A friend sent me a YouTube link to a “Make Your Own Video” skit that hilariously tackles the myth and romance of starting one’s own winery and/or becoming a winemaker.

Once I stopped laughing, I started to really think about what it takes to be happy and successful in those endeavors (other than a ton of money in the case of starting a winery, incredible patience and a work ethic of steel). As the video spoofs, it’s not often about glam and glitter, but a serious, grass-roots devotion to creating an agricultural product that speaks of the place in which it’s grown and made. That’s no easy feat.

I turned to some sage voices in the wine business to ask them what kind of advice they would impart to a person seriously interested in pursuing a life as a winery owner or a winemaker. Here’s what they said:

“Winemakers and winery owners must have extreme passion and a huge connection to the wine. It’s a tête-à-tête relationship with a living organism, and like a human, it evolves over time. Through this personal, in-depth relationship, you’ll also get to know yourself better. Approach it artistically and do not cling too much to concrete objectives.” -Jean-Charles Boisset, owner, Boisset Family Estates

“Winery ownership is not easy. Pleasurable sometimes – but not always. Glamorous, maybe – but not as a rule. Winery owners are pretty hard. They like to go camping and sleep on the ground. They like spinach. They love young Cabernet Sauvignon. There is always a little pain to go with the pleasure. “ –Mike Ratcliffe, owner Warwick Wine Estate

“Vino is mother nature’s precious gift but to produce a beautiful wine is only one step in the process. The challenge is to get the fruit of your labor onto the tables of wine lovers across the globe. In a world full of great wine and thousands of labels, the focus is not on the wine you want to make but one that consumers will enjoy. Next, how to bring it to market with great value? Making and sharing wine is romantic but achieving distribution, brand building, marketing, and investing time, resources and finances is decidedly less so. Worth the ride? Yes, by the glassful!” –Cristina Mariani-May, owner, Banfi Vintners and Castello Banfi

“My advice to an aspiring winemaker? Know what you want. Are you interested in Chardonnay, Sangiovese, Pinot Noir or Verdelho? To make volumes of good wine; or small amounts of great wine? Do you want to incorporate both the vineyard and the winery? Go work at a winery doing what you aspire to do. And work overseas, too. To an aspiring winery owner: First, know how to sell the wines you want to make. Find the best site to make them. Focus on vineyards that can produce them. Use your capital carefully. Or, buy a winery that does what you want, and manage it carefully. For most, winery success requires persistance.” -Zelma Long, pioneering California winemaker and winemaker for Vilafonté Winery

“You must really love and be passionate about what you do, otherwise when the hours get long you will start to hate the job. It definitely is not a 9-5 job (more of a 5 -9 and that is on a good day in the harvest). Be prepared to put in many extra hours, not only during the vintage (6-8 weeks of the year) or when one needs to blend and bottle a wine, but when marketing and promoting your wines throughout the rest of the year. The upside of the job: all of the above if you love wine and live and breathe it, as well as the ability to travel for and with your wines. We have met wonderful people and made many friends through the common bond of wine. Wine is beautiful! –Cathy Jordan, Owner, Jordan (Jardin) Wines

What in your mind is the right approach for the aspiring winemaker or winery owner? Is it more grit than glamour, or a romantic ride?

He was the Indiana Jones of his day: As Davy Crockett, he was the star of our favorite adventure films of the 1950s. He was a hero to an entire generation of goofy kids. He was the calm center of a media and merch blitz. Very few people have worn that mantle with such grace.

Fess Parker died on March 18th at his home in the Santa Ynez Valley, California. He was 85. In his story on our Web site, Steve Heimoff did a fine job in sketching the biographical details. Steve noted that the man who played Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett was also a pioneer in Santa Barbara County wine country; he and his son Eli purchased 700 acres there in 1987.

If you want to toast Parker’s memory properly, Heimoff has plenty of suggestions.

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I’ll admit—I’m an amateur whisky (I’ll use the term “whisky” here to encompass Scotch, American and Irish, for simplicity’s sake) fan, but a dedicated one. I was initially drawn to the spirit because of the romance and glamour it evoked. Like many before me, I grouped serious male whisky drinkers—beyond those who just had a penchant to swing back Jack at the fraternity house—into two (very) broad and admittedly slightly vague categories: distinguished, swifter-collecting older men—the same breed that gravitated toward fine Cognac, Nantucket, tweed smoking jackets and cigars—and the more brooding, soulful artistic types (think James Dean, Jack Kerouac, Johnny Cash). Female fans of this “ultimate man’s drink” had even more cachet and consisted of dangerous femme fatales (Marlene Dietrich was probably a Scotch or Bourbon drinker), older, wiser Mrs. Robinson figures or hard-skinned, convention-flouting Joan Jett characters. Interesting company indeed.

 I was intrigued, though it took a while (as does any activity with a learning curve) before I finally decided to take the plunge. “Scotch on the rocks,” I said assertively to the mustached, suspender-donning bartender at a pseudo-speakeasy one evening. Whatever respect he may have had for me quickly vanished when I responded to his next question—“What type of Scotch?”—with a blank stare.

 Despite this less-than-auspicious start, I went on—I’m happy to say—to develop a more schooled appreciation for whisky. There’s the taste from the fiery, smoky single malt Scotches to the sweeter, mellower Bourbons, the abundance of different styles, terroirs even and blending techniques to which any wine geek can relate and—though this may be unique to me—the restorative, reflective, even intellectual feeling you have after a few good sips of the stuff.

 It’s never made me particularly giddy or excited (the way other libations have done in the past) but it often leaves me feeling calm and content—especially on a cold, blustery night—and even a bit reflective. If I were inclined to drink while writing or creating, whisky would be my chosen libation.

Share your own ruminations about whisky with me, and tell me what I should be trying in my whisky exploration.

As a wine critic, I taste and review a lot of wines without ever seeing the label. What’s in the glass is what counts, and that’s something wine writers have espoused for decades, if not centuries. If a wine tastes good to you, it shouldn’t matter what a critic says…or what the label looks like.

Or does it? Obviously, wineries spend a lot of time, energy and money developing labels for their bottles. The label is the first point of contact for many consumers and gives the producer a unique chance to make an impression.

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Man o' War's vineyards on Waiheke Island

Something like 90% of the New Zealand wine imported to the U.S. is Sauvignon Blanc, which makes it easy for American wine drinkers to completely disregard the other 10%. Sure, some folks go on about Pinot Noir–the latest flavor du jour in the U.S. and New Zealand’s most prominent red wine grape–but what’s remarkable is the diversity of grape varieties now being grown in this remote corner of the world.

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Before I started working full-time at Wine Enthusiast Magazine I held a freelance position that enabled me to work from home several days each week. Some people use periods of unemployment (or in my case underemployment) for travel or self-reflection—it becomes a time to sit back, introspect and remove oneself from the fray and frenzy. Me? I took my more flexible schedule and decided to explore NYC—the city I currently call home—at night. I like to think of this time, less as a hiatus for wild, booze-filled partying and more of a journalistic, social-anthropological foray into a part of the Manhattan experience previously unknown to me (I was always more of a worker bee). Case in point: I am now, as a journalist, blogging about it. The below represent some of my general musings and personal conclusions, a few of which will be discussed individually in future blogs.

The coolest kids go out on school nights. It’s common knowledge that the best nights to experience the city are weeknights: it’s less crowded and the oft-maligned untouchables of the nocturnal scene—i.e. the “bridge and tunnelers” from Jersey, Staten Island and Nassau County, Long Island—stay tucked away in their boroughs.

Most cool kids don’t have to get up in the morning. A good number of the weeknight partiers don’t keep regular hours—i.e. they’re students, models, model/actresses, socialites, socialite/model/actresses, aspiring DJs or filmmakers or other members of the creative class (and often members of the trust fund class as well) who need not be up and on for the 9 am office meeting.

Nightlife is a full-time occupation for some. I’m referring here not to bartenders, doorman and all the various nightclub/lounge proprietors and managers but to another ubiquitous NYC night creature—the promoter. These are the individuals (usually male) responsible for bringing the young, pretty party people (usually female) to certain establishments. Promoters typically can be spotted at whatever table is surrounded by the largest group of drunken girls and usually have well over 1,000 female friends on Facebook, most of whom they’ve never met.

Smoking only recently died. The infamous 2003 smoking ban, which drastically altered the city’s bar scene, only recently started to apply at certain downtown (and often subterranean) establishments.

There are two (very) general schools of NYC nightlife. There are thousands of places open on any given night in Manhattan but the more exclusive hotspots roughly fall into two broad categories: the “models and bottles” clubs and the grittier, more downtown, more hipster spots. This one will be explored in a future blog.

Wine is for earlier in the night. The bottles in the phrase “bottles and models” are typically filled with Absolut or Grey Goose. While more and more wine bars are cropping up in Manhattan, the nightlife scene is more about the hard stuff. And it’s mostly vodka with the retro-speakeasy cocktail appreciation also reserved for earlier in the night.

The daytime can be party time too. Brunch has long been a NYC ritual though in 2009 the “wild brunch” concept took hold with more New Yorkers realizing the first half of the day was an untapped reserve for potential partying. The two general versions—“the Meatpacking District’s “Bottles and Brunch” and the LES more budget approach—will also be explored in a future post.

Many beloved cocktails have earned their place in our hearts with thanks due to the incredible, edible egg. Classic drinks like the Ramos Gin Fizz get their special frothy texture and creamy meringue flavor from egg whites. So I was floored when I read in the New York Times, that the New York City Department of Health had been cracking down on the use of egg whites in drinks at popular cocktail establishments. While raw egg whites may make some precious sippers squeamish, the drinks simply wouldn’t be the same without them.

The issue occurred at Pegu Club, which serves a drink called the “Earl Grey MarTEAni” made with earl grey-infused gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and raw egg white. The ingredients are clearly listed on the menu, with a warning. Nevertheless, the Department of Health issued Pegu a violation requiring a court appearance, because the bartender failed to explicitly inform the customer about the raw egg whites. Pegu immediately stopped serving a drink they’d served for years, though nobody had ever gotten sick. Other bartenders chimed in with the same reports of serving egg-white- laden drinks for years, with nary a sick patron.

I’d prefer to have laws of full disclosure than to have these beloved concoctions banned entirely. But are they necessary?  How would you feel if you consumed raw egg without your knowledge? The stats say that only 1 in every 20,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella and some argue that the alcohol in the drink knocks it out before it could cause harm. And it’s not just drinks that use raw egg whites, plenty of sauces do too. What’s next, a hollandaise hysteria?

The issue at Pegu Club made me think about some of the proposed new laws regarding wine labels.  New labeling laws may require wineries to disclose the products used in fining be they egg whites, bentonite, animal gelatin or anything else. This is already the case in Australia, where all allergens are listed on the label.

On the one hand, transparency is a good thing. People with dietary restrictions appreciate having the knowledge to make an informed buying decision. On the other hand, I sympathize with the winemaker who resists sharing too much. Wine is confusing enough to consumers, do we want to scare them away? Plus, changing the labels is expensive.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I imagine the issue is here to stay. Where do you side? The more info, the better? Or is ignorance bliss?

The general consensus in the wine world is that wines with a bit of sweetness and a hint of spice pair best with Chinese food. Semi-dry Riesling, Gewürztraminer and sparkling wines are mentioned most often, and I agree. If I’m not drinking beer, a sleek, off-dry Riesling is my go-to quaff for that fare. The sweetness complements the spice in the dishes but also, if you think about it, the sweetness: many of the sauces used in American-style Chinese food are slightly sweet. So there you go.

But when I mentioned that my wife and I annually join as many as ten other couples for a Chinese New Years banquet on Mott Street in New York’s Chinatown, a colleague suggested I think about Amarone; its raisiny accent and plum flavors might be an excellent match for Peking duck served with a plum sauce. I had my doubts; Amarones can be tannic and that is definitely not what you want with spicy food. But I was curious if it would work.

I leave it to you to explore this pairing, because it didn’t happen for me.

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My last two working trips have taken me from North America across the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand. Figuring I’d at least like to get to and from my destinations, I avoided booking flights on Oceanic Airlines or Ajira Airways, instead flying on Qantas and Air New Zealand.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out here that my business-class tickets were provided by the respective wine boards of these two countries, where I had intense schedules of vineyard visits, conferences and seminars lined up for virtually every hour. But regardless of how I got in the front of those planes, once there, I was seriously impressed by the range of vinous offerings.

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I’ve been contemplating all week what to drink for Valentine’s Day this year. Sure, sure, typically most people go to their favorite retailers in search of a sparkler or some sort, but if that’s not your bag (which, typically, bubbly is not mine) then where to turn? A lush, rich red wine? A decadent, buttery, full-bodied white? A dry, Champagne-esque bière brut á-la-DeuS? Decisions, decisions!

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