One of most important rules of good writing is Eschew All Acronyms. NGL, in the era of texting and emojis, it seems acronyms have become STD*, I suppose, in part, to prevent messages from becoming TL;DR, but is the time it takes to Google these terms really worth it?

I probably haven’t stated this before, but Your West Coast Oenophile is FBI. Not the  J. Edgar Hoover or Efram Zimbalist Jr. type, nor even the abhorrent usurper of the throne, Kash Patel. But a proud Full Blooded Italian, with all four grandparents born in Campania (actually, my maternal grandmother was born here the year after her parents emigrated, so technically she was a Brooklynese).

Anyway, to extend the governmental surveillance metaphor, I found myself at the CIA last month. No, not Langley, VA. St. Helena, CA, the West Coast home of the Culinary Institute of America, where the Grand Tasting and auction for Première Napa took place. Others, of course, have written about the precipitous decline of the wine industry, particularly in Napa where prices and tasting fees and the general tenor seem out of touch with up & coming generation of potential wine drinkers. But rather than bemoan the current states of affairs, I was inspired to begin thinking of new ways to make wine less stuffy and more approachable.

Coming on the tail of the 2026 Superbowl and its phenomenal halftime show, I suggested to Hall Winery that they should promote themselves as The Original Bad Bunny. Yes, over the years people have slowly cottoned to this sculpture and admittedly, it does make for  convenient landmark in St. Helena, but why not embrace it for its notoriety?

Meanwhile, Première afforded my first opportunity to meet the team from Pym-Rae, the former Villa Sorriso estate of the actor Robin Williams. Being that the Tesseron family hails from Luxemborg, a country ⅔ the size of Sonoma County, they can be forgiven for not knowing Williams’ vast array of performances, so my suggestion that they offer a pair of wines labeled Mork and Mindy took some explanation.

Because I produce tasting events, I am always looking for thematic angles to draw interest. My introduction here to Cervantes, a hidden gem from Pope Valley, naturally inspired me to offer to produce a joint event between them and the late Carl Doumani’s Quixote. And for other literary-minded œnophiles, I’ve long want to combine Danica Patrick’s Somnium with Perchance in Rutherford for a Shakespearean “To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream” soliloquy.

Of course, such promotional events needn’t be limited to a single pairing. I would love to see a Napa trifecta with B Wise (the Sonoma label of Montagna owner Brion Wise), B True (Tim Cook doppelgänger Bill True), and the understatedly elegant B Cellars (Jim Borsack and Duffy Keys). On the other hand, I’m probably pushing the envelope in proposing Sonoma’s Capo Isetta join up with Bob Bianco’s Cyrus Creek from Calistoga, but astute readers can connect the self-refrential dots.

Sometimes, it astounds me when people don’t grasp the obvious hook. Years ago, when Marcy Roth opened her wine shop in Sausalito, I couldn’t believe she called it Bacchus & Venus, instead of the incontrovertibly perfect Grapes of Roth. And how natural winery Las Vivas doesn’t follow up on my recommendation to bottle a Vega Las Vivas is beyond me.

Over in Lodi, I have striven in vain to get Sue Tipton to launch my If I pour her Acquiesce, will she? campaign (lest I be accused of sexism, If I pour him Acquiesce, will he? works equally well). Regardless, the point is the wine industry has to come up with creative new approaches to marketing, if it’s ever going to raise itself from the current slump. As we would note at the end of a calculus proof, QED.

*Standard, not Sexually Transmitted Disease