I am so grateful for all of your support and excitement about the upcoming release of my book, Field Blends. Lockdowns and social distancing have forced us to postpone the in-person release parties previously scheduled. Instead I’m inviting you to join me for virtual release events in the coming weeks.

One of the things I most love about Field Blends is that its entire narrative occurs in the real-world. That is to say that one could follow the path of the characters to incredible real-world places, meet the actual people there, drink the wine, and experience that which Field Blends brings to otherwise fictional life.

Field Blends is a story of the world as it is today, consideration to the intersection of modernity, technology, nationalism, culture, and the people, pasts, and communities that give each of us roots. It is told through the eyes of friends — wine in hand — in the tumult of love and self doubt, against the backdrop of our ever-changing world. It seeks reconciliation of life amongst the monuments, hideaways, and progressive thought of great European and American cities with memories of hometowns, mother countries, and family. I have written it to be joyful of the world’s beauty and melancholy of its present failures.

This New Year I’ve decided to go with a more expansive top 10 list that I hope will inform your wine and travel aspirations in the year ahead. Cheers, and happy New Year!

Wind rustled through the garden. Soft from afar, then flapping quickly like a rain stick or a far off waterfall as it met the bowed green branches of the tree that hung over a path between bushes over which vines crawled up the arbor, the open door to the vineyard beyond. We're sitting in the garden of Vingården i Klagshamn, Skåne County, in the south of Sweden.