Recently, I was inspired by a fascinating argument made by an Impressionist art exhibit: that this artistic movement helped shape France’s identity as the global culinary capital. The beautifully captured moments of food, inn workers, farmers, haystacks, markets, and cultivated landscapes helped romanticize what we now think of as the farm-to-table movement. As I moved through the rooms, I immediately felt that it also helped to inspire the idea of terroir in the wine world - not in a...

As the calendar page turns to 2026, we are looking at a wine world completely altered by a tasting that took place 50 years ago this year – the Judgment of Paris. In 1976, this low-key wine tasting in a Paris hotel upended the global wine hierarchy. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant based in Paris, had the idea to pit top French wines against a handful of California upstarts. No one expected the Californians to win – not Spurrier, not the French judges, not even the Californians. But...

Fresh into my new role as the Wine Director, I see a table bring in a bottle of Antinori’s Tignanello. A smile can’t help but cross my face - one of my epiphany wines, my second one to be exact. Years ago, one sip of a 1997 Tignanello awoke my palate and I swear timelines shifted. Colors seemed brighter. The world felt larger. This is what an epiphany wine can do for your palate, brain, and in my case. . .life. It led me to think about epiphany moments; the wine, the conversation, and pouring...