Saturday, December 09, 2006 8:13 AM
Some law experts love wine, some wine experts love law.
Contrary to popular belief, lawyers and other professionals within the legal vertical don't spend all of their time working. And, more and more, these people are talking about their outside interests on the web. On Saturdays, I will be writing about some of these interests as well as other topics outside the law.
Today, let's look at wine.
Professor Stephen Bainbridge, a UCLA law professor, regularly highlights his love of wine in his blog Professor Bainbridge on Wine. His commentary is great. I especially love his reactions to a particular wine, as exemplified by his post yesterday, Chateau Gruaud-Larose (St. Julien) 1986:
In 1986, Gruaud-Larose made a wine for the ages. I've been sitting on a case for years, waiting for it to come around. In 2004, it was spectacular, but still needed a bit of time. In early 2005, it was still remarkably youthful. Tonight's bottle lacked the jammy young fruit I noted on those earlier occasions. Instead, it offered a powerful, mature bouquet suggestive of a rare book room - a little dusty, with tons of cedar, leather, and dried black fruits. On the palate, the wine still has plenty of tannins to allow it to age for years (decades?), but it is finally very drinkable. Classic mature claret flavors of blackberries, currants, cedar, tobacco, smoke, and pencil shavings. A stunner. Grade: A+
Lawyers also own vineyards and even found wine companies. Take Boalt Hall graduate Jess Jackson, of Kendall-Jackson. And, if this account, Jess Jackson- lawyer, farmer, patriot, from Pinotblogger of a Sonoma County meeting is accurate, it sounds like he has not forgotten what he learned in law school.
On the other hand, some wine people say I Wish I Was A Lawyer...sometimes. Tom Wark, in his Tom Wark's Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog recently wished he "was a lawyer sometimes because [he will] often read something concerning a lawsuit and just not understand the intent of it."
And, laws and regulation related to wine are an industry onto themselves, as evidenced by the need for The International Wine Law Association (Association Internationale des Juristes du Droit de la Vigne et du Vin - AIDV). AIDV "was founded in 1985 (Statutes) to provide an international forum for the study and discussion of legal issues concerning the viticultural community and the wine trade - world wide." And, it is no small group, "[w]ith over 350 individual and organization members in 27 countries, the AIDV provides a wide range of activities: conferences in major wine-growing regions of the world, publications, and opportunities for contact with colleagues in wine law."
Of course, lawyers who love wine do run risks, especially when dining out, as Professor Bainbridge recounts in The Perils of Being a Wine Blogger:
When I go out to business dinners these days, I increasingly often find myself being handed the wine list and told to order for the table. Usually, I try to beg off. I've got a story to tell about blowing the lid off a friend's expense account that's admittedly grown somewhat in the telling and is a tad exaggerated for effect, but is still sadly accurate in its basics. Indeed, my friend tells me that seven years later his Dean still doesn't let him take law school guest speakers out to dinner unsupervised.
Good stuff. Have a nice weekend.