[For what it’s worth] Who do you think you are?

♫ There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear ♫

It really seems, to this fool on the hill, that the routes that wine follow, there’s a groove that has become very, very important. I’m going to break it down into the different articulations, from the source to the terminus, and offer my observations. And yes, we’re talking about wine, and how it’s intersection within our culture has changed how we see it, how we place ourselves within that context and how everything that was taken for granted 30 years ago, have pretty much been assailed in these here times. Change is constant and inevitable. And to quote, once again, a distant cousin, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” It’s not all bad news.

Young French professionals take the lead in the wine trade

Alice Paillard and Victor Coulon

When one looks back at a career and all the people and occurrences in the span of the last 40 or so years, there is overwhelming evidence that we have been in a Golden Age for wine. But as one backs away from the precipice and the younger generations take their turn grabbing the brass ring, the idea of legacy emanates.

5 Italian Wine Buyers (that I wanted to challenge, gag and thank)

Over the length of my career in the fine wine distribution channel, I encountered a few wine buyers that “took the cake,” and I mean that in every sense. In sales, as in service, the customer is king. So, I had to learn to accept, reflect and occasionally deflect. It wasn’t all half-glass stuff, though. There truly were (and hopefully still are) some exemplary buyers of Italian wine in restaurants and fine wine shops. The following five are examples of archetypal Italian wine buyers - the good, the bad and the ugly - that I had close encounters with on the wine trail in Italy.

In the Blink of an Eye

Tornadoes, Fires and Lynchings...

The path of destruction from the Dallas tornado on October 19, 2019

Everything seems to be moving so fast. Maybe it’s the contraction of time you experience as you have more of it behind you than in front of you. Perhaps it’s the residue of all the moments in the present pressing forth upon those moments in the future. I don’t know, really, but what I do know, is that things can change in the blink of an eye.

When I was in Sicily in 2016 and woke up in the back of a car that had been hit by a truck, I was dazed and confused. “Where am I?” where the first words I remember uttering. “Sit down!” was the response. Good idea. I had several broken ribs, a knee that was bulging with a hematoma and a concussion. Not to mention various neck and musculoskeletal pains since. But we were alive, we made it through.