Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Last week Jim Barrett, the founder of Chateau Montelena, one of Napa Valley’s and California’s most iconic and important wineries, died. Jim’s son, Bo, offered the following observation on his father’s death: “My dad died of a life well-lived.” I suppose there are other, more sentimental, more earnest things that could be said about a recently departed soul. One might mention their contribution to their community, their rock solid friendship, their family ties. One could acknowledge their accomplishments. But this…
It’s unlikely that many of us have a lot of old friends. Those people you’ve come to rely on as a confidant, who know you and your peculiars, who you have witnessed changing over time as their personalities and lives are altered. It is a privilege to have such a person in your life. You learn quite a bit about how time makes its impact when you sample the same person over the years. The things that recommend we take…
50. It is not the most significant number, but it does carry some real significance. It will carry more for me over the next few months than it normally would. In the realm of life and death, 50 has always seemed to me to be that point where one has scaled the ladder and is now descending down the slide of life. Though I’ve always preferred slides over swings,I don’t like the sound of that, but I think it’s nearly…
Let me describe a perfect example of an ethical lapse where it comes to critiquing a wine for a readership: If I, as a publicist that represents wineries, were to engage in the practice. This is my annual post in which I inform fellow publicists and wine producers that I do not and never have reviewed wines and that all the wines that show up at my front door do in fact get drunk, but they don’t get written about…and…
This time of year in Wine Country always makes me think of my Grandfather, Ed Burger. He was married 10 times. As I drive around Wine Country this time of year and start to see the crews in vineyards, pruning the dormant vines, I am not made to think of the “cycles” of the vineyard. My mind doesn’t give way to notions of “Hope” or “Renewal”, as perhaps they should. Rather, it’s this time of year in Wine Country that…
