My dad and I looking confused during the Wine Camp event I helped host at Pizzeria Beddia back on October 17th.
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
The September 27th release party at Chambre Noire Studio in Paris. We sold almost 50 copies that night!
I wonder what they do with all the old framed posters at P. Franco when they need new wall space. There must be a hangar full of posters somewhere. Here’s the poster announcing the October 3rd book signing event they kindly hosted.
A daytime signing at Washington DC’s Domestique wine shop. I had no idea natural wine was so big in DC!
Matt Conroy, chef partner of DC restaurant Lutèce, who hosted a splendid early evening signing on October 16th.
Posing with my little sister Rebecca Brakeall, who drew my wine labels, after the Pizzeria Beddia event on October 17th. It was the first time she’d tasted my wine. I think she liked it!
Rebel Rebel in Somerville, where I enjoyed drinking until midnight with owner Lauren Friel and her team after the event we did at her nearby bookshop-slash-event-space Wild Child on October 19th. It’s inspiring to know that delightful miniature places like this can still thrive in certain corners of major US cities.
A solo lunch upon arrival in Toronto at Paris Paris, where Grape Witches’ enterprising Krysta Oben does the pragmatic wine list. I spent the day doing laundry after a bottle of my red wine shattered in my luggage. The tartare was splendid, anyway. So were the frites.
Somehow still standing up straight with Toronto wine importer Devin Lilly of Don’t Worry Wines, after the tasting he’d helped organize at The Grape Witches, which itself followed a live talk about the book with Nicole Raufeisen in the Witches’ upstairs lounge.
Telepathic sommelier-restaurateur Ryan Gray, who, upon our arrival at his majestic restaurant Gia, instantly opened the very bottle of wine Mon Lapin sommelier Alex Landry and I had been thinking about, Vino di Anna’s luminous grecanico “G.”
Due to poor planning on my part, I spent a total of 29 hours in Los Angeles. Thankfully my old mentor David Rosoff (not pictured) was able to put me in touch with Melody’s Eric Tucker, who kindly hosted a gaggle of disparate LA friends for an apéro after my book signing at Domaine LA.
A mildly hungover lunch on October 25th at the ambitious and thoughtful Mexican restaurant Nixta with the crew from Austin natural wine destination Lolo. From left: Julian Neel, Matt Bowman, Adam Wills, and Jake.
October 25th: The captivatingly normal exterior of a truly unique wine bar: Steve Buechner’s Light Years. None of my photos do justice to the interior, which is a sort of psychedelic disco wine bungalow from outer space.
October 27th: Ordinaire founder Bradford Taylor and Populis / Les Lunes’ Shaunt Oungoulian (and son). Taylor fixed up stellar roadside kebabs that evening. It was a good thing we were all well fed, too. Ordinaire always casts a peculiar spell from the moment you walk in. When I walked in on this occasion, the bartenders were playing the mesmerizing harmonies of obscure New York folk sister act The Roches on the stereo.
For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that my October 29th book event at Apéro Club in Santa Cruz fell on the Saturday before Halloween. A very educational natural wine event was had by all. Here is me with Apéro Club’s Hannah Denitz, dressed as a bottle of Dijon mustard.
Victor Martinez of Portland’s Ardor Wines and Nil at the latter’s bar. His colleague Lisa Nguyen and I had the brilliant idea to dress everyone up as mice for a book signing event on Halloween itself (a Monday).
A magnificent fried chicken biscuit with gravy at Portland institution Pine State Biscuits.
Meghna Prakash and Evan Leichtling, friends from Paris who have since returned to Seattle to open their daring and innovative restaurant Off Alley. They kindly hosted a book signing event on Nov. 1st that brought out much of the Seattle natural wine scene.
A selfie for our friend Romain des Grottes with Ann Marie Meiers, co-owner of Diversey Wine in Chicago, at their friends’ adjacent restaurant Cellar Door Provisions. (Incidentally, a culinary highlight of the trip.)
Nov. 5th: The view from my book signing stand at Karakterre NYC 2022 at Radio Park in Rockefeller Center, where this initial US tour finished up. Bravo Marko Kovac and team for a consummately well-executed event, right down to the bizarrely perfect weather that day.
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.
