by admin | Apr 29, 2026 | Blog
I’m finishing up this post while on a plane to Portland, Oregon. Tomorrow, I’ll help adjudicate the annual Master Sommelier Diploma theory examination for dozens of candidates from the U.S., Canada, and beyond. It’s an oral examination comprising over 75 difficult...
by admin | Apr 15, 2026 | Blog
Eons ago, at my last restaurant gig, one of the investors regularly came in with his wife to have dinner. We’ll call him Carl. Carl owned a construction company that did commercial work all over the Bay Area. To say that Carl was successful is a major understatement....
by admin | Apr 1, 2026 | Blog
Last night at dinner, I told Carla that I was considering having a dead bottle party. Her response was something along the lines of “what?” So I had to explain the concept. But even before I could do that, I had to provide some background. To begin, there’s an innate...
by admin | Mar 18, 2026 | Blog
There are times when I think we get so caught up in blind tasting for exams that we lose sight of the prime directive of all wine education and certification, which is to be able to judge quality. Regardless of the exam track one follows, the ultimate goal of all wine...
by admin | Mar 4, 2026 | Blog
Is an optical sorter the auto-tune of red winemaking? Asking for a friend. Otherwise, this morning I was thinking back to the olden days in the 1980s, when I first got interested in wine. The world was a much less complicated place then. Pterodactyls still flew over...
by admin | Feb 18, 2026 | Blog
Every New Year’s one of the things Carla and I talk about is how we need to cook more new things. So we agree to make at least one new recipe a week, alternating who’s driving the stove. But like most New Year’s resolutions, the trend usually doesn’t make it to...
