France’s exclusive wine societies—the Commanderie de Bordeaux, the Chevalier du Tastevin. There, the chosen ones knighted one another with a dull sword and celebrated their superiority. Wooed by ambitious importers and indulged by restaurateurs who feared to deny them discounts, they spit and drooled and tasted, one-upping one another at bring-your-own bottle bashes. Women were distinctly not welcome, except at the once-a-year galas open to wives, mistresses, and female restaurant writers.
But life was heady for
New York
magazine’s Insatiable Critic. Wine collectors collected me. There I was, basking in the spotlight of my reviews just as our town was unzipping its puritanism and discovering there was more to dinner than well-done lamb chops and orange sherbet. My unabashed passion for eating made great cooks I’d never met want to feed me, and great collectors dangled guest lists of luminaries to tempt me to dinners designed around their greatest bottles. I got out my black velvet ball gown (Oscar de la Renta on sale) for their fancy dinners. And I tasted. Tasting great wines won’t necessarily guarantee a sharp palate. But it makes for a divine kindergarten.
Meanwhile, winemakers and importers—the whole spirits industry—were conspiring to wean Americans from scotch, Coke, and highballs to the grape. Marketing experts were sure that if they could lead Americans to Chardonnay, they could make them drink. I was invited to countless wine seminars and I went because clearly the best way to learn was by tasting wines side by side, comparing flavors, labels, and vintages. The experts were so deft and full of esoteric information, I felt mastering wine was only slightly more difficult than brain surgery.
I would mention loving a wine in a review—La Doucette, a sauvignon blanc, for instance, and watch the prices soar. (Well, a name Americans could pronounce without mangling was always a plus.)
Soon I knew a little, enough to spike my reviews with helpful wine chat. I put together a list of Bacchic bon mots that an apprentice oenophile could toss out nonchalantly to impress and thaw a glacial sommelier, and was bold enough (or obnoxious enough) to use them myself.
Innocent pals would watch, mesmerized (or even embarrassed), as I squeezed the cork, swirled the wine and sniffed, swirled again, sipped, and chewed. “I find it acid . . . astringent . . . balanced, bitter, brilliant. Clean, isn’t it? Cloudy, coarse, common, dull, earthy, nicely flinty . . . a bit flat . . . hmm.” I could parrot my betters’ alphabet of joy or dismissal: “Powerful, ripe, rounded, soft, steely, stemmy. And young. So young.”
When the mythic and magisterial Gregory Thomas (president of Chanel in America and a revered
Feinschmecker
) stood up at a small and ridiculously exclusive wine dinner at the Four Seasons to dismiss a fruity little Beaujolais as “a simpering teenage cheerleader,” I felt learned enough to leap in and defend my sex.
“Oh, really, Gregory,” I began. “I find it more like a young lifeguard with his nose peeling from sunburn.”
Soon I was summoned to perform onstage with my mentors. Actually, I think Danny Kaye and I were cast for comic relief among the Establishment pros in a tasting panel
Time
magazine put together in the late seventies to compare the new, aggressively marketed California wines with the long-respected bottlings of France—blind, of course. Even blind, I recognized Gallo Hearty Burgundy at once. It was a cross between Beaujolais nouveau and strawberry Jell-O in a jug, and Americans, including me, adored it. “I know this is just a little California jug wine,” I whispered to the vaunted expert Frank Schoonmaker on my right, “but I like it.”
“I do, too,” he said, and to my shock, the loftiest wino of them all cast his vote for Gallo Hearty Burgundy.
Now when we were out at reviewing dinners, Don would hand the wine list to me. “You know what you want,” he might say. The
But life was heady for
New York
magazine’s Insatiable Critic. Wine collectors collected me. There I was, basking in the spotlight of my reviews just as our town was unzipping its puritanism and discovering there was more to dinner than well-done lamb chops and orange sherbet. My unabashed passion for eating made great cooks I’d never met want to feed me, and great collectors dangled guest lists of luminaries to tempt me to dinners designed around their greatest bottles. I got out my black velvet ball gown (Oscar de la Renta on sale) for their fancy dinners. And I tasted. Tasting great wines won’t necessarily guarantee a sharp palate. But it makes for a divine kindergarten.
Meanwhile, winemakers and importers—the whole spirits industry—were conspiring to wean Americans from scotch, Coke, and highballs to the grape. Marketing experts were sure that if they could lead Americans to Chardonnay, they could make them drink. I was invited to countless wine seminars and I went because clearly the best way to learn was by tasting wines side by side, comparing flavors, labels, and vintages. The experts were so deft and full of esoteric information, I felt mastering wine was only slightly more difficult than brain surgery.
I would mention loving a wine in a review—La Doucette, a sauvignon blanc, for instance, and watch the prices soar. (Well, a name Americans could pronounce without mangling was always a plus.)
Soon I knew a little, enough to spike my reviews with helpful wine chat. I put together a list of Bacchic bon mots that an apprentice oenophile could toss out nonchalantly to impress and thaw a glacial sommelier, and was bold enough (or obnoxious enough) to use them myself.
Innocent pals would watch, mesmerized (or even embarrassed), as I squeezed the cork, swirled the wine and sniffed, swirled again, sipped, and chewed. “I find it acid . . . astringent . . . balanced, bitter, brilliant. Clean, isn’t it? Cloudy, coarse, common, dull, earthy, nicely flinty . . . a bit flat . . . hmm.” I could parrot my betters’ alphabet of joy or dismissal: “Powerful, ripe, rounded, soft, steely, stemmy. And young. So young.”
When the mythic and magisterial Gregory Thomas (president of Chanel in America and a revered
Feinschmecker
) stood up at a small and ridiculously exclusive wine dinner at the Four Seasons to dismiss a fruity little Beaujolais as “a simpering teenage cheerleader,” I felt learned enough to leap in and defend my sex.
“Oh, really, Gregory,” I began. “I find it more like a young lifeguard with his nose peeling from sunburn.”
Soon I was summoned to perform onstage with my mentors. Actually, I think Danny Kaye and I were cast for comic relief among the Establishment pros in a tasting panel
Time
magazine put together in the late seventies to compare the new, aggressively marketed California wines with the long-respected bottlings of France—blind, of course. Even blind, I recognized Gallo Hearty Burgundy at once. It was a cross between Beaujolais nouveau and strawberry Jell-O in a jug, and Americans, including me, adored it. “I know this is just a little California jug wine,” I whispered to the vaunted expert Frank Schoonmaker on my right, “but I like it.”
“I do, too,” he said, and to my shock, the loftiest wino of them all cast his vote for Gallo Hearty Burgundy.
Now when we were out at reviewing dinners, Don would hand the wine list to me. “You know what you want,” he might say. The
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