For two years, Mr. Walker carried around “Côte d’Or,” Clive Coates’s magnum opus on Burgundy. Finally, in 2008, as he was training for a new job at Merrill Lynch, with his wife six months pregnant, he realized he was not happy. With her support, he quit to learn about the wine business.

Before long he was hired at Freeman Winery in Sebastopol, in Sonoma County, to wash barrels and help with bottling and the harvest.

“He’s a really bright guy, and he gets it right away,” said Ed Kurtzman, the winemaker at Freeman. “He was driven and knew exactly what he wanted to do, though I don’t think he knew where he was going to end up.”

At Freeman, Mr. Walker learned the basics of making wine. The ambition was growing to do it himself, but when he was offered some petite sirah grapes to turn into wine, he could not muster enthusiasm.

“My wife said: ‘Don’t do that. We don’t drink wines like that,’ ” he recalled. She asked him what he was most passionate about, and the answer, Burgundy, was obvious. So were the obstacles.

In the real world, people do not leave their jobs, their wives, their new babies because they fantasize about making wine in Burgundy. If the all-too-real logistical and financial difficulties are not enough to swat down such ambitions, certainly the dubious prospects of acquiring grapes and equipment and enough money would do the trick. Yet here was Mr. Walker’s wife and parents urging him to follow his heart. What else was he to do?

Mr. Walker hatched a plan. He would try to buy village-level grapes: good, but not as good as premier cru, and certainly not grand cru, which is exceptionally rare. Working the Internet, he drew up a list of grape brokers.