Robin Goldstein is a writer, economist, and founder of the food and wine publishing house Fearless Critic Media. He is the author of several books including The Wine Trials, the world’s bestselling guidebook to cheap wine. His most recent book is Can Legal Weed Win? The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics, co-authored with Daniel Sumner and published in 2022 by the University of California Press.
Robin’s World is the home of Robin Goldstein’s food, travel, and creative writing. His other work, including books, pop articles, essays, and academic articles, many including full text, can be found on his University of California, Davis faculty page.
Another current creative project is The War on Pleasure, an informational musical comedy that includes 10 songs and stories about food experts and beer snobs. The show is designed to accompany Robin’s next book, provisionally entitled The Age of Experts. It premiered in Houston in 2022 as a one-man show (with Robin singing and playing piano), and has been performed for modest-sized audiences in a few other cities. The music is now being re-scored for five-string viola in preparation for recording in spring 2024, and the show is under development for larger stages.
Robin is based at UC Davis, where he is a research economist and director of the Cannabis Economics Group. His research and writing focuses on consumer prices, preferences, quality, snobbery, and expert opinion in the food, drink, and weed markets. He publishes his work in academic journals and a variety of popular media outlets.
Robin has an A.B. from Harvard University in neuroscience and philosophy, a J.D. from the Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Bordeaux. He is an Associate of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for Wine Economics and a Fellow of the American Association of Wine Economists.
He was born in New York City, grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, and currently splits his time between the East, West, and Gulf Coasts.
So basically, he’s a dilettante.
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For more details about Robin’s background, you can go to this page.