Meet Doug Pike

1. The pivotal wine that “did Doug in”…”A 67 Chateau d’Yquem. Nearly didn’t get to drink it. My sister inadvertently opened it, to have with her tuna sandwich. She thought it was a dry wine.”
2. The pivotal cartoon experience…”A cartoon I drew while taking art classes at ASU. I remember drawing two women engaged in conversation. There was real rapport between the two characters. That drawing really stuck in my mind.”
3. Doug's career role models are…”Al Capp, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks.
4. If he weren’t drawing, he’d...”Be painting, sculpting, writing.”
5. He finds inspiration from…”Family, friends.”
6. He finds humor in…”Just about everything.”
7. The wine equivalent of the Victoria’s Secret Million Dollar Bra is…”Dom Perignon.”
8. At the end of the day…”I set up my telescope.”

Over the last week, I‘ve discovered Doug Pike has many facets, and that we only touched upon a few during our brief email interlude. A former drug/liquor store owner from New Jersey, Doug Pike learned the wine business the old school way: He listened. He engaged in countless conversations with his dad; he bent the ear of the salesmen he worked with. He attended auctions, questioned his customers and visited wineries.

Doug got into cartooning professionally about 16 years ago, although he says that as far back as grammar school he was “an incessant doodler, filling my notebook pages with all kinds of drawings.” He originally specialized in business cartoons, of which he’s done about 1,000, but occasionally the subject of wine would work its way into his pieces. He began to set those cartoons aside, thinking it might be a unique niche to develop. When he’d gathered about a dozen, he started to send queries to wine-related websites.

“Robert Parker was one of the first to give me a shot,” Doug says. 

Five years and 365 cartoons later, Doug has become a recognized fixture at Parker’s online version of The Wine Advocate. He’s published a collection of about 100 cartoons called Gone With the Wine, and he’s branched out into the wine labeling world with Richard Smith of Stoney Creek Wine Press, whose often tongue-in-cheek wine labels have even been featured on the TODAY Show.

Doug believes cartoons can be an effective educational platform for wine, a subject that’s often perceived as stuffy or overwhelming. Or both. In fact, several wine schools have purchased his works. “The cartoons often depict, in an exaggerated way, the problems that people initially have getting their arms around the subject of wine,” he explains. “And, they can effectively be used as conversation initiators in a classroom setting."

A man who approaches wine with humor, humility and curiosity – like I said, we’ve only touched on a few of the many facets of Doug Pike. I look forward to discovering more, if only through his art, over the next few years.