"Official" First Wine Tasting Experience

On this brisk and chilly Sunday my mind wandered. When was my first official wine tasting experience? I guess what spurred this on, aside from living in the mecca of wine country, was last night I watched an old re-run of David Letterman interviewing Clint Eastwood.

David was running down the list of movies that Clint was in and he came upon the movie "Play Misty for Me". It was evident that Clint was very fond of this production and also the writer, Paul Gillette.

It was one of those "Aha" moments. I had my official wine tasting experience many moons ago and didn't even know it, and when I thought I had it, I didn't, at first.

Way back when I was an aspiring screen play writer I took on this internship with Paul Gillette. Paul Gillette was not only a screenplay writer, novelist but a beverage industry analyst who published a newsletter entitled "Wine Investor". It was Paul Gillette who told the New York Times in 1990 that "Robert Mondavi has probably been the most important figure in the wine industry in the last half of this century."

Robert Mondavi didn't have any formal training in wine making but he had the vision that with proper techniques and lot's of great PR, domestic wines could one day hold their own against the French tradition. It is Mondavi that has been credited with creating fume blanc and popularizing the quintessential Californian white, chardonnay. To him we owe thanks.

At that time it didn't mean much to me, this whole wine thing and the role that Paul Gillette played in it too.  I was just excited to have the opportunity to be apart of this elite crowd on aspiring writers that met once a week in the evenings to give constructive criticism to each other's work. It was my job to make sure there were enough chairs, materials and plenty of coffee too.

I remember fondly these evenings in Gillette's Sherlock Holmes den kinda-of office, which was three floors up from Hollywood Blvd.. All of us perched in our chairs facing Paul, who sat like a Judge on the bench of Superior Court.  His big wooden desk stacked high with paper's. He had this thing about hoarding paper. Every piece of paper that entered his office remained to be reused. All envelopes were disassembled flat stacked high to be used as scratch paper. To this day I catch myself using envelopes as message pads.

At the end of each evening, as I stacked the chair's Paul and I would discuss that night's slaughter. Often times we had a glass of wine as we proceeded. So most likely, unofficially, I was probably tasting some pretty good stuff and didn't even know it.

The official first tasting in my mind was comic in nature and I'll never forget it.

One of the writers in the group, Michael (for the life of me I can't remember his last name) was a writer and photographer for a wine publication out of Beverly Hills. He always wore this tweed sports jacket and glasses darker than Roy Orbison. One evening after our writers session he invited me to tag along with him to this wine tasting event he had to cover.

I remember Michael picking me up at my apartment in Hollywood in his dirty, little red compact car. I answered the door and there was Michael, with his black, curly hair looking like he just rolled out of bed with his press pass dangling around his neck dressed in his tweed coat and jeans.  My instructions were... I was his assistant... a light meter was placed in my hands and away we went.

We made our way across town towards Beverly Hills as he chattered about the screenplay he was working on. He pulled out the fattest joint I ever did see and lit it up. Thank god he let me roll down the window's since I did not partake in that kind of smoking.

It was like out of the Hunter S.Thomas book, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as we got closer and closer to Rodeo Drive. The evening became more surrealistic as we entered this grand facility.

In the center a huge round table with cheese and fruit galore. In a horse shoe shape, separate bars were setup and each one had a scary person dressed in a tux standing behind them. Like soldiers, ready to do battle, armed with a bottle and a bucket. This was a blind tasting of some French tradition wines, in which I wouldn't have known the difference even if I saw the label.

I held my light meter tight in my hands as Michael whispered to me, "Okay you find the one you like and go back for more".

I was mesmerized watching people take a sip, make funny noises, spit into the bucket and move onto the next. I tried to mimic what was going on but the spitting thing hung me up. Unnerved and intimated I moved throughout the room until "Aha!" I spotted Sylvester Stallone.

 "My God" I thought to myself, "I'm bigger than he is!" All the fear melted away, the room seemed to get smaller and more comfortable as I watched he didn't spit either.

The moral of the story? Wine tasting is suppose to be fun and there is no right or wrong of it. The most important thing is to enjoy it.