Yesterday was the last day of 2021, and it was appropriately grey and gloomy, as much of the year has been. Covid’s grip doesn’t seem to be loosening, on my personal life, on my social life, on my professional life. I’m not sure how much I can continue to write about wine when I have access to so little news about it. I seriously doubt that very many people want to hear any more about bottles brought out of my cellar: Certainly, I won’t do another 12 cellar selections.
It’s all, as the King of Siam used to say, a puzzlement.
A paradox too. For me personally, wine has been the one steady consolation and joy available every day, no matter what. OK, that’s dumb: Diane and our life together is the first and foremost of those, and the many domestic pleasures we share – friends, food, books, music – come next. But at my now seriously advanced age, with the number of chronic aches and infirmities that sap my joie de vivre, wine looms very large among my pleasures. It’s probably literally true to say that wine is my surest physical pleasure. Certainly, I look forward all day every day to the bottle Diane and I will share with dinner – always a treat, always a little bit of a surprise, even to me who chooses it.
And that is one of the greatest joys of wine: It can always surprise you. No matter how well you think you know it, it can still catch you off guard, even with something as simple as the way this particular bottle of one of your everyday wines meshes with this simple pasta sauce that you make all the time. Things like that are a great everyday joy, and as long as they continue to be so, and as long as my palate holds out, I guess I’ll continue to celebrate them on this blog. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy them. Here’s to a Happier New Year!
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Tom's Wine Line 
Yes, I agree with everyone above. Your writing is a pleasure in itself; and while I keep an eye on the novelties from the (very) few wine writers I trust, I read your texts for the way they convey the ephemeral but often long-lasting pleasure that only wine can give. You don’t taste, you drink your wines, at home, with your wife and friends, and you show them for what they are: living, evolving creatures which gives us pleasure but also, momentarily at least, happiness and solace. Keep at it.
Thank you. I will try.
Please keep writing, keep ruminating, even knocking about in the dark.
More than ever we need grace, wonder, gratitude and fortitude, in a bottle, on a page, in our lives! We need you.
Carry on Tom, please carry on!
Thank you. I’m touched and humbled.
Well, I am sure you can make something interesting even out of your everyday bottles of wine. I agree that in these COVID times (and may they end soon) food and wine have been two of our major remaining pleasures. So to another year of close friendships and companionship and best wishes to you and Diane.
Heartfelt thanks for the compliments, and I sure as hell hope you’re right in every other respect. We shall see. Happy New Year!
Don’t think twice about any more tastings from your cellar. I am in a similar position, divorced from Italy itself by the pandemic so delving deep into treasures brought back from visits in happier times. Your cellar tastings have been eagerly awaited during the recent months. Happy New Year.
Thank you, Ian. Much appreciated. Happy New Year to you too!
Tom,
The world doesn’t really need many more posts about a press luncheon, or the perfect dinner and the wine to go with it, while vacationing (during a pandemic) in Italy. It’s been done. To its death.
What people like you offer are stories, woven among the years (and yes, the pains) of a life well lived. Keep telling those stories. Someone will always listen to them. No scores, no one-upmanship’s, no interminable quotes from Dante or Ovid. Just the stories that well up from the years you have been on this amazing planet. Thanks for sharing them and happy new year (aches and pains, and all) to you and Diane!
Thank you, Alfonso, and a very happy — hopefully ache-free — New Year to you too!