Nov 1, 2013
Read to the bottom of or go to the bottom of this post. I have a plan! Yes. Social media has and continues to change the way wine lovers share their passion. I think we communicate more about wine with other geeks due to social media. We more easily discover fellow geeks. And the ways by which we discover new wines has expanded with social media. But I recently introduced to one of the ultimate examples of the way Social…
Sep 4, 2013
This month I will embark on my 24th year working in the wine industry and I’ve begun to start to think, finally, about the industry from the top down. I was speaking with a friend about this perspective and they asked a pretty simple question: “What have been the major themes in the wine industry over the past two decades?” That it’s simple also makes it somewhat difficult to answer. But, by breaking down the industry into its constituent parts,…
May 6, 2013
To my right there’s a woodsy looking guy in plaid who supplies hives to numerous grape growers in Napa Valley and he’s getting pretty darned excited about hatching queens directly into his hand. To my left is a table of food that holds a plate of chopped up blood sausage that is to die, but also a four-inch high moose (as in the big antlers) pie that I’ve arranged to get the recipe for. Across the table is a gentleman…
Apr 10, 2013
There’s a wonderful scene in the film The Godfather in which the aging and retired Godfather is sitting in the shade on a warm day with his son Michael, who recently took over the operations of the “family business”. They are sipping wine and the Godfather muses on his recent increased intake of the beverage: It’s by far my favorite wine-related scene in this, the finest American film ever produced. It’s poignant. It shows the Godfather in a sympathetic light…
Mar 25, 2013
Future and current Napa Valley winemakers were in the house Sunday afternoon as the long anticipated “Spring Concert” of the Saint Helena Children’s Chorus and Teen Choir rocked a standing room only audience at the Saint Helena Catholic Church. The vibrancy of the Napa Valley music scene was on full display as more than 60 voices rang out in a show featuring 16 numbers representing a large and heady range of genres. The well-honed and pitch perfect set of tenors…