Relative to the rest of the world, the wine industry in the United States is still very young. This is especially true of the wineries of the Northwest. Several of the pioneers of the industry in Washington and Oregon are still active in those industries, or are a mere generation removed from involvement. The origin stories of most wineries and [...]

Wine writing in the traditional media has long been somewhat of a boys club. Although there are a handful of women who have managed to penetrate the Riedel Ceiling, such as Jancis Robinson and Alice Feiring, the overwhelming majority of wine writers in print have been male. Thanks to the new DIY options that have sprung up with the advent [...]

I still remember the first time that I heard Johnny Cash’s original American Recordings album. There is something haunting about the vulnerability of an aged Cash’s gravelly voice singing over a simple acoustic guitar. There is an intense honesty that comes across in the music once you have stripped away all of the excess instrumentation and production that had gone [...]

I came, I saw, I drank a lot of Pinot Noir. Last week the 2012 Wine Bloggers’ Conference was held in Portland, Oregon. This was my second time to attend the conference, the first having been the 2010 conference in Walla Walla. WBC12, as the attendees referred to the conference, was a fantastic mixture of fellowship, education, and party. I [...]

Although my activity as a blogger has slowed to a trickle here on Vinotology, I still count myself as a part of the blogging community. I keep telling myself, and all of you, that I am going to start blogging regularly again. I suppose that I have, if you consider once or twice a month to be “regular”. Most social [...]

I know that this is probably shocking to you, but the wine industry is not the most agile market for adoption of new technologies. That said, there is a tendency within the industry to latch onto marketing fads with the wild abandon of a rabid honey badger. Although the initial reaction to some of these efforts is to applaud wineries [...]

Forgive this crudely crafted gem. I promise, it will get better from here. Dear Reader, I know, it has been a long time since you last heard from me. I’m sorry that I have been remiss in keeping the lines of communications open. I could make up an excuse about why I have been away, but you deserve better than [...]

Wine events come in all shapes and sizes, and last weekend Seattle hosted one of the biggest annual wine and food events in the Northwest, Taste Washington. This was my first time to attend Taste Washington, and I spent the majority of the day Saturday serving guest some of Chef Frank Magana’s mind blowingly delicious goodies. The Chorizo Stuffed Prawns [...]

My goal of writing every day for 40 days hit a snag recently. Sometimes life gets in the way of writing, and there isn’t a damn thing that you can do about it. About two weeks ago I received one of those phone calls that you never want to receive. I listened dumbly as my mother informed me that my [...]

There are very few areas in life where science and art intersect. The two things seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Philosophers have fought intellectual battles about which mode of thinking is more central to the human experience. Regardless of whether or not one paradigm is preferable to the other, wine is one area where the two sides [...]