Dwight Furrow

The Michelin Guide Will Review Wine? Last week brought the curious announcement that the Michelin Guide plans to start reviewing  wine. It’s not clear how this will work given that the Michelin Guide already owns The Wine Advocate, th…

Wine’s greatness is place, not polish. Can Michelin tell the difference? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/21/t...

Why Detailed Wine Reviews Matter to the Wine Community If you want a community, you need a conversation; if you want a conversation, you need a shared record; and if you want a shared record in wine, you need detailed reviews—the kind that actually say…

Wine changes. Memory fades. Reviews keep the conversation alive. Read why tasting notes are the postal service of taste. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/08/w...

The World of the Italian Meal The traditional Italian meal—the all-day affair with (at least) seven courses—has always fascinated me because it is not just a meal but a way of organizing time and space around a sensibility. It …

The Italian meal isn’t just a feast—it’s a philosophy of time. Seven courses that teach patience, proportion, and the art of ripeness. When a culture puts taste before productivity, even lunch becomes an ethics. #food #FoodSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/02/t...

Terroir as Interpretation: Why Preserving Place is Always a Style Choice Let’s retire the pious fiction that the winemaker who “lets the site speak” abstains from style, as if terroir were a shy woodland creature spooked by the faintest human intention. Terroir is not a…

Non-intervention is a myth. A vineyard offers tendencies and resistances; the cellar organizes them into a voice. The question isn’t “intervene or not?” It’s: which articulation of this place are you willing to own? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/30/t...

Eight Ways People Judge Wine Recently I posted an essay on my theory of wine tasting which evaluates wine by how its structure creates movement, texture, and tension over time, connecting those felt dynamics to character and p…

Tired of “95 points!”? Meet the other 7 ways people judge wine and what they get right and what they can't see. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/23/e...

This is an agent of the US federal government, armed for live-fire combat against a modern army, slamming a passive and nonviolent female candidate for the US Congress into asphalt.

Then walking away without checking if she has injuries, with his identity concealed behind a black facemask.

Roast the Algorithms; Then the Vegetables We live under the regime of instrumental reason—the worldview that treats everything as a means to something else, preferably something quantifiable. What is the value of a tomato? Depends: yield p…

No “fast kimchi.” No frictionless cuisine. Cook like a citizen, not a user. #food #foodsky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/18/r...

Tasty is the Floor, Not the Review I’m not going to link to it or name the writer since I’m not into calling people out for minor transgressions. But I recently read an article from a wine writer entitled “Why Tasty is the Only Tast…

We don’t need fewer words for wine—we need better ones. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/16/t...

Heraclitus in the Glass: Why the Most Interesting Wines are Unruly Originally posted at Three Quarks Daily Wine tasting is a great seducer for those with an analytic cast of mind. No other beverage has attracted such elaborate taxonomies: geographical classificati…

My theory of wine tasting: aromas aren’t properties; they’re performances. Taste isn’t a checklist—it’s choreography in the glass. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/09/h...

Watch Out for Natty-Washing There is plenty of evidence that natural wines are maintaining steady sales despite the overall drop the wine industry is experiencing. I found this anecdote from Jeremy Parzen to be particularly i…

When Big Wine discovers its inner pét-nat, you know ‘natural’ is about to get spin-cycled. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/04/w...

Is It a Tragedy When We Drink a Wine Before It’s Time? Most premium wine is consumed before it hits peak quality. Estimates suggest upward of 90% of wine in the U.S. is opened within a week of purchase.  This includes no small share of bottles that wou…

Wine isn’t a museum piece. It’s for the table. Stop mourning the bottle you didn’t age and enjoy the one in your glass. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/02/i...

What the Hell is Data-driven Cooking? There is a lot of hype among some sectors of the food industry about data-driven cooking (aka  computational gastronomy). It is the practice of using structured food data (recipes, ingredient chemi…

Pairing tables ≠ cuisine. Texture, timing, and order can flip the script. I break down where computational gastronomy helps—and where taste pushes back. #food #FoodSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/28/w...

Winemaking and Artmaking It’s been awhile since I’ve seen this argument in print but it has really become standard fare. Tim James in World of Fine Wine used his recall of a fine Amontillado tasting to proclaim that regard…

"Artists create; winemakers respond." That's a cute slogan. But it's also wrong. If Spiral Jetty counts as art, why not Sherry? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/26/w...

Yes. That is interesting

One of the best pieces I've seen in awhile. It absolutely nails the value of wine and the limits of wine as a commodity.

Food’s Fragility is an Aesthetic Gift Food is ephemeral. You taste it, and in moments—sometimes even before the thought of tasting registers—it vanishes, leaving only memory and an empty plate. Unlike a painting that hangs for centurie…

Stop judging dinner by museum rules. #food #foodsky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/21/f...

Yarrow vs. Beckett on Wine and Food Pairing Well, thankfully, it wasn’t exactly the Hatfields and McCoys, but there was some heat generated in the Decanter-hosted debate between wine/food pairing expert Fiona Beckett and wine blogger Alder Y…

Wine and food pairing is about probabilities, not pronouncements. Somms aren’t priests; they’re guides and pairing is an adventure, not a catechism, more like disciplined improvisation. #Wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/19/y...

I tasted a lot of Frontenac a few years ago when traveling through the upper Midwest. If was dreadful unless made into a fortified wine. But maybe they have learned to deal with the acidity.

I'm sorry that happened. If legal action isn't possible, public shaming seems to be the only alternative.

But clinical synesthesia i would imagine functions differently

There is some good evidence in sensory science studies that music can shape how a wine is perceived and it is at least to some degree independent of preferences. If you find a wine disgusting music won't help much but the effect seems independent of musical taste.

Wine and Music: 5 Classic Pairings The thing I miss most about no longer doing wine reviews on this blog is the wine and music pairing that accompanied each review. The book I wrote with Clark Smith on wine and music pairing was a b…

Champagne that dances, Margaux that dreams, Grange that slams, Sassicaia that soars, Único that shapeshifts. Press play, pour. #wine #winesky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/12/w...

The Food Revolution in the Age of the Algorithm This post piggybacks on my post earlier in the week about the plight of French winemakers as well as the post A Glass Against the Machine from several weeks ago. I am apparently obsessed with this …

Silicon Valley wants AI to correct my knife skills. I’ve been cooking for 50 years—I think I’ll survive without algorithmic guidance. #food #foodsky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/07/t...

How is the campaign going so far? Are you winning?

Will AI Generate the Rebirth of Wine Traditions? In her article “Why Doesn’t Anyone Want to Make French Wine Anymore,” Josephine de La Bruyère chronicles the plight of French winemakers, many of whom hail from families with centuries-old ties to …

AI can code your website. It can’t tend your vines.
Why the future may belong to the stubborn, the muddy-booted, the unoptimized. #wine #winesky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/05/w...

I dimly remember a Josh Sauvignon Blanc, the best of a bad restaurant selection.

Omnivores are the new snobs although I suppose they are by definition imperfect since it's no longer clear where to draw the boundaries that snobbery requires.

The Tragedy of Umami: When Depth Becomes Default Umami was once a revelation—an elegant discovery of a fifth taste that illuminated the subtle synergy of fermented soy, aged cheese, and slow-cooked broth. But in today’s kitchen discourse, u…

Maillard, miso, mushroom dust—umami’s everywhere. But what if our obsession with savoriness is slowly starving our sense of contrast? #food #foodsky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/07/31/t...

If Wine is Poetry in a Glass, Then Writing About It Must Be Poetry on the Page Wine resists language. It slips through the mesh of vocabulary, defying even the most finely woven nets of metaphor, reference, and sensory notation. We reach for terms like “cassis,” “bacon fat,” …

Wine doesn’t want to be described—it wants to be felt. Stop trying to trap it in flavor wheels and sterile descriptors. Let the metaphors fly, the poetry stumble, the weirdness bloom. This isn’t chemistry—it’s expression. #wine #winesky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/07/29/i...

I took them too long to figure out that barnyard, battery acid, and 15 yrs. to age weren't selling points for the Ctrl+Alt+Next generations