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 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-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 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 […]
Organolepticians Number Fifty-Two (August 5th, 2004)
Way Up North In December of 1964, the year my father died, the Salmon River overran the narrow confines of its banks, and washed away the old Langford’s Store, near Somes Bar, along with the low-lying cabins Mrs. Langford had rented over the years to folks like my grandparents, and my parents, people who found […]