The Continuing Legacy of Sokol Blosser Winery
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 [...]
The Women of the New Wine Media
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 [...]
The Continuing Odyssey of Randall Grahm
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 [...]
Portland, Here We Come!
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 [...]
Put a QR Code On It
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 [...]
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 [...]
Last night I was awakened by a dream, a dream so glorious that I had to rush to write it down so that I would remember all of the details to recount to you. Like a magic portal to my subconscious, this dream featured dancing midgets (little people that is), crushed velvet robes, giant sandworms, a disembodied human ear, and [...]
Miguel De Unamuno, a person whom I know absolutely nothing about, is quoted as saying, “Consciousness is a disease.” This is a theme that I have always found, though seldom stated explicitly, in some of my favorite authors. The disease of consciousness can be found everywhere in books by Dostoyevsky and Albert Camus. As a existentialism junky, I have consumed [...]
I just wanted to drop a quick post to talk about a project that I am going to be participating in, and am very excited about. Many of you know, or know of, Hardy Wallace. His fiance, Kate Graham, has kicked off an exciting writing project called “40 Days of Writing.” The idea is that those of us with an [...]
Just a note, if you are easily offended, you might consider skipping this one. This is an innuendo-heavy post. We all have our own things that turn us on. Some guys are leg guys, and some are ass guys. Me, I’m a Syrah guy. Okay, so Syrah and Pinot Noir, but my Pinot fixation is a topic for another day. [...]
Sometimes I don’t like myself very much. This feeling can be traced all the way back to my childhood. It’s a mommy issue kind of thing. I know that we all have things about ourselves that we would like to change, but I have really honed my self-loathing to a fine point over the years. I have a whole laundry [...]
Getting older sucks. Of course, it’s not really the actual aging that is a problem; it’s the changes that go along with aging that bother us. We have the great pleasure of watching our bodies slowly deteriorate, despite our best efforts to fend off the visible effects of having outlived our physical peaks. There are some of us who decide that [...]
The last several months, (probably the last year is really more accurate) my blog has been a mess of fits and starts, with the fits generally outweighing the starts (or maybe it’s the other way around.) I’m going to level with you all here; the truth is that I’ve been fucking bored. The story of my descent into boredom is [...]
One of the biggest local wine events of the year here in Eastern Washington is the Tri-Cities Wine Festival that is put together by the Tri-Cities Wine Society. Roughly 100 wineries participate every year, and this was Thomas O’Neil Cellars first trip to the festival. The original plan was for Tom O’Neil to join me at the festival while his [...]
Small businesses always present owners with unique challenges, and a small winery is certainly no exception to that rule. All that fancy equipment that you see at the larger wineries is not always an option for a smaller place. You start out with the items that are essential to operate, and then year after year you add on as you are [...]
