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What Happens Next
Keep Me Out of Spam
A QUICK STORY…
A few years ago, I sat on the floor of my hotel room in South Kensington at 11 PM eating one bite of each of eleven different cheeses.
No plate. No plan. No dignity.
Mr. W&D was narrating the scene to my sister on WhatsApp, because marriage is apparently a surveillance state with better lighting.
I had bought the cheeses that afternoon at Borough Market in a state of evangelical hunger and euphoria.
I had a flight home in the morning. No functional refrigeration. Customs was not going to let me import a raw dairy crime scene back into the US.
So I ate them. Significantly drunk on a Sauternes I had not paid for.
Not my most elegant hour. But possibly my most honest.
Because that night I realized something irritating.
I knew how to build a cheese course for everyone else’s table. I knew what to buy. I knew what to pour.
I knew which cheese made people close their eyes for half a second like they had remembered they were alive.
And yet at my own dinner parties, I was still the woman getting up every seven minutes. Refilling. Checking. Fussing. Making five-course meals. Apologizing to the oven like it had feelings.
And on the nights I wasn’t hosting? Microwaved leftovers off a plate I hadn’t bothered to find a placemat for. Like I deserved less because nobody was watching.
I had built a beautiful table for everyone else. And then sentenced myself to kitchen prison whether the guests were coming or not.
That was the night this thought crystallized:
Sip, slice, repeat. Wine, cheese, and calling it dinner.
Today, it is finally yours.
Introducing Sip, Slice, Repeat
A region-by-region guide to pairing wine, cheese, and calling it dinner.
France. Spain. Italy. Britain. The American South. Plus a bonus Greek chapter, because my father is Greek and I enjoy staying alive.
Each chapter includes:
Specific cheeses, named and priced, findable at a normal grocery store.
Specific wines, real producers, real prices, with the Baroness’s verdict on which are worth your Tuesday and which are just charging you for the label.
Pairing tables you will screenshot before every store run.
Hosting moves that make the whole thing feel intentional, whether the guest list is eight, two, or you in a robe watching something faintly ridiculous at 9 PM.
The writing made me laugh, and the pairing tables are perfect to screenshot before heading to the store. I’m definitely not building one of those giant Pinterest charcuterie boards that requires three stores and emotional support.
Cara G., Mt. Juliet, TN
It’s not a cheese encyclopedia (boring). It’s not a sommelier exam (no certificate, the Baroness finds them tacky). It’s not a $400 Pinterest board.
It’s the permission slip and the playbook, that lives on your phone for the next time it’s 6:47pm and the voice in your head is being annoying.
This is for you, who has cooked enough dinners in this lifetime to qualify for emotional damages. Tonight, nobody needs a sheet pan. The cheese counts.
What You Get:
Sip, Slice, Repeat (123-page guide) – $27
Instant access. Refund if it doesn’t earn its keep.
The Promise: read it, build one cheese course from it, and if it doesn’t earn its keep, reply to any email and I’ll refund you. The Baroness will not pursue further inquiry. The cheese will forgive you.
The wine is in the fridge. The cheese is at the store. The voice in your head is wrong, and you’ve known it for years.
You are the occasion.
The Baroness: “For less than an overpriced sad salad lunch, darling. That’s not a decision. That’s a rounding error.”
Yours in wine,
Cheers,
Alexandra · Wine & Drama · Chief Instigator