My first major in college was music. I never finished that degree, and instead got degrees in plant biology, chemistry, and food science and technology. But from my early studies one of the things that I keep with me to this day is that making wine can be very much like making music.

There's basically two ways of learning music: one way is by going to the Juilliard School of music or something like that, where you learn the language or the science of music. You learn about call and response, timbre, meter, pitch, tone -- those are the things that go into you. What comes out then that you synthesize is the art. And winemaking is very much the same way: you learn about the language or the science of wine. You learn about tannins, pH, acid, plant physiology, yeast cell biology -- those are the things that go to you. What you synthesize and what comes out is fine wine, artfully made.

Now most of winemakers in the US have to take this approach of careful study to making wine because we don't have the advantage of having generation after generation having made wine in our own backyard. Just as traditional folk musicians often have music kind of coming forward organically from having heard and followed music sitting at their grandpappy’s knee, so have Burgundian winemakers followed the lead of generations past. For example you might have a little kid in Beaune who's maybe six years old sitting at the breakfast table table eating Cheerios or a croissant or whatever it was that they were eating, and listening to her grandpa talk to her dad. And the grandpa says,  “Oh this year is a lot like 1946, and this is what I did because my dad had said that is what works in this situation.” And the budding-young winemaker is kind of absorbing that stuff by osmosis. Well, most of us here in the New World just don't have that kind of multi-generational experience with grape growing, so it's up to us to study hard and really understand our medium, to help to overcome the great advantage that so many generations of European winegrowers have had.

Lots of people who are passionate about wine are also passionate about music, so I hope we'll hear from some folks with their experiences learning or making music and/or wine.