The 12 Drop Rule: Getting the Most Out of Wine and Life

An empty bottle of wine is a bittersweet experience, creating a natural pause as friends debate whether or not to open the next bottle. It's a time for reflection, as one experience ends and another begins.

Retired professor and wine lover Patrick Drinan notes, however, that a seemingly empty bottle is an illusion. Turn it upside down and a few remaining drops flow out—as many as twelve or more. In these last dregs, Drinan sees opportunities—for conversation, for play, and for personal growth.

In this creative self-help tome, The 12 Drop Rule, Drinan transforms those last trickles of wine into an opportunity for self-reflection and a chance to clarify a set of individualized practical wisdoms for personal growth. Basing his system on the ancient Greek game of cottabus, where wine was flicked at targets during philosophical discourse, Drinan offers the tools to shape your "persona terroir," or inner landscape of thought and commitment.

Chapter four presents an imagined conversation between Thomas Jefferson and Epicurus, two great lovers of wine who were fascinated by the opportunities to define wisdom. This fascinating and insightful book serves as a reminder of wine's close connection with philosophy—as well as its enduring advocacy of good conversation and friendship.

Married for forty-seven years, Patrick Drinan has a longstanding love of wine, especially wine produced on the "sacred geography" of Virginia. Drinan holds a PhD in government from the University of Virginia and spent forty-two years as a university professor in higher education, including seventeen years as dean.