Oct 21, 2021
It’s just fine to buy wine with no intention of drinking it. It’s just fine to buy a wine with no more intention than having it and appreciating what it is without any intent to drink it. This is collecting. And sometimes it gets a bad name. “Label Sniffers”. “Ego Strokers”. “Snobs”. “Wine is for drinking.” These are some of the charges that sometimes are leveled at that group of collectors who purchase wine—often expensive wine—simply to have and keep…
Sep 27, 2021
Who doesn’t love Tik Tok? Just visualizing the slow movement of a second hand across a clock face brings a swell of delight to our hearts. Now add lipsyncing into the mix or short vids of dogs sleeping with cats and you can understand why this new video creation and sharing platform is all the rage. And so I was excited to see the article in the Wine Enthusiast touting the Tik Tok Creators who were bringing “Barrier Free Joy…
Jul 19, 2021
It’s one of my Top Ten Sentences of 2021 so far: “A huge step in the evolution of debauchery was the invention of agriculture because farming made booze possible.” I’ve never thought too deeply about the “evolution of debauchery” in general, but rather just my own. The story of my own debauched evolution is far less interesting than this little article at Phys.org, from which this awesome sentence originates: “When Did Humans Start Experimenting with Alcohol and Drugs?” While it…
Jul 5, 2021
It was difficult to find any non-mocking coverage of the claim made last week by University of Connecticut professor Mathilde Cohen that “French eating habits reinforced the ‘dominance’ of white people over ethnic minorities.” These mocking reactions came in response to a talk she gave in France on the subject that, in turn, was based on a paper she wrote on the subject. Her paper, entitled “The Whiteness of French Food,” purports to “identify a form of French food Whiteness…
Jun 29, 2021
What if at the end of 2022 it turns out wine sales have dipped below the pre-pandemic 2019 level? What if wealth inequality is unchecked and reaches levels higher than we’ve ever seen? What if more fires impact American wine-growing regions by the end of 2022 and test our industry’s ability (and the consumers’) to confront smoke taint? What if the reaction to greater online sales results in fewer wine club memberships? We are still very much in a state…