Kelli White Joins Vinous

Kelli White joins vinous as associate editor. Not sure if this is supposed to be a big deal or not.

Kelli is awesome. Sounds like a good fit.

Who?

Congrats to Antonio and the Vinous team!

Congrats to both! Kelli is terrific.

Not this Kelli White: Kelli White - Wikipedia

This Kelli White: http://www.terroirist.com/2012/04/sommelier-interview-kelli-white-and-scott-brenner-from-press-restaurant/

From the Vinous email notice:

“Prior to joining Vinous, Kelli was Head Sommelier at Veritas Restaurant in New York. More recently, Kelli has spent five years at Press in St. Helena, where she helps curate an award-winning list that is arguably the finest collection of Napa Valley wines anywhere in the world. Kelli’s articles have appeared in numerous highly respected publications, including The Robb Report, Sommelier Journal and The World of Fine Wine. Later this year, Kelli will publish Napa Valley Then and Now, a comprehensive and historic look at the wines of Napa Valley.”

Thanks for the links Ken.

Paul -

Super cool. Kelli White and Scott Brenner have been the sommelier duo . . .

Got that?

Super cool.

All you need to know.

One could argue that they both have a history with performance-enhancing drugs, however (depending, I suppose, on your selection from the PRESS list).

Perhaps she will at last provide the gravitas and relevance that Antonio Galloni has been so desperately seeking, as well as a Vinous reviewer with at least some background in California wines (other than Steve Tanzer, I mean)…

We had a great evening with her at Press several years ago. I thought she was impressive.
Congrats!

A smart addition to the Vinous team. Kelli is great.

Kelli: Coming from New York where people never bring wines to restaurants, it’s hard for me to understand the culture of corkage in California. It’s one thing when you want to bring in a special occasion bottle for your anniversary or something, but we get a lot of people bringing in wine from the end shelf of the supermarket. After they pay the corkage fee, the wine often costs more than if they had bought it off our list, so they aren’t actually saving money.

I find this an interesting statement. Insulting, really, as a Californian. So we here in the Golden State lack the graces to bow to overpriced wine lists and the great sommelier. I don’t mean to hijack this thread but this is a statement made by Kelli in a thread about Kelli. I don’t know her, but this doesn’t impress.

Rick,

That certainly is an interesting comment that I guess can be taken a few different ways. One might say that she is simply looking out for ‘value’, noting that folks oftentimes don’t realize that if they bring in an ‘inexpensive’ bottle of wine and then pay corkage, they are no better off than having purchased something off the list.

One could read into this that she would simply hope to have the opportunity as a somm to suggest wines based on likes/dislikes, etc and ‘do her job’.

One might also, though, look into this as you did, in somewhat of an ‘insulting’ way. What she might miss by making this statement is a) some folks bring wines that mean something to them, regardless of price; b) some lists may be fantastic, but are so overpriced that there’s no need to buy anything off that list; and c) believe it or not, some folks don’t ‘trust’ somms and feel that they will be led down a path of overpaying for a wine they don’t want, like or need. (and yep, I know plenty of folks who feel this way).

I don’t know Kelli and wish her the best of luck with AG and Vinous and hopes she adds another ‘dimension’ to the team . . .

Cheers

The only thing I see wrong with her statement is that people do bring wine to restaurants in NY. Perhaps not often to Veritas where she worked, but certainly to other places. Otherwise it seems to me she is not criticizing corkage or Californians in general but the notion that people would pay corkage on a cheap bottle when her list at PRESS had better values.

+1. Although her statement makes it hard to avoid the inference that Californians can’t do addition…

While I don’t have any numbers to back it up, my guess is most people that bring their own wines to restaurants are bringing bottles from their own collection, rather than the supermarket shelf. Her implication otherwise seems off the mark. I’m sure periodically you get a patron who shows up with a bottle of Caymus 40th anniversary, but I suspect she is exaggerating the premise that masses of Californians stop by Safeway on the way to dinner.

Edit: and just to add, I don’t judge people by a single quote or statement and my post was not meant to disparage Kelli. My intent was to point out what I see as a completely erroneous statement, as I read it. Best of luck to her!

Well, she is speaking from her experience, and you open by admitting you’re speculating… I speculate that your speculation is informed by an assumption that a greater percentage of “the masses” - whether in CA or elsewhere - is better informed and more interested in wine than they really are.

As a NYer who often seeks to bring my own bottle in BYO-hostile NYC, I agree with Ken’s observation upstream. And I don’t think NYers are more sophisticated about wine than CAians, nor that Kelli implies they are - only that the lack of BYO culture here (fueled by paucity of BYO-friendly venues, high corkage fees, and perhaps also by the absence of wine in our supermarkets) successfully dissuades most in NY from toting their own bottles to restaurants.

Not to be disagreeable but In my experience Kelli is correct. Most people who BYO do stop by a liquor/wine store and grab something off the shelf. I’m not goingto bore people here with stories but you’d be surprised. We have to remember that we are the 1 percent of 1 percent of wine drinkers here.

Several people with lots of experience in that side of the business have told me that this isn’t true at all.