Super special thanks to the entire team @mamaoakland for an incredible evening and a fantastic menu last night for our packed @vinidabruzzo dinner! And warm thanks to the wine professionals who took time out for an industry night at one of Oakland’s most Italian wine-friendly and fun destinations. Lastly, a heartfelt thanks to @steviestacionis who didn’t think I was crazy when I proposed the event for a Monday in December. Apologies to all the folks we couldn’t fit in. I feel so blessed to be part of the international community of wine people. Thanks to everyone who made it possible. It was my last event of 2023! It couldn’t have been sweeter. Now time to get my butt back on a plane to Houston. Oakland, I love you.

Happy Hanukkah!

May your holiday be filled with light, hope, and joy!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season…

Image by Jaxon Photo.

When the Consorzio dei Vini d’Abruzzo asked me to organize a December wine dinner in Atlanta, the challenges seemed formidable.

It’s hard enough to get a group of wine professionals together during “OND” — October, November, December, as we say in winespeak, when more than 50 percent of all wines are sold.

But the greater mountain to climb, at least for me, was that Atlanta is a market where I’ve spent next to zero time over the course of my career. I’d been there for this or that in-and-out speaking gig. But I had never taken that deep dive into the wine professional community there.

So, I rolled up my sleeves a few weeks ago and began reaching out to people individually on social media.

Before long, what started as a drip became a stream of rsvps from some of the coolest people working in wine in the U.S.

By Monday of this week, we had a waiting list 10 persons deep!

I can’t thank the Atlanta wine community enough for the warm welcome.

And I believe my experience is a reminder that U.S. and European winemakers and wine marketers need to look beyond the usual suspects when it comes to destination cities for their campaigns.

Luckily for me, the Abruzzo wine growers association is among those groups who have recognized how important these markets are. And more significantly, they have understood that these wine communities are among the most vibrant and energized in the country.

I’m feeling so blessed to do what I do for a living. And I’d like to give a heartfelt shoutout to Sarah Pierre of 3 Parks Wine for encouraging her staff and colleagues to join our event; Tahiirah Habibi for being one of the most inspiring members of our greater U.S. wine community; my good friend Gina Christman who recommended the venue and also generously helped with outreach; and Chef Marco Betti for giving me a night in his private dining room at Antica Posta during the busiest time of the season. Thank you!

Stayed tuned: the Abruzzo tour is coming to Mama Oakland next Monday. We already have a deep waiting list for that event. But please hit me up if you’d like to attend (there are always last-minute cancellations).

One of the begging questions that emerged from a tasting of (mostly) California wines yesterday in Houston was why do people think that kosher wines are inferior to treyf wines?

It just so happens that all the wines poured, by the excellent urban winery Covenant in Berkeley, California, were kosher.

Nearly everyone present had already tasted at least one Covenant wine: each of the tasters were part of a recent judging panel where said winery was a contender. There was no question that the wines in question were high-quality and expressive of the California where they were grown and vinified.

But the conundrum remained. In the perception of most consumers, kosher wines can’t be as good as conventional wines.

I’ll leave the parsing of what makes a wine kosher to the wineries and their minyans (pun intended). But in my experience, it’s the way that kosher wines have been marketed over generations in this country that has cultured the misconception.

Most American-Ashkenazi Jews my age had parents who rarely drank. Our generation, X, of U.S. Jews is arguably the first to become wine lovers. My wine appreciation didn’t begin to develop until after I finished grad school, for example.

Until that point, I believed, like most American wine enthusiasts, that kosher wines were limited to the “contains up to 50 percent grape product” wines that were heavily marketed to us through the ubiquitous — and one might say, insidious — presence of one brand.

But the renewal of interest in viticulture has reshaped wine enthusiasm among middle class Jews just as it has the rest of bourgeois America.

Covenant has been making high-end kosher wines in California and Israel for two decades now. And their popularity in Texas is growing rapidly. (Like so many misconceptions about my adoptive state, there is a widespread, erroneous belief that there aren’t many Jews here. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just visit the Houston neighborhood where we live!)

The wines were delicious, fresh and food friendly. Unless someone had told you otherwise, they wouldn’t taste Jewish at all.

May everyone have a peaceful Sabbath this weekend! Shabbat shalom, yall!