After a brief interlude, when I lived for two years in Tehran, Iran, and traveled the countryside where ancient wines had been produced, the wine bug grabbed me. The idea of getting into the wine business came to me, too, after having worked on a number of projects as a script writer for a few wineries and their promotion campaigns. I had already started to consume wine regularly and to make it at home. To me, it was just a short leap to make wine commercially.
That short leap cost me some money but I got a winery up and running and when the money ran out eight years later, I had to close up shop. But I kept writing, yet I switched to wine writing and then I added food writing to that.
After closing the winery, I went to work as a wine salesman for a winery and then for a distributor. After that, I opened a wine retail shop with a partner.
My immersion in the wine world has me traveling the, well, the wine world. I continue to write and I have added a blog to that effort: vinofictions.blogspot.com
