Category Archives: In Vino Veritas by Jonathon Alsop

Everything I Needed To Know About Wine I Learned From Larry Bird

Everything I Needed To Know About Wine I Learned From Larry Bird By Jonathon Alsop, Boston Wine School Founder & Exec. Dir. The secret to great wine is the opposite of what most people think it is… but we can fix that. BOSTON MA USA April 17, 2023 Bill Simmons, the writer formerly known as […]

Ten Things Wine Pros Never Do That You Do All The Time

Our wine lives are full of rules, some expressed and some implied, that in theory are supposed to make things better and easier, rules that should keep us drinking the right wine at the right temperature out of the right glass, but really, they’re rules that deliver a sense of relief and assurance that in […]

What Gives Vino Its Veritas?

BOSTON, MA — “In Vino Veritas” doesn’t mean that wine contains some enduring, romantic, artistic truth. It means what we all know: when people drink wine, they talk. They speak truths they say they don’t mean, or at least don’t mean to say out loud. Wine’s active ingredient – alcohol – causes these slips, which is […]

What We Write About When We Write About Wine

By Jonathon Alsop BOSTON, MA — First thing they teach you in journalism school is don’t write what you know. Go out into the great big world and find something new and interesting that you don’t know, that ideally no one knows. Discover it, figure it out, understand something about it, then explain it to […]

Wine Word Of The Month: “Lean”

By Jonathon Alsop BOSTON, MA — It’s hard to speak the language of wine because it’s a language invented by drunk people, but wine lovers blame themselves for the convoluted vocabulary. Talking about wine is like writing a poem where multiple literal and metaphorical images appear and overlap. But it would help if we could get […]

3 Reasons Why You Can’t Stop Yourself From Falling In Love With Wine

By Jonathon Alsop BOSTON, MA — The language of love and the language of wine are completely interwoven in our culture, for better and for worse. For instance, if you fall in love with someone because you find them intoxicating, that’s OK; if you try to get someone intoxicated in hopes that they’ll fall in love […]

Breaking Wine Down

By Jonathon Alsop BOSTON, MA — James Brown, the godfather of soul, used to explain himself musically by saying he was “breaking the music down.” He is heard often on record urging his band to break it down, get down, get on down, and sometimes – counterintuitively – to get on up. Get up and […]