Wine ... changing even as we taste it, delivers a message with meaning only in our response. If we are in the right key when we receive it, our eyes will shine and we shall radiate pleasure.

I made a mental note to watch which bottle became empty soonest, sometimes a more telling evaluation system than any other.

One thing I don't think that we have enough of in wine writing is the use of cause and effect. Whatever wine tastes like, whatever you're going to do with it, it is as it is for a reason.

Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.

It needs only a good bottle of wine for a roast chicken to be transformed into a banquet.

Long ago, during my apprenticeship in the wine trade, I learned that wine is more than the sum of its parts, and more than an expression of its physical origin. The real significance of wine as the nexus of just about everything became clearer to me when I started writing about it. The more I read, the more I traveled, and the more questions I asked, the further I was pulled into the realms of history and economics, politics, literature, food, community, and all else that affects the way we live. Wine, I found, draws on everything and leads everywhere.

Wine ... changing even as we taste it, delivers a message with meaning only in our response. If we are in the right key when we receive it, our eyes will shine and we shall radiate pleasure.