What is your idea of a perfect meal?
It starts with older vintage Champagne, involves the best of friends, and lasts for hours. Perhaps it also involves a little bacon.
What wine still gives you goosebumps?
Fantastic aged Burgundy with 30 or 40 years in the bottle. When it’s good, it becomes ethereal and mind-blowingly smile inducing.
What wine personality, living or dead do you most admire?
Serge Hochar of Chateau Musar is one of my wine heroes for his singular vision and dedication to making wines with real soul. His death in a swimming accident 2 years ago was a tragedy, and I’m horribly upset I never got the chance to visit with him at his winery in Lebanon.
What’s a type of wine or wine region you wish you knew more about?
I have a fascination with the wines of Sardinia. I’ve never been, but I’ve had some utterly outstanding wines from the island and I dream of having the chance to check it out in person some day.
Which wines do you find yourself drinking the most?
I think I probably drink more aged Riesling than anything else. This is in part because I love it, and in part because my wife and her family are from Shanghai, so we end up eating Shanghainese food with some regularity, and there’s nothing more satisfying than a 10-year-old German Spätlese from the Mosel and a batch of freshly steamed xiao long bao.
What was your biggest wine disaster?
My wife would probably tell you it was running out of wine on the first day of our three-day fly fishing trip when we first started dating. In my defense I wasn’t under the impression she drank very much wine, so I dramatically under-estimated.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi. What wine do you dream of?
All sorts of things, but I truly pine for Soldera Brunello.
What’s your most treasured bottle of wine?
I’d probably say it’s the unlabeled bottle of Cabernet given to me by Imré Kalo, a winemaking savant in the Eger region of Hungary. He doesn’t sell his wine (he doesn’t have a license to do so), he just gives it or trades it to people. My visit to his cellar is still one of my favorite wine memories.
If you weren’t a wine writer, what other occupation could you see yourself excelling in?
Well, if you have to know, wine writer is actually my secret identity. By day I help run a Brand Experience agency in San Francisco, where I play the role of Chief Experience Officer. We help companies design the quality of their customer experience to be a source of competitive advantage. I’m proud to say that we do great work, and I’m probably better at that job than I am as a wine writer, unfortunately. Which is a good thing, because it’s all but impossible to have wine writing pay the bills.
Mario Batali has clogs. What’s your most marked characteristic?
Well, I’ve become mildly recognizable in the wine world for being the guy wandering around the big public wine tastings taking notes on my iPad with a wine glass hanging off the side in a special metal wine-glass clip. I probably could have made a fortune by now selling those clips if I carried a bunch with me at tastings.
What wine do you hold in the lowest of regard?
Anything made in the United States that costs less than $5.
What is the quality you most like in a sommelier?
Inquisitiveness. The best sommeliers try to learn about what you like, what you don’t and what excites you. They also seek out diversity in the world of wine, and try to bring new discoveries to their customers.
What is the quality you most like in a wine drinker?
Adventurousness. Far too many people are content to drink the same thing day in and day out. One of the wine world’s greatest gifts is its incredible variety. Those who fail to explore the richness of this variety are robbing themselves of one of wine’s chief pleasures.
Chef Boyardee or Colonel Sanders?
I’m not a fan of either, but if things got desperate, I’d choose Colonel Sanders.
Who or what inspires you?
I gather inspiration from many quarters, but chiefly, my inspiration comes from truly understanding a wine in the context of its own circumstances. Tromping through vineyards and cellars with winemakers while tasting their wines and hearing their stories is my main source of inspiration for what I write. I also find myself quite inspired by reading the work of other wine writers, and just other writers in general.
How do you take your coffee?
Generally, I don’t. Drinking coffee is a habit I never picked up. I don’t like the taste of it. But occasionally it is useful as a drug to counter jet lag, and so in those scenarios, I take it tasting as close to coffee ice cream as I can get it.
What wine trend drives you batty?
The endless parade of new, fancy wine aerator devices that purport to dramatically improve the quality of the wine you drink. These things are a scourge upon the wine world. Some wines benefit from aeration. So open the bottle early, or decant into a lemonade pitcher and then pour it back into the bottle. But whatever you do, don’t buy one of those devices.
In-N-Out or Five Guys?
Five Guys. Their fries are definitely better.
Could you “beat” Bobby Flay?
With a hose.
Do you prescribe to any wine superstitions?
The one time you fail to bring a backup bottle to a special occasion will be the time your wine is corked.
What’s an early wine memory that still sticks with you?
[I] must have been around 12 years old. As a kid of a single mother, I often got dragged to a lot of different adult social occasions. While the adults all had a good time, I’d sit in the corner and read to my heart’s content. I was that kid. Once I remember sitting in the living room of a friend of my mother’s and from the kitchen there arose such a ruckus of exclamations that I put my book down and went in to investigate. Everyone was sitting around the small kitchen table tasting wine. “What is all the fuss about?” I said, or something along those lines. I was told that everyone was particularly excited about a wine that tasted like chocolate. I can remember thinking how preposterous that was until someone handed me a glass, and sure enough, the wine tasted like dark chocolate. I remember being amazed at that flavor, but it must not have been interesting enough to me at the time to spark any real attention, as I didn’t really begin exploring wines until late into my college years.
Biggest wine fear?
The only bottle of something that I own and am looking forward to drinking is corked.
What do you drink for everyday drinking around the house?
Whatever the latest few wine samples are that were any good. I taste through samples in batches and usually throw a couple of the best bottles into the fridge after I’m done tasting them. Then that’s what we drink with dinner for the next week.
Go-to guilty pleasure wine?
Rich, ripe, California Zinfandel.
If you drank some adulterated wine and passed, what person or thing would you like to come back as?
I’d hope to be reincarnated as Sercial Madiera. That sh** lives forever.
What is your catchphrase?
Life is too short to drink lousy wine.
