The Art of Pressing Reset: Wine, Wisdom, and the Courage to Begin Again
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blend of Old and New
Jun 18, 2025
Hello. I wanted to write something different from some of my other posts. However, it is still within the realm of the wine world, but it is more personal and reflective of my journey to where Winemakers Rock is. As I find myself sitting and contemplating, or even reflecting for a moment on what is changing in my life, I realise there's a moment in every winemaker's journey—usually around 3 AM during harvest, covered in grape juice, a beer in hand and questioning life choices—when you understand that making wine is less about controlling nature and more about dancing with it. It's a delicate waltz between honouring centuries of tradition and having the audacity to try something completely mad that might work brilliantly.
This got me thinking (dangerous, I know) about navigating the broader vintage of life itself. We're all essentially winemakers of our own existence, aren't we? Blending the wisdom of our past with the courage to press reset when the blend isn't quite working.
The Tyranny of "That's How We've Always Done It"
In wine, as in life, a particular type of person treats tradition like gospel. You know the sort—they'd rather drink vinegar than admit that maybe, just maybe, temperature-controlled fermentation might be an improvement over leaving everything to the whims of Mother Nature and hoping for the best.
Don't get me wrong—I have tremendous respect for traditional methods. There's something magical about techniques passed down through generations, each vintage teaching lessons that can't be found in textbooks. But here's the rub: blind adherence to tradition without understanding *why* we do things is just as dangerous as throwing out everything old in favour of whatever's trendy this season.
My good friend Andy Abramson recently wrote about the death of hospitality in travel and dining, and his observations struck a chord that resonates well beyond hotel lobbies and restaurant tables. He painted a picture of an industry that systematically eliminates the human touch in favour of cost-cutting measures—self-checkout kiosks replacing helpful staff, hotels where "elite" status delivers increasingly basic amenities, and restaurants where servers juggle impossible workloads. What caught my attention wasn't just the decline he described, but the underlying cause: businesses prioritising short-term profits over the very essence of what made their industries special in the first place. It's a cautionary tale that applies to any field where tradition and human connection have been the foundation of excellence. When we strip away the soul of what we do in pursuit of efficiency, we risk losing not just our customers, but our purpose.
The best wines I've encountered—and the most interesting people, for that matter—manage to honour their roots while remaining gloriously open to evolution. They understand that tradition isn't a museum piece; it's a living, breathing foundation upon which to build something extraordinary.
The Beautiful Mess of Making Mistakes
Let's talk about failure for a moment, shall we? In wine, mistakes can be spectacular. I once knew a vigneron who accidentally left a valve open post-fermentation, creating what he generously called "an innovative low-alcohol experiment." Naturally, it was undrinkable, but the lessons learned from that disaster informed his subsequent five vintages—all magnificent.
Life offers similar opportunities for what I like to call “educational disasters.” These include career pivots that fall flat, relationships that combust spectacularly, and business ventures that crater faster than a Yorkshire pudding in a drafty kitchen. The temptation is to pretend these never happened or let them define us permanently.
But here's what I've learned from watching countless vintages come and go: the magic happens when you can look at your failures with the same analytical curiosity you'd apply to a problematic fermentation. What went wrong? What conditions contributed to the disaster? What can be salvaged, and what needs to be rethought entirely?
The Reset Paradox: Changing Everything While Changing Nothing
The most fascinating wineries I work with have mastered what I call the "reset paradox." They'll completely overhaul their approach to viticulture—perhaps switching from conventional to biodynamic practices—while simultaneously preserving the soul of what makes their wines distinctive.
It's rather like renovating a centuries-old farmhouse. You rewire the electrics and install modern plumbing, but you don't rip out the original stone walls that give the place its character. The essence remains; the experience is transformed.
This principle applies beautifully to personal reinvention. The most successful "life resets" I've witnessed haven't involved people becoming entirely different versions of themselves. Instead, they've figured out how to strip away what wasn't working while amplifying their authentic strengths.
The Wisdom of the Blend
Here's where wine offers us its most profound life lesson: the art of blending. A skilled winemaker understands that individual grape varieties have their strengths and limitations. Cabernet Sauvignon brings structure and power but can be austere on its own. Merlot adds softness and approachability but might lack complexity in isolation.
The magic happens in the blend, taking the best characteristics of each component and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
Our life experiences work similarly. The discipline learned from difficult periods, the joy harvested from unexpected successes, and the wisdom gained from spectacular failures each contribute something essential to the blend of who we become.
I am learning the trick is knowing which experiences to feature prominently in your personal vintage and which to use more sparingly. Some lessons deserve to be the dominant note in your life's composition; others are better served as subtle background influences that add complexity without overwhelming the palate. And for me, I find myself at that crossroads. Im a slow developer in a world of speed and youth, very much like the current wine market. But it’s time to get on the market and have my cork pulled. (Figuratively, obviously)
The Courage to Cork It
There comes a point in winemaking when you must decide: Is this wine ready, or does it need more time? Get it wrong, and you've either released something that required more development or kept something in the barrel so long that it's past its peak.
Life presents us with similar moments of decision. When do we stop tweaking and adjusting and commit to our chosen direction? When do we have the courage to "cork" our new vintage of self and share it with the world?
I am guilty of many things, and procrastination is one that I have to fight and understand. Like me, too many people get trapped in perpetual preparation—always getting ready to launch a business, start a relationship, make a career change, or take the leap. They're so busy perfecting the blend that they never actually bottle it. Well, it’s now my focus to cork it and move forward with the plan—no more tweaking.
The Tasting Notes of Growth
If I were to write tasting notes for personal growth, they might read something like this:
"A complex blend of experience and aspiration, showing excellent integration between lessons learned and dreams yet to be realised. Notes of resilience on the nose, with undertones of hard-won wisdom and a surprising finish of childlike curiosity. The tannins of past mistakes have softened beautifully, providing structure without overwhelming the fruit. Ready to drink now, but will continue to develop with time."
The beauty of both wine and life is that they're never truly finished. Each vintage teaches us something new, and each experience adds another layer of complexity to our personal blend.
The Art of Sharing the Vintage
Perhaps most importantly, both wine and wisdom are meant to be shared. The finest bottle in the world is wasted if it sits unopened in a cellar, just as the most profound life lessons lose their value if we hoard them.
The winemakers I admire are generous with their knowledge, understanding that sharing wisdom doesn't diminish their own reserves—it enriches the entire community. They know that helping others avoid their mistakes doesn't make their own journey less valuable; it gives meaning to the struggles they've endured. And even more so in this context, I have enjoyed joining a group of inspirational individuals who share this fundamental outlook. All of them are from various positions and businesses, with multiple challenges, options, and a mindset to learn and support each other and better their own goals. I believe this platform will aid my self-development, driving my goals and aspirations. I highly recommend looking into the group on their website, [Game Changers](https://mygamechangers.com/ You never know what it can lead to. Always keep asking; What if? I find it enlightening.
Raising a Glass to Reset
So here's to the courage to press reset when life's blend isn't quite working, to honouring our past while remaining open to transformation, and to understanding that the most interesting people, like the most compelling wines, are those who've learned to balance tradition with innovation, and experience with experimentation.
And here's to remembering that every day offers us the chance to adjust our blend, to learn from yesterday's vintage while crafting tomorrow's masterpiece. Because in the end, we're all just winemakers trying to create something beautiful from the grapes life has given us.
