In mid-November I returned to Paris following just over a month of travel promoting The World of Natural Wine in London, Barcelona, Toronto, Montreal, and all around the United States. I tried to organize at least one book event per day, with the aim of justifying (and maximizing) the travel budget my publisher had given me.
“Why would you put yourself through such an ordeal?” was a common question from friends and loved ones.
Well. The opportunity to catch up with scores of industry friends and acquaintances on their respective home turfs was too good to pass up. Thirteen years have passed since I’ve spent any substantial period of time in the USA, and with my book now out, it felt somewhat urgent to acquaint myself with how natural wine is being offered and consumed and understood there.
I now owe about a thousand thank-you notes to everyone who helped make this inaugural USA book tour possible. And I will write them! In the meantime, here’s a little tour diary in the form of a captioned photo dump.1
Please note that this is not intended to be a complete list of people to whom I owe thanks, or of bottles or meals that delighted me. It is just the photos that seemed good enough or funny enough to share in a stand-alone sort of way. On some occasions, I failed to take any good photos. From other occasions, I have good photos, but intend to use them later in a dedicated post of some kind.