Above: my wine writing Master’s class last year at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, Italy. Next week I’ll be teaching both print-media and digital-era wine writing to a new group of Master’s students there. Enrollment in next year’s Master’s Program in Wine Culture, Communication, and Management is now open. Click here to read more. If I were 20 years younger, I’d enroll just to attend the seminars with Armando Castagno, one of my teaching fellows and one of the tasters, wine writers, and wine THINKERS I admire most in the world.

“In the context of wine communications,” writes veteran wine blogger Tom Wark on his blog Fermentation this week, “wine blogs should best be understood as the minor leagues of wine journalism. If you observe the wine blogosphere as a whole, some bloggers are clear standouts and are likely to be assigned a place in the major leagues; given exposure in outlets beyond their blog where more eyes and minds are exposed to their singular voice.”

He’s not denigrating wine bloggers, he notes (he’s a wine blogger himself):

This may come off as a view that diminishes the importance of wine blogs… [In fact, it] is the most exciting thing about the genre. It always has been. On that occasion when you discover a new, exciting voice that rises above the crowd and delivers a perspective not previously encountered, any keen observer of wine writing and wine communications should be excited or at least highly intrigued.

Tom is a leading member of the American wine community, well respected by his peers and widely read by his colleagues. I like him a lot, I read his blog religiously (one of my favorites), and I look forward to every opportunity I get to interact with him. He’s one of the most intelligent and thoughtful voices in wine writing today. Not only does he have something intriguing and compelling to say but he also says it exceedingly well.

I’m going to be sharing his post with my students next week in one of my seminars for the Master’s program in Wine Culture, Communication, and Management at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, Italy.

But I take issue with the intrinsic (and misguided) hierarchy that he projects on wine writing today. And more specifically, I believe he is wrong that there is an inherent dichotomy between the major leagues and minor leagues of wine writing.

Here and now is not the space or time to get into a discussion of just exactly what constitutes a blog. But I will point out that nearly all the “major leaguers” he cites (including himself, if he puts himself in the privileged category) are also wine bloggers. Master of Wine Jancis Robinson (one of my favorites) is one of the few leading wine writers who still publishes with a print-media outlet (the Financial Times). But most of her writing appears on her tasting note portal and blog JancisRobinson.com. Antonio Galloni (another favorite) may have been a minor leaguer by Tom’s standards when he published Piedmont Report, which he distributed as a PDF. But today, he and his online Vinous.com are considered top resources for wine writing, even though the media is available exclusively in digital format — a web log, updated frequently (the very definition of a blog).

The bottomline is that there is no difference between a blog and a website or a print media outlet today. Print media is dying out. And websites — even the New York Times — are consumed primarily by digital users. That’s a fact that no one can dispute. Does that mean that the Times is a blog? Or does that mean that blogs can’t be associated with former print-media brands? It doesn’t matter anymore…

Tom’s post and his emargination of those writers who don’t make the grade in his binary wine-writing hegemony (and I write this with the greatest respect for his writing) made me think of a wine blogger whom he considers a major leaguer, the HoseMaster of Wine. The title alone of this award-winning and much celebrated blog is as offensive to current sensibilities as is the hateful (however satirical) content it hosts. (My suggestion would be that he change the title to Petroleum Flex Connector of Wine.) A Harvey Winestein of wine blogging (pun intended), H——– frequently attacks other wine writers/bloggers with explicitly sexual and misogynist language (the Donald Trump of wine bloggers?).

Tom’s post also made me think of another spite-fueled wine blogger, On the Wine Trail in Italy, a devoted detractor of the “Instagram generation” of wine writers, as he calls youthful wine-focused social media users and bloggers.

The Lambrusco Twitter troll @LambruscoDay was another writer (blogger/social media user?) that came to mind. He’s the world’s leading expert on Lambrusco (in his mind) and is determined to tell you how little you know about the category, whether you like it or not.

I don’t know if Tom considers the latter two to be major leaguers but all three of these writers have something in common, something key to their whole approach to oenography: you know less about wine than me and I’m going to denigrate you for it.

The parallel I draw between Tom’s hierarchy and the prime motor behind the three bloggers (or micro-blogger in the case of the @LambruscoDay) is borne out of the malignant notion that there is nobility in disparaging those who see the world differently than you. Your major-league aspirations make you better than them and you find purpose in letting the world know you’re better than them.

I agree wholeheartedly with Tom when he writes that we “should understand the Wine Blog as the voice of a single individual.” But I also believe that the voice of every individual deserves our respect and a place in the blogosphere. After all, wine writing and the synesthetic art of describing wine culture is an expression of human subjectivity and idiosyncrasy.

There is no minor or major league in wine writing. Everyone is and deserves to be in a league of their own — just like Tom.

Thanks for reading. Please check out the Master’s program in wine culture at UniSG. Beyond my own seminars, I highly recommend it.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see/hear my new band The Go Aways this weekend at 13 Celsius. The response to the gig was so positive and the venue was so pleased that we are definitely planning on doing another show before year’s end. Thanks also to Londale and Golden Cities for making it such a great bill. Stay tuned…

Above: Prince Alessandrojacopo Boncompagni Ludovisi and I will be presenting a flight of his family’s Fiorano wines stretching back to the 1980s on December 7 at Rossoblu in Los Angeles. He’s flying in especially for the occasion. I’m so super geeked about this!

I’ll be pouring and speaking at a number of really cool events this season. Please join me in Houston and/or Los Angeles at one of the following dinners/tastings. And if you happen to be in Langa or Roero in November, I’ll be teaching at the University of Gastronomic Sciences the weeks of November 13 and 20. Shoot me a line and let’s connect and taste.

Mascalzone (Houston)
Monday, November 6
6:00 p.m.
Wine Tasting: Native Italian Grapes

I’ll be pouring 3 wines at Mascalzone where I’ve been writing the wine list since this summer. $35 per person, including light bites. I’ll also be working the floor that night at the restaurant. Call (832) 328-5151.

Rossoblu (Los Angeles)
Tuesday, November 28
6:30 p.m.
Lambrusco Tasting with Alicia Lini

The magnetic Alicia Lini is one of my best friends in the wine business and we love her wines at Rossoblu, where Christine Veys and I have been writing the wine list since the restaurant opened in the spring. $35 per person, including light bites. Registration hasn’t opened yet but please save the date.

Rossoblu (Los Angeles)
Thursday, December 7
7:00 p.m.
Dinner with Prince Alessandrojacopo Boncompagni Ludovisi
featuring a flight of Tenuta Fiorano reds from the 1980s

I’m so thrilled about this event: I’ve only had the opportunity to taste the Prince’s uncle’s red wines from the 1980s on one other occasion (thanks to a group of very generous collectors in New York). When I saw that he was making some of the wines available (directly from his cellar), I jumped at the chance to share them with our guests at Rossoblu. $195 per person, including a tasting menu created especially by Chef Steve Samson. Registration hasn’t opened yet but please save the date.

Above: Master of Wine Ashley Hausman Vaughters (left) greets New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov at the Boulder Burgundy Festival in mid-October.

It’s an issue and cause dear to my heart: the death-grip hold that American wine wholesalers employ (and enjoy) as they continue to stifle interstate retail sales of wine in the U.S.

I call it a “death grip” because it’s killing wine culture among young people across our nation. I’ve traveled from coast to coast over the last three years, visiting not just major markets but also budding wine communities in fly-over country and beyond. Again and again, I’ve met young wine professionals who are thirsty and eager to taste iconic Italian wines that they simply cannot get in their home cities. As the wholesale lobby has continued to tighten its grip on interstate retail sales, young sommeliers are increasingly forced to travel to other markets to taste wines otherwise unavailable to them.

It’s unfair, it’s anti-competitive (anti-capitalist) it’s un-American, and it’s downright pig-headed: not only does it hurt U.S. consumers who simply can’t buy the wines that they want, it’s putting a generation of future wine professionals and restaurateurs at a disadvantage.

I’m a wine buyer in California (where I write two lists) and Texas (where I write one). Over and over again, I see wines that are available to me and to consumers in California that are not available to me and my fellow consumers here in Texas (and in some cases, vice versa). And it’s thanks to efforts of the powerful wholesaler lobby. As farty old white men are getting rich in Texas and Florida (the states where some of the worst offenders make their home), American wine lovers are being denied a fundamental right that other Americans take for granted (it’s called the “Interstate Commerce Act”).

As New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov put it in his column this week for the paper: “In an age where you can order just about anything on the internet, including wine, consumers deserve safe access to great retailers over state borders.”

Eric writes:

For a golden moment, motivated wine lovers could rely on high-speed internet as a sort of national wine shop. A consumer in Little Rock, Ark., for example, unable to find particular bottles locally, could order them from a shop in New York. It required only a willingness to pay shipping costs.

Those days are no more. In the last year or so, carriers like United Parcel Service and FedEx have told retailers that they will no longer accept out-of-state shipments of alcoholic beverages unless they are bound for one of 14 states (along with Washington, D.C.) that explicitly permit such interstate commerce…

But now, states — urged on by wine and spirits wholesalers who oppose any sort of interstate alcohol commerce that bypasses them — have stepped up enforcement efforts. Retailers say that the carriers began sending out letters to them a year ago saying they would no longer handle their shipments.

Please read Eric’s excellent piece for the Times.

And for some background and perspective, see this post by blogger and industry observer Tom Wark, who has written for years about this un-American, anti-competitive, monopolistic lobby.

The California wine country fires affect everyone in our industry. Please read my post today for the Slow Wine California blog.

Burgundy may be my mistress.

But Langa will always be my signora.

Last weekend, I attended the Boulder Burgundy Festival, where I not only have I served as the gathering’s official blogger for last four years but I also get to taste and drink far above my pay grade. It was a remarkable experience. Possibly the best event yet.

But as much as I loved sitting across from Bobby Stuckey as we tasted through a spectacular six-wine flight of Chambolle-Musigny, with Raj Parr and Eric Asimov leading us on our journey from the red soils at the bottom of the côte to the white soils at the top (what a seminar!), my mind and my heart always find their way back to Nebbiolo.

Last night I led a tasting of seven of my favorite expressions of Nebbiolo for 24 guests at Rossoblu, the new downtown Los Angeles Italian where my college buddy Steve Samson is chef and owner and where my colleague Christine Veys and I have been writing the wine program since it opened this spring.

We were joined by Cesare Barbero, director of one of my favorite wineries, the Barbaresco cooperative Pertinace — one of the unsung heroes of the appellation.

The flight: 13 Barbaresco, 12 Barbaresco Marcarini, 12 Barbaresco Nervo, 98 Barbaresco, 98 Barbaresco Nervo, 96 Barbaresco, and 96 Barbaresco Nervo.

My top wine of the night was the 98 (classic) Barbaresco, which we paired with the first white truffles of the season to arrive in LA (they were literally flown in the day before). What a flight of wines, what a dinner, and what at night!

Thank you to everyone who came out to support this event: our first wine dinner in the restaurant’s newly christened wine room. And thank you to the spot-on staff at Rossoblu for the seamless service and the beautifully polished stemware.

On Thursday, December 7, the restaurant and I will be hosting Prince Ludovisi (Fiorano) for a dinner and tasting of red wines made by his uncle in the 1980s. The Prince is flying in especially for the occasion and the wines are coming from the family’s personal grotto (they don’t have a cellar; they keep their wines in an ancient Roman cave). I hope you can join us (registration isn’t open yet for this event but if you’d like to reserve one of the 18 seats available, please shoot me an email so I can hold your spots for you).

Thanks, everyone, for your support. It means the world to me.

Please don’t forget our sisters and brothers in California wine country.

It was fascinating to sit down and chat yesterday with Oscar Arrivabene (above) in Los Angeles where he was pouring Domenico Clerico wines with the estate’s new California importer.

Like many Nebbiophiles, I had a $64,000 question on my mind: which vintage marked Clerico’s shift from standard bearer of the modernist movement in Barolo to champion of large-cask-aged traditional-style wines?

If you’re reading this blog, you probably know that Domenico, a truly lovely man who was deeply cherished by his community and the many young people he mentored, left this world for a better one in July of this year (see this Wine Spectator obituary by Bruce Sanderson to put the arc of Clerico’s career and wines into context).

“The thing about Domenico,” said Oscar, who first visited the winery as Clerico’s student and then later joined the estate as enologist, “was that he was always changing his approach to winemaking. He never stopped changing.”

Tracie (my wife) and I had the immense pleasure of dining with Domenico in Piedmont almost a year to the day before he passed. And he spoke that evening of how he had decided to abandon barrique (new wood, small cask) aging for his wines.

But what year marked the sea change?

Oscar needed no nudging to reveal that it was in 2014, when they were blending the 2011 harvest, that Clerico decided to sell off some of his barrique-aged wines and bottle a blended Barolo sans vineyard designation — a first for him and the estate. From that point onward, said the young winemaker, Clerico and his wines set back down a traditionalist path, including some of the wine he was already aging in large cask.

When the great Barolo and Barbaresco traditionalist Bruno Giacosa suffered health problems in 2006 and ultimately decided not to bottle the vintage, Oscar told me, Clerico (who succumbed to a long and courageous battle with cancer this year) began to revisit Giacosa’s wines, “rediscovering” his own passion for wines aged in botti (large cask). That led him to begin re-tasting wines by other old school producers whose wines inspired him to change his own style, said Oscar.

I told Oscar about the wonderful dinner we shared with the always colorful Clerico in July 2016. In turn, he shared a story about the Barolo grower’s boundless generosity.

He and Clerico were touring the U.S. last year when a young wine professional asked him to explain the difference between modernist and traditionalist Barolo. Without uttering a word, Clerico left the table and returned with the restaurant’s sommelier and $600 worth of wine — two bottles, one by a classicist, one by an avant-garde producer. When there wasn’t quite enough wine for everyone to taste, Clerico quickly called for another bottle of each. $1,200 later, quod erat demonstrandum.

Please keep praying for all our friends and colleagues in Northern California where wild fires continue to threaten life and property. So many of my friends still can’t get back to their homes. Click here for relief effort resources.

Please join me and my band The Go Aways for a set of Americana rock and country on Sunday, October 29 at 13 Celsius wine bar in Houston (Midtown). Show starts at 5 p.m. No cover.

My bandmate Gwendolyn Knapp and I have been working on a new album of her songs that we hope to release by Christmas of this year. She and I have been producing the music in my home studio and I’m pretty stoked about it.

Her tracks can be dark and they can be funny and they always rock with just the right amount of twang. She and I have also written a couple of Christmas songs — one political and one inspired by my daughter Georgia age 5 who wrote the title.

Two other Houston-based bands will be performing as well, Londale and Golden Cities. Please come rock out with us.

In other news…

I’m up in Colorado this weekend for the Boulder Burgundy Festival. I’ve been the gathering’s official blogger for the last three years now and it’s always a great experience. Stay tuned for posts from the gig (I’m about to walk into the kick-off event: Old and Rare Burgundy with Master Sommelier Jay Fletcher, one of the most engaging speakers and tasters I’ve ever had the pleasure to taste with).

I’ve also gotta send out a shout-out this morning to my bromance and client Paolo Cantele (below, center) who came to Houston this week to present a wine dinner featuring his wines at Mascalzone where I’ve been writing the wine list since August. It meant so much to all of us, Paolo, that you came to Houston when we need people like you most.