by admin | Jul 30, 2025 | Blog
Jessica Dupuy is an Austin-based wine educator, writer, and blogger (jessicadupuy.com). She and I will be at the TEXSOM conference next month. Recently, she interviewed me for her Italian Wine Podcast. During our session, we chatted about my tasting seminar at the...
by admin | Jul 16, 2025 | Blog
Every other year the Valdez clan gets together for a weekend reunion around the Fourth of July. The Valdez’s are Juanita’s family—my wife Carla’s late Mom. The reunions take place in the mountains on a family property near Angel Fire, New Mexico. It’s a small ski town...
by admin | Jul 2, 2025 | Blog
Whites, Rosés, and Reds for the Grill We’ve been back in New Mexico for almost eight years. Before then, Carla, the kids, and I lived for 30-plus years in San Francisco. There, the months of June through August were the antithesis of summer. While the rest of the...
by admin | Jun 18, 2025 | Blog
It was April 2006. I’d been in Portugal for a week with good friend and fellow MS, Keith Goldston. We were guests of AMORIM, Portugal’s largest cork producer, and had toured cork factories, seen cork forests, and sat through seminars on all things cork with emphasis...
by admin | Jun 5, 2025 | Blog
In all the years of countless winery visits, it had to be a first—at least in regard to how I showed up at the winery’s front door. Usually, the process involved either driving somewhere or riding in a passenger van. Per the latter, in the previous five times I’d been...
