The light goes amber around seven now. You notice it on the side of a building, or in a glass somebody left on the table — and then it’s gone, and the evening is a different thing entirely.
Three bottles will see you through that hour beautifully. Six sees you through the season — and does something three can’t.
Open two at once
This is the real reason to take the larger box, and it has nothing to do with price.
Pour two of these side by side on the same night. Not a tasting, not a ceremony — just two glasses on the table while you’re doing whatever you were going to do anyway. Within about ten minutes you’ll notice something you couldn’t have named before, because the only way to taste more acidity is to have less acidity sitting next to it.
That’s the entire trick. It’s how I learned, it’s how every person I’ve taught has learned, and it costs you nothing but a second glass. One bottle on its own can only ever be nice. Two bottles teach you something.
Six gives you enough to keep doing it without feeling like you’re using the good stuff up.
What you get
Six bottles from small growers and real places. Nothing here is stacked in a grocery aisle, and nothing is here because it was on offer that week.
Tasting notes for each one, written by me rather than copied off a distributor sheet. Plain language — what it tastes like, why, and what to eat with it. No “hints of forest floor.” You should be able to read one out loud without feeling like a fraud.
And yes, it’s better value per bottle than the three. I’d rather you took it for the first reason, but I’m not going to pretend the second one isn’t true.
How I pick them
I buy what I’d open at my own table, in the season it belongs to. That’s the whole method.
Late summer into autumn is the most forgiving stretch of the year for wine — the reds have stopped being heavy, the whites haven’t turned austere, and almost everything improves with an extra half hour in the glass. Six bottles is enough range to show you what that actually means.
No subscription
Buy this box and stop there. No auto-renewal, no account to manage, nothing to cancel at 11pm on a Tuesday.
A new collection a few times a year. Take the ones you want.
Getting it to you
- Free pickup in Lake Tapps. I’ll email to arrange a time, usually within a day of your order.
- $20 local delivery within about twenty miles.
- $35 anywhere else in Washington State.
Someone over 21 has to sign for it, so send it somewhere a person will be. Washington State only — wine shipping is regulated state by state, and I’d rather do one state properly than half of forty.
