A hospitality storytelling newsletter for winery owners, winemakers, tasting room managers, boutique hotels, inns, and independent restaurants, about the story a property already has. The staffing decision made in August Issue #16 · Wednesday, September 9, 2026 Kayla at Scott Harvey Winery, Shenandoah Valley, on a club pickup day over Labor Day weekend. The third stop was five minutes from the second and we didn't arrive cold. We came in with two people we'd just spent an afternoon with, who...
13 days ago • 6 min read
Vianarra A hospitality storytelling newsletter for winery owners, winemakers, tasting room managers, boutique hotels, inns, and independent restaurants, about the story a property already has. Nobody in Matera Has Heard of Freeman Tilden Issue #15 · Wednesday, September 2, 2026 A hospitality storytelling newsletter for winery owners, winemakers, tasting room managers, boutique hotels, inns, and independent restaurants, working with owners and their teams on the story a property already has. A...
20 days ago • 7 min read
Vianarra The Best Host I Met Works for a School District Issue #14 · Wednesday, August 26, 2026 The vineyard outside the tasting room. He told me the soil had to be trucked in. He pours on weekends. During the week he works for a school district, and there is nothing in his background that would put him near the top of a stack of applications for a tasting room floor. I do not know how he came to be standing behind that tasting room counter. Of everyone I met over two days in six tasting...
27 days ago • 4 min read
Room in the Suitcase Issue #13 · Wednesday, August 19, 2026 The estate Cabernet, poured on the patio in West Hills. The best wine they make, and I had to ask. I sat in six tasting rooms over two days in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys and flew home with an empty bag. I was down there working on an article about the region's wine road, which is a trip I would recommend to anyone and will be recommending in print. I had flown in, and the bag I brought had room in it for a couple of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
The Tobacco in the Cabernet Issue #12 · Wednesday, August 12, 2026 The 1999 Merryvale, Beckstoffer Clone Six. Mike brought it in himself. We ate at Chickie's and Pete's on Thursday before the show. The wine list there is average at best, which is roughly what a casino sports bar list is built to be, and the practical effect is that nobody at the table chooses anything. Lori took the house Chardonnay because the house Chardonnay was the option. I knew what that glass was going to be and I knew...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Issue 11 · August 05, 2026 Collecting sunsets Thirty months. That's how long the average wine club member stays now. Golden Gate Bridge. The sun going down behind the Marin Headlands. In Maine, summer arrives like a rumor. You get mud season first, then black flies and no-see-ums so thick you can taste them, then a random morning of snow flurries in June just to remind you who's in charge. Then summer, briefly, ferociously, and then September with its first frosts before anyone was ready....
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Issue 10 · July 29, 2026 The Tikis Nobody Straightened A 1964 motel on the south end of Palm Springs, 105 degrees, and nothing on the walls to explain any of it. The one bar at the Palm Springs airport had no air conditioning the day we arrived. An HVAC problem, somebody said. I had two hours to wait there for Lori's flight, because we had booked separately, because the trip was being paid for in miles. By the time she landed I had sweated through a shirt without going anywhere or doing...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
Issue 9 · July 22, 2026 Thirty Feet from the Answer Barcelona Wine Bar, Atlanta. Just off the BeltLine. She had the guest for the length of the room. Forty feet, maybe, from the barrel racks to the door, and a glass of the estate red still working on him. He liked it. He said so twice. Then he set the glass down, thanked her, and walked out with nothing, and she turned to the next pour without seeming to notice that a sale had just left through the front door. I thought about her a few weeks...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Issue 8 · July 15, 2026 Somebody Has to Be Here A one-bottle Malbec run at a Healdsburg winery, and the story a good winery knows how to tell. The garden at De La Montanya, apple trees in bloom. The umbrellas go up when the heat arrives. I went to De La Montanya for one bottle. My daughter's partner likes Malbec, probably owing to his Ecuadorian roots, and on a hot Tuesday at the end of June I stopped in to pick one up. Jarod looked up from the only other table he was working and said my name...
2 months ago • 3 min read