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The Endangered Wine List in the New Millennium
♫ Old man take a look at my life I'm a lot like you♫There’s so much I want to say about what I have observed in the marketplace in the last two weeks. For one, it is the beginning of the O-N-D holiday...
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“We have become accustomed to constant change and instant boredom.” - Ex Archium
From the Archives Thursday, June 26, 2014"The business of wine buying is being handed over to a bunch of fireflies and their life span matches their attention span. It’s no longer about good or even...
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What is More Important to Winelovers? The News? Or the Story?
In a recent conversation with Elaine “Hawk Wakawaka” Brown - who started out in the world of wine as an artist and blogger and rocketed to recognition as an evocator par excellence - the idea of the...
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"Learning the Joyful Truths" - How wine elders can help today's young wine...
From the Archives - Wednesday February 12, 2104"I'd suggest that many young wine drinkers do not have access to the great benchmark wines, the paradigms of profundity that are alas beyond their reach...
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Safe-cracking a memory vault in search of the unicorn wine
"Able was I ere I saw Etna"Memory is an odd bedfellow. Even without the vicissitude of time or trauma it can be a transitory butterfly, flittering about and dropping from time to time upon the landing...
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Beyond the Aurelian Walls - Ex Archium
From the Archives - Wednesday, November 24, 2010So you’ve had your Roman holiday. Seen the sights. Taken in the Vatican Museum, the Baths of Caracalla, the Borghese Gardens. Touched the Pietà. You’ve...
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The First 40 Years of the Golden Age in Wine
This past week, I happened to come across a copy of the Wine Spectator. I’m an online subscriber, so I don’t often see the print version. But this was the 40th anniversary issue. And it got me to...
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Fanfare for the (un)Common Somm(elier)
Brian Huynh of Gemma in Dallas - photo by Brad MuranoOver the past week, once again in Texas, in restaurants, a wine list was thrust into my hands. “You choose, find us some wine,” my table guests...
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Trump's America Beckons: A Challenge for Italian Wine in the Age of Disruption
In two weeks, on December 4, 2016, Italians will vote on a referendum to change their constitution. If electors vote to approve the bill, it would activate constitutional reform in Italy, some say the...
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Life on Mt. Etna - After the Gadabouts Are Gone
It’s wet and foggy. And some of us are scared. The long days are now a thing of memory. We are steeped in darkness. And all the while the mountain rumbles, all through the night. And all those souls...
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Bruno Giacosa Retrospective - A Life in Wine
Bruna (L) and Bruno (R) Giacosa, the oracle of Neive, in 2004Bruno Giacosa has spent a lifetime making great wine. Like the fog that cloaks the many hills of the Langhe, to many he is shrouded in an...
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The Top 10 Commandments of Italian Wine
With the holiday season fast approaching, and with hallowed respect for Italian wine, let’s take a moment and review the 10 Commandments of Italian Wine.1. I am the Red, your Wine.The first duty of...
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The American Dreamer - From Palermo in 1911 to the United States in 2016
On a Barbarossa class ocean liner, a young man, barely a teenager in 1911, makes it all the way to Ellis Island, by himself. On a ship full of hope and promise, everyone looking, searching for their...
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11 Years Wine Blogging - On the Wine Trail in Italy – Quo Vadis?
What started out as a journal, a web-log as we called it at the time, has become a journey, now expanding into its second decade. The idea of time as a construct that stretches and takes forever, well...
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Is Italian Wine Ready for a Revamp in 2017?
Vision quests, spa treatments, identity crisis wines and start-up disruptors My Italian friends are posting pictures on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds, from Myanmar to Miami and from...
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A Guide to Collecting Italian Wine for the 30-Year-Old – Part I
For those who read books, there are numerous treatises on collecting wine. I’ve read all that I have in my little library. Some of them strike a chord, while others sound vaguely disjointed from the...
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Is Italian Wine in Danger of Dying from Natural Causes?
I’ve just spent an afternoon looking at Nielsen wine sales reports for America. The exercise came as a response to a colleague who told me“Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio is dead, nobody drinks it...
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A Modern Italian Woman and Her Journey on the Wine Trail
A picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, 3,500. My friend and colleague, Raffaella, posted a photo from her youth. I thought I recognized that person from my youthful wanderings in Rome. A...
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Survivalism for the Shattered Tribe in the Fog of Winter
Could this be the week we will look back, someday, with the realization that our wine collecting days are over? For one, the span of my life, or anyone’s life for that matter, might not exceed the time...
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What will happen to Italian wine if America enters into a trade war with Europe?
The Italians never thought it would happen. They, led by the French, were marching into a huge new market, China. In that moment, they turned their gaze from America, seeing a new, emerging market...
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