TDWine

The Other Side of the Bar

It’s been a while since my last post. Things have been pretty hectic for me leading up to the week of Thanksgiving. And speaking of Thanksgiving, I have to give a big THANK YOU to Kelly Messenger, owner of Vino 100 in The Woodlands.

TD at Vino 100

Because of Kelly for a short while I was able to be ‘In the Wine Business‘. After being a long time customer, last August after passing my Level I Sommelier exam I moved to the other side of the bar.

In late October, in fact on the same afternoon Andrea and I headed to the Hill Country, I received a call from a former colleague about a new opportunity relative to my ‘day job’, technology. After the usual negotiations, I landed the gig and started this past week. It’s an opportunity to update the Data Centers for a large enterprise headquartered right here in my home town of The Woodlands. No more hour and half commutes to H-Town and back that sometimes took 10 to 15 hours a week out of my time. Another reason to be thankful.

Unfortunately for my second career in wine the new opportunity is going to take a lot of my time and energy with some evening and weekend work. I didn’t think it would be fair to Kelly and the other great folks at Vino if I wasn’t able to commit to a regular work schedule there so I had to put the fun on hold for a while. Graciously Kelly said I could still hold some Wine 101 classes in the future if I can find time. I really enjoyed those, especially teaching blind tasting techniques.

So for the foreseeable future, I’m out of the retail wine business as I focus on this new opportunity. I’ll still continue my wine studies and will keep blogging, tweeting, and Facebook’ng my winescapades, but for now I’m moving back to the other side of the bar.

Thanks again Kelly.