2 014 has been a year in which I have done the least amount of blog posts since I started this blog on this day nine years ago. On the po...

H ow wonderful this world of wine can be, if only in our mind’s eye. Earlier this month I was leaving wine country in California, heading ...

T his came up last week over a bottle of Nebbiolo. I was in discussion with industry folk and the Old World/New World subject came up. Wit...

Bibere umanum est, ergo bibamus H e knew her early on. Every year or so they’d meet, usually around a dinner table, sometimes with frien...

L ast month I was communicating half-way across earth to New Zealand with my editor at Wine Searcher . We were going over ideas for a feat...

C an a wine cellar full of 90+ point wines make your life more meaningful? Will a 30+ year vertical tasting of an iconic wine make you hap...

L ooking out my back window, I see all the plants that were alive last week are now dead or dying. Winter has arrived. Before the brutal b...

T he world is a little less safe for Italian wine today. Dear friend Philip di Belardino has left us .

I t must have been back in August. I was looking out over my garden, thinking about how wonderful everything was growing. My prize crop, t...

S illy rules. Someone makes up something about which wine with which food and over time it becomes Gospel. Last night I was at a dinner,...

H is is a world very few of us get to enter. Yet the Count lives, some would say he thrives, in his world. I say it this way not to dispar...

W e all have things that propel us forward. For some it is money, power or fame. Even in our little rarefied world of wine, we all have thos...

O ver lunch, I was talking with an older friend. He’s a fan of California wine, really loves Pinot Noir. He’s not a beginner, heck he pull...

L iving in flyover country does have its benefits. You can get to either coast in a matter of hours. A recent weekend in San Francisco, I ...

P osting from the road. In NY, the rain followed me from flyover country. Fortunately that wasn’t the only wet thing in my path.