Thirst Behavior is a project about wine, taste, and the social performances that form around them, the rituals of enjoyment shaped by status, media, money, and desire. Wine is the entry point; the real subject is how taste gets made, circulated, and contested, especially in New York and the Hamptons, where leisure and tastemaking overlap most visibly.
My City Guides Project just launched. You can find the Hamptons Guide here
You can find my most recent feature here.
This post is for paid subscribers. Friday features are always free, but if you want the weekly intel and ongoing education—plus to support independent wine writing that doesn’t do scores or sponsors—upgrade whenever it feels right.
If you’d like to work together or have consulting inquiries, pitches, or scoops, please email me at bodhilanda@gmail.com.
Good afternoon,
Last night was Thirst Trap, a one-of-a-kind entertainment event with an amazing name at City Winery from the mind of André Hueston Mack I wanted to go, but couldn’t. A couple months ago, I met up with Mack under the auspices of covering the event. I thought I was getting a quick pitch and that would be it. In fact, he bought me lunch at Via Carota and spent two and a half hours dropping gem after gem of personal wisdom on me over a bottle of Barolo.
If you don’t know, Mack is a sommelier-at-large (goals) with a diverse portfolio of wine-related projects. He won Best Young Sommelier in America, worked at The French Laundry, then ran the 1,500-bottle list at Per Se. He founded Maison Noir Wines in 2007, has a whiskey label, wrote 99 Bottles: A Black Sheep’s Guide to Life-Changing Wines, and routinely pulls millions of views on Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel, and he had his own celebrity guest wine talk show thingy, which he described to me as “kinda like Hot Ones.”
Thirst Trap was a kind of live storytelling event that featured four wines, one rye whiskey, an appearance from James Beard Award-winning chef and Emmy-nominated host Sophia Roe, and music from MICK.
Toward the end of our lunch, I asked why he had agreed to meet with me in the first place. It was obvious he had brought much more value to my project than I could ever dream of adding to his. He said something to the effect of, “I don’t know. I’d heard you were interesting, so I figured we could have a chat.”
Simple as that. What a fucking pro.
Later that night, I had dinner at Smithereens—review coming soon—where somm-owner Nikita Malhotra set my friend and me up with a bottle of incredible, super-reductive Loire Valley Chenin Blanc. I asked her about the weird dimple in our glasses. Each had a small, deliberate crease folded into the bowl. She said, “Oh, these are the ones André Mack designed with the son from the Zalto family.” Of course they were. I’d never used one before, but they really were fun. You get the smoothest most perfect swirl.
Anyway, I missed Thirst Trap because of work obligations and a nasty summer cold, which, I have learned, may actually have been COVID…awesome! It turns out that no number of colostrum cold-foam iced coffees, or twenty-dollar engineered smoothies, or cold pressed super-juices can exempt you from the basic humiliations of having a body.
Today, Thirst Behavior gained its 1,000th subscriber. Thank you so so much for being here.
Tomorrow, deejaying again at Bar Lalo. Come say hi!
TASTING NOTES
Pazo da Sinsela Albariño 2022, Rías Baixas — Tasted this recently and was kinda blown away. So much width and warmth without feeling heavy. It was just broad and kind of rich, with a soft texture I really enjoyed. This is a joint project between Raul Perez and Rodrigo Mendez, two of Spain’s greatest winemakers, who found a three-hectare parcel in Salnes in 2021 and signed a twenty-year lease. The vineyard is ten kilometers from the sea, with silty soils near the river Umia lending salinity without a trace of sharpness. The wine is fermented naturally in used oak (225 to 500 liters), aged twelve months on the lees, no malo (but silkiness abound). Albariño is often used as a go-to zippy summer sipper, without much talk of the other ways it can present. I think wines like this one are an indication that we are going to see more and more ageworthy and interesting Albariños here in the States.
