Category: Messages In A Bottle

hands holding grapes

Messages in a Bottle: What is an Honest Wine?

The other day, in the course of constructing a review, I found myself describing a wine as “honest.” And I

abstract color mixing

Messages in a Bottle: Ode to the Blended Wine

Growing up in America cripples us wine lovers from the very start. Sure, we are born into the land of

wine shop

Messages In a Bottle: Stalking the Ten Dollar Wine

We’ve been chasing after them for as long as we’ve had legs to run and the extra brain cells required

a baby's feet

Messages In a Bottle: What’s New in The Wine World

The wine world moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss

overgrown ruins

Messages In a Bottle: Wine Over Time

We all have times of silent reflection, meditation or prayer in which we voice to ourselves things both profound and

village in italy

Messages In a Bottle: Appreciating Wine in Context

What did you think the first time you heard Mozart? Perhaps like me, you had a mother who would play

change

Messages In a Bottle: The Coming Revolution

They say that bees and dogs can smell fear. Those with good noses in the wine world can smell it

wine bottles on shelf

Messages In a Bottle: The Cook’s Wine Cellar

Whenever people find out that I write about wine, the first question is always “Wow. Do you make a living

holding hands

Messages In a Bottle: The Better Half of My Palate

I heard my wife say something unbelievable last week. It just sort of popped out, casually, as we were putting

napa vineyard with mustard

Messages In a Bottle: Trying to Taste a Place

It’s Spring now in the vineyards of Northern California. The mustard blossoms yellow between the rows of newly budded vines

tightrope

Messages In a Bottle: The Razor’s Edge of Wine

That wine is getting better, for the majority of wine drinkers in the United States, can hardly be denied. By

honeycomb in a dish

Messages In A Bottle: The Taste Of Honey

Perhaps the greatest singular pleasure of wine for me, should I ever be held at gunpoint and forced to choose

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Messages In a Bottle: Wine, Version 2.0

I’m a man, and a member of Generation X, which among other things means that I’m into gadgets. You might

sparklers at night in hands

Messages In a Bottle: A Year of Learning

I’m really not one for New Year’s resolutions. I’ve got no list (for you or for me) of must-drink wines

small holiday trees in snow

Messages In a Bottle: Wine Holidays

It’s that time of year, isn’t it? It’s just barely December and I can feel the holidays bearing down like

multicolored pencils

Messages In A Bottle: Disorientation and Diversity

The dialogue about wine in popular American culture usually fails to rise above a whisper. This is to say that

books on a desk

Messages In a Bottle: The 5 Stages of a Self Education in Wine

In the course of putting on wine dinners, attending and hosting wine tastings, and generally just drinking wine in public,

wine glasses on a table

Messages In a Bottle: Characters In The Same Story

The bearded man with the diamond rings, who is nearly bursting the seams of his Armani tuxedo, grabs you around

Dante's hell by Botticelli

Messages In a Bottle: The Wine Comedy

This afternoon I poured myself the last of a bottle that had been opened earlier in the week, and wandered