"Kermit Lynch" is an United States/American wine importer, author, and winemaker based in Berkeley, California. He is the author of Adventures on the Wine Route which won the Veuve Clicquot Wine Book of the Year award. He is a winner of the James Beard Foundation's "Wine Professional of the Year", and the Chevalier de l'Ordre de Mérite Agricole medal presented by the France/French government for his service to the wine industry. In 2005 he was awarded the insignia of Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur by the French government.

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The tourists used to go down to Sancerre (in the Loire region) for the weekend, taste wines and buy for their cellar, ... Now they can't do that anymore. The cops are right outside the winery ... (Vintners) feel betrayed, these people who have devoted their lives to something they think is beautiful. Now they're told it's criminal.

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Each time a vineyard is passed along to the kids, it has to be divided up, ... Nobody has a large enough plot to make a living.

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I noticed the kids came home talking about chemical equations and the father's scratching his head. I saw it so often -- the father would say, 'I'm an idiot, but my son is a genius. He knows about malolactic fermentation.' Sooner or later all these wines taste the same.

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It began in the '70s, when (French winemaking) parents started sending their son or daughter to enology school to learn about wine.

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Too many of them (Languedoc producers) in my opinion have followed the fad and are trying to make inky black wines with too much oak.

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I like natural wine. If a wine's too technical, I'm turned off.

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With my palate, I love that perfume that keeps coming up.

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