I’m still in New Orleans consolidating recommendations for the first-ever TB City Guide. This thing will be made available to subscribers at the Founding Member tier. If you’ve ever asked me what to do when you go to New Orleans, this will be my definitive answer. New Orleans is one of the world’s best cities to have fun in; having lived here for about six years, I’ve got lots of recs. Stay tuned for that.
In today’s letter: decolonizing winespeak and free wine education, Kingston Wine Co.’s new private label, and Aaron Ayscough’s sprawling wine-expo calendar. Plus, NYC’s Mexican moment gets still more attention—and coolness itself is officially proclaimed dead. Let’s go.
Tasting Notes
Why Wine Still Matters, and Always Will → Eric Asimov makes a simple but important case: wine still matters because it connects us to something larger—land, time, culture, and each other. As trends in beverage and dining come and go, wine’s enduring value lies in its refusal to flatten into content. It’s not an accessory to lifestyle; it’s a material thread in how we understand taste, geography, and community. You can read my own thoughts on the value of participating in wine culture in The Hard Skills of Hospitality.
This guy at Vanity Fair really doesn’t like orange wine → A not-especially-intelligent attempt at a takedown, arguing that “natural wine’s unpredictability fatally obliterates one of wine’s most important uses: it acts in concert with food.” It’s a caricature of course, but a useful one. The author’s disdain for “curated anarchy” offers an inverted mirror for those of us who do care about orange wine: it reminds us that funk without form is chaos, and that the real craft of natural wine lies in its control, not its mess. If you know anything about skin-contact wines, this article probably won’t offend you. But I just love highly opinionated writing, even when it’s not that smart.
The Microbial Terroir → A geeky but grounding essay from George Nordahl that digs into the literal soil beneath our feet. Nordahl argues that the most exciting flavors in wine begin as microscopic collaborations—between fungi, bacteria, and the networks of organic matter that hold water and nutrients. These invisible communities, he writes, are what truly give terroir its signature. It’s a useful reminder that when we talk about “minerality” or “energy,” we’re really talking about soil health. In short: complexity in the glass depends on biodiversity underground.
Kingston Wine Co. x Vetter ‘Rotling’ → Kingston Wine Co. has launched its first private label: a rotling made by Stefan Vetter, the Franconian master of Sylvaner. The style sits somewhere between rosé and orange wine—an intentional hybrid that blends red and white grapes into something saline, bright, and quietly radical. What’s interesting isn’t just the wine, but the collaboration itself. For a small Hudson Valley shop to commission a German natural wine producer of Vetter’s caliber signals a new kind of translocal conversation: small retailers acting like micro-importers, curating taste at the level of ethos, not just SKU. If you could create a private label, what would you make, and how would you brand it?
Aaron Ayscough’s Wine Expo Calendar is looking stacked → The festival circuit is fully back. Karakterre (Oct 25, Domino Park), Orange Glou Fair (Oct 26, Home Studios), Amber Georgia (Nov 8, Industry City), and RAW WINE NYC (Nov 9–10, I’ll probably be there) form a kind of extended bacchanal for the East Coast natural wine crowd. Consider this your cue to buy tickets, rest your palate, and pretend you’re “working.” Pro tip: keep notes this year. The producers you see at RAW often reappear on lists by summer—knowing who’s who now pays off when the season starts.
The Spill
Johnny’s (East Williamsburg) → Helen Rosner profiles a family of rotisserie-chicken veterans who’ve turned their craft into a sit-down Peruvian-Chinese restaurant that actually feels new. The Tang siblings’ chifa project is as much about place as palate: Pisco Slushies, big windows, a single cookie for dessert, and prices under $30. It’s a study in how heritage food can scale upward without losing its soul. The room feels generous and unhurried, which might be the real luxury here.
El Rey Tacos → ryan sutton finds poetry in a $4.50 taco. Tucked into Times Square, El Rey Tacos serves lamb barbacoa, rajas con crema, and panuchos that manage to taste both homemade and modern. It’s a good reminder that the city’s most meaningful dining moments still come from corners where rent and ambition collide, and where excellence hides behind unassuming signage.
Gatekeeping is SO BACK → Julia Dudley’s plea for restraint in the age of algorithmic oversharing argues that some restaurants should be allowed to stay small, quiet, and unphotographed. The piece makes a point few will say aloud: exposure can destroy ambiance faster than bad lighting. It’s less about elitism than ecological balance. Every restaurant has a carrying capacity—of guests, of attention, of narrative. The smart ones know when to stop feeding the feed.
Opening the Conversation: Alice Achayo & Wine Empowered → Two complementary forces are reshaping the industry’s language and its access. In her work, Alice Achayo challenges the Eurocentric vocabulary of wine—those coded terms like “quince” or “orange blossom” that alienate anyone without colonial reference points. She proposes a plural, lived lexicon: tasting through memory, culture, and cuisine rather than certification. This is what I mean when I say that wine can be learned along a number of distinct vectors. Wine education shouldn’t be less rigorous, it should just become more pluralist in its pedagogies. Check out, Build a Bigger Table, Not a Dumber Wine List.
At the institutional level, Victoria James’s nonprofit Wine Empowered tackles the structural barriers that keep women and people of color out of decision-making roles. Free education, mentorship, and career support become the groundwork for a more equitable industry. Together, these two approaches—changing how we speak and who gets to speak—illustrate what real inclusion looks like
I’m always collecting intel: wine lists with ethical markups, killer BTG programs, openings that actually matter, and hospitality projects with a real point of view. Send me your hot takes, your best kept secrets, underground go-to’s— the kind of tips you’d only share with someone you know will truly appreciate it. Go ahead and spill. I’d do it for you.
Scene Report
Who Killed Cool? And What Do We Chase Now → ANU’s essay connects the death of “cool” to the collapse of irony itself. When every posture becomes instantly commodified, sincerity gets sold before it can settle. The proposed exit strategy—“subversive sincerity”—feels directly relevant to hospitality. Maybe the only way forward is small-scale, value-driven work that resists metrics: culture made in private, legible only to those who show up.
Vulgarity: The Vulgar Image → Dean Kissick charts the rise of the grotesque in visual culture: AI-warped faces, maximalist editing, and the total saturation of imagery. His argument—that vulgarity is the natural aesthetic of our time—has implications for anyone designing restaurants, wine labels, or social content. The question isn’t whether to avoid vulgarity, but how to wield it consciously. What’s indulgent online can still feel alive in person; the difference is tact.