AT SCOMA’S WITH A WILLAMETTE VALLEY/BURGUNDIAN PRODUCER
A Media Dinner Short on Media
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
Aug. 6, 2024 
The other night I went to a dinner at Scoma’s restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco to taste some Willamette Valley wines with the winemaker. I’m not sure why I went.
As a wine journalist for more than 35 years, I never accepted an invitation such as this unless there was the possibility of writing about it. Afterall, a writer owes the invitee some kind of recognition if one accepts wine and/or a lunch or dinner. At Scoma’s I tasted Résonance’s wines, and I ate Scoma’s delicious steamed clams, picked crab and carmelized scallops that must’ve cost Résonance’s Burgundian company a bunch o’ Euros.
“THE BEAR” SLEEPS ON WINE
Wine Continues to Be in Hibernation
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
July 8, 2024
They had a chance. And they blew it. Just like the discredited minor league baseball player-cum-somm, all dressed up in a dark suit, who must have been on performance dis-enhancement drugs, muffed it again. I was entranced – just as I am most of the time watching “The Bear” and hoping against hope – that the minor league ballplayer would talk about the wines he was placing on display at the wannabe major league restaurant. Instead, he was listening to a guy, who was telling him he knew who he was when he was playing ball; and before he got drummed out of the game for violating PHD rules.
WE’VE LOST OUR FREAKIN’ MINDS
So, Stop the (Wine) World, I (May) Want to Get Off
By Alan Goldfarb
June 10, 2024 
Item: During WWII, attitudes began to shift in the latter half of the occupation. New Vichy policies forbade the advertising of alcohol and levied heavy taxes.
Item: Some dummkopf wants to ban alcohol on planes saying, “in order to prevent heart attacks.”
Item: 20-somethings think even one drop of alcohol, “is poison”.
IN RESTAURANT REVIEWS, WINE IS CHOPPED LIVER
Because Food People Know Less About Wine
Than Wine People Know About Food
By Alan Goldfarb
Jan. 26, 2024
I’m sick of it, I tell ya! After having scrolled through 2½ months of the L.A. Times’ food section, I didn’t see one mention, not one article, not one picture, not one tasting note. Nothing about wine.
Damn it! I’m tired writing about why it is that in almost every restaurant review in every newspaper and magazine, there is hardly any mention of wine? Is wine chopped liver?
Whatever the hell happened to the notion and the practice of pairing wine with food? To my mind, wine & food are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other. I don’t hardly eat a meal without wine. I don’t like to stand up and sip wine at a cocktail party. I want my wine with food.
NUTS (and BOLTS) TO THE METALLICA SOMM
By Alan Goldfarb
Jan. 18, 2024
Waiter, taste the soup.
“Is there something wrong with the soup, monsieur?”
Taste the soup
“But sir, what tis wrong with the soup?”
Taste the soup.
“OK sir, but there’s no spoon.”
Ah haa!
That’s the sort of scenario I envision if and when (I hope it’s when), the robotic somm that was introduced recently meets its (her/him/they?). What will happen if there’s no spoon, I mean, what if the monsieur or madam believe there’s something wrong with the wine? Will Robinovino (that’s the name our tricked-out wine server has been given) take the wine back, no questions asked? (Come to think of it, that might not be a bad thing. How many times has some full-of-themselves somm come back and rejoindered snidely, “I find there’s nothing wrong with that wine, madam.”) If that would happen to a man, shrinking under the table is likely to ensue.