Please join me in welcoming John Anderson as a regular columnist to Wine Review Online.
Although I’ve been aware of his wine writing—and other writing—for years now, we’ve met exactly once…at a baggage carousel in New York, where he hailed our mutual friend, WRO columnist 
Michael Apstein, as Apstein and I were returning from some wine-soaked adventure in Europe.
So, though I can’t claim to know John more than in passing, we are off to a great start, on account of an important fact: Of all our columnists during my 15-year run as editor of WRO, he’s the first to write a first column introducing himself.
Consequently, my work is nearly done here, but as his column is more an intro to his wine writing than his broader work, let’s detail both here, so you’ll know with whom you’re dealing when you dig in:
John Anderson, a sixth generation Texan and longtime New Yorker, has been writing about wine for almost four decades. For many years a Contributing Writer and regular tasting panelist at Wine & Spirits, he has been wine columnist for The New York Observer, Boston magazine, and The American Lawyer magazine, and his wine writing has appeared in New York magazine, Food & Wine, Texas Monthly, and Fortune, among other venues.
John received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale (1983) and taught American Studies and English at Yale, Penn and Swarthmore. He is the author of well-received non-fiction books about the 1985 MOVE Bombing in Philadelphia (Burning Down the House, Norton), the travails of the Barnes art collection (Art Held Hostage, Norton, in both hardback and a revised paperback), and the Abramoff and DeLay political scandals (Follow the Money, Scribner). He appeared as one of the lead talking heads in the much praised documentary, “The Art of the Steal,” which was largely based on his Art Held Hostage. His print and film work has come in for praise by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York, The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Time, and Newsweek.
John lives in Ossining, New York with his wife, son, mother-in-law and four cats.
One wonders about the four cats (I love cats, but what…was the 3rd a bit lacking?), yet with writing chops like these, let’s look forward to what he’s got in store for us!
1