“No one respects the flame quite like the fool who’s badly burned…”

by Katie Pizzuto October 15, 2011
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I’ve begun believing that for some reason Australians have a long-held love affair with mediocrity. I mean, England manages to give the world Amy Winehouse, Dusty Springfield and Annie Lennox, and all Australia can crank out is Olivia Newton-John, Natalie Imbruglia and Kylie Minogue? Spain gives us Javier Bardém, Italy gives us Roberto Benigni, and [...]

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“What if I say I will never surrender?…”

by Katie Pizzuto September 18, 2011
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I’ve mentioned more than once that there are a handful of importers I trust implicitly…importers whose wines I would buy based on their names alone gracing the back of a wine bottle. Names like Lynch, Skurnik, Rosenthal and Dressner hold that kind of weight in my world, though today I’m now living in that world [...]

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“I’m a search-light soul they say, but I can’t see it in the night…”

by Katie Pizzuto September 10, 2011
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On Monday, August 29th I cried. Then I fell on black days and shut down…so did my writing. When Hurricane Irene hit Jersey we were pretty fortunate as these things go, getting no flooding or damage. All it did was leave us without power for nearly 4 days. So we packed up expensive perishables from [...]

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“You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by. And so, become yourself, because the past is just a goodbye…”

by Katie Pizzuto August 19, 2011
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He was standing there looking at me with these eyes that were all at once expressing both complete conviction and sincere humility, trying desperately not to insult me. I had just told him I would let him know when my post went up and his somewhat hesitant but unflinching response was something like, “I appreciate [...]

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“Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway…”

by Katie Pizzuto August 8, 2011
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There’s nothing quite like a road trip. No matter how much quicker it is to get somewhere on an airplane or how unique it is to travel by train or ship, nothing compares to the experience of throwing half a house of shit into a car trunk, filling the tank of gas as the first [...]

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“Well I’ve never been to Spain, but I kinda like the music…”

by Katie Pizzuto August 3, 2011
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Given my readership, I’d certainly hope that I’m preaching to the converted at this point, but if I go around assuming a reader already sings the song I’m trying to teach them I wouldn’t ever bother writing, would I? A while back I had a contest to win a free sample of wine and the [...]

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WORDLESS WEDNESDAY: “Teacher, there are things that I still have to learn…”

by Katie Pizzuto July 27, 2011
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“ ’Cause sometimes salvation, in the eye of the storm…”

by Katie Pizzuto July 19, 2011
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Call it a revolution. Call it a pendulum swing. Hell, call it karmic retribution for all I care. Just know that change is afoot in California winemaking, and the harbingers of that revolution…that swing…that retribution, are growing quickly in numbers. For a long, long time I have been bitching incessantly about the wines coming out [...]

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“Barbecue lifts my spirit, I swear that it never fails…”

by Katie Pizzuto July 8, 2011
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So I recently received an email to let me know that some dude named Chef Ted Reader (apparently “celebrity Chef Ted” though I’ve never heard of him) has pissed away valuable time that he’ll never get back in this lifetime, developing a list of “tips for good backyard BBQ party etiquette that if followed, will [...]

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“A little bit of this, a little bit of that…”

by Katie Pizzuto July 2, 2011
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“The heat was on, rising to the top…” Heat Heads are a unique breed of people, part adrenaline junkies and part masochists. Visit one of their pot luck parties and you’re likely to be entertained by someone eating a cookie and sweating like Anthony Weiner at a press conference. But what I love most about [...]

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