I started thinking of myself as a writer in the 9th grade, when my buddy Bill Sprague and I talked Mr. Russel, our English teacher into letting us drop out of class, sit in the back, and work on a "novel." No trace of that early work remains; but I have managed to write professionally about one thing or another - television, music, political campaigns, software - for more than three decades.
Most recently, my beat of choice has been wine, spirits and other adult beverages - for consumer-oriented wine magazines (notably Wine Enthusiast), wine industry trade magazines (these days primarily Wines & Vines), and general-interest monthlies (Diablo and several others). I took my fling at the dot-com thing with a stint as the Off-Road Sommelier for a glorified sporting goods website that tanked.
Every good wine writer needs a set of prejudices, and mine include a fondness for underappreciated grapes and undervalued wine regions; a preference for tasting fruit in my wine, rather than the container it was stored in; and a conviction that the world of wine is better off with a hundred new wine drinkers than with yet another hundred-dollar "cult" bottle. Off-duty, my friends will attest that I drink not only tankfuls of dry rosé, but puncheons of Riesling.
To keep myself honest, I make some pretty fair wine of my own in my garage and basement in Berkeley, California, where the wine country meets what's left of the 1960s.
NOTE: If you're in search of my altered ego, Blind Muscat, try his online Cellarbook.
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