There is no single moment I can point to and say, This is it. That's when it started. Instead, my relationship with wine has been shaped slowly, over time through friendships, moves, long conversations, and the kind of ordinary nights that only become meaningful in hindsight. It's been an accumulation of places and people, of phases of life and the bottles that quietly accompanied them.
Looking back, I realize my curiosity for wine has been growing for the last 15 years. And somewhere along the way, it became more than just something I drank. It became a hobby. A way to connect. A lens through which I could understand food, culture, and sometimes myself.
Colombia: where wine wasn't really a thing
Growing up in Colombia, wine was never part of daily life. Colombia sits on the equator. We don't really have seasons. Temperatures range from the heat of Cartagena to near-freezing conditions high up in the mountains. But we don't have the kind of seasonal rhythm that wine culture depends on. We don't grow wine, and we don't consume it the way our South American neighbors in Chile or Argentina do.
Most of the wine I remember seeing in Bogota came from those two countries. It also carried a certain image. Wine felt expensive. Exclusive. A little snobby. I associated it with people who belonged to a refined, slightly mysterious group, those blessed with trained palates and unspoken rules. It didn't really catch my attention.
That said, I do remember going back to Colombia during summer breaks while studying at Trinity and having long, indulgent nights with friends, sharing bottles of red wine. I remember liking it. I just didn't think much of it beyond that.
Things changed after graduate school.
Greenwich: the first time wine felt approachable
In 2013, after finishing my master's at Trinity, I moved to Greenwich, a small town in the suburbs of New York. I was renting a house from Chris Walker, a former world-class squash player and one-time top-four player in the world. My college friend Randy Lim and I were both trying to find our footing in the New York job market. City rent was out of reach, so we split time between internships, squash coaching, and general post-grad hustling.
The three of us ended up living together for a year.
Chris, being the gentleman he is, had a wine subscription with a California winery. Every few months, boxes would arrive. Every now and then, he would open a bottle and share it with us. More importantly, he would talk about it.
"This is a Pinot Noir from California."
That was it. No lecture. No performance. Just context.
As months went by, Randy and I started buying bottles ourselves. We started noticing labels, regions, grapes. We began trying different things just for fun. And of course, between three people, a bottle didn't exactly last long.
That year holds some of my favorite early wine memories, not because the wine itself was extraordinary, but because it was my first experience of wine as something warm and social, not intimidating or exclusive. It was wine without pressure.
Just three guys in a house, figuring life out and sharing bottles along the way.
New York City: where the world comes to meet
After Greenwich, Randy and I moved into Manhattan.
We found an apartment on the Upper East Side in one of those classic "pre-war" buildings. Translation: fifth-floor walk-up stairs, old pipes, and the kind of charm you only appreciate because it's what you can afford.
Our interest in wine continued, but the environment changed entirely.
Manhattan has an absurd number of wine shops. Small ones, large ones, minimalist ones, chaotic ones.
In those NYC years, wine became something we'd enjoy after a long workday, or on weekends sprawled on the couch. No restaurants. No food pairings. Nothing fancy.
Just Randy and me, a glass of wine, and conversations that more often than not revolved around dating in the city.
If you've ever lived in New York, you'll understand: sometimes it feels like the city runs on ambition during the day and emotional processing at night.
Wine was part of that.
Madrid: when wine became culture
After several years in New York, I moved to Madrid for a one-year MBA. That move marked another turning point.
Wine culture in Spain felt fundamentally different. For starters: price.
In New York, a glass of wine at a bar could easily cost twelve bucks. In Madrid, two or three euros could buy something better. But price wasn't the biggest difference. It was the attitude.
Wine in Spain didn't feel performative. It wasn't a flex. It wasn't reserved for special occasions. It was casual. Normal. Part of dinner. Part of life.
I noticed something else too: people seemed to drink differently.
My experience with alcohol in the US began in college. I was legally allowed to drink in Colombia at eighteen, but not in the US. That reality pushed most social life into dorm rooms and fraternity basements. I drank more beer during those years than at any other time in my life. Binge drinking wasn't an exception, it was often the point.
Spain felt calmer. More deliberate. It was common to have one or two drinks and call it a night. Wine at dinner was the rule, not the exception. That didn't stop my MBA friends and me from enjoying student-priced excess, but the baseline culture was different.
A beautiful coincidence
While living in Madrid, I spent weekends wandering neighborhoods, visiting mercados, cafes, and wine shops. One Saturday afternoon, I walked to Plaza de Olavide after spotting a wine shop that caught my eye. Inside, I ran into Johanneke, a fellow student from my program whom I'd met early on, over a glass of wine.
We were both surprised by the encounter. We started talking. Naturally, the topic became wine. And at some point, the conversation turned into an idea: why not host wine tasting evenings?
Everyone would bring a bottle, share something about it, and we'd learn together.
We did it a few times during the program, simple evenings that felt joyful and easy. No expertise, no pretension. Just curiosity.
Some love stories start with fireworks. Mine didn't.
Ours started with a wine shop and a shared curiosity.
Back in NYC: merging cultures
After the MBA, I returned to New York with a renewed appreciation for wine. Curiosity deepened. I spent long stretches at my local wine shop talking to the staff, trying to understand what made a bottle special. What "good value" actually meant. I read more. I learned regions. Spanish wine felt familiar by then, but French, Italian, Georgian, and Portuguese wines were still mostly unexplored territory.
Wine became one of those hobbies that rewards you endlessly. No matter how much you learn, there's always more.
And honestly, that's part of the appeal.
Amsterdam: the next chapter
Three years later, I moved again, this time to Amsterdam, to see if life with the woman I'd met in that Madrid wine shop would work out.
Wine in the Netherlands sits somewhere between Madrid and New York in price, closer to the former. Very little wine is produced locally, which means most of it is imported, with a strong focus on Europe. The supply chains are shorter. Many importers work directly with producers. Prices are friendlier. So is experimentation.
Since then, wine has become less about collecting knowledge and more about discovery. I'm not trying to master a single region or chase credentials. What excites me most is learning the history of a place, understanding local grapes, and seeing how different methods and philosophies shape what ends up in the glass.
These days, that means talking to importers, reading about producers, visiting wine fairs, and opening bottles at home. With two kids, dinners happen around our own table more often than not. I enjoy playing sommelier in a low-stakes way, thinking through pairings, tasting widely, sharing thoughts.
Like most things worth caring about, the deeper you go, the more you realize how much there is to learn. I love wine for its flavors, but even more for its stories. It's been about the places I've lived. The people I've met. The conversations that shaped me.
And most of all, I love sharing it, in good company, with people who are curious about the mix of craft and culture, about how place, people, and process can all show up in one glass.
Salud.