Last month, I had the sad duty of bidding farewell to Shelby Vittek, who most of you know as “The Young Unpaid Shelby,” the 1WD intern. Shelby’s official internship (the actually-earning-university-credits part) concluded at the end of March. Everyone in Roberts HQ has been sad to see her go, most palpably my daughter who literally…
Category: crowd pleaser wines
Revisiting The Wine + Chocolate Pairing Mine Field
About a year ago, I unwittingly unleashed a minor sh*tstorm when I taste-tested some very good chocolates and paired them with some very good wine and found the match up to be not-so-very-good. The main issue then was that the very good chocolates in question were designed specifically to pair with wines. And yet, time…
The Miljenko “Mike” Grgich Interview (And Recent Grgich Hills Releases)
Closing in on the ninth decade, the beret and the smile are still unmistakable. Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, now a California winemaking legend, turns 90 this year. For those who aren’t familiar with the tale, Mike’s life story could make fitting fodder for a TV wine drama: one of eleven kids; stomped his first grapes at…
Of Griffins, Protoceratops And Sonoma Syrah (Qualia’s Pavo 2009)
While I cannot verify it via personal experience, I strongly suspect that apart from mining, graphic novels, porn (or maybe graphic novels about porn), the wine business is the only other industry in which you can start a story with the phrase “so I once met this guy in a cave…” without raising eyebrows in…