480: Kevin Zraly Was At the Top of the World and Then Lost Almost Everything

[00:00:01] We'll hear from Kevin Zarelli about his life coming up in this episode, but first I would like to share with you something that Martin Sinkoff explained to me. Martin Sinkoff has had a long career working for Wine and Spirits distributors and producers

[00:00:29] such as William Grant & Sons, Glaziers, Pasternak, and Frederick Wildman. Today he heads up Martin Sinkoff Associates. Here's how Martin described to me the difference between marketing in the wine business and marketing in the spirits business. Martin Sinkoff What is that?

[00:00:48] Kevin Zarelli And the difference is that spirit producers don't talk about how their product is made or very rarely or only as a side note. What they really want to know and what they really are looking for is who drinks the product.

[00:01:00] They want to know what the consumer proposition is. They don't care about the producer proposition because they know since most spirits are, again when we go back to basics, are distillates that are then flavored in some way whether it's gin adding juniper or bourbons marrying

[00:01:20] the whiskey with oak or scotch producers either blending malts but also marrying that with oak or not. Or vodka producers doing nothing at all for that matter except distilling perhaps another 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th time or whatever they say or perhaps adding some

[00:01:38] bison grass or something like that. But for the most part it is not the producer proposition that matters. It's the consumer proposition. So you can have a fairly undifferentiated product like vodka that is successful in so many iterations because the producers have so cleverly

[00:01:54] identified each segment of the consumer population. Men over 45 are going to drink Kettle One. Club goers are going to drink, I'm just saying this I don't know, Absolute. Younger club goers who don't want to spend for Absolute are going to drink Svetka etc. etc. etc. Sophisticates

[00:02:16] are going to drink Chopin or Belvedere etc. So each segment of the population is divided up and the value of that segment is understood and analyzed, the marketing is directed and because the products are inexpensive to produce for the most part there are large marketing

[00:02:32] dollars available to help reach and talk to that consumer. The wine business is exactly the opposite in a certain way, I meant exactly the opposite but certainly the world turned on its head because the cost of production is high not low and the margins are low not

[00:02:48] high. So there's less ability to reach the consumer and the consumer propositions are few. Basically when you look at wine there are rich reds, light reds, refreshing whites, aromatic whites, sparkling wines and now we can say pink wines, rose wines and that's

[00:03:04] it. Those are the only, when people go to a steakhouse they want a rich red wine. When people are in summertime and have a barbecue they want a wine, a light fruity wine they

[00:03:15] can put in the ice bucket. Whether it's a Beaujolais or a Chino, does it really matter at the end of the day? I would say not for the most part and in a steakhouse people want

[00:03:28] to nap a cab for the most part but if it's a Sonoma cab or if it's a Bordeaux all of those will satisfy that same consumer proposition of rich red steakhouse red. However, wine producers will tell you endlessly about how their wine was made. I cultivated the wine

[00:03:45] in this way, it comes from this hillside, the clone I used is this, the spacing of the vines is this, the oak that I used is this, I am now using egg-shaped fermenters rather

[00:03:57] than upright vats and I also use upright vats but I've gone back to concrete and etc. etc. It's all about in a certain way it's a little bit boring because it's look at me, look at

[00:04:08] me, look at me and the consumer is asked to validate the choices made by the producer. Whereas in the spirits business the spirits producer says don't worry about me, tell me

[00:04:19] about you, tell me what you like, tell me who you are, tell me what you do, tell me what your interests are, tell me what kind of car you drive, tell me about your love life and

[00:04:29] I'm gonna tell you whether this works for you or that works for you and you see if this is your brand. It's a completely different dynamic and you can see spirit producers now, especially

[00:04:39] craft producers trying to pull a little bit from the wine business to tell you that the spirit was distilled in this way and especially tequilas and mezcals, you know only the agave that's grown in

[00:04:49] this place and not that place and it's mashed in this way and not that way, all of this is producer proposition but at the end of the day the spirits producer is asking the consumer about him or her

[00:05:00] and the wine producer is asking the consumer to listen to the producer's story and I find that a little bit challenging for the wine business. During a global health crisis it is perhaps more

[00:05:13] important than ever to ask your customers about them. As Martin mentioned, that isn't always the first instinct of people in the wine business but maybe now is the time to reconnect with your

[00:05:26] customers and to see how they're doing and what they have to tell you. We'll move in just a moment to listening to how Kevin Ziraley coped with both profound success and devastating loss in his career

[00:05:39] and in his life but before we get there I want to share with you one more piece of advice from Martin Zinkoff. You will never do business if you don't like your customer

[00:05:50] and I think that's true for the supplier too. When you like your supplier, when you like your customer, you find a way to do business. When something is not right in that relationship it's very hard. I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage

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[00:08:07] Kevin Ziraley of the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course and also the co-author of the book Red Wine on the show today. Hello sir, how are you? I am excellent, not good, excellent. It's really nice to see you. Thanks.

[00:08:21] So I remember you told me neither of your parents really drank any alcohol. No, Coca-Cola or iced tea. My mother still drinks iced tea or hot tea. What was growing up with them like? I'm very, very lucky but I actually even thanked my mother the other day

[00:08:39] for the childhood that I had because I don't think I would have been able to overcome some of the other things that happened at September 11th and also after that. And you grew up in New York?

[00:08:49] I grew up in Pleasantville, New York which sounds cliche-ish but it is very pleasant. I went to the same grammar school from kindergarten through eighth grade, went to high school and then went to Woodstock. It changed my life.

[00:09:04] Think about that I went to Catholic schools and I always wore a jacket and tie. That's what I wore and then I got to Woodstock and they weren't wearing any clothes. I said I'm joining this tribe.

[00:09:15] So then I moved upstate. I got into a college right away. Prior to that at Woodstock I would call myself a lost child like any 18 year old, you know, what am I going to do? I was not into

[00:09:27] wine at all. Matter of fact, my background, my mother is Irish, my father's Czech and so it was steak and potato. That's how I grew up. Not with fine food, not with wine, nothing in the house

[00:09:37] gave any indication of where I would go into wine. But once I got to Woodstock I said I'm moving here, where's the college that I can go to? And so it ended up to be a community college. They

[00:09:50] accept you. That was August of 69. By the first week in September I was in the college and then I got a job in a restaurant. The restaurant became famous and I was 19 and that's when wine started. So that was the Dupuis Canal House.

[00:10:05] Correct. If you're in New York and you go 90 miles up the Hudson River and then go west a little bit you'll find this little town of High Falls. And it was a 1797 stone building that

[00:10:16] this guy, he was 10 years older than I so I was 19, he was 29, put together. He was the chef and the owner. And he'd only been open six months. And Craig Claiborne, who was the first restaurant

[00:10:29] critic for the New York Times, came up to visit the restaurant with another famous chef called Pierre Franais and also Jacques Pepin. And Craig gave the restaurant a four-star rating, which had never been done before outside of New York City. I'm a waiter. I didn't know who Craig

[00:10:47] Claiborne was. I was 19, I was still lost. We were in the middle of nowhere, literally 400 people, Hamlet. So we'd have 10, 15, maybe 20 people for dinner. Well after that review we're looking at 100 to 120 people. Things changed quickly. And that was with John Novy? Correct. John Novy,

[00:11:08] the only reason I knew him is I moved into his mother's apartment upstairs of a pizzeria. She had a bakery and a pizzeria downstairs. And so I went down one time, you know I'm still

[00:11:18] 18 or 19 or whatever, I don't have a lot of money, couldn't pay the rent. And I said, could I get a job here? I'll wash dishes for you. And she said, no, no, I don't have a job for you.

[00:11:29] Go see Johnny. Johnny will be crazy, Johnny. My son, crazy Johnny opening up a restaurant. Okay. So I went to see crazy Johnny. He's an artist. It was a magical restaurant. So I'm very blessed to have been associated for six years with the DuPuisken outhouse tavern.

[00:11:46] What happened was we didn't have a bartender. So if you're a waiter, you made your own drinks until we started getting to 100 people, then they needed a bartender. I became the bartender for various

[00:11:56] reasons because nobody else wanted to do it. With that, I had to understand liquor, how to make a drink, beer and wine. And remember I'm 19 years old when I'm saying this. So they would come in,

[00:12:09] New Yorkers would come in now cause they're all coming up from New York city to see this restaurant. And they would say, what do you have for wine? And I said, we got the top three. We got red,

[00:12:17] we got white and we got rosé. And it was like Amadine or Paul Mason. It was underneath the bar. It was like dust on it because nobody was ordering wine in those days. This is a whole different

[00:12:29] world 45 years ago versus today. Anyhow, somebody got really upset with me, one of the patrons. And next time he came up, he brought me a book on wine. It was called The Signet Book of Wine.

[00:12:40] And he handed it to me and said, read this. And I'd started off as a history major and everything was around history, Napoleon, the Renaissance. You know, I'm Catholic, so I'm thinking about Jesus's first miracle. It's all coming together.

[00:12:55] And then it became an obsession from that moment on. By the time I left, we had 120 wines. And you started to travel to different wine areas. Well, the interesting thing is when I started, you could drink at 18. In New York.

[00:13:09] In New York. But California was 21. So I started teaching wine when I was 20 years old at the local college, the college that I went to after Woodstock Ulster County Community College. And so

[00:13:20] I started teaching these classes because they came to us, John and me, and said, you guys got a four-star rating. You must know something about wine and food. Teach a class, wine and cheese.

[00:13:32] And we said yes. And I knew nothing about wine. John knew nothing about cheese. But we did it. So that was my first time doing it. And here I'm talking about California wines. I can't even go

[00:13:41] out there because I had to be 21. So in the summer of my 21st year, I hitchhiked to California. And, you know, we talk about, and all the wineries that are out there, you know, 1200 wineries in the North coast. Well, there were 12. That's 1972.

[00:14:01] Since we're doing radio, nobody can see how good looking I am right now, how short my hair is, but my hair was much longer. I was a hippie, bottom line. But I wrote to everybody. I didn't

[00:14:13] just go to California and knock on doors. I wrote to Robert Mondavi. I wrote to everybody. And I said, I'm coming out. And it really looked good on paper. Let me try to explain. So I'm

[00:14:23] 22 years old, but I'm the manager of a four-star restaurant. Boom. There was an organization called Laissez-Moi Du Vin. They made me at 20 years old, the regional director. Don't ask me how that happened. I'm teaching wine classes. And I then was getting ready to teach an accredited wine class

[00:14:42] at the State University of New Paltz. So I had all this, and I also said that I was a writer. I fibbed, but I said, I'm writing articles. So when I go out there, everybody should come on

[00:14:51] out, let us know. We want to see you. We'll spend as much time with you as you want. I can remember I'm hitchhiking. I had no car. I had no transportation. I was hitchhiking from

[00:15:00] Santa Cruz, California, where my friend had a place, which I thought was close, which it wasn't, to Napa. I'm walking down Englenook. It's a long drive if anybody knows Englenook, and I'm walking with my friend, who hitchhiked out with me. He was my photographer, so to speak.

[00:15:16] And this pickup truck comes, and this guy's got a handlebar mustache. He's our age. He says, hop on. He just uses his finger, hop onto the back of the truck. I'll take you down.

[00:15:26] And he says, what are you doing here? I'm here to see the CEO, Mr. So-and-so. And he laughed. He said, he'll never talk to you. I said, well, why? He said, look at your hair. He's never going to

[00:15:36] talk to you. You're a hippie. I said, well, I already wrote ahead. This happened to me a lot, going to places where I wasn't expecting. They were looking for somebody else. And the guy walks

[00:15:46] out into the room, and this guy's watching this whole thing, and he looks around, and he goes back into his office. And this guy ends up to be a guy named Don Surplus, who nobody would know except me

[00:16:00] and everybody else in Napa Valley, because he was doing something in Englenook. Then he went and created the first Cooperage in Napa. Then he created the Napa Valley Balloon Company. This is

[00:16:09] all from the early 70s. We just meet these people. And he said, by the way, that was so funny. You can stay with me. So for the next three weeks, I stayed with him in his place up in the mountains,

[00:16:20] in Howell Mountain. So I come back to New Paltz, back in college again, because that's one thing my parents said to me. I told them at 19 I was going into the wine business. I said, it's going to be a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar business. And they looked at me strangely.

[00:16:35] It was just a feel. I mean, when you see what's going on in California, and you're with a guy like Robert Mondavi, who's so inspiring. And so they said, oh, that's great. You're finishing

[00:16:45] college first. So no matter what, I had to finish college. So then I went back to college, and then I started teaching that two-credit wine course. I taught a two-credit wine course

[00:16:53] at the state university. How'd that come about? I learned a new word when I moved here, chutzpah. I never heard that word before, but it's really just, my mother always said as well,

[00:17:02] if you don't ask the question, you'll never know the answer. So I call it not chutzpah, but I call it politely brazen. Be polite, but get your point across. And you can do this at any

[00:17:14] school. If anybody's listening that's still in school, you want to petition for a course, you can. You go in and say what course it is, and the administration is there, and they veto it,

[00:17:23] or they accept it. So I went in again with my long hair, go to the state university, and they say, no, we're not teaching a wine class here. We have enough problems with marijuana.

[00:17:34] You think we're going to promote alcohol? I said, okay, thank you. I went back the next month. They said, we already told you no, we're not doing a wine course here. And I said,

[00:17:45] I know, but I brought two bottles of wine with me. One was $30 and one was three. Blinded, they didn't know which one it was. Tried, tried, tried, tried. So there were six people on the

[00:17:53] board. I said, which one do you like? They said, we all like the $3 bottle. I said, good, you just saved your $27. Then they started getting angry. They said, Mr. Israeli, there's only one way this is ever even going to be considered. If you can find a precedent

[00:18:07] in the state university system of New York where a credited wine course has ever been taught, we might consider it. Cornell University is part of the state university system. And so they had started a class in 1971 that was open, not just to the hotel students,

[00:18:24] but if you were going to law school or you're in chemistry, you could take the class. So anyhow, I brought it back to them. They accepted it. Why do you think you wanted to teach? Like at that age, people want to do various things.

[00:18:38] Why did you decide, you know what, I want to teach? Where did I go with this? My degree, I'm certified to teach nursery through sixth grade in New York State. So there's the educational part. I just took the educational degree and wine,

[00:18:50] put them together, and I created wine courses. And it's not that much different when you have a group of 125 people. My last Windows in the World wine class had 200 people. It's no longer about wine,

[00:19:02] it's about controlling your audience. Well, I remember that time you wrote that once you start teaching people who are drinking wine, it's a lot like dealing with children because it's effectively crowd control. After the third glass of wine, it's no longer an educational

[00:19:16] experience. It is something called crowd control. So much later in your career, just to skip ahead for a moment, you probably realized that there were people giving wine courses who didn't have any educational background and you did have some educational background. There really wasn't a lot

[00:19:32] of classes being taught. There was one, I actually did take this class. It was at the Waldorf Astoria. Interesting. I took this class when I was 20 years old, the only class I ever took,

[00:19:42] and it was a beverage class. It wasn't just on wine. It was wine, it was beer, it was liquor. I was the bartender. I had to learn about it. And I would come down on Monday nights from upstate New

[00:19:50] York and then teach the same class on Tuesday for the local college. Oh, I see. I was stealing everything because I needed information. Chapter and a half ahead of the students, right?

[00:20:00] That's all it's about. The great thing about wine is... Here's a perfect example. I remember my very first time up in front of people, so 20 years old trying to teach wine and I bring out bottles,

[00:20:11] which you read a book. This is a Bordeaux bottle. This is a German bottle. That's a Sauvignon Blanc bottle. And the guy in the back, I'll never forget his name, Jesse Hunt, he was a lawyer and he raises

[00:20:22] his hand and he says, great, when are you going to open them? Then I learned about wine tasting. Okay. People want to taste it. They don't want to talk about it. And that's really what it came

[00:20:32] down to in the rest of my life was tasting wine. Tasting is a totally different thing than just reading about it. Now I have this degree and I've been teaching about French wines and Italian wine

[00:20:45] and Spanish wines and German wines, and I've never been there, which to me is a no-no. So as soon as I graduated, boom, I left for Europe. Again, not with any silver spoon. Youth hostels,

[00:20:57] $2.50 a night and a year-round pass and letters that I had written to the Antonores, to the Rothschilds, to Bouchard, to Marques de Rascal, to Peter Sischel in Germany. So I'm doing youth hostels. I'm in Bordeaux. Just give me one example of what happens in life.

[00:21:16] And I'm staying in a youth hostel. You ever stayed in a youth hostel? Yeah, once. Okay. So you have to leave at nine o'clock in the morning and you can't come back until six

[00:21:23] o'clock at night. That's the way it works. And so I go off, Great Chateau, I called them the day before and they said, okay, Mr. Zraily, where should we pick you up? Now remember now my letter

[00:21:35] is sounding unbelievable, manager of a four-star restaurant in New York. They don't know it's upstate. I'm teacher of accredited wine class. I've been to all the vineyards in California. And now I was writing, I called Vintage Magazine. So I said, if I write an article,

[00:21:48] would you publish it? They said, yes. So now I'm a writer for Vintage Magazine. Well, you can imagine they're getting, Mr. Zraily, great. I'm glad you're here. What hotel do we pick you up at? I'd actually made the mistake and I said, pick me up at the

[00:22:02] youth hostel. I realized that that was not a good idea because then I lost my four-hour lunch. I have no money. I get breakfast at the youth hostel. The lunch is what I need to take me

[00:22:12] through the rest of the day. So the next time, next Chateau, I'll be in the lobby of the Hotel de Bordeaux. So I go to the lobby and the limo pulls up. The limo takes me to the Chateau.

[00:22:25] I get the four-hour lunch, the tour, the whole thing. And the driver says to me on the way back, he says, you want to go back to the Hotel de Bordeaux? I said, no. Could you take me to

[00:22:34] the youth hostel? So you have to imagine this scene. Now at 545 and a limo pulls up to the youth hostel and everybody's waiting outside because they can't get back in until six at night.

[00:22:45] They're all out there and this guy limo, big limo, stretched him, gets out, opens the door for me. I had a suit by the way. I learned from California to have a suit. I cut my hair, the whole thing

[00:22:54] and boom, they thought I was nuts. It was very, very funny. But that's what kept me going. Now early 70s had to be an interesting time to be there, right? Because it was before economic renewal for France, really.

[00:23:05] They were in a fiscal crisis. New York was in a very bad fiscal crisis in the 70s. I could talk about that in the World Trade Center and how many people didn't want the World Trade Centers to be

[00:23:14] built. And I actually was there when Franco, Francisco Franco, was still in charge of Spain. It was a very turbulent time. We talk about the Chateau Margot, this fantastic, unbelievable, beautiful chateau, but not then. The weeds were higher than the grapevines. It was owned by the

[00:23:34] Ginesté family and then the Menzelopoulos has bought it in 1977 and brought it back to glory. We're talking about, I'm sure you've seen prices of what Chateau Lafitte Rothschild went for, back in the old days, 61, like for 10 bucks. It is what it is today.

[00:23:49] But another little funny story. So I go to visit Ruffino and of course I've written that letter again and they're expecting, but we didn't have cell phones back in those days and trying to use

[00:23:58] an Italian phone, forget it. So I hitched out to Ruffino to make sure I had the appointment for the next day. I say, I'm Kevin Srelly and the lady says, well, hold on a second. You know,

[00:24:10] the manager's here. Let me just go down, see if he's having lunch. Let me just get him. And he comes up and he's a burly guy, big, but very, very nice gentleman and speaks perfect

[00:24:19] English. And he says, yes, I know you're coming tomorrow, but why don't you come downstairs and have lunch with us now? He said, yeah, I'm just having lunch with some restaurateurs from Rome. And we walked down the stairs into this gigantic area, this 400 restaurateurs from Rome having

[00:24:36] lunch with Ruffino. And this man stands on the steps and says something in Italian, you know, Kevin's really in New York. I got a standing ovation. I said, this is good. I'll stay in

[00:24:47] this business. Why not? Alexis Lachine is someone that you got to know in Bordeaux, right? I did meet with Alexis Lachine. He was actually, if anybody doesn't know it, I mean, he's the man.

[00:25:00] Frank Schoonmaker and Alexis Lachine put French wines and other wines in the United States of America. It was not an easy sell. It was a hard sell. And Alexis Lachine wrote the Encyclopedia

[00:25:12] of Wine and the Wines of France, On Chateau Prière Lachine, On Chateau Les Combes. He was a Russian. He had a Russian passport, a French passport. He worked for the OSI with Julia Child and Frank

[00:25:25] Schoonmaker. And he also had an American passport. I met him when I first went in 19, when I was 24 years old, I think it was 1974, 75. He put out a sign in the early days of Bordeaux. So this is

[00:25:38] 70s, okay? It said, Dégustation, ici, here. The Bordelais were furious with him, furious that he would desecrate by putting up a sign for tasting of wines. And of course, everybody today has that, but you have to be the first. So he was a maverick, if anybody knows

[00:25:58] anything about him, a Renaissance man. So I met him. I met everybody, you know, I mean, of the high level, you know, the Rothschilds. And this is the first time I met Frank Pryle.

[00:26:09] Frank Pryle was the first wine critic for the New York Times and a fabulous gentleman, no longer with us, but a fabulous gentleman. He actually helped teach my classes at Windows on the World. And I'm going in again, going to Chateau Hicam, the most famous sauterne in the

[00:26:25] world, and I'm going in there to make the appointment for the next day, just double checking. It's about noon-ish. They're coming out of the chateau, and I introduce myself, and then Frank Pryle says, oh, I'm Frank Pryle. Oh, I'm Kevin Srelly, nice to meet you.

[00:26:40] And I said, okay, I'll come tomorrow. He said, yeah, before you do that, you know, we just finished tasting Chateau Hicam and they're all lined up in the room. So go ahead, go ahead, go taste wine. I spent the whole afternoon there. There were like 50 vintages

[00:26:52] of Chateau Hicam on the table. And you can imagine the sauterne, the hues of the colors of all of them, the light coming from the windows onto it was just a magical experience. So then I come back

[00:27:08] to New York and now my friends have no idea what I'm into. You know, they couldn't talk to me or I couldn't talk to them. Now I'm way ahead of myself. I'm 24 years old and I've been around the world.

[00:27:22] So I decided that I was going to get a job in New York City. This is the time to go to the Big Apple. You've done all this. You live in this little hamlet of 400 people, get out.

[00:27:31] I kept the job at the Canal House and I found there's something that people in the industry use here in New York. And I know it's in other States as well. It's called the Beverage Media.

[00:27:39] It's a book and tells you where all there was an ad in it. And it said, salesmen wanted 450 prime accounts, Manhattan, Westchester, and Rockland County. So I applied not thinking that I had any wine knowledge that I could compete with these people. They're the distributors.

[00:27:59] They must know everything there is to know about wine. Little did I realize they knew nothing, nothing. In my days at the Canal House, I had a salesman. His name was Red O'Rourke.

[00:28:11] I'm Irish. I can relate. And you know, I'm back from France now. And I said to Red, I'd like three cases of Nuit Saint Georges. He looked at me and said, Kevin, what are you

[00:28:21] talking? Why are you speaking French to me? Give me the IBM number and you'll get your three cases of wine. What's wrong with you? What did I realize at that moment that this guy's making $50,000 a

[00:28:32] year. I'm making five. He doesn't know anything that he's talking about. And that continued when I got the job. It was called Wines of All Nations. We only sold wine. We didn't sell any liquor.

[00:28:43] And I thought to myself, wow, they had every great winery from around the world. I'm going to be a millionaire at the end of this year. You know, I get a 6% commission. I'm starting to add

[00:28:53] it up. So I start going out to visit the accounts. The first place I go to or second place I go to, it's not the building is not there. The block is not there anymore. The block is gone.

[00:29:04] Then I go to another place where the wine store is supposed to be. It's a laundromat. Then I go to Portchester, New York, and I walk into the store, which I shouldn't have walked in.

[00:29:14] The gun is right there. The big plexiglass thing there, you put the money underneath. I just came back from the Rothschilds, the limousines. And I don't really tell this story too often, but my largest selling wine was called Richard's Wild Irish Rose.

[00:29:30] And finally I went back to this guy, Herb Choute. And I said, Herb, where did you get these 450 accounts from? Because I was getting nothing. I was getting thrown out of stores. Get out.

[00:29:40] So it was a baptism by fire. And I said, Herb, where'd you get these 450 accounts? He said, that was easy. We have 45 salesmen. They each gave you 10 of their accounts. Which 10 do you think they gave me? The best ones?

[00:29:53] Oh yeah, they gave me the best ones. So finally there was an importer. He knew that I knew wine. I was only there for like four months, but they figured out that I knew wine. They were asking

[00:30:05] me questions about what they should buy. And this guy gives me this little piece of paper, which I still have to this day. And it says, go see Barbara Kafka at the World Trade Center. They're opening a restaurant there. And it was room 1817 or something like that,

[00:30:22] because the restaurant hadn't opened yet. So I said, okay, I'll go down and check it out. By the way, I had nothing better to do. It was like January, February, March. Nobody was buying

[00:30:33] from me anyhow. And so I'm going to be in a warm place. So I go down. This is one big room. And they're doing all the menus there. They're doing all of the planning on the parties.

[00:30:46] And so I go to the receptionist. I say, my name is Kevin Zraeli. I'm here to see Barbara Kafka. She says, okay. Who are you? And I said, well, I'm Kevin Zraeli and I'm with Wines of All Nations.

[00:30:56] Okay, I'll be back. She walks into the office and comes back out and says, Barbara can't see you today. You got to understand chaos is going on. They're opening up a restaurant

[00:31:05] within three weeks, something to that effect. And it is chaos. I said, okay, I'll come back tomorrow. So I come back the next day. I'm sitting there, but I sat there for two and a half weeks,

[00:31:19] just so you know, every day for two and a half weeks to see Barbara Kafka. She can't see you today. She can't see you today. She can't see you today. As this time goes on, I'm getting to know

[00:31:27] the receptionist. You're like, you want some tea? I'll get you some tea. And when there's chaos going on and there's so many people are interviewing for jobs for waitstaff, for kitchen staff, for captains, for bartenders. And so they're all coming in and out because that was the place.

[00:31:40] So I'm just sitting there waiting for Barbara Kafka to see me. And in walks in Mayor Abe Beam. I don't know why the mayor's here. In walks James Beard. Wow. What's James Beard doing here?

[00:31:52] In walks Jacques Pepin. In walks David Rockefeller. And if you know the story about the World Trade Centers, you know that David Rockefeller was the one behind the World Trade Centers.

[00:32:02] And they're all going to see Joe Baum, the creator of the Four Seasons Restaurant in 1959 and so many other restaurants. And they wanted to be part of this new restaurant. So there I am sitting there.

[00:32:14] And finally Barbara Kafka comes out, out of her office after two and a half weeks and says, in her inimitable way, what do you want? And I said, I'm here to help you with your wine list.

[00:32:26] Now you got to remember this whole room is chaotic, right? She sort of screams at me, who the fuck are you? And the room just quiets down. You have to, I'm looking around. She says,

[00:32:38] get, get in my office. I felt like I was going to the principal's office. Okay, fine. And I had her in 20 minutes and she started ordering from me. Well, that's good to hear because it kind of sounded like a Kafka novel up to that point.

[00:32:53] Why do you think she liked you? I knew wine. She said, have you ever been to California? Yeah. You ever been to France? Yeah. Bordeaux? Yeah. Burgundy? Yeah. Rowan Valley? Yeah. Champagne? Yes. Loire Valley? Yeah.

[00:33:04] Tuscany? Yeah. I'd already done this. And I was a teacher and little did I know they were interviewing sommeliers for the job. I met them outside in the little hallway where we all sat for

[00:33:16] two and a half weeks. And I remember this one guy, Patrick Fagan, who ended up creating the Chicago Wine School. He's no longer with us. And I said, well, who are you selling wine to? He said,

[00:33:25] oh, I'm not here selling wine. I'm here for the job. I said, what job? He said, a sommelier job. Well, interesting. Didn't know there was a sommelier job. They had a white paper it's called.

[00:33:36] What are they looking for? What kind of general manager do they want in a union house? What kind chef do they want? What kind of sommelier do they want? First of all, they don't want a sommelier.

[00:33:46] They want a cellar master. They don't want to use that French connotation, sommelier. And they're looking for a young American. Here I am. And the next day she offered me the job. How many sommeliers were working in New York at that time?

[00:33:59] None. There were no such things as sommeliers. Maybe in the French restaurants it would have been one of the waiters, you know, that type of thing, but not as a sommelier. When I finally went in to see, Barbara introduced me to the general manager, Alan Lewis, and then

[00:34:14] they introduced me to Joe Baum. We all sat at a table and said, okay, you're hired. You're the guy. I said, okay, what do you want me to do? Joe Baum said to me,

[00:34:25] I want you to create the biggest and the best wine list that New York has ever seen. And don't worry about how much it costs. Why do you think that they wanted to give that kind of responsibility to a 25 year old?

[00:34:40] I wasn't looking for a job. I was there to sell wine. I was very, very happy to get a case order out of them. I wasn't vying for this job and I was still a hippie. They knew it too. You know,

[00:34:52] they, I was college, I had my college degree. I spoke enough French that I could get by. I worked at a four-star restaurant. He's got restaurant experience. And they met, they made

[00:35:02] calls around town. Anybody know this guy? And the stuff came back good from different people that I knew in New York. And that's how I got hired. What an unbelievable experience that was to go to

[00:35:16] windows in the world and taste anything I wanted to taste at a young age. Joe Baum had already done the four seasons that he'd done former of the 12 Caesars then or? Yeah. What was he like?

[00:35:27] P.T. Barnum. He was the Barnum and Bailey, if you will, of the restaurant industry. And he was a perfectionist. He was so far ahead of everything. Let's just give you a little example.

[00:35:41] So windows in the world now is created in the minds of everybody in early 1970s. It opened in 76, but early they created something called the cellar in the sky inside the restaurant next to the wine

[00:35:53] cellar where all the wines would be stored. So think about this one sitting at 730, seven courses and five wines with a guitar player in the background. In the seventies, we'd be putting wine and food together on a prefix menu. And it didn't start

[00:36:10] off with wildfire. And that's Joe Baum's genius as well. We only held 30 people in that room. If we had a reservation for two, he'd find 28 other people to dine. That place was full every night.

[00:36:21] Nobody knew that, you know, and they're going to go home. Well, the place was crowded. It was unbelievable. So the two ended up to be four to six to 20 to 30. That was his genius of knowing

[00:36:31] how to do that. Lighting. Think about, you know, you're on a banquette and a woman's usually facing out. He would stand there. I watched him do this. So at five o'clock at night and how the light

[00:36:43] on you and how the woman's face would change at five o'clock, at six o'clock, at seven o'clock. Now the sun is going down. How's that light now on every single table in the restaurant to make a

[00:36:56] woman look more beautiful than she already is? Hiring again, James Beard worked there. James Beard worked. I worked. Okay. You got an enzyme. I'm selling nothing going nowhere except selling wild Irish rose and pints. And the next day I'm working with James Beard sitting down and talking

[00:37:13] about the wine list because James Beard actually was really into wine. He actually worked at Sherry Lehman and Jacques Pepin worked at windows and well, the people that I got to know in a very,

[00:37:23] very short period of time. What was Joe's background before restaurant associates? Like how did he end up as Joe? Graduated Cornell hotel school, lived in Saratoga Springs. His family had a hotel there.

[00:37:34] So it was sort of in his blood. He got a very minor job at restaurant associates, but worked his way up. They actually, his first restaurant was called the Newarker. Who's going to go out there?

[00:37:45] And he made it successful. So they saw that and they started giving him other things and four seasons is 1959. Look at the legacy of that restaurant. And this also goes back to the world's fair in 1964 in New York city, all these chefs, they had a French pavilion.

[00:38:02] And so all these French chefs said, well, maybe we'll stay in New York. So Pavillon becomes this outrageous restaurant in New York. Joe Baum was in it. He was involved in all of that. He ran

[00:38:11] the food for the world's fair. So this is 64. He's doing all this stuff, getting me to meet all these French chefs. And when he does restaurants like La Fonda Del Sol or the form of the 12 Caesars or four seasons, whatever it was, he was just meticulous about it.

[00:38:27] But like the form of the 12 Caesars, the waiters are dressed in togas. The wine bucket is a helmet, you know, a soldier's helmet. You think he tried to make a restaurant alternative to Broadway? I mean, was there a

[00:38:39] theatrical play? He always said the restaurant is theater and they weren't called uniforms, wardrobe and the lights, lighting is so important on the, on a stage. He also went into the rainbow room after windows all done to be theatrical. You know, he said,

[00:38:57] there's two things that make a restaurant. And think about this now, two things that really make a restaurant. One is the greeting at the door. And if you're not greeted and you're with

[00:39:06] your wife or a relative or a friend or a business associate, and you're not respected, nothing can change it. The evening's over. Knowing that is really, really important. And the final thing is

[00:39:19] the last taste. That espresso must be hot and a foam on top. Now this is long before Starbucks and everybody perfected, you know, getting espresso and cappuccino out. If you got that, that was the last taste that people left with. It can't be bitter, can't be acidic,

[00:39:36] and it's got to be hot. And if it didn't work out, he could walk through the room and say, they're not having a good time. Bring them all the desserts. Every single one of our 20 desserts,

[00:39:46] put them on their table. But he had a sort of intuitive sense about people or how did he operate day to day? Yes. I'm very lucky to my office was right across from his. And so we got into some

[00:40:00] very interesting, deep conversations. He was the best subcontractor. Yeah. Hire out James Beard or Jacques Pepin or all of them, you know, came to him. They respected him. They wanted to work for him. He'd already done this. So when windows opened, which is interesting because the world

[00:40:19] trade centers, again, we're not a happy thing for most New Yorkers. They didn't like it. It was a fiscal crisis and the front cover of New York magazine before windows in the world opened

[00:40:31] up the front cover said the most spectacular restaurant in the world by Gail green. We're not even open yet. She's calling us the most spectacular restaurant. And they actually thought windows in the world was not going to be a successful restaurant because we operated

[00:40:46] everything in the world trade center. So it was a $50 million company from start. So we did the coffee. We did the hamburgers. We did everything and windows on the world. They thought windows

[00:40:56] on the world was going to be subsidized by the other operations. It was windows in the world that subsidized them September of 2001 windows in the world was the number one dollar volume restaurant in the world. And the wine sales were more than any restaurant in the world.

[00:41:12] So these are things that I can keep with me. I might not have windows in the world to go to anymore, but I have that in my heart. What were some of the other concepts that were up there?

[00:41:22] The hors d'oeuvres. Now I began, this is the early seventies. It's terrible name in a way, the hors d'oeuvres 250, 300 seats with no main course, small plates, sushi and sashimi views of the statue of Liberty. It was overlooking the statue of Liberty during the

[00:41:41] celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the United States. Right? Yeah. So that was a July 4th, 1976. And we opened in may. So we'd been open what a month or so. And if they didn't think windows was going to make it, you had to be there that day.

[00:41:58] You couldn't get in there. Everybody in the world wanted to be there. It was a unbelievable day clear. So you had Kings and Queens and presidents and ex-presidents, and you had celebrities

[00:42:12] and it went on all day. And I remember it was like around nine o'clock and they're getting ready for the fireworks and I'm walking by an elevator and I go by the elevator.

[00:42:23] I won't tell you who they were, but you would know their names, very high politics people, political people. And there's a small little elevator. I went to the top floor. I went to

[00:42:31] the 110th floor. We were on the 107th and nobody stopped me. I just jumped on the elevator with their security people. I had a tuxedo on. They're not going to question me. We go all the way to the

[00:42:41] top. And then they realized in those days, the antenna wasn't there. The antenna was put in in 1978 and there were no barriers. The secret service were going down, get out of here.

[00:42:52] And I turned around and the fireworks had started and I'm on top of one world trade center by myself in a tuxedo. And those 10,000 hours that I put in from California to Europe,

[00:43:06] to the Finger Lakes, to the teaching of the classes, all of that paid off. And I actually danced on top of one world trade center with the fireworks that I could hear but not see,

[00:43:17] but I could see 90 miles around me of all fireworks going on. So yes, that's a fond memory for me. Adam Backman And that's the same year as the judgment of Paris was spurrier in Paris, right? Tom Hanks Yes. And I think that that influenced me

[00:43:31] to push more for California wines. Our sales were French wines and then that's totally changed by the time we hit 1980. I also created the New York Wine Experience. I don't know if you know the wine experience. Adam Backman With Marvin Shanker? Tom Hanks

[00:43:44] I created the New York Wine Experience. I brought Marvin in. And then we also ran together the California Wine Experience. So I have all of these wineries that I can go to see and taste all their

[00:43:57] different wines. And I ran it for 10 years and for many reasons left it because it's time to move on. Sometimes it's just time to move on. Adam Backman What was the first wine experience like? Tom Hanks

[00:44:08] 100 people sold out in an hour. The first three were at windows in the world. It was only a day thing, just one day of nothing else, not even a dinner. Goodbye, four o'clock, have a good time.

[00:44:21] Then the second year it was sold out again within a day for 250 people. Third year it was 450 people. And then we finally had to move it out of windows. We didn't have the space to do it and we moved it

[00:44:33] to the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. And actually this is one of the reasons that I decided to call it a day because we got to 1,200 people. But I'm going to tell you if you see 1,200 people

[00:44:44] tasting the wine with the owner, that to me is an experience. So I put it together and then Marvin Schenken came in. I needed a publication and Marvin was very eager to do it. In those days,

[00:44:59] the Wine Spectator wasn't as it is today either. So he wanted to beef the whole thing up. So that worked out really well for him and the Wine Spectator. The grand awards started there. The first grand awards for restaurants, wineless, were at Windows on the World.

[00:45:14] And originally it was a private club at lunch, right? It always was. And there were 2,500 club members. That's how the wine classes started. They knew I could teach. I already had done all this stuff. So they said, okay, we have 2,500

[00:45:26] club members. So in the fall of 1976, I had a wine class, 12 people and we were tasting wines. When I tell my students this now, we were tasting 1900 Chateau Margaux. It was just amazing. We

[00:45:42] talked about Alexis Lachine before. So I met him at Priory Lachine when I was studying wines. He being a good friend of Joe Baum. So when Joe said, create the biggest and the best wine list, I called Alexis. I said, I'll meet you in Bordeaux.

[00:45:56] And I had an open checkbook. And in those days, in the 70s, the 75, 76, 77, it was a worse fiscal crisis in France. They were giving the stuff away. I still have the original invoices. I would go in

[00:46:10] and say, okay, I'll take five cases of the Margaux 1900, the Lafite 29. I could go on 21, 34, 45, 61s, whatever it was. It was so easy to build up my wine cellar. I wasn't that smart.

[00:46:24] I just had the money and Alexis Lachine with me. I mean, what else do I need? So I'm a lucky guy. What were some of those cellar visits like? It was just a surreal experience. And I'm going back now. A year earlier, I was there as a

[00:46:40] student. They remembered me. Now guess what guys, I got a job. I'm not at the hostel anymore. Right. Exactly. Thanks for the lunch, but I'm back again to help you. They needed the cash.

[00:46:53] So they were all too willing to do that. And they had the inventory. And so I cherry picked. What did the original list look like at Windows on the World? I had two lists. And the first one was 125 wines, just like the Canal House, nothing over $100.

[00:47:09] They were from all over the world. I had every country represented. It was Windows on the World. We're having wine from everywhere. You might have an emphasis on French wines, but we're getting wines from everywhere. We had a Yugoslavian Cabernet for $3 and 25 cents on the list. Wow.

[00:47:23] The joke was you could have three bottles and get changed back from your 10. So we had the 125 wines, and then we had the extensive wine list. And I just kept building that, building that, building. I think we ended up finally maybe with 1800 wines, which sounds like

[00:47:39] a lot, but we were selling. There was no window dressing. My concept was bring it in. I was a businessman. Bring it in and sell it. My assistant seller masters would say, can I buy five cases of

[00:47:51] this? I say, yeah, buy it, get rid of it within a month. If you don't, I'm not gonna let you buy again. Not being strict, just saying I'm not buying everything just because you like it. If you can sell it, done. What was your approach to pricing?

[00:48:02] That's another genius of Joe Baum. I always price things very low at the Canal House. Maybe I doubled it. But I did the original wine list, which I still have, and I brought it to Joe,

[00:48:13] and I said, here it is. And he said, the prices are too high. And I thought they were down. He said, nope, cut all the prices by 20%, 25%. It was volume that we were doing. He knew how to sell.

[00:48:28] His philosophy, and I learned from him, is I'd rather sell two $15 bottles of wine than 130. And the customer's happier, and it keeps moving. And it sounds like that global wine idea of having wine from a bunch of different

[00:48:43] countries was really kind of influenced by the World's Fair idea as well, right? Because that was a similar kind of concept. And the name, Windows on the World. He coined that name, Joe Baum did. When I go up the elevator,

[00:48:56] I'm on the 107th floor, and I'm looking at all of Manhattan. I can see planes land in a period of five minutes. I can see landing at Newark, landing at LaGuardia, landing at Kennedy. I can

[00:49:08] watch the sun rise. And many times I went there, had my coffee watching the sun rise, and the sunsets were spectacular. So I used the word magical before, and the place was sold out. I think the

[00:49:24] first time I felt that it wasn't sold out was after the 1987 stock market crash. So 1988 things, but from 76 to 88, you're talking 12 years of just everything booked. Cellar in the sky, banquets, restaurant, you couldn't get in. Around 1980, the club class got up to like 50,

[00:49:47] and the club members wanted to bring their friends, but there was no room. They just wanted to create something for our friends. Okay? And the wine classes started for the consumers. And somebody said, why don't you write a book? And I presented that to the people at Windows

[00:50:03] and the World. They hedged a little bit because they wanted me to be on the floor. They finally said yes. And Windows and the World, a lot of people don't know this, but it was owned

[00:50:12] by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, but operated by Hilton International. So in 1980, I became the Hilton International wine director. So now I'm going all over the world and created

[00:50:22] an American wine program. I took Robert Mondavi's hand and put it together with the hand of the CEO of Hilton International, and we started the American wine program in 1979. So again, more excitement going on. Adam Blye So who were you on the floor when

[00:50:37] you worked the floor? Were you the same persona that you were as a teacher? Richard Davis Being a waiter is a skill. You really have to know when to leave a table, when to be at a table, and when to leave a table. The one thing

[00:50:50] that they used me for at Windows and the World is I took care of every celebrity. The general manager never wanted to go to the table because it would be too obtrusive. So he said, Kevin,

[00:51:00] bring the wine list. So whoever it is, or he'd be sending wines over. So I got to meet everybody I ever wanted to meet in my life, but in a nice way. My name is Kevin. I'll be taking care of

[00:51:09] your wines tonight. Let me know what you're looking for, and I'll come back. And then I could monitor the table because I was pouring the wines. Adam Blye When did Michael Skernick show up? Richard Davis

[00:51:19] Michael Skernick. Michael was a waiter at Windows and the World. His brother Harmon was a bus boy in the hors d'oeuvres. And Michael came to me one day. He started there at the beginning. So

[00:51:31] we opened in 76, maybe 77. And he came to me and he said, I love wine. I really want to work here in the wine cellar. And in all honesty, he was making maybe $25,000 a year because it was good

[00:51:43] money. And I said, Michael, I can give you 12,500, maybe. And he just had a baby, had his first child. I said, go home and talk to Judy about this. And so he comes back the next day with a big smile.

[00:51:53] Oh, Judy says, it's not a problem. I can work here. He never talked to Judy. And I think he worked almost two years in the wine cellar. And he learned. Michael is a very smart guy, obviously.

[00:52:04] Skernick Imports today is considered to be the number one importer of wine. And it's funny. I can go through the list of the wines that we had, almost exclusive that we had at Windows

[00:52:16] that he now sells. But there's been so many people who have worked at Windows, it's sort of gratifying to me, that worked at Windows, that went into the wine business. I mean,

[00:52:26] I could give you Jan Petro, who still to this day works for Vineyard Brands, which is to me, another great company, was the first sommelier, female sommelier, Andrea Robinson. So I was

[00:52:40] blessed to have these people. Am I reading it right that you were a young guy who hired young people to work with you? I actually never looked at it that way, but that's the way it was.

[00:52:52] I don't think I rejected anybody because of their age. I was looking for something. And again, I think it's a question you just asked me, what was I like on the floor? The problem sometimes

[00:53:02] when I go to restaurants is they're helicoptering, you know, and I'm trying to have dinner with somebody. Sommeliers, I think they mean well, but they are trying to express too much of what

[00:53:14] they know, because they have no outlet, I think. That's part of it, they have no outlet. And so I was hiring somebody like Andrea, who's unbelievable with the guests. It wasn't just knowing wine. And Andrea, she graduated SMU, she was working for a financial firm, she was making

[00:53:33] a lot of money, but she wanted to be in the wine thing. And I said to her one day, she was like 21 years old when I hired her, I said, what do you really want to do? I want to be a writer. Okay,

[00:53:42] you know, I got my book. We'll write the chapter together, wine and food. So it was that kind of thing. And then of course, Andrea went on to write some bestselling wine books. I mean, there's

[00:53:51] Catherine Phallus who's out in California, who's an MS, Rebecca Chapp, who's out in California. I mean, there's a lot of women, by the way. And that was Joe Baum's thing too, hiring women to do roles

[00:54:02] that were supposed to be male roles in a restaurant. Did you have great managers along the way? If you're running a restaurant that does $38 million a year and you are a union house, I mean,

[00:54:14] obviously if somebody did something bad, it was taken care of. And we had a good union, let's put it that way. But you still have to be a little strict. I mean, there's alcohol flowing, you know,

[00:54:23] people, anything can happen in a big restaurant like that. And we had a manager whose name was Alan Lewis, who was actually Joe Baum's sidekick. He went to Cornell with him. Joe would come up with

[00:54:32] these ideas. Let's do this, let's do that, let's do this. Okay, all right, Alan, do it. So Alan had to go and do all the crazy things that Joe wanted to be done. But he could also be very, very

[00:54:43] difficult and very, very tough. He had to be, he had no choice. It's not like a small mom and pop operation, you know, breakage. Glassware, I forget the dollar figure, but it was outrageous back in

[00:54:55] those days, like half a million dollars we had to buy in glassware again because people were just breaking them. Then he went out in front of every, the whole, he just took a random garbage can

[00:55:04] and dumped it out on the floor. How much silverware was in there? And it was good silverware, so that kind of stuff. And so he was a type A manager, but he got the job done.

[00:55:17] So there's really two iterations of Windows on the World because it originally closed in 1993 with the bombing. Correct. That was 17 years. I was there from 1976 to 93. I was not there on that day either. Andrea was, Andrea Robinson was, and she actually led everybody downstairs.

[00:55:37] And they had to walk down and there were no lights. And you're walking downstairs into smoke. You don't even know if you're walking into the fire, but you had to get out. And you've seen

[00:55:47] pictures of people in those days in 1993. So that was a tough time. And actually the Port Authority was also looking for new management at that time. And interesting what happened. So the place was

[00:56:02] closed from 93 to 96, but I always had a great relationship with the Port Authority because I used to teach them about wine. And they said to me, we want you to stay and teach the classes.

[00:56:12] Not there. I couldn't teach at Windows. And the reason being the only elevator that went straight up the World Trade Center was the one going to Windows on the World. That was the chimney for

[00:56:20] the 93 bombing. So you can imagine what the place looked like. And then they wanted to redo the whole place. So they said, okay, Kevin, you stay here. I was actually on the 106th and 107th floor

[00:56:34] by myself for at least two years. Very eerie. It's not something that I have fond memories of. Then I taught the classes at 7 World Trade Center, which is no longer there. Back to the World Trade Center to another room, no longer there. Then to the hotel,

[00:56:49] which was the Marriott Hotel. That's no longer there. And then back to Windows in the World in 96. The Windows in the World Wine School lasted 40 years without interruption from the bombing and

[00:57:02] also the destruction in September 11th. But in a way, probably having that as a foundation for you helped you during those times. And what do you mean in foundation? Well, what I witnessed going

[00:57:14] through a hurricane in Florida is that it helps people to try to get on with their routine as much as possible. That helped them cope. It's a very good point. And there was a point that was

[00:57:26] made by my therapist, by the way, which I'm very happy. I'm only seeking therapy once every three weeks right now. Used to be every day, then once a week, then once every two weeks. But

[00:57:36] it's still, you know, we lost 72 people on September 11th. There was five people working in the wine cellar, two died, and me. So it was also the end, 25 years being in the same place.

[00:57:53] I was the only one there for 25 years from beginning to end. So yes, my therapist said to me the following, if you don't continue to do what you like, you will die too. That was his exact words.

[00:58:09] And so it was the last thing on my mind to do the Windows on the World Wine School in the fall of 2001. That's out. It's gone. It's finished. Move on. We'll figure out something else later on.

[00:58:18] But that's not the way it worked out. Everybody who was still at Windows, from Michael Lamonaco to the Emil family, do the classes, continue the classes, do the classes. So without that, I probably would have been a different person. So we actually started the classes at the Marriott

[00:58:32] Marquis in Times Square in October, late October. So I finished out the semester. Very difficult. Very difficult. But back to the 93 bombing. So it was closed from 93 to 96, and then it was put out

[00:58:46] to bid. And it was quite fascinating who bid on it. Werner Leroy, who created Maxwell's Plum and Tavern on the Green. Alan Stillman, who created Friday's and Smith & Walensky. And then Joe Baum.

[00:59:03] Joe Baum bid on it. David Boullée even bid on it for a moment. Then he realized it was Union and got out real quickly when the Union picketed him at his restaurant. Anyhow, Joe Baum now is

[00:59:15] coming back, maybe. Anyhow, he wins the bid with his partner, Michael Whiteman. And it's really important because Michael was really the key element. I don't think Joe totally wanted to come back, but Michael Whiteman definitely wanted to come back and brought in with the Emil family.

[00:59:29] And I'm not expecting anybody in the Emil family, but you need backers. And the Emil family was the backer at Rainbow Room. Because what happened is Joe left Windows to do other projects outside,

[00:59:38] and then was hired by Rockefeller Center to redo the Rainbow Room. And he had a 15-year lease on that. So at one point in time, we owned the Rainbow Room and Windows in the world. It's

[00:59:47] fascinating time. Anyhow, so Joe came back, we brought it back together. So there are two different Windows in the world. The first one from 76 to 1993 and then from 96 to 2001. But it came back

[01:00:01] to glory. In my opinion, the best years at Windows in the world were the first five and the last five. So I think doing the books, because you've revised the book several times, probably has the

[01:00:13] effect of bringing some of this up for you in a repeated way. Because each time you have to go back for a revision of that book, which is a classic book that sold millions of copies. But

[01:00:23] then for that reason, your publisher probably asks you to make a revised and expanded edition. I think it's happened many times. You probably open that page and see a lot when you open that page to do

[01:00:35] your edits. I wrote the Windows in the world wine book in the early 80s. It came out in 1985 with no illusion of any grandeur. It was like, okay, I need a book. My students were saying,

[01:00:49] there's no book. They wanted something that was lively. And so I designed this book. My book is Reader's Digest of Wine. Very easy to understand. My elementary education degree cut out the stuff you don't need to know and tell people where they can find the information.

[01:01:05] I mean, there's so many books that are so much better than mine, but they don't cut to the chase and I got to cut to the chase. So I wrote that for my students in 1985 and we were very lucky.

[01:01:16] It just took off. The sales today of that book are over 4 million copies. But Windows in the world, of course, I've been to the memorial and I went by myself the top of one world trade center. I couldn't be with anybody. And I did go to the museum.

[01:01:37] And the only reason I went to the museum is it is hard and I couldn't stay long. But my friend who had been there for 23 years at Windows in the world said, I can't go alone. Would you go with me?

[01:01:47] I said, okay. Neither of us could stay. It's too hard knowing the people that died and when they died. And I do my own on September 11th, I go to a place called Mohonk mountain house

[01:02:01] and I go, there's a tower on top of the mountain. And that's where I am every September 11th from 8am to noon. I do my prayers there every year and I do it alone. I lived it.

[01:02:17] I lived all of Windows in the world, the good and the bad. But as we all know, life goes on. Do you ever have the sense that you survived and why? Yeah, my mother says God has different, does other things for me. Yeah, of course I do. Why

[01:02:38] wasn't I there for the bombing? You know, six people died in the bombing. One of them was our employee who was at the receiving, which is where the bomb took place. And I could have been there

[01:02:49] on September 11th. I actually usually was there Mondays and Tuesdays. I actually used to stay Mondays at the hotel. I would come down from New Paltz and just work early in the week and then

[01:02:59] I'd have to, I could do everything by phone or computer. Interestingly enough, my first son, I have four children. My first son was turning 10 on September 12th. So I said, ah, maybe I won't go

[01:03:11] down. We also had closed the restaurant for breakfast and lunch because we were rebuilding. We were going to have our 25th anniversary of Windows in the World in October of 2001 with the opening of the new wine cellar. And so I wasn't there. And I know people that shouldn't

[01:03:30] have been there. And I feel very lucky. And especially with four kids at that time, they're all under 10. And so that I can be with my children now. Yeah, it's hard for me to talk

[01:03:47] about, but it's good for me to talk about it as my therapist says, because if you don't, then you're bottling it up. I know you've had hardships. You've had leukemia in the family. You've had a

[01:03:58] tumor you had removed from your leg at one point. And it's never easy to have people that you know and love die. And I know that quite well. But it does seem like you have always been lucky.

[01:04:16] I can't disagree with that. September 11th, 2001, of course, was a bad day for everybody, not just me, you, and everybody in New York and everybody in the world. It was a shock.

[01:04:32] I travel the world. I know, they ask me about it. What happened was I was trying to process that, which I never have processed, by the way. But within a year and a half, my daughter,

[01:04:41] who was four at the time, was diagnosed with leukemia. And so that meant a slow in Kettering for the next four, five, six years or whatever. She's fine today and is going to USC in California.

[01:04:56] But within another year of that, my house burns down. Totally gone. Totally gone. And unfortunately, my daughter found the fire. We were not home. The nanny was there with her because she couldn't leave because she had leukemia, so she couldn't leave the house.

[01:05:12] We all go, this is something I've learned. You either can handle it or not handle it. And as a parent, you better handle it. Because it's not just your life that you're... I got four little kids running around. That maybe is the reason that... Maybe that's God's way,

[01:05:31] I don't know. You want to be strong for your family. Yeah. When you go through that and think about them, they probably didn't understand September 11th. Maybe my oldest did, but he was just nine.

[01:05:42] But the leukemia affects... When you have a child, she just turned four. Boy, it affects the family because I don't even discuss it. It's too much to tell you all the trips to the hospital and

[01:05:54] emergencies and all this other kind of stuff. When your house burns down, everybody's affected. When you lose everything. I think one of those things is enough for anybody.

[01:06:05] I don't want to be so crass to say you get over it. You don't get over it, but you move on. I feel like it's very common in the culture to think of wine as somewhat of a trivial or

[01:06:14] hedonistic pursuit that isn't really serious. But it has been, I think, a sort of lifeline for you during some hard times in your life where you could return to this thing that's really nourished you in a way.

[01:06:29] I would agree with that. I found something that intrigued me. I think about my kids right now, you know, are 18 to 26. They don't have... They're not set up yet. They haven't figured out their

[01:06:42] life yet. And I knew from the time I was 19, that was it. I wish everybody knew from the time they were 19 what they were going to do. Then you wouldn't do all the foolish things that you do.

[01:06:51] And I took it on like I took it on. It was the number one thing. So writing the book was very easy for me. When you went through some hard times, some people came through and sort of lent you a hand.

[01:07:05] People like Mr. Stillman, who you mentioned earlier. Smith & Wonsky gave you a corporate wine job. Reached out to you after Windows and said, look, if I can help, let me know. Do you feel like that's built some empathy for you? Because some of the most empathetic people

[01:07:21] I've met are the people who have suffered real hardship. I think that's the only way you can learn any hardship is to go through it. People could talk about it like I'm talking about it now. And I don't expect everybody to feel the way I feel.

[01:07:36] But you're right about friends. And you know what? I'm going to bring this up. I don't think I've ever said this on a show or radio show, but people in the wine business, they are givers, not takers. And that's big. In the restaurant business, they're givers, not takers.

[01:07:54] So yeah, I was blessed by everybody around me. After September 11th, you mentioned Alan Stillman, who is the guy who created Friday's, but he also Smith & Wonsky. He just called me and said,

[01:08:04] and I've known him forever, but he said, whatever you need, just come on in. And I worked with him and his chain for five years. They were sold and moved on. But the Marriott Marquis calling me up

[01:08:16] and saying, because I had the wine experience there, so I knew all the people, bring your class here. And I stayed at the Marriott Marquis for like 14 years. That was my teaching is important

[01:08:36] to me. Being in front of an audience is important to me. Having somebody get something that you're trying, any teacher will tell you that, you know, they got it. I have the red wine book out, as you

[01:08:48] said, and that was with Mike and Jeff. I'm sure you know Mike and Jeff. The wine guys. The wine, yes. The world wine guys. Come on, you got it. You know, not the wine guys,

[01:08:55] the world wine guys. And then they're always talking to me about all these obscure grape varieties that they find. And I'm right. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm writing with other people. When you write for people, who are you imagining that you're writing for?

[01:09:09] My mother, who knows nothing about wine. And I've seen reviews of my book saying, well, he doesn't cover this and he doesn't cover that. And the biggest problem I have is what am I

[01:09:25] taking out? Not what am I putting in? What did I learn this year that you, the consumer, you, the consumer doesn't have to know? Rather than adding to the book.

[01:09:36] I still, I remember what I had to learn, what I had to study. I was into it. What if you're just doing it as a hobby? So I always tell people to leave my book in the bathroom. It's a quick read.

[01:09:47] Your mother showed up for one of the classes not too long ago, right? For the first time? Well, she's been to them before, but she doesn't drink. So I bring her tea and she just

[01:10:00] looks at her son saying he hasn't changed since he was three or when he could walk. He talks too much and he's always running around. And I don't know what he's saying, but everybody's having a good time. You want people to have a good time? What's wine about?

[01:10:18] Kevin Zarelli writes wine books for his mother and also for you. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you for having me. Kevin Zarelli of the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course and also the co-author of the book Red Wine.

[01:10:55] Stickers, notebooks and even gift wrap are available for sale if you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com. That's I-L-L drink to that P-O-D dot com, which is the same place you'd go

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[01:11:24] That's super important to see every episode and thank you for listening. About six years ago, I returned from a world trip. I went around the world, 400 wine regions, 800 interappellations, you name it, we were there. And I came back with

[01:11:57] the feeling, this is five years ago, I came back saying, this is the golden age for wine in the world ever, ever. It can get a little bit better, but this is it.