Today I thought that it would be appropriate to answer a few of the questions that I have been asked the most often. Possibly the top one being how did I become involved in the wine trade. We must go back to 1975, when after ten years with IBM, the thought of working with something that improved in complexity and value as it aged intrigued me.

J.E. Lightbourn needed a general sales manager and a gentleman, who sat in on my interview said, “why not hire him, pay him what he wants and send him out to study the wine trade with us in California”.

So off I went to a winery started by two brothers who borrowed a few thousand dollars from a family member and armed with a winemaking recipe they found in their local library, they set up shop.

Three generations later it is still family run. They own 23,000 choice acres on the West Coast (twice the size of Bermuda), about one hundred brands or wineries and annually sell 3 per cent of all wine produced on our planet!

Not only their Gallo family wines, but the likes of Barefoot, Louis Martini and Orin Swift. Ernest and Julio Gallo are no longer with us, but I spent time with Ernest in California, and even Bermuda, and got to know him quite well.

So that is how I became involved with something as totally unnecessary for human survival as poetry, music or even the painted picture.

What is my favourite wine? I believe that it was the “The Maestro” of modern Californian wine André Tchelistcheff, who replied when asked which is better Californian or French wine, “what do you prefer blondes or brunettes”?

I will confess that I love Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon that Burrows Lightbourn and Discovery have such a fine selection of, but there is no way I could judge them above some from the thousands of Chateau properties in Bordeaux.

I have been bowled over by examples from so many countries and I think that André, who was consulting for the historic Simi winery when my wife and I spent a day and an evening with him in the 1980s, had the best reply.

Is it important to use the correct glass? If my wife and I are opening a red, say Drouhin burgundy or maybe their pinot noir from Oregon, we will often get out a crystal burgundy Grand Cru glass as well as one from their West Coast winery.

We will pour a little in each and taste and exchange opinions before we decide which to use.

The large balloon shaped pinot noir glass allows the delicacy of the wine to expand and be concentrated as it travels up and through the narrowing opening of the glass.

Please have at the very least, appropriate pinot, cabernet, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc ones to use. You will detect the subtle difference they make – really!

Now we have to get to the meat of the matter, and it is difficult to know where to start, or how to say goodbye, so let us go back to where it all began.

Home from California in the Spring of 1976, I am going on about Americans making fine wines.

I believe it true to say that not a single restaurant listed a single New World wine and I felt that folks were thinking “that poor boy gave up a good career with IBM and is babbling on such nonsense”.

Then on May 24 of that year I was vindicated! An English wine consultant and writer named Steven Spurrier decided to have a blind tasting in Paris to celebrate the bicentennial of the United States.

The panel was a who’s who of French culinary and wine elite and the finest of Bordeaux and Burgundy was poured with a few selected Californian counterparts.

Astoundingly, Napa Valley placed first with both red and white. “Not bad for kids from the sticks” Time magazine said on its cover about “Judgment of Paris” as it will be for ever known.

Soon after I came up with an idea that would be called Grape Expectations, and it would run in this newspaper twice a month.

I took a bottle to their photographer who would take a black and white picture and then enjoy the wine at home with his wife.

I wrote about it, and it would be framed in a standard ad space. On and off I was still submitting in the early 2000s when the Mid-Ocean News switched to a tabloid size, and we went to a full page in it with far more information in this internet age.

I think it was shortly after the last publication of that newspaper in 2009 that I was approached by The Royal Gazette to ask if I would write a weekly one that would take on the look of an actual newspaper column – an advertorial – they would make minor changes to fit their format and style.

An example is grape names where I write Pinot Noir, but they always change it to pinot noir. No worries!

I felt that I would run out of ideas after one year, but I was willing to give it a try.

Now, many years later, and now for Burrows Lightbourn and Discovery Wines, they have decided to move into the future with new ways to promote their wines.

What a wonderful journey I have had, and I must thank all the staff that have been so helpful at The Royal Gazette.

Your chats interested reader, along with e-mails and phone calls will always be in my happy memories (I am still out there at bdamlrobinson@gmail.com).

It is comforting to know that such a keen, knowledgeable, and friendly team are in place at Burrows Lightbourn and Discovery Wines.

If you care to ask what I will be up to now I can say that I have been working on a project since just before Covid-19 burst upon the scene.

Similar to some other Bermuda history books, it does start with a little boy living in a long-gone cottage on Wesley Street in Hamilton, at a time before private cars and motorbikes. We had ration cards to buy food at a small grocery store on the corner of Wesley and Victoria Streets.

But turn the page and it might magically be my wife and I, in the wine cellar of a Michelin Star restaurant in Piedmont, surrounded by 65,000 rare and wonderful bottles, with the owner/chef.

Then I may be on a small boat in a raging storm in the Gulf Stream or even chatting with a brilliant winemaker.

You may turn a page and see a picture of my kindergarten report at age five or my dad’s sports award certificate from 1917.

My tale weaves in and out of such times, adventures, and places and hopefully it will be out and available within months.

Goodbye for now dear reader and fellow enjoyer of the wonders of winemaking talent and Mother Nature.

• This column is a paid-for advertorial for Burrows, Lightbourn Ltd. and Discovery Wines & Spirits written by Michael Robinson. He can be contacted at mrobinson@bll.bm. The Burrows Lightbourn retail store is located Paget (Harbour Road, 236-0355). Discovery Wines & Spirits stores are in Hamilton (Corner of Queen & Reid Street, 232-0090) and Pembroke (Bakery Lane, 296-9463). A selection of their wines, beers and spirits are available online at www.wineonline.bm