When TV and Wine Collide

There are plenty of people who make a lot of money and then decide they would like to own a winery or make wine. Lil John is now making wine in California, Antonio Banderas owns a winery in Spain, Jay-Z launched a Blanc de Blanc champaign, etc. Sometimes it is even a business decision; a brand can become so large that all you have to do is stick the name on a label and slap that label on a bottle of wine and it will fly out the door.

Or at least that is the hope of the makers of the Sopranos' wines. The brand was launched back in September of 2008 (ah the good old days). About a month or so ago, I was sent a few bottles and I am embarrassed at how long it took me to open them up. I got around to popping the corks this past weekend and I was not disappointed.

Nope, not disappointed at all. The wines were as lacking in flavor and typicity as I could have wished. My expectations were that the wine was being sold on its namesake instead of the juice inside, and I feel as if I were right on the money. The Pinot Grigio smelled nice, lots of citrus and grapefruit with a little minerality. However the taste was so off I had to look back at the label to make sure I was not drinking a California Chardonnay. It said made in Friuli. Then I tasted the Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Sangiovese blend. Not bad, but certainly not exciting. There was nothing in the taste that I could point to and say "yup, that's a fruit."

Does that make this wine something to be avoided? Not if you are doing a Sopranos marathon party...

I am only sort of social

I get a lot of people who meet me in one aspect of social media and then decide to include me in ALL aspects of social media. And then I am faced with the delema of whether or not I want hundreds of thousands of people knowing how I look in a Santa Claus outfit.

The answer, simply, is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Let's go through the sites I am a member of one by one:


Twitter (www.twitter.com/RobBralow)

Twitter is a great place to chat with people and share ideas, events, news, philosophy, etc. If you have a food or wine bend to your profile or if you engage me in discussion, yes I will follow you. I would prefer if you would follow me as well, but for the most part I do not care. I am there to talk to people who like to talk about wine.

I do NOT want a direct message after following you, especially if you are not following me and will not allow me to send a direct message back to you. In fact, there is not much that pisses me off more in the realm of Twitter. I also am not going to pay any attention to you if all I see coming from you are links to your blog/store website/promotional event/press release. I will not click on your link and I will not retweet it so that others can see it. On the other hand, if you and I have had some discussions previously about the topic and then you send me your blog post regarding the topic via Twitter, then yes, I will most likely pass it on for others to see.

That being said, come talk to me! I almost always respond and I really, truly, absolutely love striking up conversations with people I do not know. You never know where they might lead you.


LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/robbralow)

I work for a living. Not too profound a statement, but it is true. As such, you can find me on LinkedIn. If you are in the same business I am, I will happily add you to my network. In fact, I probably will even if you are marginally in the same business I am. Business connections can become invaluable when you or someone you know is looking for information or opportunities. Especially in the current job market, it just does not make sense to limit the number of people you are connected to. Sometimes I need vendors, sometimes I need consultants, sometimes I need... who knows what I will need. But that is the point. You never know where life will take you and it only pays to network.


OpenWine Consortium (www.openwineconsortium.org/profile/RobBralow)

Yes, I am there, but I am not really there, because there is no there there. You can find me, you can friend me, you can message me, you can comment on me, and you can read my blog there. But I am NEVER there. Why? Because I get all of the social networking interaction I need from other places. That is not to say that I do not think the OpenWine Consortium is not valuable. I just find other places to do my interactions. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn being the main ones.


MySpace (www.myspace.com/84438513)

I do not use it. I do not want to use it. The only reason I am posting the link is to see how many people actually go to it. And try and be my friend. I will never speak to those people ever again, ever...


Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbralow)

Before you go and click on the above link, I want you to think about what you are doing. This isreally the crux of what I wanted to talk about, and I really believe that this is somewhat of a generational issue.

Five years ago, you could not find an 'adult' on facebook. Everyone was in college and highschool. Then facebook opened itself up to the world and the at first the world shrugged. Now it is THE place to be, advertisers, marketers, promoters all want to be there and want to be my friend. But so many have jumped in without really understanding what Facebook is, and signed on and have begun to "friend" everyone in sight, and then spamming them with everything under the sun. Now I see everything as someone advertising to me, and I ignore more than I've ever ignored. And I was a really lazy teenager...

Then there is the personal side. There is a lot of me on Facebook. I use it all the time and I update it regularly. I go there to see what my friends are doing. I go there to post photos and events and generally interact with people I like.

It has become common practice for people I meet on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to then friend me on Facebook. And it makes sense. Everyone wants to be able to have their stuff in front of me. That's ok, I get it. However, please understand if I do not give you access to some of the slightly more personal information in my life, such as what I did while in a fraternity at school (I was a Chi Phi by the way). I will definitely not add you as a friend until I meet you face-to-face, and even then I give no assurance that I will let you be my "friend."

Silly, perhaps, but I have found that each of these social communities gives different levels of personal insight. Facebook is as personal as it gets without being someone I do drinks with on a regular basis.

Speaking of which, its time for a drink...

I am really interested in making a new contact and getting to know someone new. Just realize that just because I converse with you in 140 characters at a time does not mean that I will then all you to see more.

The view from Roa

A few quick notes from Spain:

I have always found that the wines from any country in the world taste better when you drink them on their home soil. So far, Spain has been no exception. The wines I have had (Rose, Tempranillo (Crianza), Garnacha) have all be delicious and perfect for the heat and the cooler evenings.

The heat is HOT, but luckily dry. Not like that sweltering humidity in New York City...

Check out some of the photos I have taken:

Today I start my NEW JOB!

And now... the announcement I am sure at least three of you have been waiting for...

Today is my first day starting at Gregory White PR.

I am very excited to be working with this company of a few reasons. The people are great and extremely enthusiastic about wine and spirits. The company is also very interested in what social media is and how it will impact (has been impacting...) the wine industry landscape, something I think is extremely important to understand.

And I also get to work with new wines! One of the reasons I started this blog was to force myself to better understand, research, and write about wine I am unfamiliar with and regions that I have little knowledge of. However, I do not think that there is any substitute for hands on learning. To be able to touch a bottle and understand a wine region, with the expectation that you are going to be required to explain everything you know to another person, is a priceless education.

For a list of the clients Gregory White PR represents, you can check here.

I will likely announce more information about the specific clients I will be working with at a later time. I would like a few days to get updated on the procedures that GWPR have (like what the access code for the bathroom is, are there regular after-work drink places... you know the IMPORTANT stuff!!). For now though, I would like to reiterate (as I have in previous posts) that I will never review a product that my company represents in any way.

I have also added another disclaimer to my profile information. It seems a little silly, but with the story about bloggers being put under FTC guidelines, I feel like it is well worth putting two sentences on the side of my blog...

Eight Chilean winemakers walk into a bar...

Last night was the first Wines of Chile Online Blogger Tasting, and it was far from a joke. Michael Green, Wine & Spirits Consultant for Gourmet magazine held a discussion with eight of Chile's winemakers live via video conference.

And bloggers from all over the US got a chance to watch and taste the winemakers' creations.

If you would like to check out descriptions about the wines and the winemakers, you can read about them here.

I thought the tasting was everything a wine blogger could have wanted it to be. The winemakers were loose and dressed casually, Michael was informal and funny, and the wines were very good. Even a three minute break in the action, due to a technical problem, was easy to move past.

It was interesting to see how the bloggers were responding during the tasting. Many latched onto twitter to push out comments and notes as the tasting was happening. You can read the comments here. Already there are many blog posts about the tasting.

In today's online, instant information world, it is hard to say how influential wine bloggers are and how influential they are going to be. Besides my mother, a few friends, and a slew of other bloggers, I am not sure how influential my own blog is. Sure, I have numbers of how many people visit each time I put up a post, I have numbers of how many eyeballs read my words each month, and I know where in the country (or world... yes, my blog is read all over the place... although I think it might be just one person who flies around a lot) the people that read my blog are located. These numbers are tiny when compared to the reach of the wine trade publications. But that is not why I write, so what does it matter anyway?

The great power of blogs are when large groups all talk about the same subject at once. That is where I think marketing is going in the wine world and why events such as this tasting make sense to me.

I thought all of the winemakers did a great job explaining not only their wines but the philosophy of Chile as a major wine player in the world. I tasted the wines with several friends of mine and I do not think there was a wine that the group did not like. My personal favorite was the Errazuriz Single Vineyard Carmenere 2007. For me it was smooth and vibrant, like having rich and ripe blueberries in a glass.

I am going to now start reading the other bloggers' posts to see what they thought was the best. It is very interesting to see how tastes differed.

CORRECTION:

I really should listen to that persistent voice in the back of my head, the one that sounds like my mother. Yesterday I wrote that the Online Blogger Tasting was my idea. It was firmly pointed out to me that I might have been mistaken, as Michael Green made the suggestion to the CEO at RFBinder back in August, whereas I put forth the idea in October. I have absolutely no wish to take credit that is not mine and beg the pardon of Michael Green.

Disclaimer:

I was previously employed by RFBinder Partners and a member of the team in charge of the Wines of Chile account.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #56 – Fine Kosher Wine

The next Wine Blogging Wednesday has been announced! Our host for April is The Cork Dork who has chosen Fine Kosher Wine for Passover. The challenge is to find a fine kosher wine to report back on. The subject, besides being timed to be posted on the last day of Passover, was inspired by a Napa Valley Cabernet that was made in the kosher tradition.

My mother had a very defined view of kosher wine, that if it says manischewitz on the label it has no place on the table. Luckily enough, I know of a few kosher wines that my mother would approve of.

A lot of people mistake kosher as manischewitz as well as Israeli. For those that do not know, manischewitz wine is made here in the US and has nothing to do with Israeli wine.

There are more Kosher wines on the shelves than most people think. I have found Kosher wines from every part of the world and I look forward to tasting a few and seeing what others review.

Cocaine, goes down like a fine wine

Why would you ever compare Cocaine to Wine? I asked that question when I read a quick note about it on Vinography regarding this story from the UK Telegraph.

It really never crosses my mind when I pick up a bottle of wine just how much cocaine I could have had instead. I consider the wine to be enough of a drug to appease the side of my personality that requires mind-altering intoxicants.

Really, what I want to know is what editor decided that title was the one they were going with. Is the UK so progressive in their drug habits that cocaine is now on the menu? Yes, I would like the Beef Wellington with a Chianti Classico and a side of cocaine. No, I have my own snorting straw, thank you.

I also read a New York Times article today about Brazilians taking an excess of ecstasy. Evidently instead of only a stamp on the hand when you enter a nightclub, you also get a party pill.

There was another article on Argentina becoming softer on drugs for personal use. Personally, I think they have the right idea, even if they are doing it for the wrong reasons.

For a subject that in the US has lost a lot of its national focus, it seems that the rest of the world has begun to focus on dugs. I’m just glad that the rest of the world isn’t comparing its drug problems to wine.

Then again, check out this old story about someone smuggling cocaine into Australia in bottles of wine.

Well, if you put it in front of me…

There is really only one thing that stops most people from becoming more knowledgeable about wine. It is not the amount of time they read articles about the regions or a particular winemaker or a particularly good vintage. When it comes down to it, the roadblock is accessibility.

In order to know about wine you need to taste a lot of wine. And I mean A LOT of wine. The last comprehensive wine tasting I helped coordinate had over 800 wines submitted (two bottles of each, that’s 1600 bottles of wine!!). If you have never been in an office with 1600 bottles of wine, I would suggest trying it. The feeling that you have enough alcohol to host the craziest frat party is quite a trip. That is as long as you do not break any of the bottles (another story for another time).

And then when these bottles are open it would seem a shame not to taste them to see what they are like. That’s my point, where do you have the opportunity to taste 800 wines? Do you think you’ve had 800 wines in your life? Any of the wine bloggers that I read regularly (for list, see sidebar) would say, “Yes, I did that Thursday” but for the vast majority of wine drinkers (and I mean SERIOUS wine drinkers) it would take over two years of drinking a different bottle of wine each night (don’t skip a night, otherwise you’ll have to drink two different bottles the next night).

And the crazy part is that 800 wines is just a drop in the bucket! As I posted in The good of wine ratings, there are over 7,000 different wine brands available, and more appearing DAILY!

So, I feel very lucky to be in a position to taste as many wines as I can get my hands on. It lets me explore the tastes I enjoy and the combinations that are possible. Hopefully my personal insights are also useful to my friends (who read this blog?).

However, as I said up front, the main problem is accessibility. My company only works with two (maybe three) wine country groups, so besides those I am limited in my knowledge. But slowly I taste more wines (and I encourage you to do the same) and continue my wine education.

If you are a wine marketer reading this, I accept wine samples (I’d be a fool not to). E-mail me here.

Wines Tasted on December 3, 2008

1) Domaine de la Pepiere Muscadet Sur Lie 2007, 12% ALC, AOC Muscadet Sévre et Maine, Loire, France

2) Lucien Crochet La Croix du Roy 2006, 13% ALC, AOC Sancerre, Loire, France

3) François Pinon Cuvée Traditional 2007, 12.5% ALC, AOC Vouvray, Loire, France

4) Domaine du Closel – Chateau des Vaults La Jalousie 2006, 14% ALC, AOC Savennières, Loire, France

5) Catherine & Pierre Breton Franc de Pied 2006, 12% ALC, AOC Bourgueil, Loire, France

6) Les Petites Roches 2005, 13.5% ALC, AOC Chinon, Loire, France


Recommendations:

These were tasty. Some a little funky, but all well worth checking out.

1) I got some moist slate on the nose. Something that gave it a little funkiness, something I found really pleasant and very natural. The taste was very zesty, lots of lemon/lime.

2) Liked this wine a lot. Aromas of melon, grapefruit with some spring floral smells. Super minerality on the taste, great red grapefruit and lots of zippy acid.

3) It was like putting my nose in a bucket of fresh cut yellow apples. It was sweet and delicious, with interesting marzipan, honey-apple and caramel flavors.

4) Crazy. Well, interesting is a better word. Evidently this wine needs to be decanted over 3 days (3 days?!). I found the nose to be very almond and kind of like raisons from the box. The taste was like taking a hit of amaretto, with a really large hit of acidity at the end. Again, interesting and worth tasting.

5) The red color was beautiful on this wine (and when was the last time I mentioned color, so it was damned pretty). This is a biodynamic wine, so the nose was very crunchy celery. Not my favorite. The taste was herbal with a bit of slightly unripe sour cherry and some black pepper.

6) Again, another pretty colored red wine. A bit darker than the last one. The nose was all bell pepper with some vanilla and sour cherry. The taste reminded me of a nice earl grey herbal, with more sour cherry finish.

Another Thanksgiving, Another Great Memory

I love my mother.

Yes, I think that is a good way to start any blog post. I love my mother for so many reasons, she brought me into this world, she dealt with my diapers, she kept me fed (not an easy task) and she supports me constantly as a single mother.

This past weekend was one of my favorite Thanksgivings I can remember. There is nowhere else I would rather be on Thanksgiving than at my mother’s table. The food is always delicious and the company great. And this year the wine was truly amazing.

A few months ago my mother asked me to go take a look at what she has down in her basement. I went down not expecting too much, it was rather dusty and slightly moist from being embedded in the ground and surrounded by concrete. She and I had gone to Pier 1 to get some cheap wine racks that stack on top of each other so that I could unload the decaying boxes that have been forgotten for many years of their treasures. And treasures I did find!

The prizes that I had found and convinced my mother to open for Thanksgiving were two bottles of Chateau Cheval Blanc 1978. It was like finding a diamond when you had expected a cubic zirconium. Actually, that isn’t fair, my mother has better taste than that. But I certainly did not expect to find such bottles, nor did I expect my mother to open them for Thanksgiving. My parents bought these wines; it was their anniversary year.

But we did! And it was phenomenal. Instead of turkey and the fixings, we had roast beef tenderloin and potatoes. I had several of my friends join us and I really could not have been happier.

You want tasting notes? DELICIOUS! It was so complex with an incredibly long finish and a base earthiness but still some dark berry fruit and… I could seriously go on for another page. As a novice wine geek it was heaven in a glass. Like having that perfect morsel of Belgian chocolate melt in your mouth or enjoying the work of a master artist or being moved by your favorite passage in your favorite book.

For desert we had her classic apple and pecan pies. It was a perfect end to a memorable meal.

And then the next night we had another feast, this time with my mother’s longtime friend from junior high who has been part of the family for as long as I can remember. She and her family came over with their turkey leftovers, and added to our roast leftovers it was another great meal. For this we had a Chilean wine, Altair 2003. Again, a delicious wine and while lacking the decades of winemaking that Cheval Blanc has, still more than a match for the meal and for the company.

It might have come and gone, but the memory still remains. Cheers to you mom, happy anniversary, and thank you, always.

The Art of a Virtual Tasting

Last Friday night at 8 pm I joined a group of other wine geeks to taste wines and compare our notes. We all went through the proper motions: swirl, sniff, sip, swish and swallow (I don’t think anyone spits in this crowd). We were all meticulous in noting the different flavors and aromas that our senses perceived. I might be the only one to admit it, but some of us got a little tipsy. And we did it while we were all hundreds of miles from each other.

We were all participants of a tasting on Twitter Taste Live. On November 19th Lenn Thompson of LENNDEVOURS announced that he was hosting the tasting and that his choice was four wines from Humanitas Winery, a winery owned by Judd Wallenbrock who is also the winemaker. I read Lenn’s blog all the time so I decided to check it out. Judd blogs at Drink Charitably and the concept of his winery is a beautiful one, to make good wine and to give back to charities in local communities where the wines are sold. The profits from the winery go to three primary causes: hunger, affordable housing and illiteracy. They have chosen Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest), Habitat for Humanity, and Reading is Fundamental as their targeting charities, but do not limit the donations to only those. Judd and company are just as likely to donate to local charities that best address these issues in individual communities. One of the best winery missions I have heard to date.

If you’ve never seen or heard of Twitter before, you are not the only one. It might be the latest online craze, but then again it might not. The format of using Twitter Taste Live (TTL) was an interesting one. The notion is that everyone buys the wines and meets at the same time and tweet about them. Yes, that’s the new verb, and no I did not coin it (thank goodness). TTL was created by Craig Drollett, John Hafferty, and Chris Gillis and was originally connected to their retail store Bin Ends. Today TTL has distanced itself from the store and is completely open to the world of the wine industry, especially the consumers. The userbase is currently nearing 500 with participation in 8 countries. Not bad for a site based on tweets.

“The real vision is that this platform is a direct line of communication between consumers and wine makers,” explains Craig. “So far it’s working out very well.”

The tasting itself was very interesting, but turned into a case of the hiccups that won’t go away. I loved being in an online space where there are so many people who love to talk about wine all expressing their opinions of the same wines. The way it works is that as long as your tweet has #ttl included then it will pop up on the live feed. The only problem was that every ten to fifteen minutes or so the live twitter feed (I almost said tweet feed, but that seemed wrong somehow) would cut out. The only thing that really kept everything together was Matt doing a live video feed from his house.

All said and done, it was a good experience. The wines we tasted were:

• Humanitas Sauvignon Blanc 2006, 13.8% ALC, Monterey County, California, USA


• Humanitas Oak Free Chardonnay 2007, 13.8% ALC, Monterey County, California, USA


• Humanitas Gap’s Crown Pinot Noir 2006, 14.6% ALC, Sonoma Coast, California, USA


• Humanitas Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, 14.2% ALC, Paso Robles, California, USA

My clear favorite and that of the two others I tasted with (ok, so it is also nice to taste wine with live people too) was the Chardonnay. It was that classic pear and apple that Chardonnay should produce and had a great balance on the taste. The Cabernet started coming through for me after it sat out a while; I had not expected to need to decant it. When I first tasted the Cab it had huge tannins and was extremely rough. It started to smooth out and find some fruit after about an hour or so. I’ll know better for next time.

You can buy the wines here, and be sure to check out Twitter if you have not done so yet and Twitter Taste Live.

Wines Tasted on November 19th, 2008

1) Chateau de Seuil Graves Blanc 2006, 12.5% ALC, AOC Graves, Bordeaux, France

2) Chateau Les Hauts-Conseillants 2005, 14% ALC, AOC Lalande de Pomerol, Bordeaux, France

3) Chateau de Lescours 2005, 13% ALC, (80% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc), AOC Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux, France

4) Chateau Merville 2001, 12.5% ALC, AOC Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux, France

5) Chateau Lacoste-Borie 2005, 13% ALC, AOC Pauillac, Bordeaux, France

6) Charmes de Kirwan 2005, 13% ALC, AOC Margaux, Bordeaux, France


Recommendations:

I liked many of these wines. Each had a certain character and was definitely closer to the earth and mineral side of taste rather than the bigger fruit explosions.

1) For those that did not know that good white wines could come from Bordeaux, you should try this one. This wine had such soft vanilla aromas. In the group that tasted with me someone said, "butter cream frosting". I think that is right on the mark. The taste was very pleasant, an easy expression of softer pear with a little lemon zest. It had some nice honeycomb overtones as well. Relaxingly good to drink.

2) Lots of mineral/earthy smells came out of this wine for me. There was a bit of leathery, cedar boxish things going on here. The taste was something to get used to, not in a bad way, but in a way I did not expect. It was smooth up front with most of the taste coming well after the wine had past my lips. The texture was of fine grain sands washing over your tongue, or as one of our group said, "velvet".

4) To me, this is the best wine of the bunch. The nose was so funky that it almost put many of our group out from tasting it. However, when we tasted the wine it showed itself to be complex and elegant. There were some great black cherry and strawberry flavors with length and structure. A really solid and balanced wine.

5) When I tasted this wine I just wanted food. Perhaps that was because it was roughly 7 pm and I had not eaten dinner yet, but this wine made me crave a rosemary lamb stew. This wine was rich, with some dark chocolate and blackberry flavors. The scent was a little hot, reminding me of fresh leather and cassis.

The good of wine ratings

There are a lot of people that complain about wine ratings. Most of the people I know from college have only the slightest grasp of what a rating is and what it means for the wine. For me, it is important if a wine is rated, but a rating is not everything.




How many products have over 7,000 brands to choose from? I think I can name five brands of cereal, six brands of mustard, and perhaps (if I stretch really far) eight or nine brands of salad dressing. However, when you walk into a wine store and look around there are easily hundreds of different wine brands sitting on the shelf, waiting for you to make a decision on which one to purchase.


How are you supposed to make a decision as to which one to buy?? There are large bottles, small bottles, green bottles, brown bottles. There are bottles with cute cartoons on the label (be wary) and bottles with funny names (be even more wary). There are bottles that look like you need a jackhammer to open and bottles that look like you could sneeze and they might break. Bottles, bottles, more bottles, and then even more bottles...

It's daunting! You almost prostrate yourself in relief when a helpful employee comes over and asks you what you are looking for and then points you in a direction. However, the only way to have a suggestion coming into the wine store is by checking out the ratings.

Some writers talk about how ratings are like training wheels. I think this is pretty accurate (although those that know me might find this funny since I do not know how to ride a bike). Wine ratings are, when all is said and done, a report of what one person thought about the wine. The higher or lower the rating the more or less they would recommend the wine over another. I think the only way to know if you agree with the individual rating the wines is if you taste the ones they rated and see if your tastes match theirs. If not, perhaps it is time to find a new writer to follow (there are plenty out there).

As a final note, a writer who I read often on his blog is Steve Heimoff, the West Coast Editor of Wine Enthusiast. He posted about reviews and the people who malign them on his blog. It is an interesting read, mostly because you get to see the cat fighting in the comments.

Vicariously Living the Life of a Sommelier

The concept of a sommelier is an amazing one. They are persons specifically paid to a) decide which wines the restaurant will buy to have available for its customers and b) to be available during service to help customers with their choice of wine. Depending on the type of restaurant and if it serves lunch, a sommelier is on the job 10-14 hours a day and is constantly bombarded by aggressive importers and distributors hoping to get their wines on the sommelier’s list. Public relations groups track sommeliers, waiting until they land at a new “hip” restaurant so that the sommelier can then be invited to lunches, dinners, tastings, and trips around the world.
These are the gatekeepers, the last line to cross before a wine is purchased by the ordinary restaurant patron. Sommeliers listen to their customers and determine the direction of trends. Always looking for the next great wine, they constantly taste wines from places like Australia, California, Chile, France, Germany, and Italy.

And through all that work, sommeliers know where to go for a good drink. I went out on Friday with a few of these wine junkies and had a great time. At Elmo, the first place we went, every part of the restaurant was taken in and measured on a scale of how much each person enjoyed the experience. We had drinks and caught up on how each person’s restaurant was doing in these unknown economic times.

Then the discussion turned to where to go next. Terroir, PDT, and Employees Only were among the places considered. These are establishments the members of the New York food industry know well, but your average bar hopper might not.

We ended up going to Pegu, a place on Houston. The door had a small design with the name bracketed, easily missed by a passerby. The atmosphere was dark and perfect, and the drinks were great and inventive. It was the kind of place I wanted to go to hang out with a group of friends and not a night club where I would have to yell at the top of my lungs just to get a gin and tonic. While we were there another sommelier joined us, bringing with him a glass in his backpack he brought from his restaurant. In the glass was a '71 Burgundy that a collector had opened at the restaurant. Imagine, that someone walks into a bar with a 40 year old wine in a wrapped glass in their backpack after they had biked to get there. These people are awesome.

So being a sommelier is a lot of work. One has to deal with customers, pushy salespeople, and determined public relations professionals. But the perks seem pretty good to me.

What an amazing meal can do

On Saturday night I treated myself and a date to a dinner at Veritas and it was an experience that everyone should have at least once in their lives (hopefully many more). I picked Veritas because I had been on a business trip to visit the Chilean wineries with one of the sommeliers, Patrick Cappiello.

My goodness, were we treated well. The menu was small enough to make a choice easy, but there were so many amazing sounding dishes. I chose a seared fois gras, my date chose the langoustine roti. My fois gras was fantastic and it really highlighted for me what the combination of a great chef and very talented sommelier staff can produce. With the fois gras I was poured a Volnay, a really great choice and not one I would have expected. Usually I would expect a sweeter white wine, but the Volnay was perfect! The smoked flavor in the wine hit the exact right note with the seared flavors. Then there was a linguini dish that came out, made with chestnuts and topped with white truffles. With that we were poured a Piedmont, a nebbiolo based wine. Again, melt in your seat perfection. The tastes complimented each other perfectly.

My entree was Duck a l'Orange, with which I was served a young Chateau Talbot (2005). My mother actually has about half a case of the '78 in her basement and another half case of the '89 for my brother. I think I was on food overload. I wasn't nearly as impressed with this pairing as I was with the others, but it was still great food and wine.

When we were done we could barely move. We paid the bill (ok, I paid the bill and yes it was quite expensive, but well worth it), thanked Patrick for such a good meal and making sure he thanked the Chef for us, and left. We were stuffed and decided that the only way to unstuff was to walk the two miles home. I was nearly asleep in a food coma the entire way.

This was one of those meals that I will probably remember for many years to come. The company was good, the food was amazing, and the service helpful but unintrusive. It is an experience you pay for and you feel good about it. I don't know if I could do it again anytime soon, but I'm glad I went. There is probably no where else in the US that takes dinning as seriously as New York. From the very high end like Veritas to the very low end junk food pizza place. Being from Philly, we take our junk food very seriously. My favorite spot is a shack on a corner that sells the best, greasiest cheese steaks in the world. "One, wit, wizz" and you're on your way with a heart attack in your hands.

I can see how fine dinning can be a difficult draw in harder economic times, but hopefully there are enough people in New York who understand that this experience is worth the cost. Just not every night...