It's finally here!

Ok, people. The blogger of all bloggers, Adam Roberts, aka - The Amateur Gourmet, has finally published a book.

His blog is amazing, and the book is generating a ton of buzz. Check both of them out. Immediately.

I ordered my copy today. God, I love Amazon.com.

Do's and Don'ts of Your High School Reunion (Alternately titled "My $45 glass of wine")

If you tell someone you spent $45 on one glass of wine, they will assume that you have just been to some fabulous restaurant that pours a first-growth by the glass, or that you splurged on a shared bottle with someone, or had some kind of amazing gastronomic experience culminating with a glass of d'Yquem.

If they were talking to me, that someone would be wrong. Because I somehow wound up paying $45 for a plastic cup filled with oaky DeBortoli Chardonnay.

That's what you get for attending your ten year high school reunion when the planning committee threw together an event that cost $45/person and included only one drink ticket before switching to cash bar.

I can't complain too much, though. The whole evening was hugely entertaining, and I picked up a few tips from the experience, which I will now share with all of you just in case your have your own reunion coming up.

Do: Take your gay best friend from high school as your date.
Don't: Laugh in the face of the person who asks if you two are "still together".

Do: Develop a signal with said date about how to rescue each other from conversations.
Don't: Let him get drunk and tell people what the signal was so that they then see you doing it while talking to them.

Do: Wear killer heels.
Don't: Trip in front of the rent-a-cops while walking to you car.

Do: Come up with a plan on how to "spin" yourself when people ask what you do.
Don't: Look around and loudly ask "What's with everyone here being a teacher?" when the tenth person in a row tells you that they teach.

Do: Talk to your sophomore year Homecoming date.
Don't: Roll your eyes when he launches into a heartfelt monologue about how much he misses playing high school football.

Do: Encourage your date to strike up a conversation with his very conservative ex-girlfriend.
Don't: Rally people to stand across the room and watch it all go down.

Do: Listen politely when the girls who planned the reunion give out superlatives.
Don't: Grab the mike and cuss everyone out for not electing you Senior Class President.

Do: Be nice to everyone, including the guy who used to dangle spit out his mouth and then suck it back in third grade.
Don't: Give him your phone number.

Do: Utilize the provided name tags.
Don't: Blatantly tell people that you have no idea who they are.

Do: Have a few drinks to loosen up.
Don't: Let yourself end up being the guy who gets drunk, takes off his shirt, and tries to pick a fight.

Do: Have fun.
Don't: Take any of it seriously.

A Pivotal Moment

January, 2004

The day of my final exam was upon me.

It was a typical snowy, January morning in New York City. Cars sloshed down the streets, and pedestrians ambled carefully so as not to ruin their expensive footwear. Shod in my mother’s old Duck boots (all of my attempts at fashion, which in a city like New York came out half-assed anyway, went to the wayside when it meant that my feet were in danger of getting wet), I stood outside the gray building south of Houston Street and looked up at the sign on the door. This was it. The American Sommelier Association. The locale of the test that I had spent the last five months dreading.

Gulp.

As I rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, I mentally crammed. Name the five first growths of Bordeaux. Got it. What are the major grape varietals in Piedmont? Easy. What does Trockenbeerenauslese mean in reference to German rieslings? I was golden.

After settling into my seat, I flipped over the test in front of me and did a quick scan of the short-answer questions. Panic ensued as I systematically blanked on most of the answers. I started to feel claustrophobic, like I was drowning in a Nebuchadnezzar-sized wine bottle, and my instructor was pushing in the cork.

Two hours later, I surrendered the exam, brain fried. I gathered up my belongings in defeat and ran to the elevator wondering how I could have done so poorly on the final, when I had an 85 average on the dozens of other tests we had taken? The elevator car finally hit the ground floor, and I sprinted for the door and burst out onto Broadway, gasping for breath. Two completely dazed blocks later, I called my mother, choking back tears, and attempted to explain what had happened.

“Erin, do you need to come home?” she ventured.

That did it. The flood gates burst open.

“Yes,” I wailed, “I want to move back home.”

My hand flew to cover my mouth. Had I really just admitted to myself and my mother that it was time to move back to Richmond?

Delicious Reading Review #1 - I Am Now a Mondavi Groupie

The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, by Julia Flynn Siler

Admittedly a relative novice in the wine world, having only been in the business for about five years, I did not know a lot about the Robert Mondavi Winery. I'd always thought of them as mass-produced supermarket wines, and although I had some sense in the back of my mind that they were a bigger deal than that, I really had no understanding of the history. So when I caught wind of The House of Mondavi earlier this summer, I figured it was my duty as a baby in the biz to see what all of the Mondavi fuss was about. The daunting four hundred page hardback sat on my shelf for a few weeks before I broke the back, expecting to merely trudge through and learn a little something.

Um, holy crap.

Brother against brother, mother against sons, friends against friends - my jaw literally dropped several times while I flew through this captivating book in a little over a week. Siler chronicles the soap opera-ish history of the Mondavi wine empire from a completely neutral standpoint, leaving the reader to take their own sides based on which family member they relate to more and pass their own judgement on how certain events went down.

This book is both informative and compelling, and I'm actually disappointed to be finished with it. I am left hungry for more information on the Mondavi family, daydreaming of my next visit to Napa so that I can pass under the famous arch and take a tour of the Oakville winery myself - something I would have considered myself too sophisticated to do before taking this literary journey. Hell, maybe I'll even pick up some Woodbridge Chardonnay to drink with dinner tonight.

Ok... maybe not. But I do highly recommend the book to anyone with even a smidgen of interest in the California wine industry, or just loves some good 'ole family drama.

Wine poetry

Last night we wanted to celebrate the birthday of Pete,
and the best way to do that is get some vino and eat.

So we started off the meal with some Joseph Phelps Cab,
and settled into a booth at our favorite restaurant to blab.

The wine opened up as our steaks were seared,
and soon the bouquet was so rich that our eyes almost teared.

"Yo, Paisan!" called Pete, to our wine-manager friend,
"We need one more bottle before this meal can end!"

We chose an Amarone, (no accent on the "e").
What better way to celebrate the birth of a man from Sicily?

The wine started out a bit tight, but then opened right up,
as aromas of raisins and dried petals soon burst from the cup.

A candle was blown out as the meal drew to a close,
and so ended our birthday feast ended, much to the disappointment of my nose.

I need representation like that...

Um... Ryan Seacrest must have the best agent in the world.

See here.

Mouse spying

I wonder if I should tell someone about the little mouse that is running around on the patio of the coffee shop where I am currently usurping free internet? Safely inside, I'm sitting next to a window watching the tiny thing (probably a baby) scamper around the cement to and from his hiding place.

I should probably be grossed out, but it was just so cute a few seconds ago when it found a piece of food and bounded back to his nook with excitement, I just can't help but indulge in spying on it for a few minutes more.

Yeah, I'm kinda weird.

Riesling and Buffalo Wings

When my friend Dana asked me to sit on a tasting panel for an article that she was writing on where to find the best buffalo wings in the city, I jumped at the chance.

"It'll be perfect!" she exclaimed. "I've got a chef, a guy who knows a lot about peppers, and a couple of novices. You can be the token 'foodie' and give your expert opinion!"

Well, I wasn't sure that I was actually an expert on the subject, but for the opportunity to taste a bunch of free wings and then pontificate about them in an article that was going to grace the front of the food section of the local newspaper, I was willing to pretend to be. A photographer was coming and everything. My ego was psyched.

I arrived at the restaurant last night and promptly ordered a glass of Riesling, figuring that the balance of sweetness and acidity in the wine was the only logical compliment to the spicy sauces that were about to pass my lips and coat my fingertips.

"Ok, everyone," Dana instructed after we all settled down at the big marble table in the middle of the bar, "here's how it's going to work. We're tasting wings from six restaurants, three chain and three locally owned. There are three different flavors represented in the line up, and we're scoring each one on a hundred point scale. Also, there's plenty of space to write comments, so be sure to come up with some good stuff so I'll have quotes to use in the article."

The results were full of surprises. Being a crowd of city-dwelling twenty-somethings, we were primed up to hate the chains, but were surprised when some of our local haunts failed us. There was definitely a runaway favorite of the bunch, and all of us greedily fought over the leftovers and licked the peppery sauce off of our fingers.

However, dessert was yet to come. The chef on the panel worked at the restaurant that was hosting us for the tasting. Since it is an upscale environment that is not exactly known for bar food, not to mention the fact that there would be a natural bias, we did not enter their wings into the mix. We had, however, been promised a round of theirs when the competition was over.

When we thought we had had our fill of chicken drummettes and celery, a new bowl was placed in the middle of the table. Inside was about a dozen and a half of the most perfectly plump wings I had ever seen. We could already smell the sauce, which had the perfect mixture of sweetness and heat and... and... what was that last ingredient?

"Roasted garlic," the chef announced over our lip smacking. "You get it right up front and it moistens your palate for the rest of the flavors. Oh, we almost forgot the blue cheese!" And with that he scampered back into the kitchen.

A few minutes later two wide, shallow ramekins of the thickest, most pungent blue cheese dressing I've ever seen were gently set down on either side of the wing bowl. We oohed, aahed, and finally just started eating the stuff with our fingers. These were, undoubtedly, the best wings I'd ever had.

And like I suspected, they went perfectly with the Kabinett Riesling. Maybe I've got more expertise on the subject than I thought...

Week breakdown

Here's how my week has transpired, thus far:

Wednesday: Southern Starz tasting at Australian Embassy.

Thursday: gurgling Cougar Crest products all day (and night) long

Friday: copious amounts of coffee in the morning, and more wine drinking that night while listening to a friend's band play

Saturday: serious Crest Whitestrip action (They are, after all, the #1 dentist recommended brand.)

A Shamelessly "Borrowed" Story

Yesterday I rode around with the National Sales Manager from Cougar Crest Winery. Only on their third vintage, these guys are phenomenal. The wines are complex and varietally correct, each displaying the perfect balance between fruit and acidity. They are truly a great example of what Washington State can do, and I am proud to be able to sell their products.

And as an added bonus the sales manager was a trip. He kept me in stitches all day, and well into the evening, with tons of stories, including this one, which I will now completely rip off.

(Picture this story being told by a short Italian guy, whose personality is larger than life, in a fun, not obnoxious, way. New York accent and all.)

"Oh, dude, so, my wife and I went home to my mom's house for Christmas for the first time last year. My mom doesn't drink cause she gets migraines. I mean, the woman can't even fuckin' have a red wine reduction, I swear, it's terrible. But she lives with my aunt, and they have a few bottles around the house that they have somehow accumulated over the years.

'Brian, go down to the basement and get that bottle on the left end of the shelf,' she told me when we were there. 'It's something I've been wanting to share with you for a while. I bought it when I graduated college.'

Great, I thought. Something she bought like 40 years ago and has never told me about until now. This should be interesting.

So I creak down the stairs and find the bottle she's talking about. It's covered in cobwebs, so I pick it up and blow it off. Poufffff....

My wife, who's like, a total Bordeaux freak, by the way, could hear me gasp all the way up the stairs.

'What is it?' she called down.

So I'm cradlin' the bottle like a baby, afraid to do anything to damage, or even alter the wine in any way, and go back upstairs.

'Um, it's a '68 Lafite.'

'Oh... my... God...' she muttered slowly.

'Is that a good thing?" my aunt cackled.

'Oh, we're fuckin' drinkin' this thing tonight,' I say. Dude, I don't even care that '68 was supposedly a bad vintage.

So I go to open the thing, and the cork completely dissolves and I have to push it down into the bottle. So I'm fuckin' filtering it through a coffee filter and decanting it into a water pitcher. But we're like, determined to drink it, even if it's totally gone.

So, I lift the first taste to my mouth, and my whole body, like falls, and I shake my head to my wife. I mean, this wine... it's not completely dead, but it's like livin' at the nursing home, fuckin' IVs in it's arm, saying it's goodbyes to its grand kids... it's on the way out.

And then, I swear to God, my wife's nose perks up from across the room and she's like 'Give me that wine.' Dude, the thing had been open and exposed to the air for like two minutes, and it completely turned around. It's like it drank out of the fountain of youth, jumped out of it's wheelchair, and started tap dancin'. It was awesome.

So we drank the whole thing out of her old ass crystal glasses and had it with the meatloaf she fixed for dinner.

And I'll tell you this - it wasn't the best fuckin' wine I've ever had, but it sure was the most memorable."

104 degrees and fifty Shirazes later...

"Dude, all I'm saying is - bring a toothbrush!"

My coworker, Don, had attended our importer's tasting at the DC Australian Embassy the day before me, and after three hours of gurgling, swirling, and then spitting red wines that each had 15-16% alcohol , those were his words of advice.

So this afternoon another coworker and I hit the road to DC to tackle the second day of the event. Because, you know, on the hottest day of the year, speed tasting through fifty Australian Shirazes is just what the doctor ordered. If only someone had been able to offer me a cigar, the whole day would have been perfect.

After driving around Dupont Circle for a good twenty minutes, we finally found a parking lot about four blocks away from the Embassy. By the time we arrived at the tasting, my feet had already swollen so much that my shoes felt like they were two sizes too small, and I had an incredibly attractive sweat stain on the small of my back that had my boss referring to my V-shaped "Shweat Thong" for the rest of the day. (Don't you love when somehow you slip into a big-brother/little-sister relationship with your superiors? I mean, how many people are allowed to call their bosses "fuckwad" and get away with it?)

Needless to say, by the time I had grabbed my glass and was finally tasting the first Verdelho of the day, it was all I could do to not grab the bottle and chug the refreshing, green-ish juice right down. However, I managed to control myself. Ahem. I am a professional, after all.

The next two hours were spent juggling a wine glass, water bottle, tasting notes, and cell phone (still taking orders for the day, mind you), attempting to decipher a difference between this huge, juicy red wine and the next one, flirting with the better looking of the Aussie winemakers, and all the while trying to note which wines you were going to push onto those clients who weren't lucky enough to be invited to drink amongst the dignitaries.

After the last table of dessert wines had been tasted, and the bottles were being recorked, my coworkers and I reconvened in the small meeting area for a short powwow on which wines had showed particularly well. While we were gossiping and trying to decide where to go for dinner, one of the higher ups in the importer started passing around six-packs of extremely chilled beer.

A collective "Ahhhh..." passed through the halls, for there is nothing like capping off a marathon tasting with a cold beer to cleanse the palate. All in all, it was a fabulous way to spend an afternoon. Who cares what the weather is like outside? I'll sip on those wines anytime - as long as the AC is cranking.

Read other stuff I write

My August article on Richmond.com posted today! Check it out here.

(And keep in mind that I did not come up with the cheesy name for the column. For some reason they wouldn't let me name it "Spit or Swallow".)

Contradiction

Conversation at my wine tasting last night:

Man: Real men don't drink pink wine. It's wimpy looking.

Me: What are you talking about!? That's absurd!

Man: But you don't know what it's like to be a real man!

Me: Yes, but I do know what women find attractive in men. I, personally, love to see a man who is secure enough to sip a rose.

Man: Eh... nope. Just can't bring myself to do it.

Me: I can respect that. By the way, I like your shirt.

Next thing I knew...

"Heidi asked me last night what my type was so that she could be on the lookout for people to set me up with," I told Jess as we got out of the car and walked towards one of our favorite spots last night. "But you know, I just really don't want to date anyone right now. I'm not in the mood to get caught up in another emotional drama."

"I hear that," she said as we swung the door open and walked towards the bar.

"Excuse me," I said a few minutes later to the two guys who I was leaning in between to order my drink. Next thing I knew...

"Erin, right?" the very handsome one on the left said.

"Oh! Hi!" I said, attempting casual. Someone I'd met a few times through the wine scene here in Richmond, recently single, and so good looking that he has always made me nervous.

We spent the next hour talking to him and his friend, and having a great time.

Next thing I knew, they accepted our invitation to come with us to the next destination - a bar nearby to hear a friend's band play. We talked more than we listened.

Next thing I knew, we were all doing an impromptu late night at his house, sipping on Grand Cru Champagne and dancing in the living room.

He had asked me earlier why I liked wine. Watching his friend twirl my friend around and then lead her into a low dip, I turned to him.

"This is why I like wine," I said. "Because right now is what it's all about. New friends sharing a special bottle, dancing, laughing, having a great time. This is the most important thing in the world. This is life."

Next thing I knew, he was softly kissing me.

Ride-with cringe

"Oh my God. If someone I was riding with said that, I would fall through the floor with embarassment," I said.

Every once in a while, us wine reps will have someone in town who either works for an importer or directly for a winery that we represent. They will be assigned to us all day and will ride around visiting our accounts and tasting them on their wines. Usually the days are fun, but you always run the risk of riding with someone who is... ahem... eccentric, let's say... and you never know what might come out of their mouths. To your accounts. Who you are trying to protect and guard your relationship with. And not offend.

So when one of the employees at my biggest account on Monday was gossiping with me about another rep whose ride-with earlier that day had said that instead of aging in actual oak barrels, their winery ages in stainless steel vats and dips burlap sacks full of oak chips and cow manure into the wine for months, I felt for the guy.

"Erin, he actually referred to the process as 'teabagging'," he said.

I nearly spit out the wine that I had in my mouth. "You are shitting me!" He shook his head. "He was actually able to refer to it as teabagging without the slightest bit of irony and laughing? Wow." Needless to say, we all had a good laugh, and I felt inwardly sorry for the other rep.

Until the next day when it was my turn.

I had a ride-with yesterday with a very nice winemaker from New Zealand. His wines were showing beautifully and we were getting a decent amount of placements on them throughout the day. Sure, the Pinot Noir was still a bit young, but nothing that a few more years of aging, or a couple of minutes of decanting, wouldn't cure.

Mid-day found us back at my biggest account tasting with the two owners and the same employee who had told me the story the day before.

"Yes, the Pinot is still a baby," the winemaker said, "but honestly, the best way to cure that is to just pop it in the microwave."

I closed my eyes for two seconds and said a little prayer that this statement would just be glazed over. When I opened them and scanned the tasters, who had those blank what-the-fuck-did-he-just-say looks on their faces, I knew that there would be no such luck.

The winemaker saw those looks too, but unfortunately took it as reason to continue, not shut up.

"Oh yeah. 30 or 40 seconds in the microwave will open this one right up. You'd be amazed what a great trick that is!"

I saw the lips of the employee curl slightly as he made eye contact with me for a fraction of a second. The owner quickly poured out the Pinot in his glass and announced that he was ready to move on to the third wine.

I knew that that statement would make me an object of a few laughs later that day. Luckily, I'm pretty good natured, had a tasting scheduled in with them later in the week. I figured that with a few days for the shock to blow off and a tiny bit of self-deprication, I would be able to turn the situation around to my favor and we could all have a good laugh about it.

And I'll go ahead and get a muzzle for my next ride-with. Just in case.

A Pivotal Moment

January, 2004

The day of my final exam was upon me.

It was a typical snowy, January morning in New York City. Cars sloshed down the streets, and pedestrians ambled carefully so as not to ruin their expensive footwear. Shod in my mother’s old Duck boots (all of my attempts at fashion, which in a city like New York came out half-assed anyway, went to the wayside when it meant that my feet were in danger of getting wet), I stood outside the gray building south of Houston Street and looked up at the sign on the door. This was it. The American Sommelier Association. The locale of the test that I had spent the last five months dreading.

Gulp.

As I rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, I mentally crammed. Name the five first growths of Bordeaux. Got it. What are the major grape varietals in Piedmont? Easy. What does Trockenbeerenauslese mean in reference to German rieslings? I was golden.

After settling into my seat, I flipped over the test in front of me and did a quick scan of the short-answer questions. Panic ensued as I systematically blanked on most of the answers. I started to feel claustrophobic, like I was drowning in a Nebuchadnezzar-sized wine bottle, and my instructor was pushing in the cork.

Two hours later, I surrendered the exam, brain fried. I gathered up my belongings in defeat and ran to the elevator wondering how I could have done so poorly on the final, when I had an 85 average on the dozens of other tests we had taken? The elevator car finally hit the ground floor, and I sprinted for the door and burst out onto Broadway, gasping for breath. Two completely dazed blocks later, I called my mother, choking back tears, and attempted to explain what had happened.

“Erin, do you need to come home?” she ventured.

That did it. The flood gates burst open. “Yes,” I wailed, “I want to move back home.”

My hand flew to cover my mouth. Had I really just admitted to myself and my mother that it was time to move back to Richmond?