So it’s January–time to look forward on the year to come with 
excitement, trepidation, and at least the illusion that the slate is clean, that change is possible, that I can make some resolutions worth keeping. Here they are:
1. I resolve to devote some time and attention to regions that slip off my radar. Most of these lie on the southern end of the globe–my radar seems to give out as it crosses into the southern hemisphere. Chile, for one, is hard for me to locate; South Africa is a no-man’s-land, and aside from a few Sauvignon blips on the screen, New Zealand, for me, is largely a murky expanse. I resolve to get up on these southern fronts.
2. I resolve to do more acid. This is not going to be at the expense of other mind-altering substances I have on hand. What I have in mind is more palate-altering: in this age of warm vintages and global change, I need refreshment. Acid breathes life into a wine, it is the wine’s pulse, and without it, a wine is predictably inert. I’m going to champion its life-giving, lip-smacking properties. I’m going to drink wines with a spine.
3. I resolve to get out of my comfort zone, and try new wines from new places, or revisit ones I’ve ignored. Why is it, for example, that I always forget about sherry, especially when I have a nice bowl of Marcona almonds in front of me? How do I overlook the ever-affordable pleasures of Madeira, or tawny Port? Why do I shy away from Italian whites with odd indigenous names to wash down my plateaux de mer? I pledge to pull a Poulsard, to relish a Roussillon, to give a nod to Nantes when next I slurp an oyster, to explore Pineau d’Aunis and Romorantin, two fascinating, all-but-forgotten varieties from the Touraine. As the world’s thirst for wine grows ever larger, more unusual, uncomfortably interesting wines will make their way to market, and they deserve a look.
4. I resolve to let it be okay if I’m only charmed and not bowled over. Since when is it a requirement that every wine must be a 90+ point experience (to use the parlance of our time)? Do we require such things of meals, baseball games, carnal acts? No. For the most part, life’s activities are about fulfilling needs, and that little joys can be as pleasing as monumental ones, and wine can play an immeasurable role there. So I resolve to leave room in the world for Maconnais whites, for Australian Semillon, for German Sylvaner, for Edelzwickers, for Soave, Prosecco, Beaujolais, Gruners by the litre, little Dolcettos and Cotes du Rhône, IGTs and Jovens, and Mendoza Malbecs, lots of them.
5. I resolve to trust my palate. I’m going to smirk at the critics, blow off the pundits, log off the bulletin board, close the magazine, throw out the latest marketing blitz (‘Natural!’ ‘For Women!’ ‘For Fish!’) and gather a half-dozen friends, get out a half-dozen brown bags, pour a half-dozen wines blind and find out 
what’s what, letting the wines do the talking. I’m going to find out what’s been over-hyped, what’s been ignored, and where I stand on them. Most of all, I’m going to recalibrate my own ability to discern what I like and don’t like, and try not to be so wrapped up in what other people think about what makes a wine good. I’m going to remember how to make up my own mind.
6. I resolve to toss all but the most indispensable of gadgets. We each have our personal code of accessorization, of course, 
but really, how many wine bags, drip-catchers, instant chillers, and suction wine preservers does one person need? When did it become necessary to own wine jewelry, hoop earrings for stemware? And as for anything that purports change (‘Breathing Glasses!’ ‘Magnetic pourspouts!’ ‘Tannins-B-Gone!’), may I point out that most of the gadgets that have appeared on the market in the past year claim to do something that wine does all by itself. It doesn’t need enhancement.
7. And while I’m at it, I resolve to call out wines that arrive in the bottle “already enhanced.” So many processes now alter a wine’s character in the winery–spinning, de-alking cones, bags of acid, coloring agents, oak chips, tannin dust, even the water that’s added back to woefully overripe grapes to keep down alcohol levels. The resulting wines may taste good, but many taste artificial, inauthentic, processed. They are to real wine what a Tater Tot is to a potato. And while I acknowledge that it’s a big old world, big enough to include Tater Tots, I don’t have to drink them.
8. On the flip side, I resolve to wade through the fact and the bullshit with regard to so-called natural practices. It is vogue now to refer to your winery as carbon neutral if you’ve recycled a water bottle, or refer to your vineyard work as biodynamic if you have a cow horn on your dashboard, or to call your practices organic simply because once, last spring, you caught a whiff of manure. And yet far less ambitious practices than these have been trumpeted in the pages of press releases from overeager, overzealous publicists thinking that the very legitimate movement toward earth-responsible practices in the wine industry is little more than a marketing edge (when I think of the thousands of trees that died so I could read a press release about these natural wines it makes me crazy). As for the wines, it matters not if the wine is ‘natural’ if it’s undrinkable. So by all means taste them, enjoy them, but don’t be deceived.
9. I resolve to seek balance in all things. Nearly all critics believe in balance, of course. Not only does balance define great wine, it is perhaps its sole overriding criterion. Arguments arise, however, in defining where you want to set your middle register–is a car stereo with the treble and bass levels set at +11 balanced? Does thick, jammy fruit with a payload of residual sugar counterbalance high alcohol? It doesn’t for me. Which is not to say I always love restraint in a wine. If I may paraphrase a recent Esquire magazine: Everything in moderation, including moderation.
10. Oh, and exercise. I’ve got to get some exercise.