Two people have had the biggest impact on me, though it’s likely that few people here have heard of either of them.
Denis Kelly taught wine appreciation courses at UC Berkeley Extension, and I took about a half-dozen of them starting with “Wines of Europe and America” in 1991. Those courses really opened my eyes to the world of wine beyond the relatively few I’d tasted with friends in Napa and Sonoma up until then. Denis is actually best-known as an author of books about meats and sausages.
Tom Leaf introduced me to winemaking in 2001, when I volunteered to help at his winery, Grapeleaf Cellars, in Berkeley. I gradually became more involved with that and when the Grapeleaf label folded in the mid-2000s I stayed on to work with the two producers who were in the same facility, Eno Wines (still there in Berkeley) and Harrington Wines (moved to San Francisco in 2008). Although I’ve learned much about winemaking in the years since, I picked up many of the essentials working with Tom. He’s continued to work as a winemaker for several producers in the urban Bay Area.
My parents and other family members rarely drank wine. I’ve learned a good deal from writers in various wine magazines and books though wine critics have had pretty much zero impact on me. In terms of the internet, West Coast Wine Net had the biggest impact in terms of meeting wine people - both within the wine business and outside of it - with whom I’m still friends.
Peter Buffo - my grandfather and home winemaker who let me make wine when I was seven years old - not the best wine in the world but I loved the challenge
Rod Berglund - the person who got me hooked on Pinor noir and is the keeper of the flame in RRV. An absolutely great person.
Tom Dehlinger - he and his family are our largest supplier - also the source of cuttings for our vineyard - miss the Octagon wines
Michael Trjullio - encouraged me to follow my dream - to this day, my mentor and friend.
A close friend, now deceased. I had floundered around for years, starting in the 1970s, travelled to Europe and drank wine at restaurants and with other people, but didn’t really care all that much and couldn’t tell you much about this one or that one or why people seemed to get excited about some lable.
When I finally got seriously interested, I tried looking for sources of information. I’d read Frank Prial’s column and there was another guy whose name I can’t remember. All I remember is that I bought something he had highly recommended and I thought it was crap. I heard of Parker but never read anything by him. I looked at a few copies of Wine Spectator but I couldn’t make any sense of the tasting notes and couldn’t discern any pattern to the scores. So I figured reading wasn’t going to help at all. Instead I went to every possible tasting I could and drank as much wine as was humanly possible to learn about it.
Then I got involved with a tasting group and I was trying to describe something in a particular wine that had a kind of metallic quality as well as something that reminded me of burnt sugar and this guy next to me quietly told me that the wine was oxidized and ruined. He would point things out that I could discern, but couldn’t yet put words to and he helped me put meaning behind the various words I’d read in reviews and notes.
More than anyone, he helped me figure out ways to articulate what I was tasting. He was an engineer and extremely analytical, so it was good to taste with him. We would taste something and talk about it and decide whether we liked it and then he’d mention that it rec’d such and such a score from Parker or someone else. It helped me understand that the writers, critics, and somms in restaurants didn’t have superior palates or taste and that the history and politics of a region, while interesting in and of themselves, didn’t mark one as having a more correct opinion of a wine.
It was a great way to learn. I miss him. To whatever degree I can, I’ve tried to do for others who are genuinely interested what he did for me.
In my late teens and 20’s, I could have cared less about alcohol of any kind. I never liked beer (still don’t), never liked whiskey (still don’t) and do not think I was really ever exposed to wine. I would have the occasional margarita at a restaurant, but that was about it.
In my 30’s, I worked for a company that was based in Sonoma. When we would go to headquarters for sales meetings they would take us to the wineries for various events; cave tours, barrel tastings, blind tastings which were educational, etc. The first few times, while I appreciated the events, it was not really my thing. But as everyone around me was really jazzed about how cool these events were, it started to rub off and I starting sampling the wines. Over a few years they grew on me and I still recall bringing back my first wine from California, Imagery Estates.
I probably should not publicly proclaim him, because his already large head will be the size of a hot air ballon, but Robert Alfert is responsible for most of what came next. He gave me a bottle of Ridge Geyserville and 1999 d’Armailhac. The d’Arm was a revelation. I loved it like no other wine that had crossed my lips. I started shopping and started building my collection.
Alfert told me early on about CellarTracker, and that site has been invaluable to me. The tasting notes, the ability to manage my collection, I could go on and on.
And then he told my about WB. And now I am posting pics in the “What did you buy today” thread of cases and cases of wine.
Gary Vanerchuk at the Wine Library for making the language of wine accessible to me and the learning fun. There was a person who taught me a lot at the old Chowhound Wine Board. He was usually a nemesis, and would answer the most simple query with a 10 paragraph history lesson. We agreed on little as he was a self described “expert” and I was not interested at groveling at the alter of French Wine history. Despite the fact that our interactions were often semi-hostile, the information I learned is invaluable. He turned me on to one of my best wine discoveries, Ahlgren’s in the Santa Cruz Mountains, (or hills as I would say to get a rile up). He also helped me learn how to walk into a wine shop and not feel intimidated.
My first week of culinary school in the Napa Valley. Oy, I thought, to sit through a week of wine words, this will be hell on earth. I could not have entered with a worse attitude. Growing up in a low-income musical/political family, we grew veggies, we had chickens for eggs, we cooked. But we didn’t eat out, I never saw a bottle of wine until I was working in business and it was someone’s job to show their sophistication by ordering the wine. It just was not my natural inclination to join some snobby club that I thought, from the outside, to be exclusionary as nearly the only purpose of its existence…
But maybe it’s about sensory warm-up, I thought, a way to start things off. I showed up Day 1, and tasted Wine #1 and Wine #2 and raised my hand to answer the question of which I preferred and why. She observed us taste, writing our responses in an organized way on her flip-charts. Noting some of us may have missed the full pleasure by not swirling the glass, taking a moment to teach us. Karen’s exceptional gift of EDUCATING–not showing off, not intimidating, not manipulating, not selling: each question asked, each glass poured designed to build our understanding, to see the cuisines and regions of the world through the efforts and intentions of its winemakers. Then touring and tasting with local wineries setting out astounding arrays of wine to reinforce the impact of region, ground, viticulture, winemaking choices… So, that was almost 20 years ago now. I came to Napa Valley for a 21-week program… and I’m still here. Can’t recommend her book enough.
For me, by far #1 was my father. He owned a wine store in Savannah, GA, and I was tasting wine and developing a palate before I knew what I was tasting. To this day, my palate is a lot based on his palate. And, my love of wine and how to approach it came from him.
Second was David Schildknecht. Around 1984 or 1985 I saw a wine ad in the Washington Post from a store I had not been to called Rex with a long list of German wines. Nobody advertised German wines. When I went into the store I met David and through him I learned producers for German wines, Burgundy, the Loire, etc., that I had never heard of before. He really helped me refine my palate.
I have had lots of other influences and I appreciate all of them.
Ms. Feidner. My high school French teacher. She taught us about French culture and every year would take us to La Comedie Francaise or come other French touring troupe in NYC. We would eat lunch or dinner at Au Tunnel and they would serve us wine because nothing was wrong with 16 year olds drinking good wine. Can you imagine how much grief a teacher would get for allowing that these days? nd probably some jail time.
The Ballantine family, along with the Rheingolds, the Shaefers and the Schlitzes. Their beer was so awful that I could not drink it in high school.
An ex-boyfriend who was a bit older and had a lot more money than I did. At that time (many years ago), I couldn’t imagine a wine being worth more than $20. He showed me how wrong that assumption was.
Fortunate enough to be friends or have work(ed) with these people who have influenced me greatly:
Lyle Fass for Germany
Dan Rhodes for French wines
John Downing for Italy
Jim Duane for Champagne
In the 1970s, a med school roommate who introduced me to red Bordeaux and white Burg when all I knew was Blue Nun, Lancers and Mateus.
Next, Robert Parker, who turned me on to a lot of Bordeaux I’d never heard of and to Rhones. For good or bad, he was also responsible for me getting on almost all of the early California cult lists. In addition to subscribing since the early '80s, I had the opportunity to drink with him a few times. He was very generous with his wine and his knowledge. Unlike his online persona in the later years, he was very welcoming of diverse opinions in person.
For a few years in the mid-80s, John Bassett, a local retailer that no one here has ever heard of who loved to listen as much as he loved to talk about and drink wines became my wine guru. Every few weeks, we’d talk, he’d open a few bottles in the back of the store (before it became legal), and I’d go home with a mixed case he’d picked out based on our discussion. He really helped me learn what I liked and broadened my exposure more than anyone else.
The common theme among all 3 was their passion for wine and willingness to share.
I also have to give props to my high school French teacher. He was adamant that you couldn’t teach the language without teaching about the culture, including food & wine. We had a French club, where we ate French food and drank French wine (once we were 18). At a time when almost all of my peers were getting hammered drinking crappy American beer, it was a revelation to think about nice wines as something you would drink because it went well with a meal. The first bottle of wine I ever bought was a Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Merci, Monsieur Thelen.
Hago…he’s a local Japanese Gardener that has been in & out of the wine industry for years. He introduced me to Musar and some other producers that still are largely unknown. So anytime he speaks…I listen.
Stephane Derenoncourt
Christophe Perrot-Minot
Pierre Yves Colin-Morey
Those are the three that had most transformative power on me.
Strange CV, but it is what was available to me.
Also: loved Jonathan Nossiter’s films.
My mother, when she was dying of lung cancer and still mobile, used to drink a magnum of Burgundy every day for pain relief. I used to help her pick them.
Me too. It was the embossed glass that first got me. I was going to give props to the store owner who sold it to me when I was under age, but the store still exists and I think it’s owned by the same family, so I wouldn’t want to get him into trouble.
