Like all great cities, eating and drinking in Chicago is a dual proposition.  While the likes of Alinea, Moto, and Green Zebra ping away at culinary pleasure sensors, the city’s midwest soul food circuits beckon.  I developed my own ritual patterns for Chicago’s simpler local eating more than twenty years ago, always making sure to integrate pilgrimages to Sam’s Wines & Spirits.  Chicago’s best pizza, hot dogs, and ribs learned to live side by side with Sam’s vinous bounties inside a city honoring BYOB far better than my current hometown (read: prohibition village); Boston.  This past weekend we revisited two old time favorites, a new twist on hot dogs, and a metamorphic iteration of Chicago’s old time retail wine mecca.

Sam’s Wines & Spirits (Now Binny’s)

Back in the day, Sam’s Wines & Spirits was a smaller Lincoln Park shop on North Avenue with a treasure trove of end bins that brought civilized wine collectors to their knees, crawling around floors laden with dusty wood crates in search of a few buried prize bottles at ridiculous discounts. Then, Sam’s moved a few blocks away to larger, more modern retail space. With serious selection and depth in all formats of Bordeaux, Rhone, and California wines, among others, the shopping experience became more comfortable and less geeky.  Competitive pricing accompanied vast selection.

Involving a long sad story of family disagreements and serious miscalculations, the Rosen family consolidated ownership under brother Brian, who turned around to sell majority interest to local private equity firm Arbor.  Things went bad with that expansion plan and deal.  It brought Sam’s to it’s knees, ending up in a sale of it’s locations to Binny’s in 2009, a local big box wine retailer busily scooping up local wine shops and outfitting them in shiny new Binny’s branding.  It was a sad moment in Chicago wine retailing history and I had not been able to convince myself to pay a visit to the old Sam’s, current Binny’s, until this weekend.  Three important notes on that visit:

1. Selection is still vast, especially California, Rhone, and Bordeaux. Format variety is robust and prices are competitive.  A glass front, temperature controlled cellar full of classics is on display at the back of the store. Staff is friendly and courteous.  But the place, just like in the Sam’s era when it departed from the retailing practices that once made it legendary, feels boxy and antiseptic. If you can get beyond nostalgic remorse, it lives on as a dynamite Lincoln Park wine retail spot, on the way to or from the airport or your favorite BYOB.
2. Turns out that last year the Rosen’s got back into the game as active consultants to Chicago start up Evolution Wines & Spirits in Northbrook, Ill.  Regional expansion plans exist and hopefully the Rosen’s will remember what originally made them successful.  I couldn’t get there this trip, but a visit to Evolution is firmly on my next Chicago agenda.
3. I picked up some of the newly arrived 2010 Chateau Pesquie Terrasses for $13.  More on that in a moment.

Twin Anchors Ribs and 2010 Pesquie Terrasses

I really like pork ribs and these are my favorite. They are slow cooked, moderately sauced, not smoked.  The meat falls off the bone; not the least bit of exaggeration.  Twin Anchors has been operating since 1932 and the ribs beat anything I have ever eaten in Kansas City, St. Louis, or Memphis. It’s probably worth sticking with classic Zesty sauce, even though there’s a new Prohibition sauce now that adds more heat. Since they’ll load your table with deep bowls of any sauces you want, try both out for yourself. While Twin Anchors is an institution, it’s nothing more than a simple, local Old Town neighborhood bar scene, nothing fancy at all, positively no dancing, a decent beer list, and a $10 corkage fee.

That’s right, a bar with the best ribs in the world and proprietors more than happy to let you pop the cork on any wine you want to bring from home, or in my case, Sam’s (woops, Binny’s).  You can’t be too fancy with ribs (leave the ’45 Petrus home), but the Zesty sauce is restrained enough to not overwhelm young wines.  I have popped new vintage Bordeaux, massive young California Cabs, and newly released Rhones inside this bar since the mid-eighties, washing down full racks of pork ribs that melt in your mouth.  It’s been a hedonistic ritual that I fully recommend.

I have been waiting for the 2010 Chateau Pesquie Terrasses to show up.  Chateau Pesquie was an early player in the Cote du Ventoux, getting in at the establishment of the appellation in the early 70′s.  While production is large, the wine is a ridiculous and intense value at $13-15.  While some vintages can be stylistically modern, chewy, and fruity, the region’s terroir is mostly present in this primarily grenache and secondarily syrah blend (70%/30% in 2010).  I have been curious about the 2010 ever since Parker awarded it 94 points, favoring it over Pesquie’s 2009 luxury cuvee Quintessence.

It’s stunning and Parker is on point here.  Fully reflecting the scorched earth of the Provencal region’s heated terraced vineyards, full of the aromatic wafts associated with its local wild herbs baking in mid day sunshine, the dark purple wine is so pretty and elegant in your mouth, showing tremendous rich cherry grenache fruit and sweet floral notes.  It is a complete and multi faceted wine of classy flavors and intensity without being overwhelming or in your face.  It might remind you of $100 Chateauneuf du Pape.  How amazing is it that a large production bottling can deliver such a stunning wine for $15 or less.  This is the kind of reference point value European wine I think about when I bemoan the lack of quality and value in California wine production. Buying a case of 2010 Chateau Pesquie Terrasses will most likely be one of my top recommendations this year for sensible wine appreciation.  Opening it at Twin Anchors for Sunday lunch with a full slab of ribs and bowl of Zesty sauce can not be underestimated.

Pizza and Hot Dogs

I tried one new spot for dogs and returned to a favorite deep dish haunt on this trip.  I can fully recommend The Art of Pizza; an easy quick drive from Wrigley Field.  It’s a simple spot in a small strip mall.  While the strip mall looks are deceiving, the deep dish pizza is mind blowing.  For me, raised on Brooklyn’s best pizza, deep dish is all about crust and sauce just like Sicilian pies back home.  Here, the sauce is sweet, light, and pure tomato joy.  The crust is crisp on the bottom, and light and doughy throughout.  I tried the sausage and cheese stuffed version.  It is ethereal.  I couldn’t eat more than a slice, but will hang onto its memory until my next visit to Chicago.  Very highly recommended.

At Franks ‘N’ Dawgs, you will be hard pressed to find a traditional Chicago dog experience.  But what better city to try “Dawgs Gone Wild”?  The Chicagoesque dog will remind you of traditional local renditions, but cranks it to a new level.  I don’t prefer it over the real thing, but it is a mighty rewarding dog experience.  It has all the usual toppings, but takes it to a gourmet level, if you will.  We also tried the Truffle Mac ‘n’ Cheese dog, and it is decadent.  But that’s what you come her for, along with another BYOB policy that allows you to wash down your dog and must-try Tripple Truffle Fries with more Chateau Pesquie from, ok, Binny’s.

See how easy it is to forget about obsessing over an Alinea reservation?

The world is better off for places like Barcelona.  Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list.  But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s suburban trendy Farmington Avenue retail district, they sit comfortably on a comprehensive Spanish wine list that rekindles memories of my two favorite Spanish lists in this country; Taberna de Haro in Boston and Casa Mono in New York City.

All three lists have something in common besides size and volume.  They hold pricey classic choices like Vega Sicilia, Pingus, and Clos Erasmus while featuring depth in less popular and remote wine growing regions like Bierzo, Majorca, and the Basque country. Wines of great elegance, food friendliness, and unique terroir hail from these hidden spots to challenge juicy modern garnachas, classic tempranillos, and racy monastrells. Great rewards hide beyond modern fruit driven values and classic producers for curious wine adventurers as hungry to learn as I am.  On a recent and lively Saturday evening of tapas indulgence at Barcelona, I was reminded one more time that zagging instead of zigging straight to the proven producers can pay large dividends. $110 at the restaurant bought these two magical bottles of wine. You can buy both at retail for $30 and $19 respectively

**** $30 2008 Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894

The wine is a blend of primarily 95% viura, the most popular white variety in Rioja blancos, and then 5% malvasia. News to me, viura is the name used in Rioja for the macabeo variety, more commonly relied on in northern Spain for Cava production. I ordered this wine with memories of tasting my first white tempranillo at a Rioja tasting earlier this year.  In this case, the viura/malvasia blend showed a caramelized, lime, and honey nose with hints of toast and cotton candy to lure you in.  Most remarkably, the wine lands with amazing richness and contains an acidic linearity to provide structure and framework to the wine’s lusciousness. Cosme Palacio is co-fermented in barrel and aged in oak, but retains a bright fruit core that never yields to the wood.  This is an amazingly sexy wine because of its richness and tantalizing aromas, and its great structure gives enough balance to render it a classic choice.  I could linger over this wine all night, it’s that good.

***1/2 $19 2008 Anima Negra AN/2

I am a sucker for wines made on islands.  Call me silly, but I dream about the isolated terroir, surrounded by water, connected to no other spot. I think about the wines I have tasted from a small island off Sicily’s coast and how it is possible to imagine tasting the salt air, morning dew, and volcanic soils.  Or at least I thought I did.  So experimenting with this second wine from Majorca’s Anima Negra made from 65% callet, 20% mantonegre and fogoneu, and 15% syrah was an easy move.  The fruit is fermented in steel and then aged for a little over a year in French and American oak.  It’s a medium light ruby color, with rich and bright cherry aromas buffeted by wafts of tobacco.  The wine’s distinction comes in its weight; a softness without hard edge and a fruity lightness that appears to actually melt in your mouth. No major league forward ripeness and volume that you are accustomed to in big garnachas, just a pleasantly round and mellow mouthful of wine that is light on its feet and washes over your palate like it belongs there.  It’s a great food wine, and had enough acidity and brininess to stand up to the boldly spiced tapas that covered our table.  I am not sure I have ever tasted a wine just like it.  It has elements of gamay and pinot noir, but is not like either of them.  As the wine lingered in the glass, even some clove and cinnamon spice emerged.  It is a fascinatingly complex wine that just wants to please and accomodate your meal.  A killer value.

Wines like these keep me enthusiastic about wine discovery and realizing there is always something new just around the corner that I won’t ever believe I’ve never tried before.

Drawing up the perfect attack on a classic restaurant wine list creates the same adrenaline level NFL coaches experience prepping for Sunday games. At least it seems that way; it’s both exciting and nerve wracking knowing one or two calls can define a dinner’s outcome. Planning is required. Have we worked with the restaurant’s wine list before?  What language can we use with this particular sommelier to trigger the right personalized advice?  Are we value or treasure hunting? Older or new releases?  Hard to find limited production wines or a repeat favorite known to please?

At dinners with a bunch of wino comrades, debating and decision making are as much a part of the evening’s fabric as any other stage of the meal. Other nights involve guests less willing to sacrifice time and brain cells debating wine selection. Last week at Veritas (oenophile nirvana) with Dan, I found myself somewhere in the middle.  We had a significant amount of news to catch up on, but the wine was equally important to both of us.  I had not worked with the Head Sommelier Rubén Sanz Ramiro before so I did not feel comfortable enough turning the entire experience over to him nor burying my head in the epic Veritas wine list for twenty minutes.  Here is the game plan I followed:

Proven White Wine Value: Kick-Off

We needed something to drink immediately, but didn’t want to trump our early catch up conversation with solitary wine list huddles.  Nor did I want to rush into a big up-front cash investment without enough time to think things over.  Not having established rapport with the sommelier yet, delegating was off the table.  I turned to the Loire section and quickly ordered the **** 2010 Huet Clos du Bourg Sec.

Our Boston tasting group had just conducted a blind tasting of Loire Valley chenin blancs and this Vouvray was my favorite.  It jumped off the list as an easy choice for the straight forward enjoyment and palate awakening I was hoping to quickly uncover.  While the “sec” designation is true to the wine’s overall dry nature, there is enough residual sugar framed by significant acidity to qualify it as a shoe-in for a pleasing start to the evening.  The later vintage did not disappoint with familiar steely notes, hints of background sugar, grapefruit and lemon meringue delivered in a round and luscious mouthfeel, chalk, and a crisp finish.  It’s a go to wine, and one that didn’t break the bank at roughly $70 on Veritas’ not-so-cheap list.  While we had a long game ahead of us, it was a perfectly designed kick-off play.

Cellared But Not Tried: Third Quarter Audible

With the dinner unfolding and middle courses arriving, this was no time to fool around.  I called time out and spent three minutes on the sideline scanning the list.  Without leaving the Loire section, I stumbled upon the ***1/2 2007 Clos Rougeard Les Poyeux.  I am an admitted sucker for Clos Rougeard, had tasted the already immediately enjoyable 2007 Saumur Champigny, but wondered if the Les Poyeux would provide as much immediate accessibility.

The wine also sat in my cellar and this was the perfect chance to check it out without draining my limited 2007 Clos Rougeard stockpile. Not wanting to waste too much more time with the list, I went with it.  I called for a producer that always knocks me to the turf.  This particular cabernet franc made by Rougeard’s Foucalt brothers showed trace hints of its truffle and licorice bones, but remained seriously tight all the way through to the end of the bottle.  It never opened up.  The wine seems like it will stay closed down for at least several years to come.

While the move informed delaying future 2007 Les Poyeux drinking, it did not do as much for our dinner.  It was a win/lose; I should have consulted the sommelier.  With just one question about its approachability (admittedly, a doubt I quietly pondered) he would have known the wine style I leaned towards and could have dealt a more accessible alternative.  Live and learn; turnover.

Consult Sommelier, He Understands Me Now: 4th Quarter

Rubén agreed the wine was too tight to really appreciate.  But, we went to school on that experience together and now had the beginnings of mutual understanding.  I asked him what he would drink next if he wanted something similar, but at the peak of its development.  He suggested the ****1/2 1998 Bois de Boursan Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee des Felix.  I knew ’98 to be a prodigious year in Chateauneuf du Pape but had never heard of the Cuvee des Felix blend.  It turned out to be the first Cuvee des Felix vintage.  Rubén assured me this Boursan held the style I had probably hoped for with the Clos Rougeard, and was perfectly ready to drink now.

Touchdown!  The Boursan was a massive mouthful of well aged wine that smoothly coated the palate with unabashed silkiness, delivering rich and advanced raspberry and black cherry fruit flavors, animal fur and mushroom aromatics, and a streak of serious acidity to keep the wine as lively as it was exotic.  It generously expressed the licorice flavors the Clos Rougeard held closer to its vest.

The strategy worked and created a rewarding evening of drinking.  The structure of the ordering, inside this wine temple called Veritas, helped to keep my adrenalin in check.  Step 1: Known delicious white wine value.  Step 2: Classic wine laying in my own cellar to monitor drinkability.  Step 3: Ask the sommelier to follow your early moves with his own superior list knowledge.

What’s your game plan?

Some wine is described to be authentic. I have been meaning to build a working definition of authenticity for my own clarification and finally managed to squash a prolonged streak of procrastination after discovering ($25 ****) Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades XX on Atlanta’s Local Three Kitchen & Bar wine list. This adjective that has blossomed into standard wine enthusiast fodder, bandied throughout critical wine circles with head-spinning frequency, will no longer be taken casually here.  Research turned up these words and phrases to collectively define authenticity:

•         devotion to genuineness
•         truthfulness of origins
•         true to one’s own personality
•         conforming to original character and attributes
•         adherence to originality
•         lack of falsehood

This urgency around authentic clarity was driven by the reappearance of Pleiades in my glass, a wine and winemaker emanating high beams of authenticity, unlike anything I have ever tasted from California before, and a vintage version different from any other wine we came across in the vertical Pleiades tasting we conducted last year.

Conversely, Local Three Kitchen & Bar fanned antithetical flames of authenticity, housed in a building complex called Piazza at Paces somewhere off I-75 in a nondescript Atlanta, GA neighborhood.  The southern/suburban/Italian center is designed with grand Roman thematics in mind, and the restaurant is located off a lobby of what appears to be an office building named Forum.  You can park your charriot in a brand new multi level parking lot that is just behind the Forum.  When you finally navigate the commercial office space and open the door to the restaurant, you spatially transition one more time into yet another farm to table, contemporary barn decor, pig-art dominated meat theme park.  It’s a restaurant du jour, paying attention to local, meats, and comfort foods that you have been served at twenty other places.  All the boxes are checked, some surprisingly good (brussel sprouts), but most renditions not as compelling as earlier versions (i.e. pork buns compared to Momofuku’s).

While we could have been eating in Epcot Center’s Italy Pavilion housing a mediocre replica of a trendy themed American restaurant, Sean Thackrey and Pleiades XX came to authenticity’s rescue.  Dinner guests and wine became the focus of my experience.  The polarizing effect of a highly authentic wine showcasing the original attributes of its component parts, not dressed up to be anything it isn’t supposed to be, producing a drinking experience uniquely it’s own, and presenting a personality not shared with any other wine helped push away Local Three’s themed overtones.

The Marin county based iconic, idiosyncratic, and eccentric Sean Thackrey produces Pleiades without any adherence to style consistency year to year.  The blend is different each vintage, and possibly never totally represented on the label. According to this vintage’s label, Pleiades XX includes sangiovese, pinot noir, mourvedre, viognier, and syrah among others.  The appearance of the wine is on the lighter side, showing off the color characteristics associated with its sangiovese and pinot noir components.  You might be able to even see the hint of brown edge that lives at the edge of the glass of Pleiades XX at the right.

There’s a sweetness, almost candy apple quality to the aroma.  Earthy and leather notes are neatly tucked into the sweet nose.  Simply from the aromatics, it reminded me of Arianna Occhipinti’s southern Italian Frapatto since both wines offer floral sweetness, multi dimensional flavor profiles, great acidity, a lightness on their feet, and sweet/herbal/earthy changing aromatics.  Sage and thyme (maybe the mourvedre?) show up after the wine sits around in the glass for ten minutes.  The mouthfeel is like a graceful, medium rich pinot noir and it finishes with Burgundian like acidity.  Its a wine that juxtaposes styles and varieties to the drinker’s advantage.  It does all that for around $25 a bottle.  It could be one of the most interesting values in all of California.

In addition to my working definition of authentic wines, there is also Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades as a benchmark of authenticity.  And then there is Local Three Kitchen & Bar to prove authenticity is not required to be mostly presentable, sometimes yummy, occasionally attention-getting, and ordinarily unexciting.

I’ll admit to spending more time than it’s probably worth thinking about nuances in wine and food culture.  For example, I ponder how obvious it is that most of us Americans act with righteous self confidence buying, ordering, and cooking the foodstuffs and ingredients we prefer. We’ll ask questions freely when shopping or ordering to make sure a dish or ingredient lines up with our palates’ preferences. Conversely, I am consumed by “knowledge gap” insecurities that loom large around restaurant wine lists and retail shelves. We tend to get embarrassed that we don’t know enough and fear asking the questions that might reveal these insufficiencies.

People I eat with know I think about wine a lot and regularly delegate the decision about the wine they will drink with dinner to me. How come this happens with wine but not food? Dinner companions don’t funnel all their food menus my way. They are confident enough to pick dishes and ask questions that help fill in blanks about preparation. Ordering food in a restaurant is as easy as brushing your teeth, but juxtaposed with the trauma of ordering wine it turns into one bookend of a cultural culinary divide.

We eat multiple times a day but wine is a minuscule piece of our diet. According to the Wine Market Council, the average American drank a bit over 11 litres of wine during the last twelve months.  Compare that to the idea of “wine as food”, a steady piece of the European diet where there is an absence of anxiety ordering a glass of Cotes du Rhone, Muscadet, or Bandol with lunch or dinner.  Continental Europeans, Brits, and Aussies more than double per capita US consumption.  This idea of “wine as food” stems way back, something I was reminded of when I read this at CliffordAWright.com (a great resource, by the way, for Mediterranean food and wine culture):

Languedoc, the region to the west of Provence, shared many alimentary parallels with Provence, especially the prevalence of bread and wine in the diet. In his study of the peasants of Languedoc during the last third of the fifteenth century, the French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie compared the diet of the farmworkers of Narbonne to the bourgeoisie of Beziers, using household accounts. The bourgeois family of Beziers, the Rocolles, consisted of a widow, her two daughters, and a female servant. The four of them consumed about two thousand liters of wine a year. Again, as in Provence, we see that wine was food. The Narbonne farmworkers drank even more, about 650 liters of red wine a year per person. The farm workers were not demanding, insisting only on money in the pocket, white bread on the table, and a glass of good wine.

That was 60X more wine than the average current day US consumer, and 180X the average US per person 1970 consumption rate. The frequency of consumption in the European diet demanded an uncomplicated approach to wine.  Is there really any question whether the low rates of consumption and immersion are top differentiators between food confidence and wine phobia in the US?

Jonathon Alsop

I still wonder about how this US culinary divide perpetuates itself.  One interesting question to ponder is how it came to be that restaurants distribute only one wine list per table.  This point only surfaced last night sharing a few bottles of old wines with Jonathon Alsop, founder of the Boston Wine School.  Jonathon is a pretty grounded guy, carrying tons of wine knowledge that he shares in a remarkably matter of fact, uncomplicated fashion.  I never fail to spend even five minutes with Jonathon and not realize an hour later that I learned something new without ever having noticed being taught.  I shared my interest in this concept of “food as wine” with Jonathan and will attempt to paraphrase his reaction as best as I can:

Think about this, why do restaurants continue to present only one wine list per table?  Do they think only one person is capable of ordering wine?  Is there one person who has more knowledge than anyone else at that table?  Is there a ranking of knowledge that the restaurant expects all their guests to participate in at each table?  Is everyone to pass the wine list to the oldest, wisest, whitest, richest, man to order their wine for them?  It’s insanity!”

It’s a guess, but I presume this tradition started when great restaurants with classic cellars used hard cover bound books to showcase the hundreds of pages of inventory.  You can still find something like this at Tour D’Argent, for example, where a small stand is placed next to your table to rest the twenty pound tome on.  But with practically all of today’s restaurants producing a few pages of wine inventory on cheap printed paper, why not make sure everyone at the table can look at wine menus?  Isn’t this akin to giving only the smartest math student in the class a math textbook because he knows more about math than the other students, and everyone else just gets history and literature textbooks without any hope of becoming more comfortable with mathematics?

The earliest evidence of wine making and drinking goes back to Neolithic times.  National Geographic recalls Patrick McGovern’s research on ancient wine and throws a jab at the people and forces that complicated wine matters over the last 2,500 years:

Wine snobs might shudder at the thought, but the first wine-tasting may have occurred when Paleolithic humans slurped the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes from animal-skin pouches or crude wooden bowls.  The idea of winemaking may have occurred to our alert and resourceful ancestors when they observed birds gorging themselves silly on fermented fruit and decided to see what the buzz was all about.

Serving wine and food at Per Se in New York City is anything but Neolithic and a far cry from animal skin wine vessels or crudely carved table adornments.  Phoebe Damrosch was working her way through graduate school waiting tables at this pinnacle of New York eating establishments.  She was forced to confront her total lack of wine knowledge by deferring to the sommelier.  She eventually took some lessons from him which lead to a more useful romantic involvement than deep wine savvy.  She simply cemented her crutch and reliance on him.  Phoebe had no problem having her new beau constantly visiting her tables and stepping in with the right wine talk at just the right moment.  She left the restaurant after 18 months, was still totally insecure about her wine knowledge, yet she became the go to person among her girlfriends for ordering wine in restaurants.  After all, she must know something having worked at Per Se and dated the sommelier.  Phoebe dreaded these moments and froze in front of wine lists and wine waiters, scared to reveal the gaps in her knowledge even though she had more exposure to wine than the average person.  She wrote about how she overcame her own wine list phobia in a Food & Wine piece and shared this liberating vignette of a dinner out with friends:

“Do you like red wines or white wines?” He asked me slowly, with raised eyebrows and wide eyes, as if I were very young or dim-witted. And then it hit me. I had just been pegged as a Chardonnay-with-ice drinker. This would not do.

“Give me a minute,” I said, grabbing the list. I had ordered smoked fish and my friend a salad with vinaigrette, which meant the ideal pairing would be a high-acid, low-oak white. Scanning the whites, I happened to recognize a few of the producers—Marcel Deiss, Albert Boxler—and settled on J.J. Prüm Kabinett Riesling. When I got to the reds, one jumped out at me: the Movia Veliko Rosso, a biodynamic Slovenian wine that’s a blend of Merlot, Pinot Nero and Cabernet Sauvignon. We served Movia’s Ribolla at Per Se.

I ordered the Riesling and got the standard “excellent choice,” but when I ordered the Movia, the sommelier hesitated. “Have you had the Movia before?” he asked.

Having closely observed sommeliers in their natural habitat, I recognized his behavior. This unusual wine was the sommelier’s little pet. He wanted it to go to a good home and be appropriately adored.

When the Movia was poured, and I swirled and stuck my nose halfway into the glass, the sommelier asked, “Are you in the business?”

I guess there’s hope for all of us if we challenge ourselves and stir up enough courage to experience the liberating confidence from ordering wine you think you might like to drink.