Comfort Of Cover

“No! Oh my god, no!” my own voice calling out so loud, accusatory and punitive that I found myself sleepy-eyed, confused and sitting up in bed. Feeling blurry, terrified and for some reason, guilty as my heart pounded against the back of my throat, my chest lurching along with the wind in my lungs almost as if they were trying to keep up with the lunging and  pull my heart back down into its rightful spot.

Third time in the past couple weeks that I’ve been awoken like this. To my own voice dripping with primal fear and utter panic. Fucking nightmares. I’m a grown ass woman, like way old and junk and here I am wiping tears away from my eyes, trying to catch my breath and digging myself deeply under the covers. Trying to soothe my racing heart and thumping chest by slipping one leg out from under the blankets, slowly and methodically running the bridge of my foot along the soft fabric, lips barely spread as the panicked pace of my breathing slows to a normal pant. The soft whisper of deep, “that wasn’t real” exhales the soundtrack to my toes dancing along across a puffy duvet. Settling my unrest under the comfort of cover…once again. 

In this really weird spot right now. Not bad, per se, but I feel like I’m balancing on the edge of, something, and I can either step back and keep going as is or jump, feel my heart rattle around in my chest like it has its hands on prison cell bars and is beating the hell out of me from the inside out. Feel all my limbs floating. Been trying to figure out what my body, my screams and mind are trying to tell me in those rare moments when I’m holding still enough to hear. To listen.

 I was thinking it might be a work thing. One of my coworkers is leaving, one that I love more than I can even begin to tell him. I have a brother, this man that is leaving is the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever known. I was crushed when I heard he was moving on. I understand why and know that he and I, well we are years away from being done with one another. He is leaving to do outside sales, so he’s going to sell wines to assholes like us and the funny thing, in the past 5 months I’ve had 3 offers from importers to do the same. Leave The Wine Country. New gig. New start. So I think part of me worried that I might have been stupid, mistaken or letting fear keep me from taking those positions. Took me a couple weeks to figure out that for me, that outside sales business, well it isn’t what I want to do. Like not even a little. Never has been. In fact leaving the store, well that isn’t something that even begins to pass for craveable in my world. It isn’t work…

“You have his face”

“You have to see my ex-wife’s daughter. God, what an ugly little bitch she is”

“I love fucking you from behind…..that way I don’t have to look at you” 

“You never noticed that you don’t that many friends? No one likes ugly fat girls. You’re my sister and I can’t stand you”

“What a waste”

“You know if you were smaller I’d consider dating you”

“Who’s going to believe I forced myself, on you. Look at you”

“Sam, why do you cut your own hair?”

Because I can’t stand sitting in front of a mirror long enough to let someone else do it…..

Last month I hit the one year mark on my non-smoking thingie. I haven’t had a cigarette in like almost 400 days. Not sure I have within me the capacity to express how fucking unreal that is. No cigarettes?! Been smoking for longer than I’ve been a mother so in actuality those leggy, long, smoldering tar sticks were one of my longest and most committed, at times, cherished relationships, like ever. I’m not sure I spent much time thinking about quitting before I did it. Sure I knew I would smell better, be at least a tiny bit healthier and I would save loads of money but that quitting nonsense that was for… well for fucking quitters. I was crazy in love with my cigarettes. They kept me company when I was lonely and the rest of the world had bailed, fucked me over, and died. They were always there to crawl into my chest and cover my pain with, stinky and poisoning comfort. 

 There was only one thing that would or could inspire me to give them up, love and the fact that I had promised my life to another. What kind of woman would I be if I purposely, or selfishly “Indian gave” that life by cutting it shorter with my addiction. I’ve never had much to give, my big dumb heart and my word. Not much by any stretch but, they are at the very least honest. I laugh loud, bite hard, make love like I mean it, cry too much, drink even more than that but, I love huge and if I muster up the courage to tell you how much I love you, you can go to your grave knowing that you were genuinely and absolutely loved. I wish you could all see my scrunchy face now…scrunchy face and shrugged shoulders. It’s all I got….

“Please, for the love of god take a picture of yourself naked and send it to me!”

A dear friend being funny when I told him I had to cut our chat short because I needed to pop in the shower to wash the hair dye off my stanking skull. I laughed, like demonically, at the very idea. “Get naked and show you?! You’re high dude” my chuckle as I logged off and headed off to rinse the natural blonde from my noggin. Hair dried and me bored I popped back online only to have yet another friend make some reference to me sending a naked picture of myself. I am assuming he was kidding too, might as well have been because once again I was nearly snorting with laugher. Impossibly hilarious, like panda bears sitting on the Supreme Court kind of ridiculousness. Me naked for others to see, I can’t even manage a fucking haircut, you think I’m going to expose myself? Let you see all of me? Um….

“I stopped reading your blog because it scared me. I’m too formal. Too eastern European and Lutheran. It was too much to read all that…You”

“Your posts about your father, I had to write you because I just lost mine…”

“I was sitting on the tarmac reading you on my phone, that piece about your real family being those that you pick, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying”

“I read your stuff about Jeremy and I wish, wish that you were my Mom”

“I savor your posts and get sad when I can see the end is getting closer to the top of my screen”

“I’m crazy in love with you.”

“I read you and know someone out there gets me”

Impossibly hilarious. Me naked, exposed, wide open for the world to see. Fuck.

I started thinking about these dreams that have been jarring me from the comfort of the sleep I never get enough of. The images that have been flashing against my flinching eyelids, the sounds that crunch and bang so loudly they stab holes through my slumbering skull like a whizzing drill bringing with it blinding flashes of exposed light, maybe, hopefully, enlightenment. As I pushed the pieces around on my mental dining room table I saw the puzzle coming together, each and every dream that grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me awake, “awake” they were all me finding myself somewhere alone. Waking up in some dingy hotel room a million miles from anyone or anywhere I know, not knowing where I am or how I got there. The sound of a boot crushing a cluster of dried clay, a heavy door slamming and me opening my eyes, jaw painfully tight as I my head swivels, knuckles white and gripping the steering wheel of a busted Ford pickup, nothing but corn fields and absolute silence for miles upon miles…me flinging open the rusted out door of the truck, my bare feet splitting and bleeding as those caked clay clusters refuse to crumble beneath me. My mouth wide open, throat tight as I try and scream, beg, cry and nothing…no one can hear me. I wake terrified. Terrified and mad. 

Being left. Left behind. Left to deal with whatever fucked up and wrong decision I’ve made this time. Mean and cruel words I’m used to and the loudest voice, my own. The thing I blame every little bit of lonely and heartache on, the way I look. Why not right? Been a theme in the verbiage since the beginning. My mother angry at me for looking like my father, the man she still loved so much she cried herself to sleep at night, even years after he succumb to his only true love, the needle. The brother that had to assure me of his dominance by pointing out how different I looked and how many more friends he had….the ones that would come over to “his” house and snort big dreams and delusions of grandeur, provided by his father’s bank account of course, up their nostrils before enacting their angst and rage on a scared little girl that just wanted to belong. A lover that never lied about his cruelty and rage but in my young and splintered mind seemed better than my station allowed. College educated, firm and full hard body, checking account and a family that owned their home. His words cutting enough but his fingers, bats, knives and rage, the kind of punctuation you never forget. The one man I thought I could trust with every huge, tiny bit of me, from my soul to my true voice..my whole heart and just once, my whole naked body and having that be the last time he ever made love to me before he decided he didn’t really love, need or want me anymore. That time in the mirror, fucking hate it but…

So those toes that feel like they wanna take a leap? The jump my body and soul need? I think I have to bury myself even deeper into work, let myself feel and slither about in my formidable French wines, let them move and shape me…let them squeeze my neck and pull the little lever in my back that makes me ooze. Down with that but there is this one thing…me, naked, here and feeling like it’s okay to be in my own, this skin. Jesus, even typing that has my hands shaking but I need another challenge after that giving up my beloved smokes. So, if I was willing to give up my long, leggy, smoldering partner in honor of my love and promise to another, what am I willing to give myself? How do I prove to me that no matter how hard the words, the tears, the blood, fear and walk back home that I am more than this shell….that I’m worth the effort? 

One year from this day I will post a picture, of me naked and as raw as I’ve always been here. No nipples or nubbins but the same kind of sensual photos that I post and am drawn to, this time it will be me my shape, skin, body. The body that I bring will either be the one I am living in now, and have grown to embrace or one that I’ve worked on, (I did give myself a year…incentive much?) not looking to impress, I mean fuck, I’m 42 now and there are thousands of better things to look at naked on the internet, might I suggest baby whales?! Fuck me. Cannot believe I’m doing this but I need to kick these messy and stifling rocks out of my path. That and I know those picture begging folks, while kidding, know they could have been enticed by any keystroke, it was me they asked to see…me and that has to mean something right? 

Time to slip out from beneath the comfort of complete cover…

Back In Babys Arms (November Newsletter Blurb)

So some of you might not know this about me but when I started at The Wine Country 17 years ago, (holy shit) brought on to help with shipping and the quickly growing mailing list, I came on with one very specific issue, one I was honest about and rather unwilling to change…I hated wine. Never drank the stuff, couldn’t really believe there was even such a thing as a store just for wine and I somewhat nastily resisted even tasting the wines open on the tasting bar, no matter how much my coworkers urged me. Just wasn’t my thing and the only time I would get pulled into tasting something was when Randy would call me over to do so. I would drag my feet, groan, huff and puff all the while Randy handing me glass after glass of stuff that all tasted and smelled the same to me. One afternoon Randy called me to the tasting room, big smile on his sweet face and he handed me a glass of golden liquid, a glass of wine that would start my heart racing on a path that has never ended. I fell in love with wine that afternoon, changed my career path and became obsessed with aromas, textures and flavors all after one sniff of Zind Humbrecht Gewürztraminer.

Alsace started my love affair with wine and the famed Zind Humbrecht wines lead the charge. Alsatian wines have continued to play a huge roll in my wine drinking pleasure but the wines from Zind Humbrecht, not so much. Two factors as to why, one being that after getting tons of press and fawning over from the wine media the prices went through the roof and right out of my price range, secondly, the press was going gaga over wines that were, in my humble opinion, overly saturated, alcoholic and cloyingly sweet. I was finding it difficult to even taste the wines let alone pair them with food and paying like $80.00 for a wine that was only really suited for cheese courses and were so pushed as far as extraction that they were falling apart after five years in the cellar, well we had to cut the cord as it were. Let the wine media and followers of it have those wines, let them figure out what to do with them while we set forth in restructuring the Alsatian department. Finding little wines like Roland Schmitt Pinot Gris and Bott-Geyl Pinots d’Alsace, wines that did what we loved Alsatian wines for, paired brilliantly with a wide array of foods. We couldn’t be more pleased with how these wines have been preforming and how many people have also fallen head over heels for the wines from Alsace. That said it always made me a little sad that I couldn’t sell the wines that flipped my wine switch in the beginning, so when I was approached by a sales rep about getting “brought up to speed” on Zind Humbrecht, well I took her up on it.

Could not be happier to report that The Wine Country is once again in the Zind Humbrecht business! The wines are more reserved than when I last tasted them and while they are still on the spendy end of things we were able to procure a couple bottlings that may not be everyday drinkers but are in prices that we can afford on a splurge and especially with Thanksgiving right around the corner. Turkey and Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris? Yams or sweet potatoes with Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris?! Yes please! 

2012 Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris $25.99

If you’ve ever been curious about what a textbook representation of Alsatian Pinot Gris is you need look no further. Showing plenty of peachy notes on the nose but tempered by a slicing cut of nectarine and orange zest. On the palate the wine is ultra-bright and practically shimmying with minerals and fat cutting acidity. We could just drink this refresher on its own but you can pair it with everything from slightly spicy seafood and chicken dishes, to gooey cheese and even eggy dishes. What an absolute delight to drink.

2011 Zind Humbrecht Thann Pinot Gris $45.99

Now this aint your auntie’s Pinot Grigio! This is a curvy, rich, powerful white wine with so much depth and richness it almost needs chewing, just this side of being over the top but with a far drier palate than the nose, and its apricots, syrupy peaches and honey would suggest and bristling acidity that keeps it in absolute perfect balance. Not a wine for subtle foods. Here you want fall flavors, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, powerful cheese or heavily spiced white meats. You won’t believe the texture here, or the fact that it clocks in at 16.5%! Indulgent and worth it. 

2011 Zind Humbrecht Clos Windsbuhl Gewürztraminer $76.99

To anyone that think Gewurztraminer is insipid or for beginners, you owe it to yourself to be educated by this stunning bottle of wine. The entire staff was rendered speechless, well aside from the groaning, when we tasted this very serious and heart-stopping white wine. The nose is a gorgeous mix of peaches, dried apricots, lychee, black tea, browned butter and baking spices and on the palate the weighty, but far from fat, wine just seems to melt across the tongue and stain it in the most sumptuous way. Very fruity but far from sweet there is a refinement here that only Zind Humbrecht could deliver. Blew our minds.    

Welcome, home....

Feeding

So okay, I’m willing to admit it. Willing to cop to this one embarrassing indulgence….I get the damn magazines for the pictures. Fuck the articles and stories; I greedily finger those glossy pages, my mouth watering, my want building, my eyes devouring what my hands, fingers, lips, tongue can only dream of. I sheepishly slip the plastic off of them when they come…moving slowly at first, much like I would undress a lover….taking the time to marvel in each crease, each uneven bump, letting the cool silkiness rest upon my palms before I cannot wait another second. My pulse quickening, my fingers, my touch less measured, more desperate as my fingers slip between the pages and I pry the object of my desire open and peel away at it like a ripe orange. Flip-flip-flip, “Oh God, I want that” and flip-flip-flip again. You all might “read” for the articles but I am there for the sumptuous flesh, the gratuitous money shots and the way all of it makes my bits tingle.

After undressing one of my lovers I begin flipping, peeling and lusting as always but when my eyes happen to fall upon one page….a page that will send me even deeper into the belly of those glorious beasts and leave me reeling, eyes watering, heart pounding away in my chest as if it were being held hostage. Speechless and floating in and out of my own fleshy memories, nostalgic and pickling in the brine that has both toughened my skin and softened my heart.

“Anything but pancakes” my answer to my mother whenever she would ask what I wanted for dinner. An inside joke and a way for me to stab away at her heart with my preteen angst. Make her feel worse for the plight I felt she had subjected us to. Food. Food was forever an issue with my mother and I, is still an issue with my mother in law and at times with my sweet little sister….baffles me that I can spend hours with some of the most interesting women I know and all they can do is talk about food, in a very negative way. Kills me and is part of the reason I feel like I am gawking at porn when I slip those covers off my food magazines when they arrive.

Years ago I ripped open one of the afore mentioned lovers of mine. Glossy, slick, swollen with the kind of prose that gets me slipping about in my seat. It was Saveur and as I read, Our Daily Bread, a short piece written by Richard Rodriguez my eyes instantly began to water, my heart started its pounding away, my breath sped up and as my eyes rolled over each beautifully and powerfully written word I felt my feet come out from beneath me. His connection to his family’s food, his passion and desire for what it all meant were laying out before me…as naked and honest as any piece of food writing I have ever read and so much like my own unashamed connection to food that it literally brought tears to my eyes. Food, much like wine and lovemaking has never been a simple thing for me. To get me off…. in any of those three areas it takes far more than polish, simple beauty or style…I need to be touched, like truly touched before you can slip inside me and while I can appreciate the beauty in glossy pictures, glossy humans and glossy wines, it takes something more raw, earthy and spread wide open to really inspire me.

“Go grab your sugar cane while Grandma gets some things for herself and Grandpa” the raspy booze and cigarette seasoned voice of my grandmother. I knew even though I really didn’t know what she was going to get…the bottle of Bourbon for him and bottle of Scotch for her. I stood in that market in Rosarito Beach, five or six years old…skin dark brown from hours spent sitting outside the funny smelling, trinket filled, foodless trailer of my ex-pat grandparents. A junk filled silver tube of sadness that rested upon soft beach sand that I felt honored to rub my toes through. I didn’t really know them, didn’t really know their son that had made me possible but I learned early on that Bourbon or Scotch scented kisses meant I was free to wander the friendly streets, the markets whose smells beckoned me and I was able to sit in a stall watching, smelling and tasting freshly made corn tortillas with the sweet Mexican lady that lived down the beach from my grandparents. She called me an angel and used to laugh as I would take out plates of warm, soupy, veggie studded tacos to her waiting patrons, my payment was always a pocket stuffed with still warm from the stone corn tortillas, a kiss on my white blonde head and a pat on the behind as she sent me back to the trailer of the foodless “sleepers”.

Those summers spent in Mexico were the very first to waken my senses, the most vibrant food memories I own, the snappy peppers, the gamey smell of the markets, the thick aromas of overripe fruit and cinnamon. The way a six year old finds joy in something that was shameful and missing for lack of funds at home…food. The chewing on starchy stalks of sugar cane, the tortillas that warmed my skin on my breezy walk on the beach…the sound and smell of the ocean always a soundtrack to my life….always a smell that would conjure up images of freedom, sweetness, sadness and liberation. The curling up on a trailer sofa, letting my tiny fingers slip between the loops in the knitted blanket, looking at my grandmother in her pale blue pant suit sleeping in the chair beside the table that her ice filled, sweaty glass of scotch rested upon…missing the pancakes of home but finding the early bits of this me….this me that you all read now, finding her scared, lonely and finding something soul satisfying in the breathless walk from the stall, the caked on sand clinging to my feet, the toothsome give of a chewy, freshly made tortilla. The aroma of corn, the doughy feel in my mouth on those lonely nights….the kisses I would bestow upon the “relative” stranger as she slept. The feeling when I was back at home and we got the call, “Can you come identify the body?” a grandfather I never really knew, the woman…my mother that took the call, made the drive and did what my “father” would have never been able to. In tomatoes, avocados, onions, cilantro and doughy corn I trust. 

My life, this scent filled, glossy page fondling life of mine started there….sand between my toes, not sleeping, a lust for something, anything pleasurable in a tube of sadness that was saturated with Bourbon, Scotch and the palpable loneliness that I still feel resting upon this heart of mine that seems forever engaged in trying to feel full. I fail, a lot but there is just enough intrigue and inspiration to keep me sniffing, kissing, opening my mouth to roar or to take a bigger, much needed bite....

Wine Biz Interview #15 Iconic Importer, Rock Star, Thirst Inspiring Writer, Kermit Lynch

Well seeing as one of my questions was going to be along the lines of, “How do you define or classify your occupation?” I figured we might as well start there right? So Mr. Fancy, in the long line of things you do; write, wine merchant, importer, music man…how would you explain how you make a living to a novice? In what order and have you, at any point, wished you could shuffle the deck and put one of the others at the top of the list?

During my twenties I was writing, singing, and drinking wine, and still am, but my wine business pays the bills.  The books and CDs, well, if I lived off them, I'd have to change my lifestyle.  However, I don't regret it for a minute.  Writing is a very solitary job.  Doing it full time doesn't sound like my cup of tea.  I had a taste of the musician's life on the road and didn't much like it either.  Turns out I like the aroma of Raveneau's cellar more than a backstage dressing room.  I do love making CDs, so that's what I do.  Thank goodness I don't have to live on a tour bus to support my love of music making.

What was your first foray in the wine business?

I tried to get a job in the local wine shops back in 1972.  No one would hire me.  Neither would the post office, thank goodness.  I borrowed $5000 from my girlfriend and opened a little hole-in-the-wall retail shop.  Thank you Joan Connolly!

What was it that lit the fire under you? Was it timing, a certain wine?

In 1974 I went on importer Dick Buck's buying trip with him.  My next trip was with California winemaker Joe Swan.  After those two trips, I was hooked.  I was tasting in  Germany, France, Italy and Spain.  I was also buying a lot of California wines direct from the wineries.  What I ended up doing in France and Italy, I had begun doing in California with wineries like Swan's, Ridge, Chalone, and so on.  What lit the fire was the thrill of discovering great wines, and that's still the case.

When I Google the name Kermit you are number 4, cool to know or a pisser that you aren’t higher on the list?

I thought everyone knew, I am Kermit the Frog.  That's why I feel right at home in France.

There seem to be a lot of musicians in the wine business, my boss Randy Kemner included, any idea what might be the common thread

Hmmm, yeah, what could it be? I've noticed that, too.   It must be that we all appreciate harmony.

 When making purchases how much of what you decide to import is based on what you think will sell and what you want to drink?

It always starts with what I want to drink, then I have to decide how much to order, which of course means considering how much I think I can sell.  

What would you say was the hardest or most unforeseen obstacle with importing French wines to the US in the beginning? How, or has that changed at all?

Wines are shipped in metal containers.  It took about 600 cases to fill a 20-footer, and financially, that was impossible for me then.  I piggy-backed in another importer's containers.  That would be Karl Petrowsky who worked for Frank Schoonmaker imports.  He was a great help to me.  The German winemakers loved Karl.  I accompanied him several times on his buying trips, and had the chance to taste incredible Germans wines going back to the early twentieth century. 

So you have access to some of the greatest French wines in the world, are you reaching for Raveneau and Coche Dury every night? (Warning, admitting this is true will make us give you the scrunchy, “Really dude?!” face. Just so you know.)

 I went over my to my pal Alain Pascal's house two nights ago for dinner.  He's the vigneron at Domaine du Gros Nore, a hunter, and it's the season.  I took a Raveneau 2000 Montee de Tonnerre and a 1999 Corton Charlemagne from Coche-Dury.  That's a neat progression.  The Chablis was austere, the CC opulent.  Alain roasted a marcassin on the spit in his fireplace and brought out his 1999 Bandol rouge for it.  Then Alain pulled out a Sauternes from his friend at Domaine d'Alliance.  If you haven't tasted their wine Sauternes, you should.  They only have two hectares (five acres), and theirs is about as close to an Yquem as you can get.  I know, because then Alain uncorked a 1996 Yquem that a customer had kindly given to him.  Sorry, that doesn't really answer your question.  Anyway, yes, I often reach for a Raveneau, Coche, Ente, de Cherisey or some such white Burgundy, because I like them so much.

When you started KLWM was there an existing store or did you start from the ground up?

It was an empty storefront on San Pablo Ave near Solano.  Eight hundred square feet.  By the time I painted it, put in phones and all those little basics, I had enough l money left to open the doors with a 33 case inventory.  I was open four days a week, five hours a day, because I still thought of myself as a musician with a wine hobby.

You have an amazing ability to describe a moment, rich in vinegary greens, a female winemaker in a fine woolen suit, the soothing first splash of Beaujolais used to wash down a creamy, meaty piece of pork rillettes…a way of sharing the moment as you saw and felt it. How did you know Kermit? That there would people out here that would respond to that kind of beauty in wine and the story rather than the coco, beet root and dried tuna, kind of wine description?

Wine critics' tasting notes have become laughable.  So many aromas of things that no one I know has ever smelled in their entire lifetime. Just painfully ludicrous.  Do they think the more numerous and more esoteric their descriptions, the more we'll believe in them.  On the contrary. Eric Azimov has a great chapter on all that bullshit in his recent book.  And those tasting notes are off-putting to our customers.  They read about a wine with a dozen different perfumes and they think, Jesus, I don't smell all that, I must have a lousy palate and might as well go back to buying rot-gut.  And here's another thing:  you taste a wine one week and find raspberry in the aroma, and you taste it a week later and it might smell like cherry or strawberry.  Living wines change whether they are in a barrel or a bottle.  Every winemaker knows that.  So even if a critic were right about what a wine smells like the day he writes the tasting notes, it won't be true by the time you buy a bottle and take it home.

Three way fork in the road. To the left you have Salma Hayek, to the right, a jam session with Charlie Parker and Lady Gaga and straight ahead, a magnum of Lapierre Morgon, what ever do you do?

Take the magnum to Salma's.

What would you say have been the most significant changes, good or bad, in French wines in the past 15 years?

There has been an immense change.  For year's it seemed that the enologists were going to sterilize all French wines.  Make sure they were stable no matter what they tasted like.  Now the pendulum is swinging more to so-called "natural" wines which have been minimally treated filtered medicated and all that sort of stuff.  Hurrah for it.

Hangover cure of choice?

I drink wine with meals.  And I don't hit the harder stuff.  I haven't had a hangover in years.  In the new edition of Adventures I tell of the time a hangover nearly killed me after a long night at Domaine Tempier and then Richard Olney's house.

Can you give me three wines that would help us understand your passion?

  

I don't think I can.  Sorry.  My mind goes haywire just thinking about it, for some reason.

Have you ever sneezed while peeing?

(Dead air)

Dammit, he snuck off before I could squeeze out that last one! Knew I should have started with that. Dag-gum-it. 

I would like to thank famed importer, musician and impassioned wine writer Kermit Lynch for taking the time out of his busy schedule in France to let me play reporter with him...made me feel all fancy and junk. 

Kermit Lynch, his wines and his extremely devour-worthy book Adventures on the Wine Route have been instrumental in informing, beguiling and inspiring many of us to dive head first into the deep end of wine.....appreciation sounds too perfunctory, feeding our appetite for wine, the people that make them and the meals they are gulped along with. His voice is anything but dogmatic, it's more of a romantic summoning and I for one am all in. 

So do you have any questions you’d like to ask Kermit? Turns out he will be at The Wine Country December 7^th! This year marks the 25^th anniversary of Kermit’s Adventures on the Wine Route so he is traveling around signing copies of the 25^th Anniversary Edition with its updated epilogue and list of 25 most memorable wines. We will be conducting a special tasting of Kermit Lynch imported wines in honor of having the man, the myth, the legend in our shop signing books. 4:30-6:30 PM, $25.00 for the tasting and we will also be selling books so you can get your very own copy signed and trust me, it is a book that will leave you wanting to taste, smell and see all that he did….I know I still do.