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 […]
Organolepticians Number Sixty-Five (November 1st, 2005)
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 […]
Organolepticians Number Sixty-Six (November 28th, 2005)
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 […]
Organolepticians Number Fifty-Eight (May 22nd, 2005)
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 […]
Organolepticians Number Fifty-Nine (June 14th, 2005)
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, […]
Organolepticians Number Sixty (July 17th, 2005)
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 […]
Organolepticians Number Sixty-One (August 1st, 2005)
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 […]
Organolepticians Number Sixty-Two (September 25th, 2005)
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 […]
Organolepticians Number Fifty-Seven (April 10th, 2005)
Whiskey Before Breakfast(And other songs of the itinerant…) So many times when I go out on the road to sell wine it means rising in darkness to catch a flight in order to reach my destination by dinnertime, even if it’s only from Oakland to Columbus, Ohio. I made exactly such a journey a few […]
Organolepticians Number Fifty-One (June 28th, 2004)
Can’t Forget the Motor City As Detroit finally came into view, from my seat just in front of the wing, I got a glimpse, not so very far to the East, of the thunderstorm system that had kept us at Chicago/Midway for four and one-half hours past our original scheduled departure time. I’d had it […]