The Tell Me Bar in New Orleans filled me with hope for wine’s future.

Looking back on the last two decades of my career, it’s crazy to think about how much I owe to being in the right place at the right time.

One of those moments was hanging out with Cory Cartwright at Terroir in San Francisco in the first decade of this century. It was there that he and a band of likewise forward-looking cats were forging a new wine language.

Many industry folks will remember those years. Those pre-social media days marked the advent of “natural” wine and the explosion of the eno-blogosphere.

Cory and I met because we started reading each others’ blog. He was one of the most prolific writers of the early blogging days as he deciphered the new (old) wines that were finally reaching our shores.

When he and I reconnected yesterday in New Orleans at wonderful The Tell Me Bar, we reminisced about what a magical and exciting time it was. We were part of a burgeoning and swiftly expanding enoical dialectic. Those were the years of the new wine and the new wine language.

Hanging out at his popular spot in the city’s warehouse district, I was inspired by his business partner Uznea Bauer’s approach and interaction with their guests. Her voice is so genuine and her chops so spot on. Gone are the pretension and the one-up-personship that have plagued our industry for too long. Is this the authenticity that we have been hoping and waiting for? I believe it is. Spending time in their joint, wine felt like pure unadulterated pleasure unbound from the superciliousness of pseudo-connoisseurship. Man, it was good.

But as much as I was looking to the future last night at their bar in New Orleans, I couldn’t help but order a wine from the past. I remember drinking wines like that, so many years ago, with Tracie by my side, on my way to one of the best gigs of my life. It was the legendary night of Guillaume and the baseball bat at Terroir!

Uznea and Cory, thank you for putting together our Abruzzo event yesterday. It was off the charts!

Uznea, I quite literally couldn’t have done it without you. And it was such a treat to get to work by your side!

Cory, dude, how will I ever forget those years and how exciting it was to be part of a movement that would change the wine world forever and for better. Thank you for everything — then and now.

I’m one lucky son of a bitch. Just happened to walk into the right wine bar at just the right time — then and now.

Love you guys.