Through the Grapevine #76
Wine news and just a smidge of commentary for Dec. 16, 2025
Life Among the Vines
The Great Medical Saga of 2025 continues, and this round of Prednisone hasn’t been providing quite the same surge of frenetic energy. I get through work pretty well, and often as I drive out of the parking lot, ideas of all the things I’d like to do when I get home come to mind. Christmas lights! Cooking real dinner! Leaving home and hanging out with humans! By the time I unlock the door and greet Val, all that vim and vigor has drained right out of me, and I’m ready to don my pajamas and wearily scrounge up whatever food doesn’t require more than three minutes in a microwave to prepare. I’m in a holding pattern now, waiting for biopsy results, waiting to see whether the vasculitis will flare back up the minute I come off the prednisone, waiting to find out whether this is a temporary situation or a condition I’ll deal with for life.
Gloomy season has well and truly come to this part of California. We’ve been shrouded in fog every day, and tomorrow starts several days straight of rain. Personally I could use a little sunshine in more ways than one, but we don’t get to choose the weather or our health. Sometimes we only get to enjoy the brief glimmers of reprieve.
The Grape News
The Chateau Ste. Michelle saga has been a wild ride for a while, but now there is speculation that its most recent sale could have been a cash-free dump. Yikes.
As one of the best-known and most awarded sommeliers in the world, Aldo Sohm has every reason to be one of those pretentious wine people, but I’ve always been impressed by how down to earth and relaxed he is, including in my very brief in-person brush with him at Le Bernadin. One of the first wine podcasts I ever heard featured him telling the host he got his start on Yellowtail Shiraz, a gateway drug we have in common. This week he was on The Wine List podcast talking about his career, general wine things, and his new book, Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings.
Would wine benefit from a fashion mindset where it comes to creating culture and attracting younger drinkers? Probably, in some ways. One of the problems I frequently ponder is that good, higher end wine brands start at a fairly inaccessible price point for younger drinkers, those who are starting out and see no reason to commit to $80+ per bottle, or, you know, normal humans who appreciate those wines but don’t have that kind of money to throw around or choose to use their money in that way. And unlike a handbag, the point of your top tier wine is to drink it, not keep it as a well-tended statement piece forever. There are plenty of “ladder brands” with entry level options, but most of them are big corporations. Smaller premium producers tend to be afraid of devaluing their brand by offering lower price options. I struggle to imagine the winery where I work suddenly deciding to produce a $20 Chez Lena brand. Nonetheless, the culture piece is important. For most drinkers, we’re not selling soil or farming techniques; we’re selling the experience they have while drinking the wine.
This Food & Wine piece on Gen Z’s wine engagement mirrors some of these points: looking more to culture, values, more stories of people, and perhaps fewer of dirt.
On the other hand, dirt is also important, or more precisely, soil. Soil quality may not make for the most naturally scintillating social media content, but part of the story of wine is always literally and metaphorically rooted in it.
People drinking less for their health (thanks to Ozempic and other GLP-1s)…
Vineyard Maintenance
I’m putting the finishing touches on my 25 most memorable wines of 2025 and hoping to have it out later this week. Let me know what you’ve been drinking as you’re counting down the days to the new year! I always appreciate my readers’ support along the way, but it’s been especially crucial during this health crisis, so thank you to those of you who have been there for me in various ways. If you’d like to support my work here, please consider a paid subscription, or drop me a one time tip on Buy Me a Coffee, which is currently a direct line into my medical billing account. Gotta love U.S. healthcare.
The Best Thing I Did Not Drink This Week Because Medication, and Great Food to Go With It
