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Growing up in an Italian-American household (front and center), I thought of wine as something basic to life, as important to a good dinner as a crusty slice of bread or, at least on Sundays, the luscious cannoli from the neighborhood pastry shop.
At church, it came as no surprise to me that wine was associated with miracles. For I would see my father return home tired and weary from a hard day’s work as a construction laborer, clean up, come to the table and be transformed as my mother passed him a plate of pasta while he filled a small glass tumbler from the gallon jug.
In an almost sacramental way, he would lift the glass, intone “salute,” take a sip and smile. The weariness faded. Body and spirit refreshed, there was no man more content.
I also remember my mother recounting stories about the family vineyard in Italy. She took such delight in recalling how buyers would try to outbid each other for the wine that land produced, she seemed to be transported to those earlier times. I swear she grew younger before my very eyes.
Now, many years later but with those memories still echoing, I’ve decided to expand my appreciation of this ancient gift from the earth. The Web is my library. This blog is my notebook. Whatever interesting things I learn — everything from the latest reports of bargain vintages or a wine lover’s essay to tips on tasting or the secrets of winemakers — I’lI share.
But the power of the Web is not just its vast store of knowledge. More than that is the world-wide conversation that it enables. So you’re welcomed to learn along, ask questions or help teach. I will always respond to comments on articles.
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About the author “Good wine,” Henry James observed in A Little Tour In France, “is an inward emotion.” Or as wine expert Kermit Lynch writes in Adventures on the Wine Route: “Wine is, above all, pleasure.” Those quotes pretty well sum up my wine-blogging philosophy. And this clickstream from my Google Reader offers some clues into stuff I’m interested in, wine and otherwise. A journalist by trade, working on matters that are not nearly as intoxicating as writing about wine, I intend to stick to the same principles I practice in my day job. That includes not accepting payments or favors to write one way or the other. This blog is not affiliated with anyone or anything else. For better or worse, whatever I say in these pages is my own opinion. What you see is a work in progress, like everything else on the Web. That’s what makes it interesting. Questions, suggestions or complaints are gladly accepted. It’s easy to contact me. One final thing: Pay no attention to speculation that this blog is a ploy to get wines in greater quantity and better quality through the front door. ;-)
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I focus mostly on highly affordable wines because, well, that’s what I can afford. No knock against the more expensive bottles I pass on the racks. I furtively caress them sometimes. But as even some of the world’s top experts acknowledge, wine doesn’t have to be pricey to be good.
Since one thing we all have in common, in addition to a taste for wine, is our use of the Web, I’ll pass along any online tools I find that help me make wise choices about what to buy and drink.
I designed this site so that I could easily keep up with what’s happening in the world of wine — with a custom Google-powered Advanced Wine Search tool to cut through the online clutter and with continuously updated feeds (on selections of popular red wines and white) from national and international news outlets.
Just for fun, I’ve thrown in some acoustic guitar riffs from the music service Pandora that might help create a sipping mood and random photos of vineyards to please the eye. Latest Technorati taggings and Del.icio.us bookmarkings help reveal what others on the Web are doing and saying about wine. And when you step out of cyberspace, this user-friendly Wine Map/Bar Finder may help with directions.
You can find photos of people and places I’ve blogged about at Flickr.
Being part tech geek as well as an enjoyer of wine, building these things was a labor of love, and I hope they are as useful to you as they are to me.
Last but not least, many thanks to the WordPress community and all its contributors for creating such a great blogging environment — and especially to Scott Wallick for freely sharing with the rest of us his blog.txt theme, a thing of beauty.
As my father would say: Salute!
— Sam Meddis, aka vinothekid
