Thanks so much to all of you who attended in NY and Napa. Each one was a revelation to me. It was wonderful to hear your questions, and a superb exercise to reflect on what we are doing, articulate our methods, and peer into both our successes and our failures.

The wines that we tasted are listed and described here.

All are still available for sale to you in our store, including the scarce 2006 skin-fermented Pinot Grigio.

And now that east and west have tasted the wine, I have released the remaining three cases of Glos to the mailing list.

We held the NY tastings in a loft on the Lower East Side a month ago. Each was exciting and full of energy; the only flaw was that our iron-clad security left the brilliant winemaker and teacher Eric Texier on the sidewalk. Guests came from Philadelphia and DC. The wines showed very well; to the highest degree, perhaps The Sylphs.

We held our last pair of tastings on Sunday, at my new house on the Napa river. The first session was spontaneously led by the ardent questions of two UC Davis students. The tasting was completely infused with their sharpness and enthusiasm. It was interesting for all of us to be prodded by people well enough educated that they could not simply drink the Scholium coolaid.

The most striking wine for me was Glos. It was beautiful and strange at once: more like tequila than wine. MIdan al-Tahrir was also very seriously charming— powerful and more aromatic than we had expected. It is a kind of spice and slate bomb. The rock star at the event was the San Floriano Normale, the skin-fermented PG that had spent 54 months in barrel without topping or sulfur, many of those months outside in the sun. The wine was sweet—in the metaphorical sense; smooth and charming to the point of being suave. Dangerous. And not yet sold out.

The second tasting on the river was cold and windy. I had not eaten all day, had taken a beautiful bike ride on the levees to prepare for the events, and was shivering and just a little unhinged by the time that we got to the fantastic skin-fermented pinot grigio. This tasting was much less technical, though no less passionate; and part way through the crazy, blood red wine, a new face from the back row asked if the wine were a “cult” wine. I was about to defer and distract when she repeated herself more emphatically, and made clear that she wanted to know if it was a FOUCAULT wine.

This prompted the most deep and uninhibited answer I have ever given to a question about wine and winemaking, and led me in a mad rush to tie the harvesting of Hudson Syrah to my doctoral dissertation and deepest beliefs about the world. I am not about to try to reproduce that torrent from the depths here—and might never repeat it. Each tasting was amazing in its own way; I can only say that you should not fail to attend the next ones.