And it reminded me of an embarrassing moment I once had in regards to wine (I guess I’m self-deprecating that way).
There was this great restaurant in Montreal, it closed down a while back, and they were front runners in the “natural” wine movement. I first visited on their second night in business and soon became a regular. We got along nicely with the staff and I started bringing in bottles of various stuff (wines I wanted to share, hooch from the in-laws, etc.). I used to sit at the bar (comptoir) and we’d make it a late night so we could take time and enjoy wines with the staff.
One evening, after a particularly long event with an open bar, we showed up for a late night snack and a few drinks. An importer was there, and he was going through a lot of good stuff. He noticed that I was showing an interest and pulls out a Ganevat (can’t remember the wine). There was one pour left in the bottle. He begins to talk to me about Fanfan and tells me he’s happy to have me taste that last pour. Pours it into my glass and smiles, waiting for me to try it.
I smell the wine, wonderful, and I give it a good swirl. A good swirl. The wine flies out of the glass which is now empty. He didn’t even look at my shame. He just walked away. I quickly paid my tab and went home.
I was at @Robert_Dentice’s rieslingstudy event last year in Memphis and poured myself the last glass of 2020 G-Max he had saved for DJ Muggs while he was doing his set.
At that point in the night I was clearly tipsy and didn’t realize the bottle was being set aside. I was quite ashamed.
We were just in Florence, sat down at Regina Bistecca, and I did the swirl and it went all over my shirt. The server actually said she poured too much but it was 100% my fault. Fortunately my wife is a magician with stains but I was still quite embarrassed.
I did that same thing a couple of years ago at my friend’s 60th birthday party at Joes Stone Crab here in Las Vegas. I had brought a magnum of 2010 Switchback Ridge Anniversary Blend and was making a toast to my buddy in front of about 20 people, raised my glass, and gave it a little wrist to swirl…out some goes, right on my white dress shirt. Ugh.
On another note, we went to Bistecca Regina last year. What did you think?
The steak was perfect, and unique. The Chianina beef had an excellent flavor. The antipasti were fine, and the side dishes were just ok. We got the truffled potato au gratin and it lacking in … potato. We skipped dessert for gelato on the way back to the hotel. It was a a 7.5/10 experience, with the beef being the highlight.
In my twenties I was dating my now wife, and we went to a restaurant that was then at the top of my budget for a special night. I knew virtually nothing about wine at the time, and when the waiter came by I ordered a bottle of the Pinot “griss”.
Waiter: Ah, yes. The Pinot “greeeee”
[he emphasized].
Me: No, no. The Pinot “griss”, please.
Waiter: Yes sir. Coming right up. The Pinot “greeeeeee”, just as you ordered.
And that’s when the lightbulb went off, and I realized he was obnoxiously correcting my pronunciation.
Today, with the benefit of decades of hindsight, I realize that he was the jerk in this situation by so obviously and snidely correcting me in front of my date. But at the time I felt like a proper dummy, as evidenced by the fact that I remember this encounter 20 years later.
But I won in the end. I got the girl, we married, and lived happily ever after.
The 1st time I tried to pronounced Leroy - ugh like something from a Jim Croce song.
The time when I had to stand up at a wine dinner and discuss the wine (blind). It was a chardonnay and I said it was a Riesling. Hiding under my chair for the rest of evening. I still hate blind tastings and still get performance anxiety.
I’ve told this story before, but it’s so good. It’s worth repeating
An American wine festival was held every year at the Desmond Americana at in Albany. There were no events on the Saturday afternoon, and everybody gathered in one of the rooms of a distributor and tasted wines blind. I was excited that Francis Mahoney of Carneros Creek was there, and brought one of his Pinots, the 1977.
As I said, it was a blind tasting. Sadly, he did not recognize his own wine, in fact, he hated it so much that he began to rail about it, how bad it was, it should never have been released, and ithe winemaker fired.
Not much I could do to stop the reveal. I said it was a bad bottle and had it before and this wasn’t representative. In fact, I had kind of had it before, and it tasted the same, but I had to try.
To his credit, Mahoney laughed and said everyone was entitled to a fuck up once a year.
As someone who is fairly new to wine, American, and also does nearly all their tasting and reading alone, I basically don’t know how to pronounce anything and remember reading about Lalou and the Leroy story and then later hearing someone else pronounce it correctly and being so grateful I never had the opportunity to say it wrong because I definitely would have
Early, early years, mispronounced Peteus for like a year or so, in more than one venue with people that knew and didn’t correct me because they thought it was “cute”.
We were at an office dinner with a bunch of people and I’m was asked to order the wine. As I was holding a bottle someone asked me the time. Without thinking, I tilted my wrist and the bottle all over the person beside me.
