The Wine List as an Act of Hospitality

Recently, while listening to a podcast about a local chef whose restaurant holds one Michelin star, I went online to look at the menu. Along with that, I took a peek at the wine list.

The chef, who said on the podcast that less is more, gave me a one-page menu. The wine list was a tome. Let’s dig in and see how the wine list—at 56 pages—at first blush and seemingly at odds with the food menu, corresponds to the spirit of the restaurant at large and the overarching theme of hospitality.

What’s going on here?

“To Serve Man”

I’m in my local Whole Foods. Self-checkout. I have about $60 worth of groceries and on the WF app it says $10 off your next $50 grocery order with code “APP10.” The self-checkout monitor has his eyes glued to the screen of his phone and I call him over for help. He comes over reluctantly. “I can’t help you.” It’s not like he tried anything. “I’ll get my manager.” OK.

She comes over. “This looks like for a delivery order,” she says, not really looking at my screen. I reply, “It doesn’t say that. It says $10 off your next $50 grocery order. This looks like a grocery order to me.” She flips a few switches, can’t find it, and finally just gives me a credit on the $9.67 item in my bag. Not $10, but close enough. That’s service in 2026.

The Meaning of Hospitality - Revisited

Ed. note: This was written 15 years ago, but there are indications that in 2026 we have gotten away from the true meaning of hospitality when it comes to dining out. Not everywhere, but with the change of generations, there is a learning curve that must be negotiated. I will write more about this in the coming weeks, but for now, this archival presentation is a reminder that every day, in the restaurant business, the same challenges exist, and every day they must be faced head-on. The client is the top priority. Full stop.

Tonight. My last night. Two weeks away from home. France. Italy. Every day, somewhere to be. Wine to be tasted. Ten-hour days. Driving. Weak eyes. Sore feet. And then finally the last hotel. Near the airport. So close.

One more meal. Near the hotel. 50 feet away. Why not? After a wonderful day in Barolo, with Anna and Emanuela and nine wonderful wines going back to 1990. Dolcetto. Cortese. Barbera. Nebbiolo. Moscato. Great chef. Amazing lunch. Wonderful company.

And then the drive to the last hotel room. And the last meal.

Stick the Landing — A Pizza Joint Parable

In my dotage, I want to be gentle and understanding. This is a pivotal moment for the restaurant industry, as it is for the wine trade. It is nearly impossible for an independent family starting a food-serving business to survive past a few years. The costs are high, and the target is always moving, higher. Access to goods can be spotty. Aside from the seasonality of things, it can be a crapshoot. And then organizing and retaining a workforce is daunting. All said, this is not a business one gets into unless one is driven or just downright crazy. Hence began my journey the other day.

Drinking without Dogma – Writing without Wonder‽

𝅘𝅥𝅰  Don't bother they're here 𝅘𝅥𝅰 

When I look at the “inside baseball” world of wine writing lately, I want to puke. It is as if this little manufactured bubble, which displays little if anything of a natural reality, exists for the simple reason that folks need something to hang onto in regard to the way they identify themselves in the world. Apart from the artifice, the performativity, the virtuousness and the constant scuffling for the top rung, where are the stories? What happened to the story tellers?

Choosing Your Hill - Bric by Bric

So much of what we’re enveloped in lately seems to be a battle over where to plant one’s flag. There is such an overabundance of information pulling us one way or another. I’m not just talking about the wine world, which has it share of battles, but the overall sphere of experience and existence. It just feels like everyone is itching for a fight. Which hill are you willing to die on?

What the Next Ten Years Actually Held

redoing a 2025 blog post over a 2016 set of guesses about Italian wine in America 

Ten years ago this past January I sat down and made a list of guesses about where Italian wine in America was going. I hedged at the top, the way one might:

Looking back is so much easier than this. But the past is dust. So where are we going? All I have are some educated guesses. Maybe not predictions, but inklings from the tea leaves.

The past is indeed dust and the tea leaves have all dried out. Here is the scorecard.

Ziff & Dale Decanted - The Strip Returns

It's been the better part of two decades since a corkscrew and a decanter first started arguing with each other in the back of a restaurant, after hours, over whatever was left in the bottle. Ziff & Dale. Some of you might remember. Most of you won't, and that's fine too.

A few things have changed since then. The wine world, obviously — natural wine wasn't a headline back then, orange wine was still a curiosity, and nobody was asking a bot for a food pairing. The people those early characters were drawn from have gone their own ways since. 

Selling the Sunlight

Recently I was, what else, talking wine with a friend. Sicily came up (we were sipping on a Grillo) and the notion of just how far Sicilian wines had come, not only in the aspect of quality, but in the perception of quality. France came up, and how French wines had that particular je ne sais quoi with regards to how folks saw French wine in the pantheon of wine greatness. I recalled a story about  how, many years ago I was hosting the father of a client, the father being the director of a very large wine cooperative near Bordeaux. We were trekking to Northernmost Texas to visit the TV Munson vineyards. Along the way this gentleman, Raymond Chandou, and I got to talking about Italy and Sicily, and our mutual affection for the island. “I have many friends there in and around Palermo,” he recounted. I was a bit puzzled.

Passion Is the Yeast, Not the Grape

How many times do you read something, hear something, talk to someone, and the subject comes around to passion. I'm not talking about some arm-in-arm torrid romance that is splashed all over the screens, large and small. No, I am thinking of something a little more internal. And what I often hear is that someone is finally going to follow their passion. When I first heard it, years ago, I bought into it. Then after years of chopping in the woodshed, I realized it is balderdash! Passion isn't something you follow. Passion follows — and it usually follows after years of painstaking and drudgery-filled labor, the 10,000-hour kind.

I wasn't lured into the wine trade because of passion. It was an accident. I needed to make money to support a small family. I started out in the restaurant business, as a server, and then eventually became a manager of a wine bar. Then I moved on to wholesale and distribution, importing, and the worlds that enveloped that. I spent more than 10,000 hours, and I didn't take a test or receive any medals or post-nominal titles. I simply plied my trade.

Don’t Pee on the Oregano

I don't know if this is a redundant type of notion, but once again I am thinking about wine, wine tasting, the wine tasting experience and the overall life experience. And the more I think about it, and live it, the more I am inclined to not isolate wine as an experience separated from the rest of life.

A young female wine influencer recently made a video about this and in it she expressed thoughts about being out with friends in a restaurant. There is music, there are the aromas from the kitchen and the food. There is perfume and cologne. There is conversation and dialogue. People are sharing their lives. The wine arrives — does life stop?

The Wines of Campania: Tom Hyland Gives an Overlooked Region Its Due

Photo ©Tom Hyland 2026

 

Tom Hyland has spent the better part of five decades chasing Italian wine, and approaching 100 trips into the country to do it, so it's a little surprising it's taken this long for him to give Campania a book of its own. The Wines of Campania (Palmetto Publishing, 2026) fixes that, and it does it the way you'd want a region this misunderstood to be handled: on the ground, province by province, producer by producer.

The Dog Days of Summer

Rocco, as I found him on July 20th 

July came and went. My month, and the month for so many people I know and love. I look forward to July every December, January and February. And then when it arrives, it careens through time, like it always does and leaves us in the dust and into the dog days of summer.

1989 La Chapelle Hermitage - Thirty-Seven Years After

There is another story I really want to tell, but this one comes first. Last week I had a few fellows over for a birthday meal — they were all (or had already turned) 50, and I was 25 years ahead of them. Good for them: they still have more time than I do to do whatever they need to do in this life. For my part, I have spent years doing things I wanted to do and had to do. One of them was collecting wine. For this evening, I pulled out one of four remaining bottles of 1989 La Chapelle Hermitage from Paul Jaboulet.

In the last century, I obtained three cases of this wine — one case of the 1985 and two cases of the 1989 — intending to enjoy them for special occasions over the years: holidays mainly, but special birthdays too. Over time I got to know this wine well; it became something like a member of the family. I tried both vintages as the years passed, but found the 1985 was developing faster than the 1989 — which was fortunate, since I only had one case of the 1985. That vintage is long gone, but the 1989s carried me forward to this point. Three bottles remain.

Annotations from a Life in Wine, Writing, and Photography

...my 6 bits worth

There is something about a birthday that both excites and terrorizes me. Of course, the excitement comes from an early age, with the anticipation of a celebration and all the ensuing detritus that is attached to it. Fun, maybe a party, gifts, and being the center of attention are the upsides. The downside is the inevitable march towards oblivion that we all are making. Yeah, I know, I think about that, especially now that I have many more days behind me than before me.

That said, it's time to take inventory. What do I need to sell, what do I need to keep, what do I need to cast off, what do I need to drink, what do I need?