In personal news, Anna Brones gifted me with this papercut as well as including me in her Women’s Wisdom Project. I hear that The Dirty Guide to Wine sold out in the Japanese edition after only ten days! Had a fantastic time in Richmond, Virginia where I gave a talk sponsored by the restaurant Laura Lee’s. Their wine director Michael Smith reached out to me on Instagram (yes, sometimes it’s not toxic) and the next thing I knew they were flying me down to give a talk. Right off the plane my first stop was the Church Hill section and Sub Rosa for coffee and bites. And what bites they were. This bakery was conceived and executed by siblings Evrim and Evin Dogu. Evin is in charge of pastry, Evrim handles the bread. Now, I’m more a savory person than a sweet but the quality of the pastry, with recipes drawn from their Turkish ancestry, was impressive. I am still eating the pistachio shortbread and rye biscotti. However, that damned polenta bread? Flour is milled in-house. Local varieties are used as much as possible. Oh, yeah, and they have natural wines! If you’re there in the neighborhood, go. Why can’t we have anything this spectacular in New York City? I know. It’s called high rents = low creativity. That night the event was packed, enthusiastic and the questions could have gone on into the wee hours. Michael was right. Richmond is sweet. Those stinky proposed wine tariffs? Friends and colleagues have been hard at work to try to raise awareness and do what they can to lobby for a positive resolution—meaning take the notion off the table. Anyway, we will know the answer by February 13th. Among those hitting the drum the loudest have been Jenny Lefcourt and our very own Christy Frank. And I didn’t mean it this way—because I dread the coming articles from mainstream publications on what to drink now that European is unaffordable—but as it turns out, this week we have a lot of Chilean wine for you to consider. Every single one of them is worthy. For some of the backstory on them, you could read the AFAR story I wrote last year. |