In brief, this blog is not exactly meant for you. This is a way for the authors to share recommendations with each other and with their friends. Since meeting at language school in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil in the summer of 2005, Nathan and Sheridan kept in touch through their respective graduate school years, sharing notes on everything from economics to wine, from relationships to navigating Washington DC’s shark-infested career waters. More recently, their shared passion for wine has led to budding wine-related projects, including planting a couple of rows of Barbera in Nathan’s backyard and making wine (to be clear, Nathan makes it, Sheridan helps drink it). After years of struggling to keep up with their own tasting notes, while fielding countless friends’ desperate text messages from wine stores and markets asking for beverage recommendations or that special recipe to impress the new love interest, Nathan and Sheridan created this blog to capture their developing tastes and recommendations for friends to enjoy . . . and the two of them to remember.

If you don’t know Nathan or Sheridan, this blog might help you navigate wine shops and restaurants in a better way than crowd-sourced options: a quick browse through the content will give you a sense of how your own tastes compare to theirs, whether these guys really know what they’re blathering on about, and, thus, whether you can rely on their recommendations. With no journalistic aspirations in play, hopefully they’ll free the reviews from the self-absorbed bloviating found on most crowd sourced options and keep things straight, to the point, and useful.