About

I’m a former waiter, bartender, line cook, & wine director…now full-time snark.

This blog is dedicated to the people who bus the tables, muddle the cocktails, grill the steaks, and serve the food. We are the real gourmets; we’re around food every day, and it’s our life.

This is the kind of stuff that gets discussed over a well-worn bar after a martini or two, in the last hours of the night. It’s mostly food and beer and wine and booze, with a little politics, factoids, conspiracy theory, and a soupçon of B.S.

I have no aspirations of M.F.K. Fisher.
I have an arbitrary 20 minute post-writing limit.
This site is 100% paid for by me.
(and your generous contributions (see the PayPal tip jar at left!).

I taste thousands of wines a year.
Labels mean nothing to me.

You can’t shine a turd up with reviews or scores, mediocrity can’t hide.
I try everything.

I review wines like I review movies.

Not every movie is a film, nor should it be. Most of us, despite
what the self-fellating industry rags focus upon, like movies instead of films and drink instead of collect.

Wine is a limited, mutable, agricultural product. It is not a brand to be identified with. Good wine has nothing to do with prices, scores, new oak barrels, or market share.

If you find yourself a service industry refugee or like-minded individual, then welcome. All others: There are plenty of old, white, male assbags out there to think for you. Go read their full-of-shit reviews of full-of-shit wine.

DISCLAIMER: I make no promises as to use, quality, congeniality, or impartiality. However, if I review something, I bought and paid for it mahdamnself. So if you don’t like it, go to www.typepad.com and get yer own.

m. dutton savarino