Editor's note: Long before Chris Shepherd became a James Beard Award-winning chef, he developed enough of a passion for wine to work at Brennan's of Houston as a sommelier. He maintains that interest to this day. When Chris expressed interest in writing about wine-related topics for CultureMap, we said yes.

Expect him to pop up once or twice a month with the wines that he's most excited about right now, conversations with people in the wine world, and other wine-related topics.

In his first column, he explains how he first developed an interest in wine. Take it away, Chris.

I love wine. I love food. I love the connection between the two. I love that I can nerd out on wine or simply just enjoy it. I love the conversation it brings, the joy, and the excitement of saving something for a special occasion or opening something cool for no other reason than it’s a Tuesday.

If you haven’t been in Houston very long, you may not know that I ran the wine program at Brennan’s for two years in the early 2000s. But my fascination with wine started long before that.

When I was in culinary school, I worked full-time and went to school full-time, which left very little time for anything else. I was learning about food at school and at my job at Tommy’s Patio Café in Clear Lake but I wasn’t learning anything about wine. Since there is a magazine called Food & Wine, I knew it was important for me to educate myself.

Uncorking a passion
Every time I got a paycheck, I’d take $100 and purchase four bottles of a single varietal from different regions in the world — for example, Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley, Loire Valley, Italy, and New Zealand. I’d taste through each one to understand the differences and nuances that one grape varietal can have thanks to different terroir and weather. I’d try to taste the place of each wine.

About a year into this study, Tom Tollett (the owner of Tommy’s Patio Café where I was still working) asked me to sit down and taste 1984 Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet. This was the first bottle of wine I’d ever had that cost more than $20. It was elegant and powerful, but it showed restraint. That was the moment that I knew I had to know more, and it was a moment I haven’t forgotten. This is the beauty of tasting wine — it’s about a sense of place, the people you’re with, the memories created.

Fast forward a decade, and I’m the executive sous chef at Brennan’s of Houston. Just for fun, I took the first level exam for the Court of Master Sommeliers and passed. I competed in the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs Young Sommeliers Competition and won — solely due to blind tasting. This earned me a trip to Sonoma to compete nationally.

Oen big move leads to another
Our wine director at Brennan’s left, and I asked my chef Carl Walker if I could take over the wine program. The way I saw it, I was already managing the purchasing on the food side, and this would give me the opportunity to learn more about wine but also how to communicate with and better understand our guests. Carl said yes, and I worked the floor for two years wearing a chef coat labeled “Wine Guy.” I felt like I was stuck in between two worlds — wine people only talked to me about food, and food people only talked to me about wine.

I loved working with the Brennan’s wine program. Three to four days a week, I would tell all the suppliers and distributors to bring me everything. I wanted to taste it all. I wanted to know more about wine makers, about regions. My friend Tony McClung, now the estate director for Bryant Family in Napa, came to Brennan’s once a week to teach me about Italy. To this day, one of my favorite things to do is share a delicious bottle of wine with Tony.

Why wine — now?
Why do I want to write a wine column? It’s the same reason I wanted to be the Wine Guy at Brennan’s. So many people think wine is stuffy or hard to understand, but it shouldn’t be. It should be fun, interesting, and thoughtful. I want this column to be interactive — I want you to share what you’re drinking with me. I’ll talk to wine professionals about what they’re drinking. Let’s start a conversation, and drink some cool shit. LFG!!!

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Chris Shepherd won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2014. He recently parted ways with Underbelly Hospitality, a restaurant group that currently operates four Houston restaurants: Wild Oats, GJ Tavern, Underbelly Burger, and Georgia James. The Southern Smoke Foundation, a non-profit he co-founded with his wife Lindsey Brown, has distributed almost $10 million to hospitality workers in crisis through its Emergency Relief Fund.