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When I first met Lora Zarubin I never could have imagined that we would find ourselves locked in adjacent cells in the police station of a provincial French town at 3 in the morning. In fact I never thought I’d see her again after our disastrous first encounter, which took place in 1995 at the Grill Room of the Four Seasons hotel. My friend Dominique Browning had recently been appointed editor in chief of House and Garden and she’d decided to ramp up the magazine’s coverage of food and wine. She’d already hired Lora as food editor and Lora was quite adamant that there should be a regular wine column. Dominique, a longtime friend, knew about my passion for wine, and she thought it would be interesting to have someone outside the field write about it. When she

 Just back from Burgundy. Yeah, I know, sounds great. If I had a bottle of La Tache for every person who’s said how lucky I am to get paid to taste wines in places like Napa and Bordeaux and Burgundy I’d be one very happy wino, but the reality of the wine writer’s job—even a part timer like myself—is not necessarily as glamorous as it sounds. Sometimes you wake up in the morning in your rented apartment in Beaune with a little bit of a mal de tete, (aka a gueiles de bois) and that handheld shower thing is not really working and you stop at the café and grab a really bad coffee, which is pretty much the only kind they have in France, and a really good croissant, (though there are bad ones too) before driving

1. Drink less, but better. I don’t necessarily expect to keep this one, but I like to make it every year, and at the end of the year I can tell myself I’m batting 500; even if I don’t drink less, I do tend to drink better as I learn more and as the older wines in my cellar reach maturity. And it’s my firm belief that the better the wine, the less it hurts you in the morning.

2. Drink more Riesling. Riesling is one of the food-friendliest wines in the world, and every wine merchant and sommelier you encounter will think you’re cool if you ask for it. Germany is the source of the world’s greatest Rieslings, which tend to be low in alcohol and high in refreshing acidity. Many people are scared away by