Dale Robertson

Dale Robertson, a retired sports journalist turned wine blogger/wine-tour guide, and his wife Deborah, a retired educator, have been traveling annually to France since the mid-1980s. In 1998, they built a house in the picaresque Ubaye Valley 70 miles above Nice near the Italian border, that they share with several Houston-area friends.

A University of Houston graduate who grew up in El Paso, Robertson was with the Houston Post from 1972 through 1990, then worked for the Houston Chronicle until February 2019. He was named Texas Sports Writer of the Year in 2010, and sports-writing took him to France for multiple French Opens, the Tour de France during the Lance Armstrong years and the 1998 soccer World Cup. He also wrote a weekly wine column for the Chronicle from 2008 through 2021. He has served on the Alliance Française board since the early 2000s and became board president last year.

You can follow Robertson’s regular wine blog at thesportywineguy.com and he frequently podcasts with Dr. Jeremy Parzen (dobianchi.com). He’s also affiliated with gourmettours.biz, for whom he recently co-hosted a nine-day tour through the South of France.