My hobby is wine, although sometimes I think perhaps my avocation is medicine and my vocation is wine. I was probably one of the least likely candidates to be a wine advocate of anyone in the Western World. The best I had ever done was two cocktails before dinner when on vacation.

Life changed, I didn't know how drastic at first, when my wife signed me up for a wine course at the Community Center. She though that I needed an outlet from my practice and teaching medical students. Coincidentally my best friend returned from Viet Nam where he developed chronic diarrhea and lactose deficiency. I immediately found the answer to his troubles. Thereafter he joined us in our second wine course.

It was a glorious world we entered in 1975. I loved the historical aspects of wine. The intricacies of geography, soil, climate, grape varieties and the foibles of the winemakers all fascinated me.

By 1979, my friend and I were teaching wine courses for the community college. I had to keep on my toes as my friend and I involved ourselves in "one-upmanship" (he went to Princeton and I to Brown). He went out and bought a 330 bottle Viking wine vault, so I bought myself an 880 bottle Viking wine vault. Then wouldn't you know it, he went out and bought himself a wine store! Did you ever see a full time professor of a medical school selling wine?

My wife became a gourmet cook after her experiences in buying fruit and cheeses for the wine courses and playing wash lady for 200 or more wine glasses a week. Thus entered the food -2- phase, which has led us into Confrerie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs and other food and wine societies.

Now, even our vacations are partly planned around wine. My wife and I went to the first Monterey Wine Festival because it dove-tailed on an American Academy of Pediatrics course. There we began to meet owners and winemakers. Since then we have been regally entertained in Sonoma and Napa by wine people. We went to France with five other couples on a Bacchants' Pilgrimage three-week wine trip. We have memories of lunch at places like Gruad-Larose in the Medoc, Jas. Hennessy's Chateau Bagnolet in Cognac, at Mumms Vendangeoir in Champagne and at Bouchard's Cave of the Chateau de Beaune.

I had to pinch myself to see if it was really me enjoying barrel samples of the greatest of all sauternes with the winemaker at Chateau d Y'Quem, or drinking wine with members of the Syndicat de Gevrey-Chambertin, or barrel sampling with the winemaker of Cheval Blanc in St. Emilion. We have also enjoyed drinking sherry and brandy at Sandeman's in Jerez, Spain. Now we are planning a trip to the German Wine Institute in Rheingau.

Our social life is dazzling. Sometimes as many as five wine tastings a week! And within a month we might go to a Confrerie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs dinner, a Commanderie de Bordeaux dinner, a Consulat de la Vinee de Bergerac dinner and a Les Gourmets Elite dinner - all gourmet dinners at different restaurants or clubs with five to ten superb wines. We belong to four wine societies, two food and wine societies and are invited to a number of private tastings by wine wholesalers where we have met many of California's, Germany's -France's and Italy's top wine people.

I also give tastings at home, to which I invite top retailers and wholesalers of Texas. They love it, for here they can meet their competitors on "neutral ground". We now have plans for 22 oenophiles to discuss the merits of 1974 California Cabernet Sauvignons - the price of admission is a bottle of 1974. Each person is letting me know what they plan to bring so there won't be duplications.

I taught an advanced wine course at a cooking school recently. The last session was a dinner at which six wines were tasted with the fish course and the medallions of beef made two different ways. It was sip, eat, sip, eat. Louis Martini's daughter, Carolyn, gave me the wine rating sheets we used. As we started with an American sparkling wine we then finished the meal with almond-apple crisps served to complement the luscious 1976 Chateau Coutet Sauternes.

When I am home I have a real problem with my reading time. Should I read Wine Advocate, The Connoisseur's Guide to California Wine, Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, or should I catch up on that stack of Journal of Pediatrics?

Will my liver hold up? And yes, I am fighting the battle of the middle bulge!

If anyone had told me ten years ago that I'd be corresponding with Mike Mondovi (Robert's son); chatting with Alexis Lichine (the father of America's interest in French wine) in his living room; or discussing wines over dinner at the Fairmont with Harry Waugh (one of England's top wine authorities) ten years hence, I'd say he was NUTS! But I love calling myself a pediatric oenologist. Or maybe I've become just another wine snob, but it sure calms a pediatricians nerves.