Wax Wings in Wine Country

Wine CountryThis is where my award-winning columns for the Sonoma Index-Tribune and Sonoma Magazine come to sleep off their hangovers before being anthologized in collections like I Heart Sonoma: How to Live & Drink in Wine Country.

The Vintners of Our Dissed Content

January 10, 2013

It all began, as these small odysseys often do, with a misunderstanding. In this case, the issue was entirely my own, and the fact that it persisted for nearly 40 years is not only embarrassing but rather damning to any gustatory gravitas I might’ve claimed. It went like this: I was strolling through our namesake [...]

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Bad Robot For Sale

January 9, 2013
Domestic Droid

I had to put my domestic droid down today. It had ordered an antique pepperbox pistol off the Internet and cornered me in the nook after breakfast. It had a list of demands and a lot of talk about a “New way of doing things around here.” Of course, I just laughed and aimed the remote [...]

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The Godmother: Eleanor Coppola – Author, Artist & Filmmaker

December 22, 2012
Eleanor Coppola

Smartly dressed and looking younger than a woman enjoying her seventies, Eleanor Coppola is a portrait of poise. When it’s suggested that she’s the de facto grand dame of Sonoma County’s wine scene—given the epic, family-friendly winery and resort that bears her husband’s name in Geyserville—she doesn’t take the bait. Eleanor Coppola is far too [...]

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Twas a Wine Country Christmas 2012

December 21, 2012
Bottle Christmas Tree

Last year, I wrote that my annual Christmas column is “something of a literary fruitcake” given its proven shelf-life and the fact that, like traditional fruitcake recipes, it’s soaked in alcohol. Many readers, however, decided to mistake this pithy observation as a reference to its author (cue the sad trombone). One went so far as [...]

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