In our book of family lore, my entrance is greeted with filial ambivalence, to say the least. I arrive home from the hospital crying inconsolably, and my mother asks my three-year-old brother, 

“James, what are we going to do with him?” 

“Throw him in the garbage?” He suggests, without missing a beat. 

Because this was one of so few examples of hostility, in a lifetime of close interaction, I maintain that it was just a thoughtful recommendation; James was trying to be helpful and maybe didn’t really know what happened to the garbage at the end of the day. After this initially bumpy start, we were close comrades, standing together to face the world. “I don’t need to learn how to read,” I once explained to my parents, “My brother knows how to read.” 

James and I shared a bedroom, strewn with juggling balls, books and records, for fifteen years, but rarely did we cross each other in any serious way. There were the requisite smacks and squabbles, teases and digs, but nothing truly mean, and, as we grew older, we developed a friendship I would now trade for nothing. We haven’t seen each other all that much in the last thirty years, and we don’t speak or correspond as often as many siblings I know of, but when we do, he is the same thoughtful, kind, self-possessed person I looked up to as a child, and when friends ask me if we are ‘close’, I say yes, in my mind we have remained very close, despite our distance.

James turns fifty years old this Saturday and I’d like to take this opportunity thank him for being such a good brother to me (and for reading all of my newsletters every other week.) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMES !!!

Those of you who have the advantage - my word, maybe not yours - of a sibling here in town should go ahead and grab your brother or sister and drag them down to Oakland Yard for a wine tasting this week.

TONIGHT: Thursday Night Flights! This evening we’ll be pouring GERMAN whites and AUSTRIAN reds - $12 tasting flights from 4-8.

SATURDAY 9/29: SPANISH TASTING with special guest Cory Gowan from Mission Wine Merchants -Red, White and Bubbly from the Penedes and Ribera del Duero - $15 flights from 2-6 and wines by the glass until 9.

SUNDAY 9/30: WINES from OREGON – Tasting flights of reds and whites from our neighbor to the north - $15 flights from 2-6 and wines by the glass – as always - until 8pm.

Cheers,

Max