Sommelier Keely Cho writes this entertaining entry to our 2024 wine writing competition about the party that set her on the path to a wine career. For more fabulous wine writing, see the guide to our competition.
Keely Cho writes Hailing from the sunny Sauvy B country of New Zealand, I washed up in London on April of 2023 with a suitcase full of wine. I immediately rushed to my interview with 67 Pall Mall and have been a sommelier ever since. There is no stronger motivator than the laughs shared with colleagues, the bottle corks shattered upon opening, the mid service fries and wrongly calling a wine blind. I like travelling to wine regions, and prefer my white wines at room temperature. I slept in my rental car in Beqaa Valley, got stranded in Sighnaghi, fell off a mountain in Vardenyats Pass and was nearly kidnapped in Sofia. A Beirut taxi driver once asked me to marry him. Still waiting for the day Port makes a comeback.
Qué Syrah, Syrah
You know how they talk about love at first sight? The kind of real, all-encompassing, soul-engulfing love that poets, singers or new parents wax lyrical about. When you realise all the clichés, and Pinterest quotes just might be something. When you realise. Maybe this is the one.
No. This sappy love story isn’t about a person. It’s about a wine.
Winter 2018 in Auckland, New Zealand. Newly graduated with a degree in Food Science, I was searching for direction in life. I wasn’t passionate about much. What I was passionate about was getting tipsy-as-a-tui nightly before flitting straight into my internship at 9am sharp. Working as an intern didn’t exactly make for a big account balance. This reality was holding back this working class Kiwi determined to make it on her own in the City of Sails. Avocado toast costs a lot of money after all. After careful assessment of my weekly available waking hours: (112), and my weekly expenses: (substantial). I elected to keep my student job waitering at an Italian Cucina and pick up another bartending job at a Lebanese restaurant. This was a scale of industriousness I have never been able to replicate since. Fuelled with caffeine, youthful folly and the power of rock ‘n’ roll, I managed three jobs that year.
The problem with holding three jobs was there was no shortage of coworkers to party with. A genuine problem, when you have discovered you really liked partying. Confined growing up in an immigrant Chinese teetotaller household, I now had liberté. I also had increasing access and affinity to refreshments of the alcoholic kind, as introduced to me at the afore-mentioned jobs. Names like Sassacaia, Chateau Musar, Hennessy, arak and simple syrup entered my vernacular, and diet. I wasn’t picky about the PDO. Sure, some drinks tasted good: Long Island iced tea. Some tasted bad: Longridge Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon two litre cask. But the end result was the same, and quality was not the purpose when scanning bottle derrières to check ABV.
Then I met Eddy. Boyishly charming with a flop of cognac coloured hair, Eddy was likewise, fresh to the joys of alcoholic excess. We bonded over a mutual interest in his lawyer father’s drinks cabinet. What we lacked in knowledge, we made up for in enthusiastic sensory evaluation. Inseparable, and terrible influences on one another. We stumbled in and out of parties thrown by kids as directionless as we were. This continued for a while until one night, as the song goes, I found love in a hopeless place.
This party was either a “disaster” or “amazing” depending on your preferences and tolerance towards chaos. It was Eddy’s sister’s 18th birthday, and I had arrived late. I was determined to immediately start drinking with clinical efficiency. After conducting a “sensory analyses” on a few bottles, with extra scrutiny on the Lindauer Classic Brut, I set off to find more Eddy. The house was a Tartarean labyrinth, lit up only by phones sending drunk texts and the heavenly notes of Tiësto. The perfect backdrop for a serendipitous story about finding true love.
Suddenly, sounds of shouting rose above the cacophony. Thud! Something heavy hit the floor. The shattering of glass. I wasn’t too fussed, it wouldn’t be a party if the host didn’t have multiple guests apologising the morning after. The glass of Cloudy Bay Te Koko in my hand was a perfect date. There was also a wine program of sorts I had been looking up on my phone. My musings were interrupted by sirens indicating a night is over. The balcony strategically provided a view of the street below. A street which now had an extra white and blue vehicle on it.
The general consensus on a reaction to a situation like this would be run. An inebriated party-girl’s reaction to a situation like this would also be to run. But to grab a bottle for the road.
Bursting downstairs, two steps at a time, I shoved aside lovers embracing before making an unceremonious departure. Eddy once said the garden bordered onto native bush. Tonight this hypothesis would be tested. Party-goers were starting to catch on- the heavy hand of the law was about to come down and the house was in disarray. Grabbing a bottle, I dashed out into the garden.
I don’t know how long I ran for. Eventually, I collapsed onto the grass of a park by the beach. Always one up for a celebration, especially one for not being arrested, I loosened the foil and wire cage.
What I had forgotten was that my hasty flight had shaken the wine. The expulsion of the cork was followed by un coup de foudre as I was bathed in sticky droplets. Breathtaking wafts of roses, ginger and lilac. I was being drowned in a sea of blossoms. In shock and half-blind, I licked my lips. Melting lemonade popsicle, muscat grape and honeydew melon. Sickly, and suffocatingly sweet. It was love. A realisation that Leo Tolstoy was right, we are indeed asleep until we fall in love.
I scrutinised the half-empty bottle. Crystalline cerulean blue. Twinkling stars of magenta, emerald and violet ascending the label. Silvery white foil feathering around the mouth. Our southern skies reflected in my hands.
Jacob’s Creek Sparkling Moscato NV
In love, you just know. I knew that night I would never feel complete without wine. My missing puzzle piece. There was no doubt about it. This was an unquenchable thirst and I knew I had to try to satiate it with knowledge, and more wine. I had to find out what made the liquid trickling down my face so utterly captivating. I had drank wine. But I had never drank it. It was an epiphany, and my first step towards adulthood and a clear goal. Cuvée Keely had fermented and was ready for maturation.
In vino veritas. I wrote my application for The University of Auckland’s Postgraduate Diploma in Wine Science the next morning.
Photo caption: 'The author examining the inside of a karas at Voskevaz Winery, Armenia'.