Read the Book
The Wannabe
I had a client who knew absolutely nothing about wine except that he liked it. He said, “Jeff, I’ve got a big job with a lot of responsibility. I’ve got two little children. I’ve got a wife who’s a pain in the ass. And I’ve got golf game that’s in serious trouble. I don’t have any time left to read the Wine Spectator. That’s why I need you.”
I told The Wannabe that we should sit down and open up some wine to try to determine where his palate was, what kind of wines he liked, and we’d go from there. “I know what kind of wine I like.”
“ Really? What kind?”
“ I like French wine.”
Well, you can imagine the sense of relief I felt. That certainly narrowed down the search. That simplified everything. I’d just run out to the French Wine Shop and ask them for about two hundred cases of French Wine, and he’d be all set.
We did, in fact, buy quite a bit of wine together, French and otherwise, and we’ve become quite good friends over time. I suggested that he should have a dinner party for some friends where I’d cook and we could open up some of these bottles—a sort of christening party for the cellar. For the main course we served Mouton ’82 out of individual crystal decanters. I told him, “When you open this stuff in your beautiful home, surrounded by friends who appreciate it, you’re sitting on top of the world.”
He still doesn’t know anything about wine, but he’s knows that much.
