“Errand Boys Sent By Grocery Clerks”

Notes from the Last Wine Blogger Standing

I. The River

The mission came through, as it always does, in the fog.

I’ve been on this river a long time. Long enough to remember when the three-tier system made a kind of sense — when the distributor felt like a partner, when the rep walking your route knew your customers by name. Knew which sommelier was quietly building an Italian list and which retailer would gamble on an Etna Rosso nobody had heard of yet. Selling wine was inseparable from loving it. The rep knew the producer, the place, the reason it mattered.

That world didn’t just change. It was hollowed out, quietly, with an acronym.

A Billion Heartbeats Ago

2026 has been challenging, so far. A short visit at the beginning of the year, to see a friend whom I might not ever see again, started it off. I returned home to receive a vet’s diagnosis that our oldest cat, Buttercup, had an inoperable growth attached to her trachea, preventing her from eating solid foods. We were advised to initiate palliative care and prepare her for hospice. About that time, I realized I had gone down this road 25 years ago with my wife, Liz, who in 2001 was in the last stages of her young life. She made it to her 48^th birthday on Feb 14, 2001, but on the 17^th she surrendered her mortal cloak and passed away. Now, I know a cat and a human cannot be seen by many folks as being equivalent, but the pathway I found myself on this early in the year has had a triggering effect. And I don’t like it.

Farewell to Barbetta

You know, there come along those once in a lifetime restaurants. For me, some of them are Gualtiero Marchesi in Milan, Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Barbetta in Manhattan. All marching to the beat of their own different drummer, but noteworthy and unforgettable. Gualtiero Marchesi is long gone (but not forgotten). Chez Panisse still has a warm hearth and a welcome mat. But Barbetta lost their beating heart. Laura Maioglio passed away January 17 of this year. And on Feb 27, the restaurant will close. I am heartbroken.

Italian Wine's Premiumization and "Affordability" Problem

What happens when you aggrandize and enshrine something that for generations has served as daily ritual

The news keeps contradicting itself. Alcohol causes cancer. Alcohol prevents loneliness. Wine sales collapsing. Warehouses overflowing with unsold inventory. Public health crisis. Social connection crisis. All true at once, all missing the point.

This isn't just a story about wine industry economics. It's what happens when you try to scale something that was never meant to be optimized—when wine went from just what you did to something you now have to decide about.

Flying Over the Future: Why Vinitaly Can't See Texas

"Vale più un rimprovero di un amico che un bacio di un nemico"

Year after year, I've witnessed the Italian wine paradox in America. Producers, consorzi, and government wine agencies trace the same familiar circuit: New York to Chicago to San Francisco, ending up in sunny LA or Miami. Meanwhile, cities like Houston, Dallas, and Austin get bypassed. Flyover country. BBQ country. Cowboy country. Translation: No country for Italian wine.

Flooded with Memories

It was finally a clear day in San Diego. I was visiting a friend whose brighter days were behind him. But he said, “Let’s take a ride around the island (Coronado, where he lives) and get some fresh air and sunshine." Uncharacteristically, it had been raining for what seemed like weeks in one of the sunniest cities in America. And after not having been in my native state since way before Covid, it was disarming not to see the sun. Just clouds and rain, and that piercing humidity that days, weeks, of rain brings. Bone soaking cold.

Earlier, the night before, we sat at a table on the top floor of a building downtown, overlooking the Pacific ocean, eating salmon and drinking French Chablis. Or rather I was. My friend had eaten before I got off the plane. He was content to watch me while sipping on a cocktail, something with bourbon, an Old Fashioned or Manhattan. I’m bad at remembering that sort of thing.

I’d really wanted a Puligny Montrachet, my guilty indulgence. But I don’t think they had one by the glass, and if they did, it would have probably been $50 for three ounces, or something to that effect. So, Chablis it was. I thought to myself, “I’m in California, I really should me drinking California wine, shouldn’t I?” I would tomorrow, with my friends wife.

But the bike ride.

Wine Doesn't Miss You

When someone you love dies—a mate, a pet—there's a hole. They don't stop loving you, but they're gone. The loss is indescribable.

Wine is different.

Does wine love you back? Does it miss you when you stop drinking it? No more than the chatbot misses you when you close the browser.

But for a long time, I couldn't parse the animate from the inanimate connections and emotions associated with them.

From the Sixes: A Surprising and Encouraging Start to 2026

The three wines that began 2026 so well

I’m plodding my way through the puddles in Southern California, on a personal mission. Before I got on the plane, we were invited to a friend’s house for New Years day celebration. It’s a yearly event, and lots of old friends show up, mainly from the Italian wine and food community. It was a pleasant day to sit outside and eat cotechino con lenticchie while sipping on Franciacorta and mature Barolo.

I used the day as an opportunity to liberate some of my older wines. Seeing as the new year ends in a “6” I opted for wines from years ending in “6,” namely 2006 and 1996. Three wines were picked.

20 Years of Wine Blogging: Now What?

Well, that twenty years went in a flash. Frankly, I really don’t want the next twenty years to go as fast, I’m already older than I want to be. But this is where I’m at, where we’re all going to be, one day. And instead of regretting it, I look forward to what this stage of life means.

Twenty Years In: A 2025 Retrospective

Twenty years ago this month, I started this blog. Nearly 1,800 posts later, I'm still here. I was contemplating an end the blog at twenty years. But 2025 brought a bevy of posts (and new readers) that were rewarding and widely read. Strange thing, for I really thought wine blogs and wine blogging were heading to the Smithsonian to rest next to the dinosaurs. It seems Substack has renewed the category, albeit in a different format, of sorts.

What Makes Someone an Italian Wine Expert? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)

I was in my local Italian market last week, picking up olive oil and pasta. A woman nearby stood staring at the wine section, Brunellos lined up like soldiers. She looked lost. I asked if she needed help. She did—looking for something specific. I found it for her, pointed out a couple alternatives, and moved on.

Walking away, a thought flickered through my mind: "I bet she doesn't know she just got advice from someone who spent forty years working with Italian wine." I laughed at myself and kept walking toward the eggs. What a ridiculous thing to think.

But it raises a question I've been chewing on for years: what actually makes someone an Italian wine expert?

The Ugly American Has Come Home

When I first went to Italy in 1971, I got my introduction to what people over there were calling the ugly American. Loud, overbearing, disregarding of local cultural norms ("What do you mean, you don't have ice?"), totally unaware that the rest of the world did things differently than we did in the U.S. of A.

A few years later I took a train from Mexicali to Mexico City - three days, stopping at every stop. More ugly Americans, unconscious and insensitive to the culture hosting them. Downright rude, and when drunk, dangerous. 

Over decades and many trips to Italy, France, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, I witnessed too many times the embarrassing and unconscionable behaviors - the attitudes, the mores, of American tourists. Fortunately, I blended in and took a side view to their ignorant ways.

But now, the Ugly American has come home to roost. There's no escaping their thunderous ubiety in the United States, no security in the homeland from the hordes of somnambulists roaming the countryside and city with their oversized vehicles and their propensity to disregard the law. Just try going through a green light without checking if stragglers are racing through the red. It happens all the time. Turns out the ugly American scaled perfectly - from loud tourist to national ethos.

Kicking the Bucket List Habit ~ Five Ways to Surrender to Italy

I keep seeing these bucket lists. Italy bucket lists. Five things, ten things, twenty things you must do before you die. And they're all the same: the Amalfi Coast, a Tuscan villa with an infinity pool, dinner at some Michelin-starred place in Rome where you need a reservation six months out and a credit card that doesn't flinch.

Nothing wrong with any of that, I suppose. But that's not the Italy that's stayed with me for fifty-some years. The Italy that changed me wasn't the one I planned. It was the one I stumbled into when I got lost, when I let go, when I trusted a stranger's gesture instead of a guidebook.

Italy reveals itself differently. Not when you grasp at it, but when you open your hands.

Are you ready for Italy? Or are you only ready for the Italy you've already decided on?

So here are five experiences for your surrender list. Understand this: these aren't things to collect. They're ways to fail by tourist standards—and succeed by Italy's.

"Spas, Tours, Golden Hour Too - We'll Be Blessed If You Come"

From the "Oops!... they did it again" dept. 

 

Apparently word hasn't gotten around yet. 

This arrived in my inbox today.

 

 Click images to enlarge  

 [Editor's note: This is a lampoon. Any resemblance to actual 

press junket invitations is purely... well, you know.]

 

 

© devised and photo-synthesized by Alfonso Cevola 

limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

The Most Important Meal of the Day

Family outing Old California circa early 1930's - Nonna bottom right

Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. At 89, this nutrition expert who's spent decades exposing the food industry says most of the research claiming breakfast is the most important meal was sponsored by cereal companies. Kellogg's and General Mills needed to move boxes. They manufactured urgency. We bought it.

But nobody marketed the meals that actually mattered. My grandfather's brick bar-be-cue in old California. Every Sunday under the grape arbor. Probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those traditions—gathering, sharing a meal, an anonymous bottle or two of wine—they're gone now.