Dead To The World It’s that time of the year again: “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 Winter faded, opened into the morning of Spring, and pushed forth green shoots, and the […]

Just Another Whistlestop 2005 marks the 20th anniversary of Edmunds St. John’s first days. Though it never occurred to me in 1985 that I would ever write that sentence, the sentence itself, and the fact that occasioned it have now come and gone, and I’ve still got plenty of work to do. I keep thinking […]

Wild Card (When Worlds Collide) Last Spring, at a fundraiser for a professional Institute with which she’s affiliated, my wife made the high bid on an unusual auction item: a poker party for up to eight people, hosted by a couple of her colleagues, which included an informal dinner of home-made pizzas and salad, dessert […]

Jack O’Diamonds (I Know You Of Old) The notorious Guy du Vin (aka Dave Holstrum, the dynamic and articulate force behind the wine programs at a handful of Portland, Oregon’s finest dining establishments) recently took part in a winetasting featured on the evening news at one of Portland’s network TV stations. Dave was one of […]

Good Things From The Garden (The Terroir Blues) CK Mondavi used to have a slogan: “Every year’s a Vintage year in California!” Like most marketing slogans, it seemed to say quite a bit without really saying anything at all. The thought behind the slogan became the cornerstone of California’s first real efforts to authenticate itself, […]

Ship Of Fools Thirty years ago a dear friend of mine moved from Philadelphia to Chitina, Alaska. At the time, it seemed like a pretty dramatic decision, and, now that I’ve spent a week in the southeastern portion of that extraordinary part of this earth, it feels, in a way, even more dramatic. Alaska seems […]

The Heart Laid Bare (This is a piece I wrote for the monthly Newsletter {July 2005, online at www.kermitlynch.com} from Kermit Lynch, Wine Merchant. I probably buy more wine from Kermit than from any other source, and I’ve enjoyed Kermit’s writing for a very long time. In recent years he’s also published a number of […]

Knock, Knock, Knockin’ I feel like a marked man. The circumstances were not extraordinary; I was checking in on the progress of a wine that had only been in the bottle a few months (since February this year), trying to get a fix on how well it had recovered from the shock of being compressed […]

Original Sin I think it might’ve been Hallowe’en morning when I first noticed the persimmon tree in my neighbor’s yard, its dazzling orange globes suspended amid its broad and whispery leaves. It was such a beautiful morning anyway, and I was on my way, on foot, up towards Codornices Park and the canyons beyond, from […]

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood A new wineshop opened recently, just a few minutes walk from my front door. The shop is called Vintage Berkeley, and, appropriately, it’s on Vine Street, just across the street from the place I walk to each morning for espresso. Interestingly, Vintage Berkeley is situated in the old East Bay […]