Authored by Brad Todd via The What For Substack,
We bought our house in the same year I discovered Piemonte, and that was fortuitous. The house came with a walk-in wine cellar and the family-owned vineyards strewn across the rolling Italian hills from LaMorra to Serralunga D'Alba provided a learnable collection of producers to fill it up. It is a good thing I have enjoyed the chore of curating this wine because I will not get to enjoy drinking it.
This afternoon, maybe even as you read this, I will be in a long surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital to remove a nasty high-grade malignant tumor from my ethmoid sinus. It is a distant cousin of the cancer blob I had cut out in 2020, after an unnecessary Covid test speared loose a hunk of tumor I did not know was there. The pandemic saved my life once, and it put me in contact with the crackerjack medical team at the world's best otolaryngology unit that will save it again.
Sinus tumors are rare - though I prefer the term "exceptional" as only hundreds of people a year battle these bastards. After what will be a rough post-surgery recovery, I will get radiation and maybe a lagniappe of chemotherapy. But I will not be savoring my amazing Italian wine collection. After my 2020 surgery, I lost my sense of smell for about six months, and my taste overall for a little less than that. My olfactory receptors were removed from my left nostril, but I started with a bloodhound's nose so half of that was plenty to keep. Wine was still complex and wonderful as soon as I recovered from that surgery's trauma. But not this time, not with this surgical plan.
The question I am asking, and also suggesting for you, is what o
