Hi folks,
I wanted to get a quick note out before the project goes under like a submarine getting ready to dive — this is the last week we’ll be out in the world (in an official capacity) before 2026!
It’s run run run until the weekend: we’re hosting our final class of the year at Stranger Wines; hopping behind the bar for a guest-host flight nite at Plus de Vin; and packing up holiday season wine club shipments and prints.
Would you like three or six bottles that unspool wine’s history plus a foot and a half tall illustrated timeline? Today’s the day to order!
Would you like to give somebody a watercolor print as a present? Drop me a line!
As for the rest of the month, I’ll be finishing the wine history series for this newsletter, putting up year-end drinking stats and wine notes at the Patreon, and getting the class schedule for January and February lined up (some cool stuff coming down the pike!).
My gift guide is: visit a small business in your neighborhood, give a subscription to an independent creator or writer,1 sign someone up for a tiny producer’s wine club,2 buy a book from a retailer that isn’t Amazon.3
Things are hard out there for almost everybody I know in this industry, and beyond, and I’ve been dwelling a lot on how we can turn towards connection and mutual abundance instead of isolation and scarcity.
I’ll see you on the other side.
<3,
grape kid
The last bits of business for December
Dec 9 @ plus de vin – flight nite x caow! 🌒 [rsvp]
Dec 9 @ copake wine works – club #3 signups close! 📦 [more info]
Dec 11 @ stranger wines – trade. mass commerce, global brands vs local wine, Champagne 🌗 [tickets]
1 maybe preorder the first issue of Kara Daly’s print magazine devoted to the wines of Appalachia and the South, the Foxy Wine Review?
perhaps support the launch of Emily Gutiérrez Peña’s new project, Reductive Reasoning, dedicated to the beverage histories of Central & Eastern Europe and the historically oppressed?
2 you could try Midland, the wines Tim & Ben Jordan farm themselves in Virginia, or Common Wealth Crush, which includes wines from the projects they support; or Chris and Laura up at the End of Nowhere in the Sierra Foothills; or Megan at Margins in the Santa Cruz Mountains; or Todd and Crystal at Wild Arc in the Hudson Valley; or Julia and Alex at Usonia, in the Finger Lakes; or Erin at American Wine Project, in the Driftless Area; or Evan at Ruth Lewandoski in Sonoma… more to count, really, those are just some favorites off the dome
3 this is a list from a couple of years ago of my best “wine books” (many of which are not, actually, wine books at all) — update / longer version coming soon, but in the meantime maybe there’s something there that you’d like to read :)