Good Saturday morning to you. As you open this, hopefully cozy in your humble abode, I am up bright and early ready to teach my WSET Level 1 class at the NVWA. I love teaching these lower-level wine education courses. They’re super fun and engaging and there’s a kind of thrill being the person who’s introducing a room full of wine newbies to what could be their next passion—personal or professional. I usually get the most interesting and insightful questions in these classes. It challenges me, keeps me on my feet, and can also be quite humbling.
Way too excited for the weekend. How is it that four-day work-weeks can actually be more stressful than a full one? Whatever. Me, I plan to wear my lazy pants and do what lazy pants do best…laze.
I highly recommend the stretchy fluffy kind as you lounge about and read some of this week’s booze news. Snarky comments are all my own. ✌️🥂
Hello, and welcome (back) to your weekly dose of what-I’m-reading, weekly-wine-headlines extravaganza. Not an exhaustive list this week, as I literally decided to (re)start doing this, um, yesterday. 🤷♀️😂
What is up with me, you ask? (Or not, too bad.) Working away on more freelance stuff (yay) that I hope to be sharing soon(ish) and also chipping away and cleaning up this old-lady of a website. No major revamp in the near future, but at least get her up and running again. ie: A wee bit ‘o’ botox, not a full on facelift.
Also contemplating other fun, independent social engagement…things and stuff. I don’t know—how would you all feel about a podcast?
Just throwing it out there.
Anywho…for now please enjoy a few newsy items below. Happy weekending.
Hello—does anyone visit anymore? I know I haven’t in a long while. Hah. Well for those of you that do, thank you. Appreciate you. I’ve written loads of articles since my last post, and I should (will!) update my portfolio soon enough. But, in the meantime, I want to blast out about a podcast I was recently a guest on. If you listen (and I hope you do), let me know how you liked it.
Below is a link to the podcast homepage, but of course you can listen to it on Apple, Spotify or wherever you prefer listening to your casts. Please enjoy and thanks for listening!
Stacy Briscoe, Managing Editor of Wine Enthusiast Magazine, joins Laura this week to share her journey into wine journalism and wine education. She tells us how she got her start and discusses her focus on regenerative agriculture, which she has written about extensively. Laura and Stacy discuss the experience of being a woman in the wine industry and the importance of having a supportive network, and Stacy shares some of her favorite wine recommendations.
Stacy joined Wine Enthusiast in 2022 after freelance writing for the publication for several years. Previous to this role, she was the managing editor for Wine Industry Network, the assistant editor of Wine Business Monthly and staff writer of Wines & Vines magazine. She has also written freelance for numerous publications including SevenFifty Daily, Sonoma Magazine and the SF Chronicle, among many others. Stacy regularly speaks at wine industry events, has completed her WSET Diploma, teaches WSET courses at the Napa Valley Wine Academy and, most recently, has been accepted as a Master of Wine Stage 1 student. Listen here.
“Liquor is worth fightin’ for, but water is worth dyin’ for.” Such is an old adage Ken Wright, owner and winemaker of Ken Wright Cellars in Carlton, Oregon, remembers from when he first came to the West Coast in the 1970s. “Water was already an issue,” he says. “When the population of an area cannot be supported by the natural annual rainfall, things get serious very quickly.”
