When I started tasting room life, I only knew that I love speaking wines a certain way.  And that’s what I ran with.  Wine itself ordering me to write differently about it.  Don’t do that scoring shit… or rating.  You don’t need your own rating system and some have suggested.

Live, show, share.  That simple.  First time at a winery with parents back in the San Carlos days where I drove with them to get their Ridge futures.  I think they were 95 Montebellos, if I remember right.

Wine isn’t something to be overthought, but I’m not here to preach or teach or some phony sage be.  I sat down to write and was like my students back in the day – “I sat down to write it and had nothing, I had writer’s block…”

If anything is anti-writer’s block, which first off I don’t believe in, it’s a vineyard.  The drives you take in Sonoma Valley, or Dry Creek or Russian River, Petaluma Gap or wherever.  Curiosity is what it always returns to.  Life, the places and attributes that have nothing to do with something in a glass, some fermented result.

But what you sip should have you in a place of appreciation and collection.  Relax, stop thinking so much.  Unblock yourself, I say… to ME.

In writing about what those grapes turn into, I think of my kids.  Maybe one day having a business with them somewhere here in Sonoma County, maybe a Napa or Mendo office too.

This blog, initially meant to be just that ‘live, show, share’ place, now a map, being written on the journey to wine industry autonomy.  Is that what I want?  Maybe…. My own location, store or shop or café, people walking in and getting what they need.