T here’s this natty new watering hole with a wood burning oven on Washington Street in Yountville. I’m waiting there to meet a friend and ...

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Julie Andrews as Maria von Trapp (L) and Sergio Mionetto (R) I t’s one thing to try and grow a...

I was making my rounds in the wine job circuit. Serving tables. Sommelier. And now (1981) I was managing a wine bar in Dallas. My son was...

Slow Wine – Vino 2017 – Gambero Rosso F ebruary has been a busy month for Italian wine in America. The Italian holiday vacations, for t...

T he Italians never thought it would happen. They, led by the French, were marching into a huge new market, China. In that moment, they tu...

C ould this be the week we will look back, someday, with the realization that our wine collecting days are over? For one, the span of my l...

Happy Birthday, Raffaella! A picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, 3,500. My friend and colleague, Raffaella, posted a photo ...

I’ ve just spent an afternoon looking at Nielsen wine sales reports for America. The exercise came as a response to a colleague who told m...

F or those who read books, there are numerous treatises on collecting wine. I’ve read all that I have in my little library. Some of them s...

Vision quests, spa treatments, identity crisis wines and start-up disruptors M y Italian friends are posting pictures on their Facebook, ...

W hat started out as a journal, a web-log as we called it at the time, has become a journey, now expanding into its second decade. The ide...

O n a Barbarossa class ocean liner , a young man, barely a teenager in 1911, makes it all the way to Ellis Island, by himself. On a ship f...

W ith the holiday season fast approaching, and with hallowed respect for Italian wine, let’s take a moment and review the 10 Commandments ...

Bruna (L) and Bruno (R) Giacosa, the oracle of Neive, in 2004 B runo Giacosa has spent a lifetime making great wine. Like the fog that ...

I t’s wet and foggy. And some of us are scared. The long days are now a thing of memory. We are steeped in darkness. And all the while the...