Step 1: build vocabulary
When a patient with acute abdominal pain comes in cessation of respiration with deep palpation of the right upper quadrant, sonography is clearly your first choice to evaluate for cholecystitis and choledolcholithiasis.
To me, that makes perfect sense, like saying two cups of flour and one cup of milk are the key ingredients in America's Test Kitchen's blueberry pancake recipe. Which makes excellent dad-approved pancakes, I don't care what my wife (aka the next gen Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart clone…but super hot) says.
Interestingly, that first sentence doesn't make a lick of sense to some people. Perhaps most people. Pain in your right upper quadrant is where the gallbladder lives and pain that makes you stop breathing when someone is pushing on that spot is likely the gallbladder or the little tubes that connect it's lovely bile to your intestines. Easy stuff right?
I think wine is similar in some respect. Lots of french names that the sommelier's (pronounced su-mil-e-a…with I guess an "s" at the end because I wrote it possessive) face indicating you should know what the heck he's/she's talking about. I don't. I still don't.
But wine people…lets call them winos…toss around estates and grape varieties with great ease because like the bile lake living under your live, it's become muscle memory vocabulary to them. I had a good friend one time who said the only difference between doctors and normal people is we speak a different language. As time goes on, that guy's pretty spot on.
But how do you get from a Taylor Swift Blank Space to having some muscle memory on the subject. Exposure and reading.
Now I'll be the first to admit, I don't read very fast. And I'm a slow mentator. Lots going for me I guess. Which means I don't get things every time on the first time and I often have to revisit ideas many times over to get them right. But you have to start somewhere. Enter Michael J Neal. Never met the guy but he has a viticulture (grape growing) service and has tons of youtube videos about vineyard maintenance. You can check him out here.
Now one of the things I think is helpful as I and you learn is don't just listen to what he's saying and what he's doing but watch how he's doing it. Watch his familiarity and the ease wit
I ordered a couple of books, which is usually how my wife knows I'm up to something (that and I don't shut up about it for weeks) the best one so far is Growing Grapes in Texas by Jim Kamas. Jim is an extension agent for Texas A&M ag department which means his job is to help people grow things better. His book is a very easy read even for my slothy neurons and I think you'll enjoy it greatly.
Amazon pinky swears two other books are coming, The HomeBuilt Winery by Steven Hughes and The Backyard Vintner by Jim Law. I'll let you know how these go.
I dunno Betty maybe it's just walking up and down all the dang rows of grapes.