I Don’t Think We’re In Kansas Anymore, Toto It’s a Friday afternoon in late September. I’m in line at a checkout counter at Longs Drugs, waiting to pay for my tube of sunscreen and 2 large bottles of water, before heading down to Paso Robles, yet again, in the perpetual pursuit of harvest epiphany, when […]

All is Calm, All is Bright Our house is such a mess. It’s two nights before Christmas, and my 5 and 1/2 year-old grandson Noah is decorating a gingerbread house with Cornelia. There’s powdered sugar everywhere. Cornelia has offered Noah a candy cane to eat, but he’s really serious about this decorating stuff, so he […]

The Devil Made Me Do It Back in the Summer of 1988 I got interviewed for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was the first time I’d been asked (for public consumption) for my thoughts on anything, and when they sent a photographer out to shoot something for the story, I have to […]

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 […]

Ramblin’ Fever (On the trail of the Sacred Energy) It’s only 9am and already there’s a filled shopping bag swinging from the hand of a slender young woman walking south on Michigan Avenue. South and North, buses and taxicabs glide past by the dozen, to the steady rhythm of red and green. The daffodil beds […]

FIRST MUSTER, DOUBLENAUGHT ONE:Sound the Trumpets! Perhaps a sign that EDMUNDS ST. JOHN is where it’s happenin’? (Or almost happenin’): from the East Bay Express, personals ad section, 12/29/2000 EDMUNDS ST. JOHN WINERY Sunday, December 3rd, 4pm, wine tasting. Slim, pretty blond woman, fuzzy tan shetland sweater, white car, dog, woman friend. Tongue-tied wine nut, […]

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER: One thing that happened, without my planning for it, back in 1985 when I first started Edmunds St. John, was that I began to pay a lot more attention to the weather. Of course it makes sense that I would do that, but I imagine most people might think of that […]

Memories Are Made Of This? It’s the beginning of the “saison des vacances,” a foggy Memorial Day weekend in Berkeley (as Cornelia has always said, Summer is the coldest season in Berkeley), and there’s no place to park because the Himalayan Fair is going full-tilt up the street at Live Oak Park (Old hippies selling […]

The Myth of Sisyphus Every June, after yet another year of planning, diligent work, some nail-biting, and plenty of waiting, two signal events transpire, and pass, as though in a whirlwind, leaving me, alas, back at square one, ready to try it all over again. The apricot tree in our back yard is about 20 […]

2001: THE ODDYSSEY THAT WOULD NOT DIE: Stop Me If You’ve Heard this Before I drove over 1200 miles this past week. I’m not sure which is longer, the story or the drive. But the result of all the driving is that the first grapes of the season are now in the winery, and there’s […]