I have been listening to a fair amount of Wagner recently after my curiosity about the Rhine and its place in German culture reminded me of the story that sets Wagner’s Ring Cycle in motion. Most things in viticultural Germany seem to be linked with the Rhine or its tributaries, and the story of the Rheingold being stolen from the bottom of the river has somehow stuck with me for years. Mostly I enjoy listening to the prelude of Das Rheingold, and I encourage everyone to do so because it is so incredibly beautiful. I can’t claim to be a music enthusiast. Most of what I know about Wagner comes from his contributions to theater theory, if you will, and his ideas of placing the director as ultimate auteur and having all of the actors replaced by these uber puppets. I think I am remembering that right. I connect the word uber with him, and it is sometimes fun to place the word, prefix-like, in front of a variety of things. Anyway, once the singing starts, I am reminded that I don’t speak German and don’t know the story, and that opera is probably best experienced in performance.

Still, that prelude, the Vorspiel, it conjures up what I imagine the beauty of the Rhine must be. Surely the steeply sloped vineyards of Berg Schlossberg are as dramatic. The heat of the midday sun on the blue slate in the Summer, the plunging temperatures of Winter, the desire to construct a wine with a transparent, vertical axis of tension between soil and sunlight, the heavenly longings from earthly elements, it all has a sort of operatic grandeur, no? A river carving through slate over centuries! Grapes ripening through the most improbable (but all the same inevitable) circumstances! The back breaking labor of man over decades, centuries, to produce a wine that can last as long and elevate us all through a vibrant acidity singing through sumptuous fruit in a crystalline voice. What more is there to say? It is inspirational.

I have gathered a few Rieslings to taste and will probably be somewhat disappointed with such grandiose preconceived notions. I am unsure about the producers, but I do have a Wehlener Sonnenuhr, a Goldtropfchen, and a dry Rheingau to taste. I looked through our distributors’ catalogs, and Germany is definitely not their forte from the looks of it. I think I could build some relationships with other vendors, but to be honest, it would seem like a lie to build that up just so I could get a decent selection of wines to purchase for myself, wholesale, bottle by bottle. We certainly don’t have a big market for fine Rieslings at my steakhouse.

And that is really the problem, I think, that I am facing. My market and the types of wines I have available to me and the types of wines I think I need to be tasting, surrounding myself with, in order to learn more about wine and be the best Sommelier I can be. Certainly I am filled with undying gratitude to the fine people who come in to my restaurant every night. Many of them are my regulars and they enjoy big Cabs with their steaks. God bless them, and I know I can help them decide or introduce them to new ones. Still, there is a staggering amount of wines that remain, at this point, theoretical to me. Greek wines, most of South America, large swaths of France including almost all of the Loire Valley. Wines that are fine and playful with varied cuisine. To solve this I have been seeking part time work at a couple of wine shops. I don’t care if it doesn’t amount to much money (although I have to make a certain amount, obviously, to support my family). Even if it just comes down to labels and bottles to go with my World Atlas of Wine, I would be fine with that. But I really just need something different.

I blame it on Kermit Lynch, to some extent. His first few pages of “Adventures on the Wine Route,” had me nodding in agreement as he described wine tastings where the “biggest” wine always “won”. How does one wine “win” over another. Can we really trust ourselves to be the ultimate barometer of quality? Can you parse and dissect it? Is there a grid involved? What is quality? In “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” the lead character drives himself crazy over this very question. I think, more often than not, we mislead ourselves into filtering out what we are experiencing with a wine through our own preconceived notions about what it “should” be. I see it time and time again in others and in myself. I hate to keep hammering away at this, but I come back to my own ideas about Sauvignon Blanc and wood fermenting/aging. Where did I get this idea that stainless steel was the most noble route to take with Sauvignon Blanc? Lynch all but rails against stainless steel tanks in his writings on Vouvray, and I found myself thinking, “maybe oak is the way to go after all.” But that is just as crazy because I am still just talking through an empty skull, swallowing other people’s ideas whole and spitting them back out. Maybe I should have a glass of wine in my hand instead of a book when going back and forth about whether or not oak is ok in SB or not. And who is to say, ultimately, that one is always better than the other? I am really just making it harder on myself with all of this mental clutter, and why? To feel like I am learning about wine? To feel like I know something about wine? Is that some sort of precondition to feel good about myself or what I am doing with my life? Or maybe it is easier to distract myself with arguments like this that cannot be won (because I am arguing with myself, which means I am always both winning and losing) instead of doing the real, and somewhat scary, work. Scary because I am not altogether sure what the work is or if I am doing it right (?). I don’t usually take myself to task like this, but I am including it here because surely, surely I am not the only one who goes through all of this. It seems easy to get lost in other people’s opinions and mistake the mechanics of what other “successful” Sommeliers do as the soul of what a Sommelier does. I guess I just have to keep trying to be the best Sommelier I can be…

And I do try. Quite a few times in the last few weeks I have stepped out from behind the bar to act as a Sommelier when a guest has questions about our list or a server is not sure what wine to suggest. Sometimes a bar regular will be sitting out in the main dining room and I will just go out and help them because I know their tastes, budget, and spirit of adventure. It takes time away from my bar duties and shifts the burden of work a bit onto my bartender co-workers (for no extra money, basically), but I feel like I just have to do it. If I am the best person to help the guest, that pretty much makes it my job.

We roll out our new by the glass list tomorrow, and there will be some changes in the bottle placement pricing as well. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out on the numbers side.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ