Uncorked by Marco Pasanella Read Free Book Online

commissioners in his pocket.
    So I did what Stew told me: I got myself fingerprinted and photographed, paid $1,000 to a bond company (still not exactlysure why), attached a lease, appended a store diagram, and submitted a notarized statement from me (landlord) vouching for me (tenant) along with the fifty-two-page liquor license application (a form designed to ferret out mobsters with questions such as “Have all investors been disclosed in this application? Yes or No”) to the New York State Liquor Authority. The SLA website explained that we should expect to wait about three months.
    Meanwhile, we had our hands full. On June 17, 2005, Becky gave birth to our Luca, the “Son” in Pasanella & Son. And for most of the summer we were more preoccupied with milk (and diapers) than with wine. Luca’s thirst also meant that my most trusted taster was out of commission for three months.
    In August, almost three months to the day we applied for the liquor license, I got a call from Stew announcing that we would be required to appear at a perfunctory hearing the following week. At the hearing, our seasoned liquor attorney explained, he would get up and describe why it would “serve the public interest” to open our store. Up we trekked to 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, the headquarters of an agency responsible for $206 million in annual tax revenue.
    The hearing room featured a long table with tented legs behind which sat the board. Before us was an earnest couple looking for a license for their organic restaurant and a grocer seeking a beer license in Queens. They all were nervous, and both were quickly approved. When our turn came, Stew did his three-minute spiel about this young couple looking to open a wineshop in their own building in Manhattan’s Seaport Historic District. As Stew made his way back down the aisle, one of the commissioners offhandedly asked, in the manner of a minister at a wedding, “Any objections?”
    Hands shot up. A trio of downtown liquor store owners with handwritten scripts rushed to the podium to protest that we would put them out of business. Their comments were peppered with “9/11” and “Ground Zero.” Our shop, they argued, would be the “final nail in the coffin.” One speaker in particular, the son of a package store owner, was so moving that he even had me choked up. I almost forgot that his father’s place, a block from the former World Trade Center, was almost a mile away in lower Manhattan, where the population density hovers around 750,000 people per square mile.
    There were murmurs among the commissioners and then the announcement: “License deferred.”
    “Deferred?!” I screamed in my head.
    Stew nodded and said nothing.
    Where, I wondered, was my tireless advocate, my Atticus Finch? Where, I wanted to know, was my friggin’ Mr. Inside!?
    We limped out of the meeting, and I was convinced that what Stew called a “hiccup” was going to require some real work on my part.
    It was remarkable that none of the commissioners were from New York City. To these upstate guys, I realized, almost a mile seemed pretty close.
    I asked Janet to take our video camera and walk at a normal pace from our building to the two nearest liquor stores. She left our cobbled Seaport Historic District, crossed Water Street, and went up the hill and through the canyons of office buildings. Twenty minutes later, she reached the second store. I sent DVDs to each commissioner. Again I waited.
    Weeks passed. The delay was probably not due to bureaucratic ineptitude. What we did not know was that the SLA had beendrafted by the attorney general to assist in a major investigation of the local wine and spirits business. In November 2005, Eliot Spitzer, the ardent New York State attorney general, launched an inquiry into unfair wholesale pricing.
    Spitzer alleged that the major distributors offered discounts and free merchandise to preferred stores as well as to favored bars, restaurants, and nightclubs.