Uncorked by Marco Pasanella Read Free Book Online Page B

collectors and then identify not only the region and grape but also the winemaker and the year.
    At a dinner in the Chelsea loft of a pianist and his companion, we were treated to a harpsichord recital while bottle after bottle was swaddled in cloths and laid out in a line on the dining table. By the time the recital had finished, I stumbled to my chair, having reached my two-drink limit (yes, this liquor store owner is a cheap date). Janet, who had downed the same two glasses of Chablis, was raring to go. The first bottle was full-bodied, red, ripe, and deep. I could taste the fruit. Janet took a few swirls and took a stab: “Rhône, possibly Crozes-Hermitage.… ”
    Then a few more sips. “Chave, 2001!” she declared, flashingpurple-stained teeth as surely as if she were saying her own name.
    That is exactly what the pianist revealed when he took the cloth off the label.
    Whoa.
    With a few years’ hindsight, Janet’s apparent miracle now seems more Sherlock Holmes than Amazing Kreskin. With practice, grape varietals offer telltale signs: Cabernet Franc, for example, tends to be herby, Zinfandel is peppery, and Syrah, the predominant grape in a southern Rhône wine, often tastes deep and full-bodied with hints of what critics like to term “black fruit” (plums, currants). Janet also may have been tipped off by the bottle’s shape, with its long, sloping shoulders. Then again, Australian Shiraz (another name for the same grape) can come in a similarly shaped bottle, although the Shiraz tends to be made in a more extroverted style. Syrah is garrulous French; Shiraz is loud Aussie. Janet probably could have excluded the Australian, as well as its so-called “New World” (any place other than Europe) brethren, because there was just a hint of the oakiness that often characterizes these wines. Knowing that the hosts were avid collectors and assuming that the wine was delicious, it was not a far leap to assume that they would have bought from one of the most renowned of that region’s producers, Jean-Louis Chave. Janet could also tell—as a novice wine taster also would be able to recognize—that the wine was old enough to have lost its mouth-puckering tannins but not so old to have turned brownish. Finally, 2001 was also a terrific year. And so, voilà.
    Janet had a great palate, and I enjoyed sharing in the blind-tasting miracles, but more and more I was realizing that they were more the result of common sense and practice than the hand of God.
    By late fall 2005, a little divine intervention would have been appreciated as we continued to languish in liquor license purgatory. Janet was starting to get antsy. With her to-do list shrinking, our dynamo started arriving a little later each day. In the afternoons, she disappeared to meet distributors, ostensibly to taste more wines. Inevitably when she returned after several hours, flashing those purple teeth, I would be irritated. “Kid,” I thought to myself, “you’re getting tipsy on my dime.” Then again, I reasoned, she needed to sample as much as she could to be the best buyer for me, so I held my tongue.
    In the worst-case scenario, I was okay with our having spent months tasting (not exactly an unpleasant way to pass one’s time), but I had promised myself that I would not start construction until I knew we had the license. Yet we desperately wanted to open by the holidays as Jude had let us know that 60 percent of a shop’s annual sales come between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. Pressure was mounting. I was starting to feel like a cane on a vine that was yet to sprout. I realized that if we waited any longer, we would miss the lucrative holiday season. So we leaped again.
    I quickly submitted plans to the buildings department. While I waited for the permits, I hired someone to smooth out the pitched floor—great for washing away fish guts but not so nice for tile. The more he chiseled, the more we discovered just how badly the concrete tilted. It