And so the adventure begins...

Utrecht, May 31st 2022. I look over my shoulder one last time towards the entrance of the building of the Municipality Public Health Service Utrecht: my previous employer since 10 minutes. With an excellent bottle of wine in each hand and a bag full of heartwarming postcards from my brand new ex-colleagues, I just said goodbye to my job as a public health physician working in infectious disease control. I have quit my job!

My suitcase for the coming year at the metro station in Amsterdam

New adventures

I quit my job with mixed feelings though, because I had a dynamic job with fun colleagues and I enjoyed working as a doctor. And it is a job that provides security. However, there is a big and exciting world out there that I want to explore, and it is time for new adventures 😊

My background

My name is Loes (pronounce Luce in English and Luz en Español) and I am 35 years old. As a child I grew up in Sudan, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and the Netherlands (my country of birth). After my medical studies at the University of Leiden, I completed a PhD in epidemiology at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Then, I specialized in public health, specifically infectious disease control, in the city of Utrecht. From 2020 to 2022 I worked as a public health physician on the island Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean, where I mostly contributed to the COVID-19 response.

Wine-worldtrip

Although I really enjoyed working and living on Bonaire, I also felt that I wanted to see more of the world and invest more time in one of my passions: wine. While gazing over the palm trees close to my house on Bonaire and with an overpriced glass of wine in my hand (everything on the island comes from far), I got the idea to combine my 2 passions: travelling and wine, by making a wine-worldtrip. My goal? To decipher the aroma’s and taste of wine by getting insight in the process of winemaking, meeting its makers, and by experiencing different wine regions of the world.

Sunset rosé at the beach on Bonaire

Savour it

I have been interested in the senses smell and taste since I was a child. My first and foremost favourite book as a child was a cooking book named ‘My first cooking book’. I made all the recipes. When I was a teenager, my interest for wine and the combination of wine & food in pairings grew. I followed several wine courses such as the Dutch SDEN-2 and the international WSET-2. Furthermore I took a basic course in Gastronomy & Wine. Holiday destinations were selected based on the presence of winemaking and food culture, such as Tuscany and Puglia in Italy and the Alsace in France. I take joy in cooking wine pairing dinners for my friends and family. And on such evenings I can easily open 2 or 3 bottles of different wines to search for the best combination with the dishes. Savour it! That would definitely be my motto 😊

Solo travel

Of course I questioned my plans. Shall I really go on this trip, all by myself? Do I really want that? Is this something I can do? Can I afford it? And how will I find an entrance in the world of wine? It is not my field and I know nearly nobody working in it. What is it exactly that I want to learn anyway? Is it worth it? A lot of questions, and not so many answers yet. However, after quite a predictable and speedy – highway – career in medicine, it feels kind of nice to try another slower – dirt road – strategy. Small steps, no rush, no exact plan, see where the flow takes me. To me, that is part of the adventure. And as long as I keep my expectations low, it will be difficult to be set back or fail, don’t you think?

The first steps

So I followed through. And a few months after that glass of wine on my terrace in Bonaire, I was treading Syrah-grapes with my feet together with Dutch winemaker Maarten in a lagar (a big wine-basin) in the Douro wine region of Portugal. This is the region where Maarten lives and makes his wine. And indeed as I expected: a week before this moment there was yet no plan. It turned out to be quite difficult to find an entrance in the winemaking world. But luckily I found Maarten via Google, as he offers a winemaking course that seemed like a good start of my trip to me. Although it was not possible to follow the course this year, he invited me to come down to Portugal and make his wine with him. A unique hands-on experience. For me, that was a once in a lifetime offer that I thankfully accepted with both hands. And it turned out to be an awesome start of my wine-worldtrip.

Treading red grapes with Maarten

Wine Doc

And while we were treading the grapes, I began to see the analogies between winemaking and health care. To me, the wine pump-over machine resembled the heart-lung machine in the operation theatre. The young wine is monitored just as the patients are, for instance by measuring things like the pH, density, and alcohol percentage. And if something goes wrong with the ‘patients’, they get a treatment in order to make them better, such as oxygen or nutrition. Also, being an intern in a wine cellar does not seem to be that different from an intern in hospital (believe me… I know the feeling).

These analogies between winemaking and health care began to grow on me and are helping me to better understand the winemaking process from a medical perspective. And they are just too fun not to share. That is why I am going to write them down and share them with you in the form of photo’s, video’s, and stories. And so the Wine Doc was born, right there between the vines, while I was surrounded by grapes, wine, and their makers.

A doctor writing about wine, is that legit?

Logically, this question kept me busy for a while. Can I write about wine whilst I am also a medical doctor? Because by definition wine is not what you would call a healthy product. Nevertheless, I decided to share my wine stories and experiences with you. I believe that with my background I can more easily write about health aspects of wine and winemaking than somebody who doesn’t have a medical background. Also, I am an advocate for quality above quantity with regard to drinking wine. Drinking a glass of wine mindfully, paired with a good plate of food and in nice company can be very healing. So: drink with moderation and enjoy!

Join me on my wine adventures

Would you like to join me on my wine adventures? Are there places or events I shouldn’t miss? Winepeople I should definitely meet? Or wines and local specialties I must try? Would you like to collaborate? Great! You are more than welcome. Read my stories on the website, follow me on the socials or drop me a line via the contact page.á

On my website I will regularly post new short stories about my experiences. I will be writing about the production of wine from a health care perspective, the experience of smell & taste and the human body, health aspects of wine, and of course about all the beautiful places I am planning to visit, wines and dishes that I will be tasting and people that I meet along the way. Links to the stories will also be posted on the socials. See you soon!