There were a number of influences that led me into writing about wine for a career, but one of the earliest was the writing of Bob Wesley .
Back in 2000, I’d come home from a day of reporting the news at the Independent, grab a beer from the fridge, and plop down on the porch of my green and yellow house on Santa Barbara Street. As I watched the downtown scene zip by, I’d peruse whatever came in the mail that day, which, about once a week, was the mailer from Lazy Acres Market . The beloved grocery store on the Mesa was mostly too pricey for my $7-an-hour wage at that point, but I still scoured the mailer’s central two-page spread to read about which wines were in stock.
This was Bob’s domain, the place that advertised the latest bottles he curated for the market’s bustling wine section. In short, punchy passages, he’d weave intriguing tales about the winemakers, vineyards, and/or regions behind each selection, revealing exciting sagas behind brands near and far.
As a 22-year-old fresh out of boozy Isla Vista, that’s how I learned that there was so much more to wine than alcohol. As a young storyteller myself, I discovered that there was so much to uncover in Santa Barbara County’s wine scene alone, not to mention the world at large. I could not have predicted how far this journey would go — I’m actually in the Roussillon region of southern France for wine writing work as you read this newsletter — but I’ve never forgotten that Bob opened my eyes to the bottomless pit of stories to find in wine.
As for his own career as a wine merchant, Wesley moved on from Lazy Acres to open The Winehound, first downtown on Chapala Street in 2008 and then up at La Cumbre Plaza. Then he opened Savoy Wines on Anapamu Street in 2017, which morphed into the Meritage Wine Market in 2020 that still exists. He left Meritage two years later and moved to the Santa Ynez Valley, retiring right in the middle of wine country.
Wesley never stopped writing, most often for Food + Home Magazine . But over the past year, as Bob and I traded the occasional email usually prompted by one of these newsletters, I started feeling like we could all use a bit more of his insight into wine.