Time for another Special Guest!!

WINE TALK
21

Mark Squires.

22

Gary Vaynerchuk
Sadat X
Don Zacharia
Abe Schoener
Charles Massoud
That guy from Guigal who just asked me to be his Facebook friend
Francois Mauss
Luca Corrado
Philippe Cambie!! (Counts as two guests)
Paul Draper !!!

23

Hugh Johnson
Eric Asimov
The cellar master at Berns!

24

That would be interesting, though I don’t suspect we could get a solid week of conversation out of him

25

Rudy has time on his hands

26

Wink Lorch.
Perhaps a round table of young burgundy producers.
Neal Martin, despite all.
Jay McInerney

27

David Russell


(Premier Cru) [swoon.gif]

28

Paul Draper or Tegan Passalacqua…

…or Mike Officer or one of the Petersons.

29

Fred Franzia would be a hoot and very informative as well…

30

Bill Klapp?

31

Raj Parr
Russ Bevan (bring Victooria and Sharon too)
Larry Fairchild & Philleppe Melka
Graeme & Alex MacDonald

32

Levi Dalton, John Gilman, Antonio Galloni and Alan Meadows would all be interesting. And I agree with Dan’s suggestion of Jasper Morris.

33

Someone from Premier Cru explaining their business model to us poor slobs?

34

Robert Parker and Raj Parr together at the same time! [stirthepothal.gif]

Mike Smith,
TRB,
Or Brad Baker.

35

R. Par, P. Draper, H. Johnson, A. Meadows, as others have said.

JD

36

I’d love to chat with Sadat X!

37

Tony Pantaleo.

A guy I know who makes wine in his garage in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

38

Kermit Lynch
Neal Rosenthal
Rajat Parr
Gary Vaynerchuk
Galloni
Suckling: would be hilarious but he’s an idiot.
John Thomas

39

Cathy Corison
Kerin O’Keefe
Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia

40

In case you did not know, he used to be an elementary school teacher in New Rochelle.

However, after looking at all the suggestions, I think the winning choice, taking everything into account, is Paul Draper if he would do it. Definitely a guy I would like to sit down and talk to. I just looked up his bio on Wikipedia. Just look at what he did BEFORE he became the head winemaker at Ridge in 1969:

Born in Evanston, Illinois in 1936, Draper was raised on a farm and exposed to agriculture at an early age. He graduated from The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut and Stanford University, where he majored in philosophy and first became aware of Ridge Vineyard, which was then owned by a group of Stanford Research Institute engineers. After graduation in 1959, Draper joined the Army where he was stationed at Italy. During that time, in a desire to see the sights from his favorite film La strada, Draper rode through the Italian countryside on a motorcycle, learning about the local culture, cuisine and wine. Following his release from the Army, he spent some time at Sorbonne studying French cuisine and nutrition. On his return to the United States, Draper went to work for at Chateau Souverain in Napa Valley as a cellar assistant with the harvest.[1]

The next year, Draper went to Chile as part of a Peace Corps mission where he leased a Chilean winery with Fritz Maytag, a fellow volunteer and friend from Stanford. Using Cabernet vines from local vineyards, Draper got first hand experience with winemaking in a very low-tech environment. During this time he also read many books on winemaking to expand his knowledge of the field. In 1968, he traveled to Bordeaux where he discussed winemaking with the maître de chai of Château Latour. The experience gave him the confidence he needed to meet with David Bennion and accept the chief winemaking position at Ridge Vineyards in 1969.[2]