James Sligh

tbh even given everything, “trillionaire nazi” wasn't on my 2025 bingo card

A picture of a Brooklynite holding an egg + cheese on roll with jalapeños accompanied by a list of wine pairings: Skin contact moscatel, Gredos garnacha, Mediterranean white (specifically merwah from Mersel in Lebanon) and frizzante rosato from Emilia Romagna

went to my bodega for breakfast to celebrate the election after spending last night sharing champagne in my neighborhood bar

here are my pairing suggestions for @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s go-to:

Chablis is closer to outer space than it is to the ocean

Licking Rocks a lesson plan for tasting minerality

This afternoon’s newsletter includes a drinkable lesson plan, a 9-minute video about minerality, and an activity sheet that wouldn’t exist if I hadn't gotten certified to teach English as a foreign language:

childrensatlasofwine.beehiiv.com/p/licking-ro...

Not a real bartender but: El Dorado 3 Year? JM Rhum white?

Some people say a man is made out of time
A floor somm's made out of cheap beer and wine
Cheap beer and wine, coffee and spit
A tongue that's numb and a thumb that's split

You sell sixteen mags, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
—

Smugly whispering 'you don't know me as well as you think you do' after service while looking at your phone's stepometer, knowing it's been charging in the office for the entire shift and you just spent 10 hours running up + down stairs

A water bottle at a banchan restaurant featuring a coquettish frog with a red bow...winking

I have friends ... everywhere

Actually that does make you wonder if the writer is the one with the G&T call and the jeans

I say this as an almost 40 year-old wearing Muji pants with bar mat stains on the knee from trying to fix a dishwasher who is also ranking Mamdani first

One reason why you know the quote post is "everybody clapped" levels of fake is the imaginary young people are not drinking, say, a dirty martini /or Aperol spritz while wearing high waisted pleated trousers w/ a knit polo

As someone who works in alcohol for a living, can confirm 1) they're totally fine (not at the very top of my N/A best-of, but far from the bottom) 2) very distant to the reasons why the world is broken

“What wine does the Shire grow?” Previewing the spring CLUB shipment

(last week's newsletter explains: childrensatlasofwine.com/2025/04/12/w...)

A watercolor map of the "wine regions of Middle Earth", with regional descriptions that tbh are too small to read in this format

Finally finished painting one of my nerdiest venn diagram intersections

*somm who knows the word 'barrique' squints at a form, writes in 16 pt capitals*

INTERMEDIATE FRENCH

Toronto LCBO staff having a blast with Gretzky wine descriptions

A screenshot of the Total Wine Temecula website with :/ over it

Yesterday’s newsletter was about box stores, consumption ethics, and America’s weird relationship to access to wine:

mailchi.mp/5001e1e5dffe...

data point: 20% of the content on my tiktok algorithm is young people giving each advice on how to delay ICE if you're a citizen and where to put your thumbs when you punch a Nazi

An archival scan of the New York Times' infamous 1939 Hitler puff piece, "Herr Hitler At Home in the Clouds"

tfw you make the mistake of opening the nyt homepage out of habit

Ten wines for 2024 The December 2024 newsletter

Ten wines for 2024: childrensatlasofwine.com/2024/12/28/t...

House Drip.

We didn't know it then, but it would be the coldest brat summer of the rest of our lives

Pitching hot ones but for wine in the group chat I think we've cracked it

Y is brutal unless you're willing to accept Yellow Muscat (feels fudgy)

Turkish yapincak, a usually blended specialty of the north side of the sea of Marmara with distinctive red flecked berries?

Yamabudo, the common name of a native Japanese vine species?

X is incredibly embarrassing, I forgot xarello

Herbal-mineral Catalán native, responsible for some of my all time favorite white wines

Would like to replace my V pick (viognier) with almost anything else

Valdigue, verdejo, verdesse (nearly extinct, being brought back in Isere)

Omg verdicchio

Vermentino!?

Vidiano?!?! (Ancient Crete variety)

Ugh anything but viognier

Vidal jeez what was I thinking

U is tricky too. I guess uva rara in Lombardy would be my pick?

I would like to taste the nearly extinct Friulian ucelùt or the Piedmontese uvalino

Q is rough — ultra obscure Piedmontese quagliano, and Peruvian quebranta, which I think I've actually tasted!

Ugh isabella would have been a good pick

Beautiful pink-skinned native American variety, you can drink as far afield as the Azores

Inzolia also would have worked — known on the Tuscan coast as ansonica

Jancis Robinson's 1242 page reference 'Wine Grapes'

Calling in reinforcements for I U Q X and Y