"Are you here for the tasting?"

Erin had stopped everything she was doing. Stopped paying attention to the class. Stopped pointing at a specific region of France. She was just looking at me, curious and excited.

"Sadly, I'm just here to shop."

She brushed it off and stepped out of the room.

"Paul, he has a similar palette to us. Big fan of Nebbiolo. Take care of him."

—

I hadn't been inside Champion Wine Cellars in nearly a year and hadn't been an active wine club member for months, but neither of these things matter because Erin runs an incredible shop and I am her loyal patron.

I first visited Champion in early 2023 after lunch with a friend, when she needed to pick up her monthly bottles. I was taken by how friendly and engaging the staff was, not just about wine, but about me. The wine world can be incredibly pretentious, but it felt as though instead of trying to sell me wine or brag about what they had in stock, they wanted to learn about my life and find out what would fit in it.

Champion's wine club, I would later learn, is quite rare in that it's bespoke — they don't send everyone the same bottles, they send you bottles based on your preferences.

For months, I received a light red, a heavy red, and a "dealer's choice" from Erin and her team, who sought feedback, probably updated their notes, and continued to surprise and delight.

In late 2023, I was on the road a lot, and the texts from the team shifted from "will you be home today to sign for this?" to "can someone sign for this?" which was a gentle acknowledgement that the building concierge was more often the primary touch point for my packages than I was. In early 2024, some friends and I attended a tasting event at Champion and her staff asked about how my building staff was by name.

—

When people ask me about why I love living in Seattle, something I often reference is community. Both in the sense that I grew up here and have many communities that I am a part of thanks to different chapters of my life and also that people here are willing to put in the work and have the posture to be in community with others.

I see this in the way that friends host events and open them to friends of friends or the public, as well as in the way that even semi-regular visits to restaurants or cafes break the transactional barrier and lead to human interactions about anything and everything, not limited to the current context.

In the current time that we're living through, choosing who you show up for and how feels more important than ever. There's so much that we can't control in this world, but being good to each other is well within our grasp.

I feel grateful to have people and places in my life that I want to show up for, and to be on the receiving end of others showing up for me.

As a friend said to me on the phone this week, "care is all the little things."

To the little things! <3