Diamonds In The Rough I get a little confused sometimes about what to eat. Yesterday I had lunch at Zuni Cafe, in San Francisco, (whose Chef-owner, Judi Rodgers, has just been awarded the James Beard award for Best Restaurateur, for, I think, the 2nd time) while I was out selling wine, and I had Caesar […]

The Miles Could Tell a Million Tales Strange, the little miracles that rocket through our nervous systems these days. From the passenger seat of a Saturn wagon passing first North, then West through the outskirts of St. Louis, I project my voice, via cellphone, to the waiting ear of a driver in a late model […]

Lo, How a Rose In the first dark and quiet hours of Good Friday, April 9th, I awoke from a variety of minor discomforts. There wasn’t anything unusual about that; I’ve got a cranky back, my shoulders and knees get stiff from lying too long on one side or the other. One’s bladder always needs […]

First Bird Sometimes we live in the country, sometimes we stay in town; Sometimes we’re not who we think we are, when things come tumblin down… I been out beyond the blue horizon, where the water tastes like wine, Aw, but you know I can get just as lonesome, either side of the line… —Steve […]

I Wanna Be Like Mike I don’t know how anyone makes it through winter, sometimes. The temperatures in the northern half of the U.S. over the past couple of weeks have been frightening to read. The highways are coated with ice, and 18-wheelers, mid-sized sedans, S.U.V.s and punch-buggies are flying off across the road shoulders […]

Ghost Stories The snowy egret is just inches above the water, its wings extended in an almost shockingly straight line, the tips poised, mid-stroke, directly over the shimmering S-curve of its neck and its head. It’s a sunny afternoon in Berkeley; a soft breeze from the South whispers through Aquatic Park, wrinkling the water beneath […]

Extra Innings The appearance of yellow leaves among the green ones on the Syrah vines at Bassetti Vineyard on Friday, the third of October, seemed a sure sign that the end of this season was approaching fast. The grapes, themselves, were hanging in there, with a sugar content that had only reached just a bit […]

Sowing On The Mountain Wine is a bridge between the two worlds, the living and the dead. Harvest is a story of death, of profound undoing. The grapevines, which began to grow as the Winter faded, opened into the morning of Spring, and pushed forth green shoots, and the shoots opened into leaf and stem, […]

The Fugitive/The One-Armed Man I’d like to settle down, but they won’t let me– A fugitive must be a rolling stone. Down every road there’s always one more city; I’m on the run, the highway is my home. The Fugitive (Merle Haggard) Sometimes we’re not who we think we are, When things come tumbling down. […]

Tales of Wining and Dining The venerable wine writer Hugh Johnson, whose World Atlas of Wine has taught me the most about wine of any book I’ve encountered, once remarked that wines’ initial importance to humans, ultimately, came down to its capacity to intoxicate, to “banish care.” He may well be correct, yet it’s the […]