“In nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence than in our relish of wines.”

“I wouldn’t have minded school if they taught you important things like how to have good sex and what brand of wine is best, but for some reason, they were hell bent on teaching me… Continue reading

“In north Africa, Spain and Portugal, [cork] forests are the last firewall to complete desertification.”

“Nobody is growing as fast as Oregon.”

“On more than one occasion in recent years, I’ve opened a wine list in a trendy restaurant and been a bit stumped. A lot of choices, but on the entire list, I may recognize about… Continue reading

“What we hear when we eat and drink—even the noises of food preparation, the rattling sounds of product packaging, or loud background music—plays a much more important role [in flavor perception] than any of us… Continue reading

“I still get intimidated when I have to order from a sommelier, or when someone in the business asks me about my favorite wines. The question is a sneakily polite way for them to figure… Continue reading

“Living wines have ups and downs just as people do, periods of glory and dog days, too. If wine did not remind me of real life I would not care about it so much.”  … Continue reading

I was so intrigued taking grapes and squishing them up and naturally fermenting them, and coming up with is unbelievably beautiful, multi-layered, complex, soulful liquid … It intrigued the hell out of me…

I feel that wine is the most intimate and profound thing. You can share it with friends, or sit alone and contemplate it. It represents a sustainable cycle. And it can be kind of fun,… Continue reading

“In Europe then we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well-being and delight. Drinking wine was not snobbism nor a cult;… Continue reading

“Dare to experiment, to ask questions and to embrace wine as a process of lifelong learning. Expect each bottle to be both a pleasure and a lesson (even when that lesson is “Never, ever order… Continue reading