In case the headlines have you in a funk about the current state of civility in the world, rest assured that being hospitable is not an entirely dead concept, not even in the fractured United States. Years ago I fell in love with the southeastern part of the country in large part due to the warm embrace I received from …
As you turn the page and your eyes alight upon the grape grower’s article, you probably expect musings on the pending harvest; envisioning misty mornings, yellowing leaves, heaping mounds of glistening clusters in quarter ton bins. Instead, I want to share with you what it is like to get my Big Spring Chore out of the way. That chore is …
High Quality — Spring 2018 Newsletter (pdf)
Slow Food for a Fast World — Spring 2018 Newsletter
I just spent four weeks in New York’s Finger Lakes region, right on Cayuga Lake next to Cornell University where my wife Ami was taking summer classes. On July 4th, we sat at a table at Good Life Farms overlooking a variegated expanse of small farms with clusters of trees, corn, vines, flowers, and feed ponds. The view and the …
Does your car tell you the outside temperature? This is not a new technology – I have a 1994 Lexus that can do that – but it is more widespread now, maybe universal. How important is it to know the exact temperature outside? For a farmer, a couple degrees make a big difference as it all adds up over the …
Baryonyx, Rhamphorhynchus, Pachycephalasaurus. These are dinosaur names that have become part of my current parlance in order to have engaging conversation with my 5 year old. I don’t recall from the time I was a kid the dinosaur names being so complicated, or so long and hard to pronounce, let alone impossible to remember. All I remember were the “basic” …
Albert Einstein famously said, “the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.” Of course, Einstein knew more about certain areas of science than anyone during his lifetime, but grasping new scientific concepts only revealed more fields for him to explore and doors for him to open. This process is what drove Einstein, and many people who push …
Andy and I heeded the call of wine fresh out of college. We struck out to make our way in the world of business with our own little passionate, entrepreneurial enterprise. We were not alone. The magic, the rapture, the spell that beautiful, sumptuous wine casts has lured many. Over the past ten years we have received visitors with entrepreneurial …
In 1996 when Nick and I bought an old sheep ranch and apple farm on the Sonoma Coast, we wore our hair in pony tails. Perhaps premature baldness was dictating our hairstyle decisions, (we joked that we should take an aerial photo of our balding heads and label the wine TwoPeay.) Could be our decision to pursue entrepreneurial, unconventional careers …
Giacomo Conterno. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Domaine Jean-Louis Chave. Other than high price tags, Old World roots, and legions of fans, what do these wineries have in common? All three are estate wineries. Recently a wine writer wrote a book on California Wine with a chapter provocatively titled, “The Myth of the Estate”. The chapter made, and still makes, me …
I know that I am going to sound like an old person when I say that young people these days (“Youts deez days!” as I shake my fist) think they can figure out how to do anything by simply watching a YouTube video. Don’t get me wrong. I have found some pretty good tutorials on YouTube where I learned how …