The restaurant business. You may leave it at some point, but it never leaves you. And working in the business for any length of time will inevitably curse you for life with restaurant nightmares. Most of them have to do with being in the weeds—overwhelmed—sometimes to the extent that there is no hope, much less survival. I’ve had more than my share of restaurant nightmares over the years. I still do. But one of them was particularly malicious because it added an element of performance anxiety from my years of playing the trumpet.

The dream took place at Bix restaurant in the City. The scene was a variation of the very first Labor Day Sunday night I worked solo behind the bar there, which can be only described as an utter disaster. The restaurant had only been open for a couple of months at the time, and the press—all very positive—had started to achieve critical mass. Add to that the fact that it was a holiday weekend with a lot of people in the city. Finally, for whatever reason, we were understaffed for a typical Sunday night.

The dream took full advantage of what was one of the worst shifts behind a bar I would ever experience. Mind you, at the time I was an exceptionally fast service bartender and could keep up with just about anything. I could get weeded--but rarely ever overwhelmed.

In the dream, I was working the shift with another bartender. He and I enjoyed a pre-shift Fernet behind the bar as per usual. Then the evening started start off slowly. Everything was just ducky. But in no time we got slammed with a tsunami of people, and in short order we were both completely screwed. In the middle of it, a couple sitting at the bar waiting for their table ordered a bottle of Champagne from me. I think it was a bottle of Bollinger Grande Année. I quickly opened and served it to them and then put the bottle in my ice at the service end. I then raced off trying to put out various fires while the service register printer was out of control spitting out cocktail tickets like a cartoon.

At some point I went to pour more Champagne for the couple and the bottle was gone. I had a moment of utter panic thinking I had poured the rest of the bottle off for an order of house sparkling wine by the glass. I was stunned. It was like one of those wildlife shows on TV where the wildebeest is at the water hole and suddenly a crocodile the size of Buick rises up out of the water and takes it down. At that moment I looked down to the end of the bar only to see the other bartender about to go under for the last time too. Suddenly, he raced up to me and said something like, “Aren’t you supposed to go on now? Don’t you have to play?” I looked at him completely mystified.

Instead of answering, he pointed to the backbar which had somehow transformed into floor-to-ceiling black curtains. When I finally found the part in the curtains and opened it, there was a stage with an audience of hundreds of people staring at me. I looked over to see a grand piano with a woman wearing a formal black dress seated and also looking at me. She was irritated and pointing to her watch. Next to the piano was a music stand and a chair with my C-trumpet on it. I walked over to the stand much like the aforementioned wildebeest and picked up my trumpet. Suddenly, I realized there was no mouthpiece in my horn. And there was no music on the stand. Then I realized I hadn’t touched the horn for over six years. How could I possibly play anything? I looked out at the audience and then back at the woman at the piano. The silence was menacing. At this point I woke up in a sweat with my heart racing.
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The restaurant business. You may leave it, but it never leaves you. 

One of my more memorable sommelier experiences happened early one Saturday evening at the Cypress Club. I was working with the late and great Randy Goodman that night. It was early in the shift and a party of four had just been seated on the main floor. The two couples were clearly friends and looking forward to sharing a night out. I immediately noted that one of the guys was carrying a magnum of red wine, which he placed in the middle of the table with a great flourish. No doubt he would attempt to impress-bore-torture his wife and friends with the wine. One more important detail: His wife was sitting across from him. And she was wearing a white linen dress.

The stage has now been set.

I approached the table, said hello, and offered the bottle owner’s assistance with opening and serving the magnum. The wine turned out to be a current release of a popular Napa Valley Cabernet. I also gently reminded him that there would be a corkage fee on the bottle. He said corkage was no problem and that he didn’t need help. He had things under control and would take care of opening and pouring the bottle for his wife and friends. I nodded and returned quickly and placed glassware and an underliner for the bottle on the table. I again politely offered to open the wine for him. Bottle guy again said he had everything under control. I clearly remember him using that phrase twice.

I then ambled over to the other side of the restaurant and stood next to Randy, who had watched the initial exchange with great interest. He turned to me and said something along the lines of “this is going to be rich.” What happened next can only be described as worst-case scenario.

Bottle guy retrieved a fancy corkscrew from his pocket. With a grand flourish he stripped the magnum of its capsule, demolishing it in the process. He then almost turned the bottle on its side as he inserted the auger of the corkscrew. Next, with enthusiasm not unlike a Jehovah’s witness approaching the first doorstep of the day, bottle guy quickly removed the cork from the bottle. He then removed cork from the auger of the corkscrew and placed it in the middle of the table so everyone could be as impressed as he was. Then, with what can only be described as deadly intent, he grabbed the magnum by the bottom of the bottle with his right hand to pour the wine.

I have to stop for a moment and note that pouring wine using this grip—holding the bottom of the bottle--is problematic at best, especially with a magnum. Unless you have huge Jesse Ventura hands, the likelihood of sloppy pouring, drips on the table, or other more catastrophic mishaps always loom. Moving on.

Bottle guy went to pour for his wife and guests. What happened next was like watching a Sam Peckinpah movie when it goes into super slow motion and all the cowboys get shot. As bottle guy reached across to pour for his wife, she of the white linen dress, he lost control of the magnum and dropped the bottle on the table, right in front of her. Wine immediately started sloshing out of the bottle at high velocity on to the table and glugging relentlessly into her lap.

As the bottle hit the table every head in the restaurant whipped around to see what was going on. Service came to a screeching halt. Instantly, Randy and I were across the room at the table. I grabbed the bottle, put my hand over the top, and set it upright on the table. Randy—and two other bussers who had appeared at the table out of nowhere—immediately started triage, cleaning up the table with cloth napkins. They also helped the poor woman sop up what must have been at least six ounces of bright purple Cabernet that had made its way into her lap.

The incident happened so quickly that she was stunned and could barely move, much less breathe. Bottle guy was also frozen. The other couple was horrified. With Randy and the busser’s help, clean up was quick. I then offered the four of them a glass of Champagne at the bar while we reset the table. After several awkward seconds, the other couple said something like “why don’t you give us a few moments.” We did, retreating a safe distance away awaiting further instructions.

The four of them sat in stony silence for about a minute. Suddenly, bottle guy’s wife stood up and forcibly threw her napkin in his face. She then grabbed her purse and stormed out of the restaurant. The other couple watched in shock as she left. They spent the next couple of minutes staring down at their cover plates. Then they looked at each other, stood up, wished their friend god speed, and left. Bottle guy sat in stunned silence looking at the comet trail of Cabernet that now adorned a goodly portion of the table top. I walked up quietly, put the cork back in the bottle, and handed it to him. Then I said, “we got this.” He nodded, got up, and left the restaurant.

​As the curtains of the front door billowed with bottle guy’s hasty retreat, dining in the restaurant resumed but with a great buzz over what had just happened. The cleanup and reset of the table took longer than usual. The rest of the evening went without incident.
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After the shift, Randy and I were downstairs having a Fernet Branca in our office. We replayed the accident multiple times poring over every detail. We then pondered bottle guy’s fate, and whether he would be sleeping on the couch--or in the garage--and for how long. We also wondered if his wife would hound or even humiliate him every time he went to open a bottle of wine, especially in front of friends. Would she would forever remind him of the “incident,” and rightly so? In the end, we agreed that the matter was really simple. If the sommelier offers to help you, let them. And don’t be a schlemiel. 

Many reading this post will clearly remember their first restaurant job. Mine was bussing tables and washing dishes at the now long defunct Uncle John’s Pancake House in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the summer of 1971 and I had just finished my sophomore year of high school. I was 16 at the time and my goal of working for the man was to save enough coin to buy my first professional trumpet.

Truth be told, it wasn’t my first job. That job would have been the summer before when my older brother Tom and I chopped cotton for a week on my Grandma’s farm. I’m not sure whose idea it was to enlist the two of us for five days of slave labor. Regardless, we earned a whopping $12 a day totaling to $60 for the week. But the job kept us out of everyone’s hair. We also got a wicked farmer’s tan.

Even though $60 seemed like a windfall at the time, it didn’t begin to cover the cost of a new trumpet. Any pitch I made for the parents helping me buy a new ax—which would have cost between $500 and $600--failed to launch. They simply didn’t have the money. After school let out in May the following year, I applied for and got the job at Uncle John’s. But there was a slight catch: the hours were Wednesdays through Saturdays, 6:00 PM to 4:00 AM. That’s right, ten hour shifts for four consecutive days.

It goes without saying that this kind of nonsense wouldn’t legally be tolerated now. Today, the state labor board would slap the owners of the restaurant sideways into tomorrow if they caught wind of anything remotely resembling such skewed scheduling practices. But this was 1971 and indentured pancake servitude wasn’t unusual.

The restaurant’s manager was a woman named Darlene, a skinny, hard-edged, aging cowgirl who looked like she’d seen a lot of bad pavement. She was also a chain smoker, with a lit cigarette in hand sometimes even when on floor during service. Darlene had a serious case of helmet hair styled with enough Aqua Net to waterproof a dinghy. The finishing touches were enough cake makeup to fix the dented fender on a ‘59 Buick and a force field of some cheap screeching floral perfume. The sum total was that Darlene looked like Tammy Wynette’s evil twin. But she was an absolute shark in the restaurant, barking orders to the staff in both the front and the back of the house.

The waitresses were all lifers, older women who had worked at the restaurant for years. They constantly bitched about their tips, their feet, and Darlene. At first, they treated me like a mutt some relative had suddenly foisted on them. But in short order they discovered that I could make life at Uncle John’s much easier for them. And that, dear friends, was because I quickly discovered everything about bussing tables was squarely in my wheelhouse.

Allow me to explain.

The very definition of the job required speed, repetition, and thoroughness—all capabilities that, for whatever reason, I had in excess. But there was one more important element. After the first couple of shifts I realized that I had “restaurant eyes,” a sixth sense of sorts that meant I could walk through a section of the restaurant and instantly see what needed to be done on every table in the moment. To this day I can still walk through a restaurant and experience the same thing. It’s a curse at this point.
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I also discovered I could easily keep at least a half-dozen things in mind that needed to be done in the next few minutes. More importantly, I could also prioritize them in regard to whatever needed to be done first. My list constantly changed, with things done going off and things needing to be done constantly added. Finally, my recipe for bussing success included the fact that I was a skinny piece of sushi who could move fast. More often than not I found myself refilling coffees or waters because I was out of things to do in the moment. Thus, in no time the aging wrecking crew of waitresses, who just days before would have chased me into rush hour traffic without a second thought, adopted me as their idiot bastard son. 

Once the gig at Uncle John’s was secured, it was a matter of figuring out the commute. Getting there was no problem. I could ride the aging green Murray ten speed bike that Mom and Dad had given me some years before. The jaunt was less than 4.5 miles (or so Google tells me). I could stick to riding on neighborhood streets for most of it. But the last stretch had me riding on the always-busy Wyoming Blvd. to cross over the freeway. The ride took less than 20 minutes and I usually arrived sweaty but ready for a ten-hour shift.

Getting home after finishing up at 4:00 AM, however, was another matter. For the first week or so Dad insisted on picking me up, bike and all. However, Martin was 48 at the time and the last thing he wanted to do was get up at 3:30 in the morning and drive anywhere, much less retrieve me. After a short time I convinced him it would be OK. And frankly it was. I don’t recall any incident ever happening other than being chased by random stray dogs. I also marvel at the fact that I was never stopped by a police car. I chalk it all up to luck.

Like many 24-hour restaurants, Uncle John’s was a cross between a chameleon and a community theater for aliens at the edge of the universe. That is to say, its personality changed multiple times throughout the course of a day. At breakfast it was a greasy hash-slinging pancake-waffle joint serving up breakfast at light speed. That would change only slightly at lunch when regulars, who worked at nearby offices, had less than an hour to hoover sandwiches and the like.

Dinner was the slowest meal service of the day. Fortunately, location helped as the restaurant was on Central Avenue, part of the old Route 66 which traversed the entire length of the city. A good deal of dinner business was made up of hungry tourists passing through town not wanting to wait until Clines Corners on the other side of the mountains or the remotely distant Tucumcari to stop. Then there were the tour buses. Many times, one or more buses pulled up in front of the restaurant filled with Baptists headed to a convention somewhere in the deep south or army guys headed to a base in Texas. Then it was all hands on deck as half the restaurant would instantly get seated. In minutes the place would get slammed. First, the waitresses would be overwhelmed and then the kitchen would groan and creak under the weight of getting 20 or more orders at once.

At tour bus times I would take on the role of a rabid chihuahua busser, moving as fast as I could and trying to cover drinks, get sides, and clear plates as needed with the usual refilling of coffee, sodas, and water. In no time the checks would be paid and the hordes would reboard their buses bound for highway glory. Then the real work would begin with a massive cleanup and resetting of tables, not to mention the restrooms. Yes, busboys had to monitor the restrooms during their shift—even the ladies’ room. I got my first taste of cleaning public restrooms there, a curse that would follow me into college when I was a janitor at a Lutheran church for the better part of three years. But that’s another story.

If breakfast, lunch, and dinner were the first three acts of a psycho-waffle drama, the post-bar rush that started shortly after 1:30 AM was a bizarre Fellini-esque finale in which the babysitter turns into an evil clown, the aging banker suddenly disappears with all the potted plants, and the tragic anti-hero is pulled down to hell by the commendatore, who’s dressed in drag.

​The cruel irony of it all was that the busiest—and craziest—part of the 10-hour shift happened after I’d been on my feet for almost eight hours. As soon as the clock struck 1:30 AM all the bars that dotted Central Ave. would start to give last call. Within minutes, the restaurant would be crammed to the gills with denizens of drink in every shape, size, and persuasion: sloppy businessmen, guys on a rowdy night out, college types, prostitutes, and much more. The noise was deafening and the cigarette and cigar smoke was thick. No surprise that after a night of boozing it up everyone was famished, and people wanted their steak and eggs, omelets, and strawberry pancakes RIGHT NOW.
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Months later, when school started back up and my schedule was relegated to weekend mornings, I experienced the breakneck pace of breakfast service with its own flavor of triage. Bar rush service was all that and more because of the chaos created by a bunch of drunk, unruly customers. The amount of coffee I poured was astonishing. I could barely keep ahead of demand by brewing fresh pots. “These people are drunk,” I would think, “what the hell is all this coffee going to do?” In reality, the coffee served to create a much-needed buzz and metabolic momentum that would last just long enough for people to eat and then drive home, hopefully without getting into an accident. 

Two regulars of the bar crowd stand out in memory. First, a sinister ruddy-faced man, who I came to call “Red.” He always wore expensive suits and was accompanied by three or four young guys. At first he was overly polite with me, offering profuse thanks any time I cleared a plate or refilled his coffee. Then, after seeing him a few times he kept me at the table to chat me up. “They don’t appreciate how good your work is here. They probably don’t pay you enough either. I can offer you a job that’s much easier and will pay twice as much.” I thanked him but was uncommitted. After all, it’s not every day you get offered a job at 2:00 in the morning. “Meet me on such-and-such corner on Monday at 3:00 PM. I’ll tell you about the job then.” I murmured some kind of answer but then never went back to table.

The next day I told my Mom about Red and his job offer. “He sounds like a criminal and the last thing you should do is meet up with him.” I didn’t know about the criminal part but agreed with her about skipping the meeting. As always, her advice was spot-on and I didn’t give it another thought.

It was only a matter of time before Red made another appearance at the restaurant. When I approached the table to pour coffee he berated me, saying, “where the hell were you? Why didn’t you show up?” I explained that my Mom thought he was a dangerous criminal. Actually, I just told him I was happy with the current job and wasn’t looking for anything else. Then I scooted away from the table before he could say anything else. But every time I looked his way Red was glaring at me, giving me the evil eye, as were the young guys who were with him.

When I was leaving the restaurant that night I asked one of the cooks, a burly guy who’d just finished up a stint in the Navy, to walk outside with me to make sure Red and the boys weren’t waiting. Fortunately, the parking lot was empty. That was the last time I saw Red and his entourage. God only knows what he did. My sense was that he was into dealing drugs, stolen cars, or something even more unsavory.

Then there was Curley. By day he was a mechanic. By weekend night he raced cars on a dirt track. More than anything, Curley was a large mutant slob of a human with just enough intelligence to be annoying and/or dangerous. He was also a stereotypical bully who surrounded himself several miscreants who were even bigger losers. But Curley was also Darlene’s nephew, so he could do no wrong.

I only saw Curley and his gang after he raced on Friday and Saturday nights and after they had had too much cheap beer. Then Curley would come in, dirty racing gear and all, and hold court with his slackers at a large booth at the back of the restaurant. Approaching the table was dicey, to say the least. Pouring coffee was met with insults, jeers, and having crumpled paper napkins bounced off the side of your head. All the while Curley, covered in dried sweat and smears of grease, laughed like a donkey, showing off his two missing front teeth.

I quickly adapted the boxing strategy called “stick and move” whenever having to deal with Curley’s table. Meaning I would go in quickly while the lot of them were distracted, get done what I had to get done as quickly as possible, and then get the hell away from the table. It usually worked—but not always.

I thought I’d seen the last of Curley when I moved to weekend breakfast shifts months later. Sadly, not true. While washing dishes one Sunday morning I heard Curley’s donkey laugh outside in the restaurant. “Dear god, please don’t let that idiot back here,” I silently pleaded. But the almighty must have been busy with the church thing, it being Sunday morning and all. Minutes later Curley’s ugly toothless mug made its appearance. At that moment the other guy washing dishes and I were in the middle of cracking hundreds of eggs into a huge metal bowl that would be ferried to the cooks for omelets. After uttering several unintelligible insults, Curley spotted the tall stack of full egg cartoons. Instantly he grabbed eggs in both hands and started firing them at us, laughing hysterically. We had no recourse but to run out the back kitchen door in defense, only to have Curley go tell Darlene we were screwing around on the job. She immediately found us and read us the riot act, saying we would be fired the next time it happened. We tried to tell her what had happened but she refused to listen. I silently cursed her helmet hair--and Curley’s dumbass mug too.

I wasn’t long for Uncle John’s after the egg incident. I’d saved enough money to buy a trumpet and was getting too busy with school. But the place, with its brutal hours and wack-job cast of characters, was the quintessential first restaurant job. The first job where you learn if you can hack the work and if you’re properly wired for success in the business. During my time at Uncle John’s I discovered that I possessed the first and excelled at the second. Working there also gave me restaurant eyes and taught me how to move quickly and efficiently on the floor. Finally, bussing tables taught me how to store, prioritize, and accomplish tasks quickly and efficiently, something that continued to benefit me in every future restaurant gig and beyond.
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As for Uncle John’s, at some point much later it closed down and the building was razed. But I still have fond and janky memories about the joint. It makes me think that there are two great equalizers in life: one is parenthood and the other is the restaurant business. Where anyone, regardless of skill or experience, can go down in flames. But where one can also be a star, especially between the hours of 6:00 PM and 4:00 AM on weekends.

I’m a big fan of the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. As of late, it feels like we’re living it. Yes, I know it’s not February (yet), but it seems like we’ve been stuck in pandemic mode forever. However, I still take comfort in the fact that we can always hide in plain sight with a good book. With that in mind, here are over a dozen recommendations of books I’ve read this past year. Happy holidays and enjoy!

The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life, by Boyd Varty​

Boyd Varty is South African and an actual lion tracker by profession. He's also a certified life coach, TED Talk guy, and lecturer. The book--all 136 pages of it--covers a single day during which he and two comrades track a pride of lions across his family's property, the Londolozi Game Preserve located near Eswatini. Varty's account is riveting. Throughout he describes the process of searching for tracks and other lion evidence in detail, comparing it to trying to find one’s way in life. Also, how we have become separated from our true wild selves, and need to find our tracks and follow them. A delightful read that can be done in one sitting. 

First Person Singular: Stories, by Haruki Murakami

​The best collection of short stories I've read in a long time. From the opening pages you know you're in the hands of a great writer. Each of the eight stories is told in first person (hence the title). All have an element of the odd, bizarre, or slightly science fiction. I devoured the book in two sittings. 

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir’s latest novel, even at almost 500 pages, is a page-turner Sci-Fi thriller. Like both his previous efforts (The Martian and Artemis), there's plenty of the protagonist having to “science the shit out of things.” In this case, it's Ryland Grace, who wakes up out of a medically-induced coma aboard an interstellar space ship. His two colleagues lying next to him are quite dead to the point of decomposing, their comas (not commas) also having failed. Initially, he has no memory of who he is or how he got there. I’ll stop there with the spoilers and finish by saying the book is filled with unexpected plot turns, aliens, and more. It’s a great read and lots of fun.

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany, by Graeme Gibson

Graeme Gibson is the late husband of celebrated poet, Margaret Atwood. He was an accomplished author in his own right and also was an avid birder. His Bedside Book is a delightful compendium of stories, poems, and anecdotes about birds throughout history, dating back to antiquity. It's also filled with beautiful illustrations and paintings of birds from different times and cultures. 

The Memory Code, by Lynne Kelly

Dr. Lynne Kelly, of La Trobe University in Melbourne, is a writer, researcher, and science educator. Over the last two-plus decades, she’s done considerable research on how ruins like Stonehenge were used as memory devices and teaching spaces to help ancient peoples store and share remarkable amounts of information concerning genealogies, astronomy, and more. Her companion book Memory Craft, presents several memory strategies learned while researching this book. Both are fun reads.

The Perfume Collector, by Kathleen Tessaro
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One of the most enjoyable novels of the year, the Perfume Collector is set in two time periods—New York in the 20s and Paris in the 50s. It’s the story of a young, just-married London woman who is suddenly and quite mysteriously alerted to the fact that she is the sole heiress to a large apartment and considerable stock portfolio in Paris. She travels there to uncover the real story of her past--and to find out that she is not who she has been led to believe. The perfume world and sensory language play a major role in the book and the author excels at writing about both. 

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, by Benjamin Dreyer

Benjamin Dreyer is the copy chief for Random House publishing. His book is the best guide on style and writing I've ever come across. It was also one of two books that I actually re-read during the calendar year. I’ll admit to being completely schooled many times while reading it, especially in regards to often-misspelled words and easily confused pairs of terms. If you do any writing at all, Dreyer’s English is a delightful if not slightly snarky way to hone your chops. 

Fuzz, by Mary Roach

Science writer Mary Roach’s books are among my personal favorites. Her new book should have been called “when animals go bad.” It’s about when animals commit crimes, and kill or maim humans. As with all Mary’s books, Fuzz is well-researched, funny, and superbly written.

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks, by David Rooney

Rooney is the former timekeeper at the Greenwich Observatory. His new book shows the connection between clocks and various civilizations throughout history, and how time has been used to control and even oppress the masses. A very curious and thoughtful read.

Taste: My Life Through Food, by Stanley Tucci

I’m sure many reading this post watched Tucci’s series on Italy this past year on CNN. After viewing a couple of episodes, I’m convinced that there is no better place on earth to eat and drink than Italy. Tucci's new book is a memoire presenting his life through the lens of growing up in a New York Italian family with its complex--and out-loud—emotions. Most of all, it’s about food. Stanley is more than a capable writer and his great love of food shines through like a beacon. After finishing it, I sent several copies of the book out to friends. You may end up doing likewise. 

A Carnival of Snackery, by David Sedaris

Sedaris's new book is a compendium of his personal diary entries between 2003 and 2020. As usual, it’s Sedaris as his wickedly funny self. Planes, trains, automobiles, and book signings have never been this entertaining. 

His Dark Matters Trilogy, by Phillip Pullman
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Guilty as charged! I am at least a couple of decades late on this one. I remember seeing a copy of The Golden Compass (American title for book one of the trilogy) on my daughter Maria’s book shelf when she was in high school. Like over 10 years ago. That said, Pullman’s trilogy is a thing of genius. Few writers beyond Tolkien have been able to craft such a complex, strange, and wonderful world(s). I downloaded all three books to my iPad and read them—1,600 pages-plus—in less than two weeks. Above all, I enjoyed Pullman’s ability to tell a story and to craft language. He is superb at both. Highly recommended. 

The Lyrics, by Paul McCartney
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Sir Paul’s new beautifully-produced two-volume set is filled with detailed information on the writing of over 150 of his songs. His notes on the creative process and insights into each of the songs makes for a very good read. McCartney also writes of his life, from the earliest days in Liverpool to the breakup of the Beatles and beyond. There's also hundreds of never before seen photos. For the Beatles fan, these books are a must read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
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My favorite read of the entire year—and the only other book I re-read. “Guernsey Pie,” as I like to call it, is comprised completely of correspondence between a woman in London named Juliet Ashton just after WWII, and members of a group who formed a literary society on the Isle of Guernsey during the German occupation. The book is by turns utterly charming, endearing, and sad. A surprising and impressive amount of WWII history is woven into the tale. By story’s end, it’s wonderful how much one comes to care about all the quirky characters in the book. Highest recommendation.

*A final note about the lead photo. It's from Christmas 1959. Your humble author is seated at left, my older sister Tina center, and older brother Tom standing, holding the spiffy aircraft model. Cheers!  

Many of my earliest memories from childhood, before we moved from the South Texas tropics to the high desert of New Mexico, are images of my maternal Grandma Wade’s farm. It was a sprawling 2,000-acre expanse of cotton fields that surrounded her house, several barns holding farm equipment, a machine shop, and multiple garages. A paved semi-circular driveway went around the house, linking to Farm Road 1, which led to the nearby village of La Villa (population 500). Towering ebony trees, filled with nesting birds during the spring, lined the drive. Just across the drive from the front porch was Grandma’s flower garden, a screen-enclosed sanctuary to hundreds of exotic plants she had collected on her travels. Rumor had it that she had even been to Cuba at some point in the early 1950s before the advent of the Castro era.

Just a stone’s throw away from the house were several sizeable corrals that once held cattle. By the time I was old enough to clamber over the fences, the corrals were covered in burlap and filled with acres of aloe vera plants that Grandma sold to a company that processed them for medicinal purposes. No surprise that she was a staunch believer in the healing properties of aloe vera. Every day she slathered her skin in clear aloe gel until shiny, and then applied a generous powdering of Jungle Gardenia, which always screamed floral in her wake. Grandma even drank watered down aloe gel for her digestive tract. She kept it in quart Mason jars in the fridge. Only problem was that she also kept drinking water in the same kind of jars. Many times I reached into the fridge for a jar of water only to pour a tall glass, tale a huge gulp, and realize that is was aloe. Gack!

Inside the house several refrigerated air units that were mounted in the windows continually hummed. Originally Grandpa had central AC installed when the house was built in 1950, which was revolutionary for the time. However, after he passed several years later, Grandma had the window units installed because she didn’t trust central air conditioning. With refrigerated air being constantly on, a musty smell pervaded the house. Enter the middle bedroom, which was stacked floor to ceiling with old newspapers and magazines, and the musty smell became a force field. Yes, Grandma was a hoarder, long before it became fashionable TV. As for the musty smell, only many years later was I to learn that it was trichloranisole—or TCA—the same compound that taints wine corks. And to think that I was inundated with it at times as a child.

At some point Grandma started to use a single crutch to get around. That crutch served as an instrument of discipline, often used to keep the mangy lot of us kids in line. Many times a sudden whack across the butt would put an end to the tomfoolery of the moment. Then there was the time when Grandma caught my sister Tina and me trying on her wigs in the bathroom. Many whacks were instantly issued.

When Grandma wasn’t whacking us with her crutch, she was in the kitchen at the stove or at the counter prepping something for the stove. My memories of Grandma’s cooking involve a lot of breaded protein deep-fried in butter or lard. Vegetables from the multi-acre garden just beyond the aloe corrals were summarily shot on sight and cooked until rendered inorganic. Anything in the green vegetable universe was khaki by the time it was served. Boiled okra, one of Granny’s favorites, had the texture (and color) of snot. When the okra was breaded with cornmeal and fried, it had a crunchy outer crust but still the same mucous inner layer.

Aside from deep fried beast and khaki veggies, the true staple of Grandma’s cooking was her applesauce cake. It was—and still is—the stuff of family culinary legend. I remember watching her standing at the counter, crutch at the ready, mixing the cake directly into an enormous rectangular baking pan. It goes without saying that Grandma didn’t need a recipe, having previously made the cake from scratch hundreds of times. As she mixed up the batter, she talked non-stop in her raspy/whiny voice telling me what ingredients were being flung into the pan at the moment.

Truth be told, cake assembly was so fast that it was hard to keep up. But the last step before putting the pan into the oven was the best. Then, to get all the air bubbles out of the batter, Grandma picked up the pan and dropped it back on the counter with a deafening smack. Granny did this repeatedly until she was satisfied that all the hidden bubbles in the batter were gone. To me it was a thrilling moment of full-contact baking.

Some 45 minutes later, the cake was taken out of the oven and left to cool. Finally, after several preemptive cake strikes on our part had been warded off by the evil crutch, slices of warm, almost gooey cake were cut and served with ice cream. The first bite was beyond delicious.

In the first few years after we moved to New Mexico Grandma would visit always bringing a sizable portion of a cake in her luggage. It was a treat beyond compare. Grandma also taught Mom how to make her applesauce cake. But try as she might, Mom’s version was never quite as good. I’m sure the high altitude and dry climate of Albuquerque were to blame. However, I also have to think that it was a matter of Grandma being the source, urtext, and author of great applesauce cakes.  
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In the many years since, I’ve never tasted another applesauce cake remotely as good as Grandma’s. Her glorious applesauce cakes will live forever in my memory, along with cotton fields, ebony trees, and acres of aloe vera plants. And that’s how it should be.

It was April of 2001 and my second trip to Germany. I had been there the year before with the same importer. During that first trip we traversed through most of the wine regions in the country for over a week, visiting as many as four wineries a day. Lest you think a trip like this is a picnic, let me point out that tasting over 400 young high-acid Rieslings in eight days is utterly brutal on one’s teeth and gums. After returning, I had to reschedule cleaning my teeth for a couple of months. Otherwise, my dentist—and dental hygienist—would have been appalled. The scolding would have been legendary. There’s nothing like dental shaming.

The second trip started with three days in the Mosel, surely one of the most gorgeous wine places on the planet. The valley looks like someone decided to plant a section of the Grand Canyon with grape vines almost two millennia ago. The producers we visited in the Mosel were all stars including the likes of Mönchhof, Wegeler, Dr. F. Weins Prüm, J.J. Prüm, Fritz Haag, Schloss Lieser, and finally Rheinhold Haart in Piesport. At every stop we were tasting the 2000 vintage which had just been bottled. We also had the opportunity to taste a lot of older wines which was wonderful.

After our time in the Mosel we drove for several hours to Iphofen in Franken, traditionally called Franconia. Our one stop in region was at the Hans Wirsching winery. While the Mosel is the epicenter of Riesling, in Franken the Silvaner grape is king. Few, if any, do Silvaner better in Germany than Wirsching, much less anywhere else on the planet.

A note about Silvaner. More often than not, the grape (sometimes spelled Sylvaner) is about as thrilling as an old Toyota Camry. In other words, it gets you places but no one is excited. Not so with the Wirsching wines. Their top Grosses Gewächs Silvaner wines from the Iphofer Julius-Echter-Berg and  Iphofer Kronsberg vineyards are among the finest wines made from the grape anywhere.

After tasting the entire range of stellar Wirsching wines from the new vintage, we went next door for lunch. The meal was set up in a long, wood-paneled room with the walls filled with various trophies of small game animals that had met a sudden and tragic fate by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lunch was comprised of a theme and variations on Vitamin P—pork. Platters of sausages of every shape and kind, some resembling Dr. Seuss creations, were passed. After I piled my plate high in an assortment of wurst I asked the woman serving us for some mustard. She didn’t speak English so I quickly turned to the son of the importer to translate. He rattled off something in German to her. She first stared in disbelief at him—and then me—before quickly turning on her heels and striding back into the kitchen. After many long minutes she returned with a small, ancient metal can of powered mustard. She then made a huge gesture out of showing me the can before sharply whacking it down on the table in front of me. I paused, thinking that if I asked for anything else my head would quickly join the others displayed on the room’s walls.

I was stunned. What was a kitchen in Germany without real mustard? I was also in a quandary. I had to use the mustard for the sake of appearances, if not survival. Using a table knife, I managed to pry the small lid off the top of the can and then scooped a mound of the yellow-brown powder on to my plate. For the record, it looked like rust from an old pipe. Then, using the skills of a four-year-old first encountering broccoli, I moved the mustard around my plate after eating the delectable sausages. Problem solved and international incident avoided.

Fast forward to the end of the trip. The second to the last day we were in the Pfalz region just across the Rhein from Alsace. The Pfalz, formerly the Rheinpfalz or the Palatinate, has historically been the sunniest and warmest region in Germany. The wines of the Pfalz, especially the Rieslings in both dry and sweet versions, are opulent, powerful, and utterly delicious. As for history, some two-thousand years ago the Romans conquered the area to take advantage of its thriving agriculture and strategic geographical location on an important trade route. I mention this because the entire region is literally strewn with Roman ruins and artifacts. I remember our car pulling up to a stop sign on a country road at one point and looking over to see a stone sarcophagus in someone’s front yard that had probably there for the better part of 2,000 years.

Lunch that day was in the town of Bad Durkheim at a famous restaurant called Dürkheimer Fass. Why famous? Because the restaurant is located in what is believed to be the world’s largest wine barrel. It’s nearly 50 feet in diameter and if filled with wine would hold almost 550,000 gallons. In other words, it’s a really big-ass barrel.

Victuals involved another huge plate of sausages (when in Rome) along with real honest-to-god Wiener Schnitzel. The latter was tender and juicy with a light crispy crust lathered in an artery-stopping cream sauce. No wonder so many of the older Germans seated at the tables around us were shaped like smaller versions of the restaurant.

On being served my plate of sausages I once again pined for mustard. After the previous episode I was hesitant about asking for anything. But I mustered the courage (ha!) and asked our waitress, who spoke perfect English, if I could have some mustard. She immediately smiled and said, “of course.” Within seconds she returned not with an ancient tin of caustic powder, but a large tray filled with various jars of locally produced mustard. It goes without saying that I was beside myself with condiment bliss.
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I thanked her profusely and then told her about my experience at Wirsching. She listened intently, her frown growing and her eyes narrowing the longer the story went on. When I finished the tale she looked at the floor for a long moment and then looked up at me hissing the phrase, “filthy barbarians.”

Later that afternoon in the car I thought about her response. In the olden days, the mustard provocation at Wirsching could easily have ignited an incident. If the exchange had happened with nobles around the table it could have been deadly. Someone’s face would have been roundly struck with a heavy glove and a challenge issued. Chairs would have been pushed back violently and a medieval version of the Jets and Sharks would have ensued sans dancing and snappy Leonard Bernstein soundtrack.

In the end, food regionalism—even of the mustard variety--runs deep. I think about sweet tea in the American south, what passes for chile in any other part of the U.S. outside New Mexico, and the vast and mysterious universe of BBQ. I’ll never be able to fathom the latter. Whatever the case, there’s just one thing:
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Never, ever, screw around with mustard. ​

Recently I read an online article about glassware. I learned that during the pandemic last year Americans drank 14% more than the previous year. No surprise given the stress of shelter in place and what with everyone always being home. I also learned that Americans purchased more wine online last year and, not surprisingly, more wine glasses than ever. The article then goes on to quote several industry professionals about their personal glassware choices. One mentioned that they drank wine out of small mason pint jars at home. Another admitted to using old McDonald’s glassware found at a thrift shop when hanging out with friends so as not to be so serious about the whole wine thing.

Several thoughts came to mind. First, I guess everyone gets a gold star for just showing up, aka drinking wine. After all, that seems to be the age in which we currently live. Beyond that, the gist of the article was that nowadays there are no hard and fast rules pertaining to use of wine glasses. In reality, this is ancient news. People have always been more than welcome to enjoy wine using whatever kind of delivery vehicle they so choose.

All snarkiness aside, one’s glassware needs lie somewhere between a Venn diagram and Maslow’s hierarchy of crystal needs. To begin, do you even care—or know enough to care--about wine to use a decent glass? If not, it doesn’t matter and you should feel free to use whatever vessel available when wine is the beverage of choice. However, there’s one thing you should know. Regardless of what you may think, your experience with a plastic tumbler of Merlot is not going to be the same—or as good--as mine, when tasting the same wine using decent stemware. I’m not talking about the “gold star/everyone’s potential enjoyment being equal” kind of a thing. I’m talking about chemistry.

The term “wine tasting” is a complete misnomer. Smell accounts for at least 85% of the sense of taste and the operative phrase should be “wine smelling.” That’s because the aromatics in wine are volatile compounds, with most attached to ethanol, or alcohol. As the wine comes into contact with air the volatiles start to evaporate at different rates, resulting in a range of different aromas. How important is olfactory in tasting wine? Someone with a good deal of tasting experience does most of their work with a wine by smelling--and not tasting--it. To point, by the time you get around to actually tasting the wine you should be confirming what you’ve already smelled and calibrating the structural elements (acidity, alcohol, tannin, etc.).

There’s more. The bit about Klaus Riedel and his experiments with glass shapes and sizes over sixty years ago was groundbreaking then--and it’s still relevant and important now. Quality wine glasses matter a great deal. They’re like audio equipment in that cheap and lousy speakers (or ear buds) make music, however well-recorded, sound shitty. Good speakers/buds deliver sound the way the artist, engineer, and producer intended. Likewise, cheap, ill-shaped glassware alters—even nullifies—aromatics and flavors in wine. The good news is that unlike the above-mentioned speakers, which can get absurdly expensive in cost (as in six figures), the very best crystal—Riedel Sommelier Burgundy and Bordeaux glasses—still runs for less than $150 per stem. But you don’t have to swing for the fences to get quality glassware. Good, all-purpose wine glasses cost a fraction of that. More below.

I have to call an official time-out at this point to bring up a much-needed caveat to my rant: context. As with everything in wine (and life), context is the ultimate trump card. Context meaning the setting, occasion, and the company you share the vino with—but not necessarily the wine itself, much less the glassware.
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One of the greatest wine experiences I’ve ever had was many moons ago in a trattoria in Florence, and involved the most delicious Chianti Classico I’ve ever tasted. The wine was served out of a large, heavy glass tumbler that could have easily doubled as a weapon in a bar fight. But the combination of being in Florence for the first time with the woman of my dreams made the meal—and the wine—unforgettable. 

​Context aside, the common denominators for quality stemware have never changed. They include the following:

• Clear glass without markings or etchings
• Made from crystal
• Have a stem
• Egg-shaped with a tapered bowl
• A capacity of at least 14 ounces—larger is better for red wine
• Have a thin, cut lip

Glassware Recommendations
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If you’re starting out or just want to find a good all-purpose glass, here are several options to consider:

Riedel: The Overture red wine glass is versatile for any number of different wines—both white and red. It’s a good value as well. More on Riedel below.
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Stölzel: The Exquisit Shiraz red wine glass is also a good value and works well for both white and red wines.

Spiegelau: The Winelover’s Bordeaux glass is arguably the best value in all-purpose glassware with a set of four retailing for around $30.

Schott Zwiesel: The Tritan Pure Collection Cabernet/All Purpose Red is a favorite all-purpose glass in that it’s made from titanium oxide and zirconium oxide, and supposedly unbreakable (not entirely true) and dishwasher safe.

Zalto: is produced from mouth-blown, non-lead crystal. The Denk’Art Burgundy glass in particular is a favorite of sommeliers and other industry pros. It’s light in hand and beautifully designed. Be aware that it’s also considerably more in cost than all the previously listed glasses.

Personal Favorites

If I had to take just one glass to the proverbial tropical isle it would be the Riedel Vinum Zinfandel/Chianti Classico glass. It’s elegant, attractive, and doesn’t cost a fortune. I also like the Riedel Vinum Extreme Riesling glass and use it often for both white and red wines. Otherwise, at some point you may want to expand the lineup. Here are the four glasses I use at home most often. All are Riedel Vinum: 

Champagne flute: sparkling wines of all kind and Champagne

Zinfandel/Chianti Classico: white wine, rosé, and dessert wines

Pinot Noir: as well as Burgundy, Nebbiolo-based wines, Grenache blends, and more.  

Bordeaux/Cabernet Sauvignon: all Cabernet family grapes/wines
 
Finally, a wizened bit of advice when it comes to cleaning and polishing glassware. Always wash and polish glasses the next day—when you’re sober. Washing glassware the night of a dinner or party only leads to casualties. Wait until the next morning and then, with coffee or other favorite morning stimulant in hand, rinse the glassware with hot water and polish with a micro-fiber cloth. If you’ve had guests over and the microbiome has been expanded, use a bit of mild detergent and then rinse the glasses thoroughly in very hot water. Polish after.
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Prost!

Ann-Sophie Barwich is a scientist and professor with joint positions in the Cognitive Science Program and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Her recent book called Smellosophy is about all things olfactory. While it may have a cutsie name, it’s anything but. The book is written for neuro-scientists and the nomenclature is dense and barely readable by the consumer, much less your humble author.

In a chapter called “Perception as a Skill,” Barwich goes into considerable detail about watching part of the second Somm movie (Into the Bottle) in which then student--now MS--Ian Cauble tastes on camera. As Cauble goes through a wine using the MS deductive tasting grid, Barwich comments on what she thinks Cauble is doing using the context of her knowledge and research. I think she misses several important points but that’s another story. Arguably the most important idea presented in the chapter comes from a comment made by one of Barwich’s colleagues: “skilled pattern recognition is what unites the perceptual expertise of perfumers and sommeliers.”

It’s a brilliant statement and describes what we as professionals do when analyzing wine. In Ian’s case, this means taking a wine through the lengthy list that makes up the MS deductive tasting grid. Think about it for a moment. A wine has to be assessed using over 40 different criteria. Given there may be several different kinds of fruit and non-fruit savory aromas/flavors in a wine, there could be several dozen itty-bitty pieces of sensory information that have be recognized, logged, and kept in one’s internal field in order to be able to get to the finish line and make a conclusion about the wine’s identity.

The conclusion is by far the trickiest part of the entire exercise. For the record, it consistently freaks the hell out of students. It also requires pattern recognition in the form of being able to identify a handful of the most important aromatics I call “impact compounds” and then matching them to the fruit quality/character and the structural levels (acid, alcohol, phenolic bitterness, and tannin) in the wine. All this information is visually represented internally, even the structural aspects which are images of some kind of scale or dial to confirm what’s being tasted and felt on the palate.
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Before making a conclusion, Cauble--and practically any taster for that matter-- literally looks internally at five-to-nine images in his mind’s eye that represent key smells/tastes and structural levels, and then concludes, “wow, this must be Gran Reserva Rioja from 2012.” Or something like that. Note I said practically. It’s not universal. It’s been my experience that a very small percentage of tasters are true synesthetes, who regularly experience cross-talk between the senses and process the wine experience in a completely different way.

Pattern recognition goes far beyond wine tasting. Every second of the day we’re bombarded with countless bits of sensory information. If our brain didn’t filter out 99.9% of it, our motherboards would constantly freeze. What’s interesting is how we we’re able to constantly categorize all the information and look for patterns we recognize so the world makes “sense” to us. This allows us to find our mate in a sea of faces (now more challenging because of masks) or remember how to get dressed in the dark (or not).

Pattern recognition is an important strategy for identifying grapes and wines when blind tasting, not to mention judging quality and assessing typicity. The following is a guide of sorts to classic grapes and wines, each with a subset of the most important impact compounds, fruit qualities, and structural levels. Memorizing these subsets will help to form unique internal “patterns” for recognizing grapes and wines during an exam. It goes without say that these patterns are my own. I strongly recommend that students use them as a launching point and create their own lists.

White Grapes and Wines

Chardonnay: Chablis 1er Cru
Fruit quality: tart
Impact compounds: lees contact, possible malolactic (ML), pronounced chalky minerality, and possible use of oak
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity.

Chardonnay: Côtes de Beaune
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: lees – ML – mushroom/earth/mineral – oak usage (often new)
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity

Chardonnay: New World
Fruit quality: tart – ripe - over ripe
Impact compounds: lees contact – ML – oak usage (often new)
Structure: dry to off dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity

Sauvignon Blanc: Sancerre/Pouilly-Fumé
Fruit quality: tart
Impact compounds: green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) - pronounced chalky mineral - possible oak in Pouilly-Fumé
Structure: dry - medium alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity

Sauvignon Blanc: New Zealand
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – possible mineral
Structure: dry - medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity

Chenin Blanc: Loire Valley
Fruit quality: tart - ripe – botrytis influence
Impact compounds: SO2 - possible botrytis – considerable chalky minerality
Structure: bone dry to medium sweet depending on style - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity    
       
Chenin Blanc: California – Washington State
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: overt fruit basket quality - possible residual sugar
Structure: off-dry to slightly sweet - medium alcohol - medium-plus acidity
 
Albariño: Spain – Rias Biaxas
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: considerable floral (terpenes) - pilsner-lees contact – mineral
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity - phenolic bitterness

Grüner Veltliner: Austria
Fruit quality: tart – ripe - possible botrytis influence
Impact compounds: white pepper (rotundone) - herbal-vegetal-botanical notes – lees contact - earth/mineral - botrytis influence depending on style
Structure: dry to off dry - medium to high alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity – phenolic bitterness

Riesling: Germany
Fruit quality: tart – ripe - possible botrytis influence
Impact compounds: possible SO2 – TDN - possible botrytis influence - pronounced slate/mineral
Structure: dry (trocken) to very sweet depending on classification - low to medium alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity

Riesling: Alsace
Fruit quality: tart - ripe - possible botrytis
Impact compounds: TDN - possible botrytis - considerable earth/mineral
Structure: dry to slightly sweet - medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity

Riesling: Clare Valley and Eden Valley
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: considerable TDN - pronounced mineral
Structure: bone dry to dry - medium alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity

Pinot Gris: Alsace
Fruit quality: ripe – possible botrytis
Impact compounds: ripe fruit quality - possible botrytis
Structure: dry to off-dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - phenolic bitterness

Pinot Grigio: Alto Adige
Fruit quality: tart
Impact compounds: floral (terpenes) – lees contact – mineral
Structure: dry - medium alcohol - medium-plus acidity – slight phenolic bitterness

Viognier: Northern Rhône
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: considerable floral (terpenes) – less contact – ML – mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - phenolic bitterness

Viognier: California - Australia
Fruit quality: ripe – overripe
Impact compounds: considerable floral (terpenes) – lees contact – ML – oak usage
Structure: dry to off-dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - phenolic bitterness

Gewurztraminer: Alsace
Fruit quality: ripe – over ripe – canned - possible botrytis influence
Impact compounds: pronounced floral (terpenes) – possible botrytis – considerable earth/mineral
Structure: dry to slightly sweet - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-minus to medium acidity - pronounced phenolic bitterness

Muscat à Petits Grains: Alsace
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – over ripe
Impact compounds: pronounced floral (terpenes) – possible botrytis -   earth/mineral
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - considerable phenolic bitterness

Torrontés: Argentina
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: overt fruit quality - considerable floral (terpenes) – common lack of earth/mineral
Structure: dry - medium-plus alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity – considerable phenolic bitterness

Marsanne-Roussanne Blend: Rhône Valley
Fruit quality: tart - ripe – over ripe
Impact compounds: floral/terpenes in lighter style – oxidative character in oak-aged wines – earth/mineral – possible oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol – medium to medium-plus acidity - phenolic bitterness

Semillon: Bordeaux - Graves Sec
Fruit quality: tart and ripe
Impact compounds: SO2/mercaptan note – mineral – phenolic bitterness – possible oak usage
Structure: dry - medium alcohol - medium-plus acidity – slight phenolic bitterness 

Semillon: Bordeaux: Sauternes – Barsac
Fruit quality: ripe – over ripe - botrytis influence
Impact compounds: botrytis character – pronounced earth – oak usage
Structure: medium sweet to dessert sweet - medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity

Semillon: Australia: Hunter Valley
Fruit quality: tart – under ripe
Impact compounds: two styles: stainless steel wines with floral/terpenes – mineral – phenolic bitterness; oak-aged wines - oxidative character – mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-minus to medium-plus alcohol – medium-plus to high acidity

Melon de Bourgogne: Muscadet
Fruit quality: tart
ID Keys: lees contact – pronounced mineral
Structure: dry - medium alcohol - high acidity

Assyrtiko: Santorini
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
ID Keys: tart-ripe fruit quality - pronounced minerality – possible oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity – considerable phenolic bitterness

Red Grapes and Wines

Cabernet Sauvignon Blend: Left Bank Bordeaux
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Cabernet Sauvignon: California
Fruit quality: ripe – over ripe – raisinated
ID Keys: possible raisination – possible green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) - new oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Cabernet Sauvignon: South Australia – Coonawarra
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
ID Keys: pronounced green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – possible mint/eucalyptus – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Merlot Blend: Right Bank Bordeaux
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
Impact compounds: green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus tannin (softer tannin than Left Bank wines)

Merlot: California - Australia
Fruit quality: ripe – over ripe
Impact compounds: possible green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – oak usage
Structure: dry ­- medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus tannin (softer tannin than Cabernet Sauvignon)

Cabernet Franc: Loire Valley
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
Impact Compounds: pronounced green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – possible stem inclusion - considerable chalky mineral – oak usage (used)
Structure: dry - medium alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Malbec: Argentina - Mendoza 
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
Impact compounds: opaque purple color – possible green herbal/vegetal (pyrazines) – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus tannin

Carmenère: Chile
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: pronounced vegetal/green peppercorn (pyrazines) - possible earth – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Pinot Noir: Burgundy – Côte de Nuits
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: lighter color - possible stem inclusion – considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Pinot Noir: Burgundy - Côte de Beaune
Fruit quality: tart - ripe
Impact compounds: lighter color - possible stem inclusion – considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Impact compounds: lighter color – possible stem inclusion – earthier than Côte de Nuits – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Pinot Noir: California and Oregon
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
Impact compounds: possible stem inclusion – possible earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Pinot Noir: New Zealand
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
Impact compounds: lighter color – possible stem inclusion – herb/leaf – possible mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Gamay: Beaujolais Villages
Fruit quality: tart – ripe - candied
Impact compounds: lighter color – carbonic maceration notes - stem inclusion – earth/mineral
Structure: dry - medium alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-minus to medium tannin

Gamay: Beaujolais Cru
Fruit quality: tart – ripe
Impact compounds: possible carbonic or semi-carbonic notes – possible stem inclusion – earth/mineral – possible oak usage (used)
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Sangiovese: Tuscany—Chianti Classico
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried
Impact compounds: anise/herb - considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: bone dry to dry - medium plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity - medium-plus tannin

Sangiovese: Brunello di Montalcino
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried - oxidized
Impact compounds: anise/herb - considerable earth/mineral – oxidative character - oak usage (barrique or larger barrel)
Structure: bone dry to dry - medium plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Sangiovese: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried
Impact compounds: fruit ripeness (darker fruit from international varieties) - considerable earth/mineral - oak usage (barrique or larger barrel)
Structure: bone dry to dry – medium to medium plus alcohol - medium-plus to high acidity – medium tannin

Nebbiolo: Piedmont - Barolo and Barbaresco
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried - oxidized
Impact compounds: evolved color and secondary color – pronounced floral – considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: bone dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - high acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Barbera: Piedmont
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried – possible oxidation
Impact compounds: herbal notes – possible oxidation – earth/mineral – possible oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Corvina Blends: Veneto – Amarone
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried – raisinated – oxidized - botrytis
Impact compounds: pronounced raisination – volatile acidity – possible botrytis – possible Brettanomyces - considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry to off-dry - high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Aglianico: Campania
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried
Impact compounds: baked fruit quality – reductive/sulfur compound quality – pronounced earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry – medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Tempranillo: Spain - Rioja Reserva and Gran Reserva
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried - oxidized
Impact compounds: dried/oxidative character – chalk-mineral – oak usage (American oak with traditional wines)
Structure: dry with medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Zinfandel: California - Dry Creek Valley
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – jammy - raisinated
Impact compounds: possible uneven fruit ripeness - black/white pepper (rotundone) – lack of earth/mineral – oak usage (often American)
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Syrah: Northern Rhône
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried
Impact compounds: possible uneven fruit ripeness - black/white pepper (rotundone) – savory meat/game qualities – possible Brettanomyces - considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium to high tannin

Syrah: Australia - Barossa Shiraz
Fruit quality: tart – ripe – dried - raisinated
Impact compounds: possible raisinated fruit - black/white pepper (rotundone) – savory meat/game qualities –– oak usage (sometimes American)
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium-plus tannin

Grenache Blend: Southern Rhône – Châteauneuf-du-Pape/Gigondas
Fruit quality: ripe – jammy – cooked - dried
Impact compounds: Mediterranean herb/garrigue - black/white pepper (rotundone) – savory meat/game qualities - considerable earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin 

Grenache: Australia - Barossa
Fruit quality: ripe – jammy
Impact compounds: jammy fruit quality - black/white pepper (rotundone) – mint/eucalyptus – oak usage
Structure: dry - high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium-plus tannin

Mourvèdre: Provence – Bandol
Fruit quality: tart - ripe – jammy
Impact compounds: black/white pepper (rotundone) - savory herb - possible reductive quality – pronounced earth/mineral - oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium-plus acidity - medium-plus to high tannin

Monastrell: Spain – Jumilla
Fruit quality: ripe – jammy
Impact compounds: jammy-raisinated quality - black/white pepper (rotundone) - savory herb – earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium-plus to high alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Pinotage - South Africa
Fruit quality: tart - ripe – jammy
Impact compounds: pronounced herbal/vegetal – possible reductive/sulfur compound – possible Brettanomyces – pronounced earth/mineral – oak usage
Structure: dry - medium to medium-plus alcohol - medium to medium-plus acidity - medium to medium-plus tannin

Author’s note: Here are some suggestions on how to use the information in this post.

• There is a great deal of information above. Break it down into three-to five grapes at a time to make it manageable.
• In regards to your internal images, make them big, bright, and close in proximity in your internal field.

• You’ll need to be able to visually represent the structural levels internally. Use a scale or a dial to do so. For more information, see the post called “Sight Unseen” from January of 2020.
• In your internal field, fan the images of important aromatics out in front of you in a simple pattern—left to right, up-down, or whatever is easiest. Do the same with the structural elements.
• Make auditory part of your memory work. As you “look at” the internal pattern of aromatic and structure level images, name each internally—or out loud.
• Remember to have fun with the process.  

To an outsider, a wine trip seems like a dream junket where we, the anointed industry professionals, are escorted in luxury from winery to winery in some foreign exotic locale. And once there, we’re treated like royalty by winery owners and importers as we taste (drink) our way through zillions of expensive wines and eat at fabulous restaurants.

In reality, wine trips are a totally different thing. More often than not, the trips are like death marches where you and a group of people in the trade you probably don’t know (but will soon know all too well) are stuck in a van for hours a day for a week or more. And the daily schedule of appointments can be brutal with four or five stops a day and between 60-100 wines tasted.

Hopefully the food will be decent. Many times it’s not. Because wine is involved with every meal save breakfast there’s entirely too much protein and little in the way of green. There was a time when vegetarians perished on one of these trips. Now it’s better but vegans are still in the same boat. Traveling in Spain or Italy and you’re a vegan? Good luck.

Eventually, the metabolic seesaw of stimulants, depressants, and too little sleep takes its toll. Then someone in the van gets sick. If one person gets a cold or worse, everyone gets it. And there’s always the possibility for a shared food poisoning experience.

There’s another aspect to wine trips rarely mentioned, but experienced by all: the drivers. They can be consummate pros or ordinary hacks who somehow got roped into driving your group around for the day or a week. The young Greek lad who drove our group around his country for 10 days comes to mind. He wore the same polyester disco shirt the entire trip. I tried not to get close to him after the first couple of days. I’m sure he just stood the shirt up in his hotel room at night. And he definitely redefined the term “terroir.” Yes, car experiences on wine trips can sometimes be the stuff of legend. But they can also be some of the most terrifying moments in one’s life. Here are four personal fear and loathing experiences on the wine trail.

I: March, 2000 - Aconcagua, Chile

At the time I was working for the artist formerly known as the original wine.com. The trip was billed as a “Sommelier Summit” for a group of august U.S. wine professionals. For several days, we were shown wine country in and around Santiago and Casablanca near Valparaiso. On the last day of the tour I opted out of sightseeing with the group to instead go to a small winery in the Aconcagua about 90 minutes from where we were staying. My assignment was to taste through their inventory and choose some selections to direct import for wine.com.

I was picked up promptly at 8:00 AM by a young goateed lad in a smallish Euro car. I piled into the front seat and immediately noticed two things: first, that the floor was littered with trash and fast-food wrappers, and second, there was a small plastic statuette of the virgin attached to the dashboard. Little did I know I’d be praying to the tiny icon in a matter of minutes.

Goateed lad immediately took off full blast from the hotel into traffic. In no time we were on the highway, which wasn’t actually a highway but a two-lane affair with a middle passing lane. My driver immediately started to pass any car or truck he could. In short order I discovered the gestalt of highway driving in Chile: your single mission was to go as fast as you could and pass every vehicle in front of you to do just that. Using your blinker was less than optional. But there’s more. All the vehicles on the road with you were trying to do the same—even those in the opposite lane. This meant that the middle lane became a dangerous DMZ of sorts in which a never-ending game of chicken was played with the bigger vehicle or driver having the largest cajones winning quick and perilous stand offs.

Within minutes I was gripping the hand rest with one hand, the seat with the other, and repeatedly stomping on an imaginary brake pedal which was in reality a pile of trash. I must have told goatee man that we weren’t in a hurry at least a dozen times. He nodded every time and then stepped on the gas. At some point during the first hour I had the sudden realization that my life was in the young man’s hands. And if the gods were willing for us to live to see another day it would be. If not, at least the end would be quick. But it would also be messy.
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In time we did make it to the winery which was in the foothills of the 20,000-foot Mt. Aconcagua. It turns out that goateed lad was one of the sons of the owner. The latter took me through the winery, which was not much more than a concrete and corrugated metal building filled with tanks and barrels. Then we sat at a table and tasted through over 20 wines, mostly red. I made notes and chose six of the samples. We then talked about pricing and the logistics of shipping the wines to California. After a quick lunch it was time for the return trip back to the hotel. It was just as harrowing. But I don’t remember most of it because I slept—or pretended to. 

II: April, 2006 - Douro, Portugal

I was in Portugal with friend and fellow MS Keith Goldston under the auspices of AMORIM, the giant cork producer. For the better part of week we had toured cork forest, cork production plants, and a few wineries. Towards the end of the trip we drove from Porto to the Douro Valley located about two hours away. The Douro is one of the oldest vineyard areas in Europe. It’s also a barren moonscape that resembles the Grand Canyon, with vines planted on steep craggy hillsides that rise hundreds of feet up from the Douro River. Dynamite is actually used to put in new vineyards. The climate is also extreme, with temps averaging over a hundred degrees during the summer. Fortunately we were there in March before the heat set in.

Our driver for the week was the lovely Maria Rosita. She was bubbly, charming, and talked a mile-a-second. Maria was perpetually on her flip phone (remember, this was 2006) giving trip updates to her boss or chatting with friends. Maria also drove fast. Insanely fast. We must have made the trip between Lisbon and Porto in record time.

Our first appointment in the Douro lasted until late afternoon, when it began to rain. Keith and I piled into the back of the rental with Maria at the wheel. Our destination was the hotel/restaurant for the night. In no time it was dark and pouring. Once settled behind the wheel, Maria rolled her window down (deluge and all), lit a cigarette, and then put on a cassette (yes, a cassette) of the Rolling Stones full blast. She had already told us multiple times that they were her favorite band. Maria then called one of her best friends to talk about the soccer game the night before between Porto—her team—and a close rival.
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From there, things went like this: it’s pitch dark and raining in sheets. From my window I can see the lights of buildings on the banks of the river hundreds of feet below. The town of Pinhão, our destination, is blinking in the distance. Maria is driving as fast as the tiny single lane road—now shiny and slick--will allow. There are wickedly sharp switchbacks and hairpin turns at regular intervals—but they’re not well marked. Meanwhile, Maria is yelling into her phone and waving her cigarette out the window with the other. I’m not sure how the car is being steered. With each turn Keith and I are tossed against each other or against our door. But the finishing touch is the music. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is blaring from the fuzzy warbles sounds system. The song has never been the same for me. It never will be.

III: April 2006 - Douro Portugal

Same trip the next day. In the morning we toured Quinta do Crasto, a Port producer. After lunch Maria dropped us off at Niepoort, a historic family-owned house that specializes in aged Tawny Ports and dry wines from Port varieties. Dirk Niepoort is one of Portugal’s most important winemakers. He’s also an affable no-nonsense guy. After introductions we piled into his Land Rover for the trip up a very steep hill—as in, a 40-plus-percent grade—to the winery. The Land Rover was ancient: one of those thick rattly metal cans with an engine and drive train that are good for nothing other than traversing off-road or up really steep hills at a snail’s pace.

I got in the front seat next to Dirk. Keith and Roger Archey from the PR company were in the back. I immediately noticed that there were no seat belts and mentioned it to Dirk. He looked at me as if I had two heads. “Why would you need them up there?” he asked. I shrugged. We then chug-chugged in slow motion up the bumpy dirt road to the top.

Just as we reached the summit Dirk suddenly said, “Shit, I left the keys down at the house.” At this point any normal/sane person would have slowly turned the car around to go back downhill. But not Dirk. With left hand on the steering wheel, he clanked the mighty Land Rover into reverse. Then he turned around to look backwards and told us, “you’d better hold on.” What followed was 30 or more of the longest, scariest-ass seconds of my life. Any wrong move with the steering wheel, however slight, and we would have somersaulted hundreds of feet to the bottom of the vineyard. We might even have made the river. It’s been done before. Roger yipped at one point. I just held on to anything I could for dear life. I’m not sure about Keith. After an eternity we reached the bottom of the road and zipped up to the side door of the house. Then Dirk looked at us and said “what?”

IV: May 2008 - Palermo, Sicily

Flying into Palermo from Rome took all of 35 minutes. Unfortunately, my suitcase did not make it. Trying to make sense of that with the woman handling missing luggage was hit and miss at best. But I did show her my passport and the name of the hotel so there was a glimmer of hope.

After, I met up with a colleague and we grabbed a cab to the hotel. The cabbie nailed every stereotype of his ilk possible. He was large, completely unkempt, and given to laying on the horn, waving his fist, and screaming at any car that wasn’t going fast enough. And this was even before we got out of the parking lot. Once we got on the freeway he hit his stride. The good news was that the hotel was only 30 minutes from the airport.

By the time we got into Palermo it was rush hour. No surprise that the cabbie became all the more incensed by stopped traffic, muttering and periodically leaning out his window to verbally assault some random driver who then did likewise. When in Palermo…. But scary cab driver had one more trick up his sleeve. At some point he made a sharp left turn down a major one-way street--going the wrong way. Cabbie guy took the far-right lane, lowered his head, laid on the horn, and drove. Cars and trucks coming toward us scattered like pigeons on a playground, some ending up on the sidewalk. I had one of those moments described in the Chile incident above. There was nothing I could do and it was only a matter of seconds before this crazy moron got us all killed. But it didn’t happen. Instead he whipped a hard right turn and screeched to a halt in front our hotel. Before we could even move he was out of the car, trunk opened, and my colleague’s suitcase tossed in front of the bell stand. We got out and he immediately asked to be paid. Basta! he said with his hand out. I paid him and he got back in the cab muttering and giving me the eye. But there was a happy ending to the story. My suitcase turned up around midnight. And I had lived to be able to open it.
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Finito

It was April 2006. I’d been in Portugal for the better part of a week with good friend and fellow MS Keith Goldston. We were guests of AMORIM, Portugal’s largest cork producer. For the past several days we had toured cork factories, seen cork forests, and sat through seminars on all things cork-related with an emphasis on TCA issues. The week also involved several great meals including numerous opportunities to taste black pig, the most delicious pork in the known universe. But now it was late afternoon on the last day. We were sitting on the beach in Porto watching a huge golden sun set over the Atlantic while sipping ice-cold Sagres beers and eating the freshest, briniest oysters I’ve ever tasted. Life was grand.

It was precisely at that moment that Maria Rosita, our guide for the week, suddenly rushed up saying she had managed to get tickets to the first ever winemaker dinner to be held that night in Porto. Further, the meal would be prepared by one of Portugal’s hottest chefs and would take place at the modern art museum. She was simply giddy at the prospect as if she had scored backstage passes to a Stones concert. 

Maria was therefore understandably shocked when we barely registered any response at all. “So let me get this straight,” I said, “you want us to leave all this to go to a winemaker dinner? Seriously?” Maria was visibly crestfallen, even offended. After all, she had been our cheerleader, biggest fan, and crazy-ass driver for the past week. Needless to say, the guilt of it all quickly sunk in and we caved in seconds. We would then go to the dinner, forsaking the Hallmark moment of sunset at the beach, oysters, and cold beer.

In less than half an hour we were at the entrance of the stark white museum exterior. Once inside we were quickly ushered to the room designated for the night’s gala event. It took just moments to realize that the venue may have worked for a museum but was a completely untenable space for any kind of catered meal. The ceilings in the “dining room” were barely ten feet high, which wasn’t exactly a problem except for the fact that everyone—except us—smoked. Constantly. Heavily. If not familiar, smoking is one of Portugal’s national sports along with football. To top it all off and complete the psycho-killer feel of the room was the fact that there weren’t any windows. What followed can only be described as a quick descent into the darkest reaches of culinary hell. But as the wise Inigo Montoya once said, “It’s too long to explain. Let me sum up.” 

To begin, the cast for the evening’s performance:

The crowd: Dozens of Porto’s top foodies, all fashionably attired were there in force eagerly awaiting the night’s event as they smoked cigarette after cigarette non-stop. 

The winemaker: Was from a small estate in the Douro Valley that produced both Port and dry wines from indigenous varieties. He resembled a short, beardless Santa Claus and was perpetually smiling as if someone had dialed up his medication for the evening. He spoke only Portuguese, which to me has always sounded like Russian pirates trying to speak Spanish. 

The winemaker’s son: Would be joining us at our table, which meant that Keith and I would actually have to behave and pay attention. The son had gone to school in New York and spoke very good English. He was a timid sort but truly excited about the evening because it was a grand opportunity to show off his family’s winery and wines. After all, it was also Porto’s first winemaker dinner and how bad could that be? The gods were just about to show us.
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The Chef: Soon after arriving, Maria arranged for Keith and me to meet the chef.  Moments later he appeared from the kitchen in impeccably clean starched whites with his tiny assistant trailing behind. Said assistant was a short, mousy woman who looked as if she’d experienced one too many explosions at close proximity. We would soon learn why. The Chef shook our hands vigorously and, in perfect English, regaled us with tales of his recent opening of a multi-million-dollar restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. He then went on to provide his thoughts on the menu for the night’s extravaganza.

​It was about ninety seconds into the conversation when I noticed the chef’s left eye start to twitch. Odd, I thought, but really no big deal. But as he went on describing the menu and how he would, and I quote, “flout convention,” things got downright strange. His speech became increasingly punctuated with loud staccato words accompanied by jerking gestures. Several minutes in and our chef was shouting and literally spitting out words as he finished describing the dessert course. Keith and I looked on with more than a bit of concern. We weren’t quite sure what had just happened. But in watching him and then looking at his tiny cowering assistant everything suddenly became crystal clear. And the thought of this guy in a hot busy-ass kitchen working with knives also became an unsettling picture. 

Punctually at eight o’clock the proceedings began with an elegantly dressed socialite, cigarette in hand, welcoming the group and introducing the evenings’ important personalities. First the winemaker stepped up and, over the course of the next ten minutes or so, told the story of the family winery all the while mewling in sotto voce Portuguese. Every few minutes Keith and I turned to his son and asked, “What did he just he say?”  The response was something like, “he said the winery is really old,” or “the hills are very steep.” Finally, the winemaker showed both wisdom and temerity by sitting down. Next up came the chef with his assistant. Any doubts about the earlier script being repeated were quickly resolved as the chef sputtered his way through the description of the first course. The crowd, bless them all, listened with rapt attention and smoked incessantly on as if nothing was amiss.   

As the first course hit the table I remembered the chef’s phrase: “flout convention.” It was a soup course. In this case, a cream of almond soup with a texture not unlike Malt-O-Meal. But the crowning touch was a raw egg yolk floating in the center of the bowl looking for all the world like an enormous evil yellow eye. Memories of the black and white Twilight Zone commercials with the huge blinking eye quickly came to mind. All around me diners with spoons in hand pierced the evil yellow eye and tucked into the almond soup, which was remarkably salty and a stark contrast to the slimy texture of the egg yolk. To top it off, the soup was paired with an oxidized and over-oaked Douro white wine that reminded me of an unfinished bedroom set that had seen better days. I will leave it to you to imagine the combination of gloppy soup, slimy egg yolk, and oaky over-the-hill white. It was definitely not conventional. 

With each successive course the bizarre tableau repeated itself. The foodies chain-smoked as if it were their last day on earth until the smoke got so thick that one could, as they say, cut it with a chef’s knife. The winemaker would stand up and quietly mewl away for 5-10 minutes about the next wine. Finally, mercifully, he would stop talking to the smoky applause of the diners. Then the chef would reappear from the kitchen with his tiny assistant trailing behind him. As before, he would start speaking to the group with authority and conviction but within minutes start to melt down. After sputtering and barking through his description of the next course he would return to the kitchen as the audience politely applauded through the haze. To say it was all surreal is a bit of an understatement.

Between courses Keith and I would stagger outside through a side door gasping for fresh air. Any and all urges to grab the nearest cab back to the hotel were quickly thwarted by the appearance of Maria, who was concerned about our sudden absence. We complained vociferously about the cigarette smoke but there was nothing really to be done. To her credit, Maria tried to get the people around us to give the smoking a rest several times but they completely ignored her. 

The high point, the pièce de résistance, of entire evening was surely the entrée. It consisted of a large chunk of cod, a staple of the Portuguese diet, which had been pan-seared and supposedly finished in the oven. Beneath the cod was a puree of roasted pearl onions and on the side a lettuce leaf burrito looking affair filled with soggy mashed potatoes. As I went to cut into the cod for the initial bite I quickly realized that it was all but raw. In fact, it had the same texture as a piece of flesh just carved from the bone of basically any kind of dead animal. 

Accompanying the dead cod and fixings was the Brettiest, most tannic Douro red wine I’ve ever tasted. Imagine the essence of barnyard and iodine combined with a texture similar to licking the floor of a machine shop. When I first put my nose in the glass my eyes watered and I saw the color brown. At that point I looked up and across the table at Keith. He was equally stunned. We put our dinning utensils down in unison, picked up a glass of one of the other wines, and quickly slammed the remaining contents. All around us Porto’s top foodies wolfed down the raw cod and potato burrito with relish and aplomb.

The end the meal was kind of/partially/sort of saved by a delicious flourless chocolate cake prepared not by the chef but by a local caterer. It was paired with the winemaker’s vintage port which had a smoky edge due either to the wine’s age or the tainted air in our lungs.
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Three-plus hours later we emerged from that hazy den of gastronomic disaster practically begging for another beer. Back at the hotel bar we did our best to tell Maria that it was OK. We would be just fine. After the second beer even she had to say, “Wow, that really sucked.” And so it did--but with style.