28 Brix
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That's how it started. A string of nonsensical words on the website for the podcast he was now trying to figure out how to produce.
Only a few hours earlier, Michael had borrowed a new t-shirt from his favorite winemaker, Robbie Meyer.
Grape juice had spilled on the shirt he had been wearing when he sampled the most recent batch.
"28 Brix. High" he had heard Robbie, or Bob, as some called him, say to himself.
Michael had no idea what this meant. He just thought it was good juice. Sweet, yes, but good. Delicious even. So much so that he went back for another sip but missed his mouth and spilled the deep ruby liquid down the plaid button down he wore when he wanted to impress someone.
"High?" Michael inferred.
"No. I wouldn't want it to impair my tasting. But it looks like you may have spilled some juice on your shirt."
'This was not the way I wanted to start this' thought Michael. The insecurity of being someone new, a fish out of water, combined with a subject that was unknown to him, winemaking, and now wearing a 'Look at this dummy' scarlet letter, literally, were all intersecting.
And was that a sneer on the winemaker's face as he briskly ambled away?
'Oh great. He thinks I'm dork. He's gonna be talking about this with the other people at the winery when I leave. He's gonna judge every question I ask him about wine now and snicker at how ridiculous these questions are.
He's walking around here so fast because he's already trying to get this over with. What am I even supposed to say next? Can I just shrink myself and crawl into one of the holes of this wine barrel that I'm standing next to?
This is terrible.'
"Here."
Michael snapped from a cyclone of insecurity to see the winemaking great, holding a pristine white t-shirt.
"I keep them stashed all over the winery.
Medium?" Robbie asked, handing Michael the t-shirt.
"If I had a bottle of wine for every dribbled shirt in this place, can you guess how many bottles of wine I would have?"
Michael contemplated a number. "Eleven?"
"More like eleven-ty.
And logic might suggest a darker colored backup. Burgundy or black. But I thought it would be funny to make them the whitest color they could be, so everyone that's here can see the new initiate. It's like a rite of passage.
Congratulations. You didn't take long."
For the first time today, a relaxed exhale seemed to be entering Michael as if wine was steadily being filled into a glass. The plaid goto was suddenly nothing more than back pocket bandanna, not nearly as cool as the bright white t with PM, Peirson Meyer, monogram.
"You wanna see where that juice becomes wine?"
A smile came to Michael's face.
'Today I will start a podcast.'
