When we opened the new wine cellar in the Don and Sherry Kuhl Art Gallery in the tower at Wizard Academy, it was beautiful but for one detail: we had no wine.

An angled “display shelf” had been built to show visitors what was stored in the 11 vertical slots above each displayed bottle, but alas, there were no bottles on display.

During the tower tour on opening night I said, “My hope is that generous alumni will each send a case or two of wine so that our students can go to the cellar when they’re in the mood, select a bottle to carry into class with them and think good thoughts about the benefactor who bought it for them. Hopefully, we’ll have enough people ‘Pay It Forward’ to keep the cellar filled with wine chosen by the students themselves. After all, it’s their wine cellar.”

Since then,
Bill Laidlaw,
Paul Sherman,
Mark Fox,
Anthony Dina,
Michael Redman,
Norm Myhr,
Gary Silverman and
Mike Diamond
have each sent
a case,
or two,
or three.

Opening the cases has been fun. This is the wine Mike Diamond sent you. Based in Los Angeles, Mike is America’s most successful plumber.

My plan is to show you a bottle each week along with the name of the person who sent it to you. The top bottle in each vertical row is tagged with the name of the donor who bought that vertical. The wine cellar rule is to read the tag so you’ll know who bought the wine you’re drinking, but drink only the 11 untagged bottles. That last one with the nametag is to be saved for the person whose name is on it.  

We’ll always leave the last bottle to drink with the friend who bought it.