What's the most interesting job you've ever had? Why'd you leave/quit/get fired?

Well I've only had one job in my life as a shitty factory worker so that's the most interesting job I've had

That's cool as fuck dude.

I used to grow and sell psychedelic mushrooms. I quit when I got a physics degree.

Going to jail with a physics degree seemed really fucking dumb to me.

I'm a wine buyer and run a few small wine shops in California. I taste thousands of wines per year, and can blindly pick out grape/region combinations pretty easily, usually 75% hit rate, the remainder I'm usually close. It's just a memory game really. People always say "wine's all bullshit you can't tell good from bad" which isn't true, but it is true that there are lots of extremely bad over priced wines out there.

I'm planning on phasing out of my role soon though and working on a startup fulltime with some business partners here in the Bay Area.

Wine industry is awesome, tons of fun, amazing food is always around (restaurant connections are great), beer connections, liquor connections, and not talking about shitty stuff, like top tier, craft things.

Problem with all that is it isn't healthy at all. I see people who have been in this industry for 20 years and they're not fucking healthy. It takes a big toll over time. Obviously the calories, etc, but also the lifestyle. There's ALWAYS a good reason to drink on a weeknight.

The problem is it isn't "oh bro, we've got a 30 rack of keystone let's go kill it", it's like, hey my friend's brewery just opened, let's go try it out and then come back and crack a bottle of 2006 Barolo ($85+) and grill up some ribeyes. Then we'll finish off with this single cask bottling of scotch that my buddy at the distributor gave me as a gift...

Crazy interesting industry though.

Im a janitor in area 51

How do you get into this? I feel like you have to be previously wealthy just to get the experience necessary

I'm in the middle of an undergrad physics degree right now. What do you do now? Did you do any grad school?

am uni student, what is go to reasonably priced wine?

What area of CA?

Also this

hamstrings the part of women that's most like men lol

Find a local wine shop and just start tasting, taking notes, and learning about wine on your own. You DO NOT need to study wine at a university, program, or whatever to get into wine. All you need to do is smell, taste, learn, and sometimes drink.

Where are you located? I can help you find a local wine shop that looks solid if you're in a larger metropolitan area, or, I can help you find a nearby wine region that's worth visiting, potentially.

You really don't have to have a lot of money, there are fantastic wines now for under $30. That said, there are still oceans of garbage in the $4-$9 range as well. I find that for a bottle price, quality kicks in around $12-$15 for imports, and $15-$18 for domestic. Yup, you heard me right, imported wine is better quality at a cheaper point than domestic. This is for a variety of reasons, one being that the old world wineries aren't paying mortgages on their land any more.

This is always actually a tough question because it's largely location based. So I can't give specific brand name label recommendations usually, because it depends where you're at. Spend about $12-$15, and find a local, smaller wine shop. Grocery stores are generally BAD places to find wine, because they're looking for MASSIVE production and quality is almost always secondary or tertiary of importance.

For some good options though, from France I recommend: Cotes-du-Rhone, Beaujolais-Villages, Bordeaux Superieur.

Spain: Monastrell from Jumilla/Yecla, Garnacha from Navarra, Tempranillo from Rioja.

Italy: Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Chianti Ruffina (avoid basic Chianti in the wicker baskets, those are mostly shit), Langhe Nebbiolo.

USA: Look for Pinot Noir from Sonoma Coast, Central Coast, or Monterey. Spend at least $15 on these. Check out Zinfandel from Lodi, or Amador County for good value stuff. Avoid Napa, it's largely over-priced at the moment.

I'm in the Bay Area

And, continuing the comment about wine costing a lot of money:

It definitely can cost a lot if you go that way. Wine in restaurants is almost always about 2.5x - 4x the cost of the same bottle in a retail setting. Find a local restaurant with a big by-the-glass menu for wines, and just start trying different stuff.

One of your best resources will be finding a local wine shop that has tasting events. These are amazing ways to get to try dozens of wines for sometimes not very much money. Regularly at my shop we have events where folks can taste 12+ wines, and learn about them (from me) for $10-$15.

A lot of online wine clubs are garbage. They source massive deals on huge quantities of high-margin mostly shitty wines. They're just gambling on getting popular and being able to scale with users, and making massive margin.

Again, hopefully you have a local wine shop nearby that has a cool wine club. Unfortunately, I know that at least in the USA, there are limited options outside of the coasts, so your mileage may vary.

I work for Jagex (think RuneScape).

It's a lot of fun, and it's a surreal workplace. It's not very fulfilling, but it pays well and it's enjoyable. I'll likely leave soon, but it's perfect now (recently out of Uni).

so u get diamonds from looking at bakhar nabieva?

so what do you do with your physics degree?

Damn son.

Sadly I'm only 19 and can't drop by wine shops. I was more just curious about how you end up getting paid to do that rather than just having a passing interest.

i had someone call me a pleb because i like zinfandel.

#1 rule in the wine industry is drink what you like. That said, I'm not gonna lie and say that there's no behind-the-scenes judgment sometimes of certain wines/wine preferences/etc., but honestly, drink what you like and keep an open mind about trying new stuff always. Even if you have a Cab, or Pinot, or French red, or German white, or whatever the fuck, and hate it, chances are you haven't tried enough to make a balanced decision. There's a HUGE diversity in wine. Don't write off any single grape, region, style, etc., just cause you didn't like it once.

If you dig Zin, here are some other options to check out from other places (google them for more info):
Italy: Valpolicella Ripasso
Portugal: Alentejo, Douro, Touriga Nacional
France: Cotes du Rhone
Argentina: Malbec

I cleaned windows in NY. Got to visit a lot of rich peoples homes and get a feel of the high life. Also, got to access a lot of crazy offices and warehouses and see whats up in there. Once a porn shoot which was fun. Sometimes the customers liked our personalities so much they invited us to a party.

Ive seen a lot of naked people/people fucking while cleaning windows. Not only when im descending off the side of the building to reach the floor im supposed to clean. Sometimes people would let me in their home while their gf is still asleep and then she would come out not expecting me. Really weird people sleep completely nude to me.

The crazier stuff is witnessing suicides. A lot of people jump to their deaths and sometimes hit the building on the way down, and we had to clean it.

This one time a girl jumped to her death and she didnt reach the sidewalk, on the way down she hit a 10 foot fence with her neck and it impaled her, so she was dangling on the fence still alive losing all her blood trough her mouth and neck.

This was my job during uni. Now im a veterinarian assistant and do cheap surgeries in my basement.

>tfw you find a good pinot noir for under $20
so good.

It's such a good feeling. Goddamned Pinot is so hot right now.

How the hell did you get here, I read through crappy posts and then this randomly informative person actually posts it feels like I entered the Berenstain universe.

Thanks for the wine tips user you rule! I don't like it enough to be a master but it'll make me a badass when I need to host parties.

thx dude. i probably like white zinfandel the most because it's pleasantly sweet and light (and that's probably why ppl more into wine think it's pleb). i'm not too into wine but i'll try w/e... i just don't really go seeking it out.

also thx for the cheap wine tips in the earlier post. think i'm gonna get some for next weekend.

i hosted a radio show that aired in the afternoon around 3 to 4. it was a fun way to get more confident in public speech.

now i work in a private gymnasium where i work as an admin for cambridge certificates.

boring 9 to 5 jobs suck.

yo nigga, a good family friend of mine owns Clos du Gravillas vineyard in Languedoc, he puts out a few very delicious wines that are sold around the US

i doubt youd remember it among the thousands of french wines you've had, but i'm curious if you do

I recommend the muscat

Can you tell me a bit about Strawberry wine? I was thinking about growing Strawberries hydroponically and turning them into wine.

I'm active on Veeky Forums, /vr/, and Veeky Forums among other boards, most of the wine threads on Veeky Forums are shit though. Glad you enjoyed! One of my favorite things is teaching people about wine and showing them that wine isn't just some douchebag's way of showing they have money. It's fucking delicious, and is a great window to meeting people all around the world.

White zin has a pretty bad reputation right now as just being simple cheap shitty wine. It's totally fine to like it, sure, some would call it pleb, but that doesn't mean don't drink it if you like it. You might also like Riesling, Moscato, or even an Italian sweet red called Brachetto. Try drinking some dry (not sweet) wines with food! It softens the dryness and can be really nice.

Never heard of Clos du Gravillas, but I'll definitely check to see if they're distributed here in California. I love Languedoc wines, great balance of fruit, spice, earth, rustic funk, and awesome fucking value. You can get absurdly good stuff for like $14. Do they make a sweet dessert style muscat?

I don't get to taste much fruit wine (generally we call anything not made from grapes fruit wine), because the demand is usually pretty low in restaurant/high-end markets. But I have had some delicious fruit wines in my day. The problem with strawberry wine is it doesn't keep very well because the structure is very different from grape wine. In grape wine there is tannin, and acid which, put simply, help the wine age and survive being stored. Strawberries are high in malic acid, but not tartaric acid, and probably wouldn't be able to make anything that would keep. That said, I bet you could make some absolutely delicious stuff. There's great recipes out there for it. I make a little wine/beer at home as well and its a ton of fun.

crazy stuff user. did you have to stand on one of those tiny platforms? and if so how did you even get on without immediately shitting your pants?

>interesting
High School music teacher. Jesus Christ I could write a book with the cringey stupid shit I've seen. These kids can't hide their power levels.

>Fun
Security guard for a company. They'd just have us drive to the places that hired the company and we would just fuck with teenagers and I'd get a couple hours of sleep in the car every night. Quit because I graduated college

I'm looking into joining the national guard right now. Don't think I want to be deployed but I half want to help my state and half need more money because teachers earn fuck all and I can do this on the side.

yeah, this is the shit right here, can't recommend it enough. so fruity.

I only had one job and it sucked

It was some mix of blue and white collar crap

>be in final year of university
>really want to be a snowboard instructor
>looking at a canadian work exchange program
>reading this thread.

idk what to do... If i don't use my Compsci degree it'll feel like a huge waste

but i also really want to travel and work on the mountain

Created new flavours for a protein powder company.

I'm the brains behind Banana Creme and Strawberrys and Cookies

Chris Archie is that you

freelance bro

get established
freelance
snowboarding is a seasonal job anyways

good luck m8

balance is always important in life

So sweet like ice-wine sweet, as in it coats your mouth with sweetness.

Or is it like a nice burst sweetness that lasts only as long as you have the liquid in your mouth?

I like sweet wines personally, when I was in Montreal I liked buying ice cider when I could afford to during university. I ended drinking very little alchol in university because I would save up my money to drink sweet wines.

Maybe make not it a career but use it as a resource when applying for a job in your field. Seems cool tho i wish i could take a semester off and become a ski bum

I took a year off after college lived on the resort riding every pow day for a season. Left to go to grad school.

It still crosses my mind while I'm at work nowadays to just quit and sell all my belongings to chase storms in my truck...

My fiance was a snowboard instructor and it was shit. Doing something not on the slope for a job is where it's at. Keep that shit sacred.

I worked as a discretionary prop trader for a year. Traded US and European markets, mainly fixed income and equities but also energies, ags and softs. Seriously interesting, fun but difficuly stressful job. One mistake and you could be gone but you could make serious money. Also the hours were killing me — 6:30 start didn't finish until 21:00 5 days a week no holidays while markets were open.

I left to do a PhD in mathematics because that's what I wanted to do since I was a kid so I felt like older me would hate myself if I didn't do that while I could although I strongly fly suspect that older me might hate myself for leaving such a good job voluntarily (most people who start trading get fired in the first 3 years). I suppose i can always go back to algo trading or something after I do my PhD but I miss the intensity of the job.

Did you also make the one that tastes like burnt fruit bats

gotta be honest, i haven't had the chance to taste it in like two years, so i'd be lying if i said i could pinpoint what type of sweetness

all i remember is it's a beautiful flowery fruitiness, and not overbearingly sweet

pls give me gold

This. Those legs look male. More or less like mine.

Worked for a travelling carnival the summer after high school. Only quit because I joined the Marine Corps.

Halp me find good wine shop in 559 fresno area. I'm new to wine to I'm a complete noob

Canada, Alberta snowboard instructor here, it's pretty shit, most of your job exists because parents are overprotective with their kids. They are 99% of your clientele.

Also the main thing about snowboarding is learning the balance, which can't really be taught so you feel pretty shitty about being paid to teach something you essentially can't teach.

Backblast area all clear?