A Report From Wine Explorer Diego Samper
Paris, France
I like movies.
Or at least I used to enjoy award season for what it promised.
At its best, it worked like a guide. Not perfect, but useful. Out of all the films coming out that year, here were a few worth paying attention to. A signal through the noise.
Now the signals feel blurrier.
There are more movies than ever. Some never make it to theaters. Others go straight to streaming. A film can collect nominations even if most people never had a chance to see it on the big screen. The old scoreboard used to be visible. Box office numbers were public. You could sense when a film connected with audiences.
Today, most of the metrics live inside streaming platforms.
So the ceremony keeps getting bigger, but the guidance feels smaller.
The carpet. The speeches. The campaigns. The solemn faces of people pretending to stand above the circus while standing squarely in the middle of it.
A few years ago, comedian Ricky Gervais opened the Golden Globes with a line that made the room laugh and squirm at the same time. His advice to the winners was simple: if you come up to collect the prize, maybe just take the award, thank the people who helped you, and move along.
In his words: come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, thank your God, and f* off.
Crude, yes.
But funny because it landed on something people were already feeling.
The ceremony had become bigger than the thing it was supposed to celebrate.
Wine can drift that way too.
Some bottles arrive already surrounded by applause: scores, medals, glowing descriptions. Sometimes you open the bottle and everything makes sense. Other times you quietly wonder if maybe you missed something.
Over time, I’ve come to trust a simpler test.
The Evening
You open a bottle. The grill is hot. There are steaks involved. Someone shows up a little late carrying bread or a salad nobody asked them to bring. Conversation starts before dinner does.
Smoke drifts from the grill. A cork pops somewhere behind you. Someone is already pouring the first glass before the food even hits the table. The bottle moves around. A little splash here, a refill there. Nobody is analyzing it too much. Nobody is giving a speech. The wine is simply doing its job.
That’s the experience that matters.
Interestingly enough, wine often shines most when it isn’t trying to be the center of attention, when it’s simply part of the meal, part of the conversation, part of the night unfolding around it.
That spirit exists in many places.
You see it in Argentina, where wine and grilling seem to belong to the same language. But you see it just as easily in Italy, in France, in Spain. Anywhere people open bottles to accompany life rather than perform for it.
That’s the spirit we try to follow when selecting wines for the club.
Healthy vineyards. Clean grapes. Thoughtful winemaking. Nothing complicated for the sake of it. Just wines that feel honest when you open them.
These are wines we found compelling enough to bring home. What happens after the cork comes out is entirely up to you.
If this were award season, think of them as our nominees.
They made it through our tastings and onto the shortlist.
The final vote happens at your table.
The Arrival
That’s why it’s been so satisfying this week to start seeing the Argentine shipment landing in your homes.
That moment never gets old.
A bottle begins somewhere in a vineyard in the mountains. It passes through harvest, fermentation, barrels, warehouses, trucks, paperwork, and a long stretch of patience. Then one day it shows up in a box at someone’s door.
And suddenly the whole story becomes simple again.
A bottle on the kitchen counter. One next to the stove. Maybe one already open near the grill.
We didn’t bring in enormous quantities of these wines either. That’s part of working with small producers. Their wines exist in real limits, and it’s already fun to see some bottles drawing attention.
Not because they won a ceremony.
But because they found their way to the right tables.
And honestly, that’s the best outcome I can hope for.
Because in the end, the goal isn’t to win an award.
It’s just to open a bottle with people you like and think, yes, this feels right.
So if you’ve opened one already, send me a photo.
I want to see the grill.
I want to see the table.
And I want to know which bottle made the evening a little better.
Skip the speech.
Open the bottle.
Salud,
Diego Samper
The Wine Explorer
