My teetotaling cousin calls wine ‘a waste of perfectly good grape juice,' and to the uninitiated, a bottle of vino can be inscrutable, or just what it appears to be: ethyl bound by glass and cork. But if you dig deeper, there is always something more. Perhaps the grapes in your glass were farmed with little care, heavily irrigated, overcropped, showered with fungicides and pesticides, darkened by Mega Purple, and flavored with oak chips; or possibly the vines that made your wine were brought by folks from far-off lands, planted by great-grandmothers in pure sand unfit for phylloxera, and these plants continue to yield distinctive fruit with centuries of age.

I’m wary of telling tales to sell wine, for as much as you or I may like the story, you might not, in fact, enjoy the wine. But when the stories are true, and one does indeed savor the wine, it is not a sales trick; it is the full picture, which is never simply the liquid in the glass, but how it got there, and when and why, a vivid history that illuminates our collective connection.

Vineyard workers in the Mosel Valley, often older women, carry precious chunks of eroded slate from the bottom of steep vineyards back to the top to maintain their wines’ distinctive character. During World War II, carpet-cleaners in Paris gave dust from old rugs to winemongers to cover bottles, convincing German soldiers that their cheap, young plonk was desirably aged. In 1954, the town council of Châteauneuf-du-Pape passed an ordinance prohibiting UFOs or "flying cigars" from landing in their vineyards. For centuries, pilgrims from all over Europe brought and planted their local grapevines along the Camino de Santiago, introducing many new varieties to the Iberian Peninsula. Hungarian nobleman Agoston Haraszthy was the first sheriff of San Diego and established Buena Vista winery in Sonoma in 1857. He died in 1869 in a crocodile-infested river in the Nicaraguan jungle. His body was never found.

Looking closely at your wine, you may find reflections of our history - our empires, wars, alliances, migrations, regulations, religious orders, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, meteorology, technology, changes in taste or fancy, customs, social mores - in short, nothing less than our very humanity. And if you find your naked eye insufficient for the task, you need only to stroll down to Oakland Yard, your local repository of vinous minutiae, to avail yourself of our extensive reference library or engage one of our kind, knowledgeable stewards who are at your service daily.

Tonight…THURSDAY NIGHT FLIGHTS: Portuguese reds and whites - Sample three reds or whites from the oldest country in Europe.
2023 Casa de Mouraz Dão Branco
2024 Nortico Alvarinho
2024 Filipa Pato DNMC Dinâmica Vinho Branco
2023 Planet Mouraz Nina Palhete
2024 Filipa Pato DNMC Dinâmica Baga Tinto
2022 Companhia de Vinhos Invencível Douro Tinto
Tasting Flights $15 from 5-9 and wines by the glass until close!

SATURDAY 8/9: 2024 ROSÉ FLIGHTS - Taste four newly released wines from four different countries made from red grapes macerated on their skins for a relatively short time.
2024 Foncalieu Picpoul Noir Rosé
2024 Birgit Wiederstein Rozae
2024 Ameztoi Rubentis Getariako Txakoli Rosé
2024 Arnot-Roberts Rosé
Tasting Flights $18 from 2-6 and wines by the glass until 9pm!

Cheers,

Max