It was in my fortieth year that everything changed.
My wife Lisa and I had spent twenty years together without a drop of alcohol between us — a tradition inherited from both our families and one I held without much question. Then we took a trip to Italy for our twentieth anniversary, and I discovered something I hadn’t expected: that wine, in the hands of farmers who’d been tending the same hillsides for generations, wasn’t a recreational beverage. It was a way of life.
I was introduced to long, slow dinners that began at eight and ended near midnight. To a carafe of simple table wine served in stemless tumblers as casually as we’d pour sweet tea back home. To the idea that the people making the wine weren’t the pretentious snobs I’d imagined — they were hardworking stewards of the land with a generational connection to something beautiful.
I came home a different person. And I haven’t been the same since.
About This Blog
Bottle Musings isn’t a wine review site. You won’t find me scoring wines on a hundred-point scale or debating tannin structure with excessive gravity. What you will find are stories.
Stories about a bottle of 1997 Brunello that started it all on a parapet in Montalcino. About a rainy afternoon in Sonoma, a double rainbow, and the unexpected hospitality of a family betting everything on their first harvest. About shared tables in Williamsburg, Barolo country, the Rhône Valley, and a little restaurant in Valpolicella where the Amarone tasted like it had been waiting just for us.
Every bottle tells a story. Some are just more eloquent than others.
About Tim (and Lisa)
I’m Tim Dammon. I live in Williamsburg, Virginia, with my wife Lisa — my co-taster, travel partner, and the better half of every story on this site.
I’m a certified sommelier through the International Sommelier Guild — though I’ll confess I didn’t pursue that credential to work in the industry. I pursued it because it fed my insatiable desire to learn anything and everything about wine: the history, the science, the regions, the people behind the labels. The certification gave shape to a passion that had been building since that first carafe in Florence.
Our three kids have grown up hearing these stories, and they’ve been known to pull a bottle from the collection on occasion themselves. The cellar has grown to around 150 bottles — none of them terribly expensive, all of them waiting for the right moment and the right company.
Pull up a chair. I’ll open something good.