I write about food, wine, spirits, music, and anything else that strikes my fancy.
For 24 years I served as Senior Correspondent for Wine & Spirits Magazine, where I was chief critic for domestic wines and author of long form feature articles on California, Oregon, Washington, and New York state wine, wine-growing, and wine culture. During much of this time, I was also a regular contributor of articles on wine, food, and restaurant culture for the Los Angeles Times. Additionally, my work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Decanter, Lucky Peach, Zester Daily, and the Robb Report.
I’ve judged at a number of domestic and international wine competitions, including the San Francisco International, the Los Angeles International, Dallas Morning News, Tech Som, the Critic’s Challenge in San Diego, Concours Mondiale in Brussels, and the Six Nations Wine Challenge in Sydney, Australia. I’ve been an instructor at UCLA Extension for their business of wine program, and regularly moderate panels on viticulture, wine tasting, and the world’s wine regions.
My book American Rhône: How Maverick Winemakers Changed the Way Americans Drink was published in October, 2016. In 2017, it was shortlisted for the Andre Simon Book Awards, and won the Gourmand Prize for Best New World Wine Book. I was development editor for Wine & Place: A Terroir Reader, an in depth account of terroir studies drawn from a compendium of global texts written by Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein.
I get around. I’ve traveled extensively in all of the U.S. wine producing regions, as well as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, the Republic of Georgia, New Zealand, and Australia. In a typical year I will taste more than 3,000 wines.
More than anything, I’m interested in storytelling. I love wine, but I love it most because it is such a marvelous vector for stories.
Patrick Comiskey 