Tell us how you first got into the wine industry.
Since I was a teen, writing and photography have been passions of mine, but it wasn’t until my mid-30s that the two harmonized around one subject matter, and that was wine. It also harmonized my interest in geography and maps, nature, weather, history, and culture. I often tell people that alcohol is the least interesting thing about wine.
As for how I got here, I suppose — like a lot of people — my gateway into this world was through Italy. My wife and I would save everything we could to travel before we had kids, and she knew Tuscany well, having studied abroad there in college. In 2008, we were at an enoteca in Montepulciano in Tuscany, and that was where I first tasted the differences across vintages. The same wine, three different vintages, massive differences, yet no preference. It was a story of weather and so much more, and I was hooked. Little did I know that Dora Fosoni of Poderi Sanguineto I e II is an icon, but it was her wine that showed me these subtle differences. I was fascinated, and that interest only deepened with each bottle thereafter.
I started openingabottle.com in 2014 as a simple blog just to show the wine industry that I could write about wine. I actually wanted to drum-up winery clientele for my content strategy business, but I ultimately decided that I just liked writing about wine and managing the site’s editorial too much to mix the two.
Fellow members can obtain a 25% discount for annual subscriptions to your online publication, Opening a Bottle. Can you tell us a bit more about why you founded Opening a Bottle, and what the focus of the magazine is?
Opening a Bottle is a magazine with wine education articles, long-form profiles, wine class videos, unconventional tasting reports, and photo essays. It is all centered on Italy and France, with a little bit of Spain and Austria.
The editorial is broken into departments, like a traditional magazine. I have a series of beginners guides focused on a ‘first taste’ of a particular appellation or grape, and those are all free to explore. As are ‘What the Winemaker Knows’, ‘Vineyard Stories’ and ‘A Life in Wine’, my interview series. Of course, photography is front and center, so I often write about where I’ve been — although I have purchased images here and there to support the editorial. It is so important to see what these places look like.
Then I have wine reviews and tasting reports, which are behind the paywall. I am a big fan of Meg Maker’s work and her efforts to document how we talk about wine. I find her research and approach liberating. We all have permission to do things differently! So the wine reviews are less about the score and more about bending the rules on how we talk about wine. For each wine, I state ‘a beginner might like …’ and ‘a wine obsessive might like …’ and if I cannot answer those questions, then the wine isn’t worth writing about. I also use graphical icons to mark important details about the wine, like vine age, the use of polyculture, volcanic origins, etc.
And then I offer five or six live wine classes via Zoom each year, with the videos of those being stored in an archive. Those are also for paywall subscribers.
What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities for online wine publications at this point in time?
We are all competing with each other in many ways, and it’s a limited pool of readers to begin with. I do worry about that pool getting smaller and smaller each year. I also think that writing as a craft is continuously being demoted by our culture, both because of social media algorithms, how we interact with the world via our cell phones on nearly every occasion, and now, because of AI. It saddens me that my daughter’s generation will mostly have no clue how to write effectively. I guess if there is good news, it is that you don’t need that many people to make your work impactful and meaningful.
Part of the beauty of starting a paywall on my site is that I actually now know many of my readers. They join me for classes, they ask great questions, they ground me in my editorial, and they email me frequently. Growing my audience is as much about revenue as it is about making bigger and better connections with my readers, which I really enjoy. My next step is to host an event for them here in Denver or lead an immersion trip in fall 2025. This can go in any number of directions, and that eases my personal fears for the future of Opening a Bottle and the age of AI and social media by quite a bit.
You are a specialist in French and Italian wines, what spurred your love or interest in these wine countries?
I’ll give the Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) credit for that focus: I took the Italian, then the French programs right before the pandemic, and after that, it was very difficult to write as knowledgeably about other places. I think WSG does a great job of bringing context to wine via its history, geography, culture, and viticulture, particularly the Italian program. I’d like to take the Spanish program soon, and once I do, I imagine Opening a Bottle’s coverage would expand more in that direction. I wish they had one for Austria and Germany, as well as Portugal.
On Italy, the simple fact is that I have more connections there than anywhere else. I am afforded the most opportunities to visit there, they know my work and seem to appreciate it, and I get to taste a lot of Italian wines here in Denver. We have an amazing Italian wine scene, believe it or not. Opening a Bottle is really a site for Italian wine lovers who want to occasionally dabble in other areas.
Understanding French wine has always been a big personal challenge for me, but I find that to be rewarding as a writer. I have zero French heritage, never took a semester of French, and really didn’t know much about the country when I got into wine. Looking at a French wine label early on, it was like reading an ancient text. I was lost. And I think quite a few curious wine drinkers still feel that way. But, that is fertile ground for my First Taste Guide series.
But I also count myself lucky in that I’ve been to France several times for wine, and once you see things up close — a cellar in Savigny-lès-Beaune, an old-vine in Gigondas, a garden-like vineyard in Alsace — it is easy to put your passion for the place into your writing and photography.
Austrian wine captivates me, and I’ve been networking as much as possible with its wine sector in hopes of earning a spot on a press tour there. And I have tremendous respect for Spanish wine. As I noted, I would love to take the WSG course on those wines. Ultimately, I’d love to scale out Opening a Bottle to other countries — yes, including my own — and work with another writer or two to cover some of the more important ‘beats’. That’s the future. But I need to raise revenue to do that: a publishing tale as old as time.
Are there any off-the-radar regions or wine styles in either country that are particularly exciting for you at the moment?
I really don’t understand why Friuli isn’t talked about in the same breath as the world’s great wine regions, particularly Collio and Friuli Colli Orientali. The wine media and sommeliers often get so hung-up on the macerated wines — rightly so, they’re impressive and compelling — but there is so much more to Friuli. The white blends are very refined, Friuliano is a sleeper pick for cellaring —you only need four or five years for it to develop into something amazing, Schioppettino can be so hauntingly beautiful. Even the international variety wines have a long lineage there, and they’re better than anywhere else in Italy, particularly three grapes with a maligned reputation: Merlot, Pinot Grigio, and Sauvignon Blanc. The quality and consistency in Collio and Friuli Colli Orientali is tremendous, and the cuisine is unique and captivating. I honestly would love to visit the area annually if I could.
You are based in Denver, Colorado. Can you share some insights into the wine scene locally?
It’s very dynamic. I cannot keep up with it, to be honest. And I’d encourage anyone in the wine trade to give it a second look. There is this derogatory phrase — ‘flyover states’ — that is often used by people on the coasts to describe anything in between New York and California. I’ve even heard a PR rep refer to it: “we are doing events in NYC, Miami, San Francisco and we’ll need something in the ‘flyover states.’” That mentality has to change, because wine brands can really standout and sell a lot of wines in a market like Denver.
I was talking with a notable Etna producer a while ago, and he said Colorado was far and away his third best market after New York and California. The reason is that you have two vital cities — Denver and Boulder — with quite a bit of wealth and growing dining scenes, and most importantly, great ambassadors for Italian wine. There’s Bobby Stuckey MS and Carlin Karr of Frasca/Tavernetta, Erin Lindstone at Barolo Grill, and even lesser-known professionals doing great work, like Scott Thomas of Grappolo Wine School, and a handful of NYC somms who left New York to start wine shops or consultancies out here during the pandemic. That’s all brought a shot of creativity and ingenuity to the scene. Some of the events they come up with are very original.
And then you have all the ski areas in the mountains — especially Aspen and Vail — where people buy wines by the caseload.
So all of this has enormous pull for Italian winemakers to come here, host wine dinners, and build a following. They’ve figured that out, but it seems like French producers have not.
So no, this is not some place to ‘flyover’. Now, that being said, there are some hurdles for the scene right now. It used to be that grocery stores could not sell wine, and now they can, and that has disrupted the market for wine quite a bit. Many importers here are reticent to take on new wineries, and it has made it especially tough on small importers and distributors as well as some wine shops with more traditional marketing. They’ve all had to get a lot more innovative with how they engage their customers.
But most grocery stores are selling pure garbage for wine. If you want fine wine, you don’t go to a grocery story, and I think Coloradans are realizing that. The dust will settle, and the scene will continue to grow.
When you aren’t writing or taking photos, what do you like to do with your spare time?
100% being a dad. I have two daughters, ages 14 and 10, and together with my wife, we are inseparable. We always like to have one trip together on the horizon, both girls are talented visual artists, and we enjoy nature immensely: birdwatching, hiking, art days at the Denver Botanic Gardens … My oldest is really into plants, and she bought me a small bonsai tree. That will be my ‘old guy’ hobby I am sure! We recently went to the U.S. National Arboretum outside Washington DC and I was so captivated by their bonsai collection. We will see where this leads, but I like the patience and the art of tending to such a plant. It is not that dissimilar to vine training, which is part of the appeal I guess.
Members can access their 25% discount off annual subscriptions to Opening a Bottle. Details are in the Members Benefits section of the Circle website.