Wonder If We Know Just Who We Are Yesterday felt like my birthday. According to the calendar, my birthday is still some ten weeks off, but yesterday my phone rang all day long with people wishing me well and congratulating me. A lot of the calls were from people wondering where, in the Northern California […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-One (August 11, 2002)
The Great Leftfielders I watched Barry Bonds hit his 600th homerun last night on television. The homerun itself was impressive, an arcing line-drive, charged as any thunderbolt. Watching Bonds over the last couple of seasons has been truly compelling; here is someone who has found his gift, his connection to the source of things, and […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Two (August 14, 2002)
Got the Butterflies I had a conversation with another winemaker recently about a subject that comes up for me constantly, and for which the answer seems to continue to evolve. We were discussing what makes Edmunds St. John wines so different from other California wines. He’d raised the subject by mentioning the lack of oak […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Three (August 25, 2002)
Waitin’ for You It’s a curious thing how different one’s voice sounds to one on a recording than it does at the moment of vocalizing. Perhaps you remember the first time you heard your own voice, recorded. I sure do. I was completely aghast! I think I was maybe 10. My friend Chuck Cirimeli was […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty-Four (Labor Day, September 2, 2002)
Ban des Vendanges 2002: Gamay Shelter! We almost made it to September this year, before picking any grapes. The onset of harvest, for me, is always best when I feel prepared: when all the barrels are empty, the previous vintage’s wines tucked safely into bottles, the bins for hauling grapes are clean, I’ve got a […]
Organolepticians Number Twenty-Six (April 18, 2002)
The View from Here What follows here is the (edited) text of an essay I wrote back in 1995, as the result of an invitation to address a dinner gathering at Manhattan’s Savoy restaurant, on the subject of whether it’s possible, in an era dominated by mass-production and homogenization, to produce “soulful” wines. The impetus […]
Organolepticians Number Twenty-Eight (May 21, 2002)
Ramblin’ Blues: In search of the World’s Greatest Pizza Over a period of 5 days in June of 1996, I visited winegrowers in the Rhone valley with the estimable Robert Mayberry, who is, among other things, the author of a most useful and comprehensive reference work titled: The Wines Of The Rhone Valley (Rowman & […]
Organolepticians Number Twenty-Nine (June 24, 2002)
Rhônesome and Ramblin’: In Search Of A Linear Narrative Fanny Klein brought us coffee. She must have taken pity on us, that morning after. Fanny had agreed to be our translator for Sunday evening and Monday, giving me a chance to get my French “legs” under me, before I became our only link to any […]
Organolepticians Number Thirty (July 2, 2002)
The King of Luckytown There are 16 apricots in a blue and grey bowl on the kitchen counter this evening, in varying states of ripeness. Three more rest near the kitchen sink, where they’ll soon be trimmed around the spots where the birds and squirrels and bugs went after them before I could pick them. […]
Organolepticians Number Twenty-Five (March 12, 2002)
I Started Out on Burgundy The last time I was in New York was approximately a year ago; I go every March to pour wine at the Spring Tasting held by my distributor there. It’s a bustling, hectic event, featuring several hundred of the highest-powered wine retailers and sommeliers in the metropolitan New York area […]