05 Jan Please The Palate January 2026 Newsletter

✨🍷Happy New Year! Welcome to 2026! 🍷✨

I can’t believe another year has passed, but I’m ready to turn the page. 2025 was a challenging year on many levels. With continued shifts in the wine industry, I felt it in my work: events slowed, writing opportunities disappeared, and the landscape changed in real time. But I didn’t let that stop me, and won’t.

I continued to write non-stop, filling my blog with new stories. I continued building the event I created, The Festival of Undiscovered Grapes. I picked up new consulting projects and, somewhat unexpectedly, spent a lot of time on the road.

In fact, I traveled 121 days in 2025, with 50 of those days abroad. I took six press trips to Italy – two to Sicily, two to Tuscany, and two to Piemonte – and also traveled to London for the London Wine Fair. Closer to home, I crisscrossed California, visiting Palm Springs, San Diego, Cienega Valley, Napa, Lodi, the Sierra Foothills, Livermore (twice), Sonoma (twice), Paso Robles (three times), and Santa Barbara County (seven times). I also traveled to Oregon and New York.

While I didn’t anticipate quite this much travel at the start of the year, I ultimately found myself on the road for nearly a third of it. Let’s see what travel 2026 brings!

2025 also brought meaningful recognition for my work. The Festival of Undiscovered Grapes (formerly The Festival of Forgotten Grapes) was named the #2 Best Wine Festival by USA Today 10BEST – an incredible honor, especially in just our second year.

I was also the recipient of the 2024–2025 Wine Travel Awards “The Brightest Journey” award, which I received at the London Wine Fair.

Wine Travel Awards coverage included:

• Wine Travel Awards 2024-2025: Where Wine, Travel and Culture Converged at London Wine Fair
• Fourth Edition – Wine Travel Awards 2024-2025 – Announces the Winners!

I was profiled in several publications:

• Voyage LA: Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Allison Levine of Los Angeles
• Hopskip: Planner Perspectives: Calm, Curated, and Intentional: How Allison Levine Elevates Wine Events Nationwide

And I contributed to a few collaborative pieces as well:

• Liquid Icons – Fine Wine & Rare Spirit Research: The 2025 Golden Vines Report – Finger on the Pulse (Liquid Icons)
• Winefullness Magazine: 15 Questions Introduced

As I look ahead to 2026, I’m feeling energized and optimistic. The past year was a reminder that this industry, and this work, is always evolving, and so am I. There are new projects taking shape, new destinations on the calendar, and exciting momentum building around the work I care about most.

Up next is an update on The Festival of Undiscovered Grapes, the event I created to celebrate California’s under-the-radar grape varieties and the producers championing them. After that, you will find links to all of the podcast interviews and articles I have published since my last newsletter. Thank you, as always, for reading, for following along, and for being part of this journey with me. I am looking forward to another year of discovery in the glass and beyond.

View the entire Please The Palate January 2026 Newsletter