The news never stops coming, and keeping up with everything is an impossible task. Regrettably, there are too few hours in a day that one can devote to reading, and though I attempt to stay on top of as much as I can, my stacks of newspapers, magazines, and books are always beckoning (and expanding). There’s wine and food, of course, but there’s so much more, from literature and cinema to essays and profiles. Here’s a look at a few things that caught my eye this week.
Esther Mobley has written a piece about the “doom loop” in which Republic National Distributing Co. finds itself. The company quit doing business in California last year, leaving more than 1,700 employees (and retailers and producers) in limbo. The worst appears yet to come for the organization. Read it here.
From bad to worse: Michel Bettane, writing in “World of Fine Wine,” says that “the wine world is on the brink of the biggest struggle for its survival since the phylloxera era.” Bettane is retiring after 20 years of working with the magazine, and he’s not, shall we say, overly optimistic about wine’s future. Here’s his missive.
Pete Wells, who was the chief restaurant critic of “The New York Times” for more than a decade, has recently been writing about how he developed healthier eating habits, and while he says he had little trouble cutting “some of the idiocy” from the way he ate (no more duck skin or sticky buns) and found it easy to come up with substitutions for white rice and and other starchy food, recalibrating the way he drank was a hurdle. Here’s Wells on his beverage journey.
No one likes a wine snob. They might provide amusement, but I’ve never enjoyed the pleasure of the company of one. However, do they deserve the death penalty? If you believe Dusan Jelic they do. He proclaims here that “we’ve let the Wine Snob hijack the industry for too long.”
Daniel Cathiard passed away on Wednesday; he was 81. Cathiard was the co-owner of Bordeaux’s Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte and Napa’s Cathiard Vineyard, among other properties. His life was a grand adventure.
I meant to include this dialogue between Terry Theise, a man I’ve admired for a long time, and Meg Maker in a previous “What I’m Reading,” but here it is now. A wonderful discussion about wine writing. (Here’s a Wine Talk featuring Theise.)
George Saunders has published a new novel, “Vigil,” which came out this week. He once thought he was going to die while traveling in a jet that was hit by geese, but he did not. Here is a fun read about the author.
Thomas Bernhard is one of my favorite writers. He was perhaps not the most pleasant man to spend time with, but his writing is magical, moving, profound, and honest. He has influenced many writers, as Oscar Dorr explains in this piece.
A famed pinot noir producer, Arista Winery, will soon be no more. Brothers Ben and Mark McWilliams told Esther Mobley that it was time to exit. If you want to purchase some of the winery’s remaining stock act fast.
Recent Comments