By Mark Ellwood, Bloomberg

Dan Dunn spent much of his adult life drinking, albeit for professional reasons (he’s the former nightlife columnist for Playboy). He’s a whisky aficionado, cocktail expert, and beer enthusiast. The only tipple that never tempted him was wine.
So when he finally decided he needed a break from the fast lane, Dunn decided to take a slow road trip around the U.S.—and it occurred to him he could structure it around eliminating his last booze blind spot.

So on that 15,000-mile trip, he set himself a single mission: learn everything he could about wine.

He turned that booze-soaked road trip into the new memoir-slash-travelog, “American Wino: A Tale of Reds, Whites and One Man’s Blues”. He wanted to understand, in particular, how wine drinking and making had changed stateside since the Judgment of Paris, when upstart American wines bested French vintages in a blind tasting. That was 40 years ago this May, and the unexpected New World victory kickstarted a Californian wine rush. After sipping his way through dozens of vineyards across the country, he has a prediction for what’s next. “At least right now, they’re not making wine anywhere in the United States better than California. Forty years from now? Things are going to look a whole lot different.”

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