Sandy Block was a Master of Wine who was also the Vice President of Beverage at the Legal Sea Foods group of restaurants, and an Adjunct Professor at Boston University in Massachusetts. Sandy passed away in November of 2021.
Sandy talks about his rollercoaster relationship with academics: doing very well in school during some periods of his life, and almost flunking out of school during others. Sandy explains that he began working at a restaurant while working on his PhD dissertation. He would eventually abandon his dissertation, but pursue his interest in wine at the restaurant. He explains how he was given his first wine job in 1981. The only French speaker on the waitstaff, he was promoted to the sommelier role, although he did not know anything about wine. He looked for answers about wine in books that he would consult during his shifts. He found that the subject of wine encompassed many of the fields of study that he already had an interest in, such as geology and history.
During his first wine tasting trip to Europe in the 1980s, Sandy discovered that wine was made by farmers, and that those farmers didn't always live in elaborate palaces or chateaux. He came back to the States more energized about wine at the same time that there was a greater shift towards wine in the wider American culture. Customers were beginning to show more interest in wine at the restaurants, with the rise of varietal wines by the glass and an increase in interest in opting for wine instead of a cocktail. In the interview, Sandy discusses the character of the Boston wine trade in the 1980s and later.
Sandy talks about his experiences taking the Master of Wine exam. Having obtained his MW in 1992, Sandy was one of the first Americans to achieve that distinction. He talks about learning to pass the test, writing essays under time pressure, and honing his blind tasting skills. He remembers being tasked with describing one particular set of blind wines, which turned out to be Bulgarian. And Sandy discloses how he approached studying for the test in secret, among a small group of friends who divided the study responsibilities. He then discusses how that study regime was eventually developed into a curriculum that he taught about wine with some of his fellow test takers - Alex Murray and Bill Nesto - at Boston University in Massachusetts. Sandy divulges the typical student profile of a wine class. He speaks about having the context to understand what a good wine is, an emphasis on value wines, and having some resistance to the winemaking trends of the 1990s. Sandy describes a cultural history of wine where wine has been understood as a food much longer than it has been viewed as a connoisseur's beverage.
He discusses the rise of countries like Chile, Argentina, and Australia on the global wine market, the importation of Portuguese wines into the United States, and the difference between working in restaurants and working in wine distribution or import. He also addresses what qualities he used to evaluate potential hires at the restaurant group where he oversaw the beverage program. And he answers the questions frequently asked by his students, including "How does one get into the wine business?" and "How does one succeed in the wine business?" He also contrasts the interest shown in wine by young Americans today with that of their parents.
This episode features commentary from:
David Wrigley, MW
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[00:01:00] I'm Levi Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine
[00:01:05] business.
[00:01:20] When I sat down with Alexander N. Block whom I knew was Sandy Block, I thought that I would
[00:01:29] have a chance to see him again, but that didn't happen.
[00:01:35] He didn't tell me that he had cancer and I was unaware that this recording session would
[00:01:40] be one of the last times that he would speak publicly about his life.
[00:01:45] At the time we spoke, Sandy had a job that he'd held for over a decade and a half, overseeing
[00:01:50] the beverage programs for the legal seafoods restaurants in Massachusetts.
[00:01:55] The Birkowitz family would go on to sell those same restaurants to a private equity group
[00:01:59] and Sandy would pass away all in a span of less than a year.
[00:02:05] The Sandy Block that I first met in the late 1990s was a patient teacher.
[00:02:11] When instructor at Boston University's Metropolitan College he facilitated what felt like
[00:02:16] graduate seminars about wine and ideas with a handful of chairs grouped in a circle and
[00:02:22] every participant encouraged to speak.
[00:02:26] Sandy who often supported a nice black turtleneck under a suit was my instructor in wine courses
[00:02:32] for several years alternating between class sessions in the same program led by Alex
[00:02:38] Murray and Bill Nesto.
[00:02:41] Thinking about those people, Alex Murray liked to provide a good takeaway, a principal piece
[00:02:46] of information that could illuminate a wine region.
[00:02:50] Bill Nesto whom I've interviewed on this program is an instructor that likes to challenge
[00:02:55] students, quizzing them verbally and testing them on their ability to detect aromas
[00:02:59] and to identify wines.
[00:03:02] But Sandy was entirely different.
[00:03:05] Sandy was someone who liked to wonder and to think about ideas.
[00:03:11] As a student of his you could propose questions that in turn the group would puzzle out
[00:03:16] the answer to together.
[00:03:19] At the time I didn't realize that this was a rare way of speaking about wine.
[00:03:25] Sandy wasn't salesy and he didn't position himself as all knowing or as a taste leader.
[00:03:32] What he wanted seemingly was for the students in his class to propose questions and to make
[00:03:37] observations.
[00:03:39] The takeaway for myself was that asking questions about wine is what creates the opening
[00:03:44] for wisdom, to be shared about a complex and sometimes intimidating topic.
[00:03:51] Here's my interview with Sandy Block who returned to the city he was born in to record
[00:03:57] with me.
[00:03:58] So this is kind of a return to the old neighborhood of sorts because you grew up in Brooklyn,
[00:04:02] right?
[00:04:03] That's correct.
[00:04:04] I grew up in Brighton Beach, lived there until I was 16, went off to college and never
[00:04:09] moved back to New York.
[00:04:11] This was kind of like post-war Brighton Beach.
[00:04:13] Right, so it was a Jewish neighborhood almost 100%.
[00:04:18] There was one bar in the neighborhood and was one of those places where I don't ever
[00:04:21] go anywhere near there.
[00:04:23] So there were very few opportunities to drink alcohol and we weren't really observant so
[00:04:29] we didn't even drink during the Passover holidays.
[00:04:33] There was a closet that we had in our apartment with bottles of whiskey, mostly Canadian whiskey
[00:04:39] that were never opened and my father took a drink every new year's eve and my mother told
[00:04:45] me a story about how she once had a drink and she immediately passed out.
[00:04:49] So there was nothing good about alcohol in my house.
[00:04:52] What was growing up like for you?
[00:04:54] Were your parents in the food or?
[00:04:56] Not particularly.
[00:04:57] It was a lower middle class working class neighborhood.
[00:05:00] You know, it was urban and it was sports and girls.
[00:05:04] That's pretty much what is my obsessions.
[00:05:07] I was a little bit into school also but it was more sports and girls.
[00:05:11] But your dad was a big, he had a big emphasis on education right?
[00:05:16] His attitude was anything can happen, cataclysm can happen but whatever you learn nobody
[00:05:22] can take away from you.
[00:05:23] Work hard and he actually in a very interesting way, tangential way had a lot to do with me
[00:05:29] going into the wine business because I had a French teacher in middle school that was
[00:05:34] really strict.
[00:05:36] I didn't see the reason to learn French.
[00:05:39] We lived in the United States and she would give us a test every Friday and we'd have
[00:05:45] to read out our scores.
[00:05:46] So it was a way of intimidating and scaring people into doing well.
[00:05:53] You had to read out your scores to the rest of the class.
[00:05:54] To the rest of the class you'd go around the room, Barbara, 90, John, 85, Sandy, you know
[00:06:01] whatever I got.
[00:06:03] And so I was playing football once and got tackled and strained my wrist I was in a cast.
[00:06:09] So I felt great that whole week because I didn't have to take the test and Friday came
[00:06:13] along and Matt Amzal said to me, here's the test and I said, I can't take it.
[00:06:18] I pointed to my wrist and she said right with your left hand and I hadn't been paying attention
[00:06:23] all week so I got a 15 on the test.
[00:06:25] She said see me after class.
[00:06:27] So I had to get my notes signed by my father that he had seen this and he wasn't amused
[00:06:35] and he said I don't care anything that you learn is going to come in handy someday.
[00:06:41] So fast forward 15 years later I'm in graduate school working in a restaurant all the wines
[00:06:47] are French because that's the way it was back in the 70s and 80s.
[00:06:52] And I made the sommelier with zero background in wine because I can pronounce the French
[00:06:57] names.
[00:06:58] That was the only one on this staff.
[00:07:00] That was the 70s?
[00:07:01] That was actually the early 80s, I would say 1981.
[00:07:05] And that was in Watertown.
[00:07:06] That was in Watertown.
[00:07:07] It was at a French restaurant that was actually very good chef-owned called Le Bocage.
[00:07:13] The owner, a gentleman named Enzo D'Anaisey, a very continental culture gentleman I learned
[00:07:20] a lot from him but he was adamantly opposed to anyone's other than French and a little bit
[00:07:26] of Italian.
[00:07:27] And he had a great seller so I learned 20 years later what the 61s were like, the 66s
[00:07:35] it was all Bordeaux and Burgundy basically.
[00:07:38] It was a great place to learn but I literally knew nothing when I first started.
[00:07:42] I went to the library, got books out, Frank Schoonmaker, Hugh Johnson.
[00:07:48] Here I was, I was essentially a pot smoking, bourbon drinking, young kid and I was wearing
[00:07:55] a taste of Van around my neck and customers would come over and I'd have to kind of fake
[00:08:02] it.
[00:08:03] And I would look things up on the job and we're talking about books now before the internet.
[00:08:10] Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Indusports and Girls, not super motivated in school and then you
[00:08:14] go to Vassar, then you get your masters, then you pursue a PhD.
[00:08:20] I don't quite see the connection there.
[00:08:23] How did you go from one to the other?
[00:08:26] That experience that I mentioned earlier was the honor that I father and I thought I had
[00:08:30] a tremendous amount of respect for my dad and I didn't want to disappoint him.
[00:08:35] So you know, I did well in school after that, I buckled down in high school.
[00:08:40] College was actually pretty easy.
[00:08:43] My high school is very, very competitive and everyone was chasing grades and I got
[00:08:48] into that in high school.
[00:08:50] Actually, I started off at Colgate University before I transferred to Vassar and my first
[00:08:55] year I didn't think it was that hard and I got one of the 10 highest GPAs.
[00:08:59] So then I almost flunked out my sophomore year because I said, this is too easy.
[00:09:05] The roller coaster?
[00:09:06] Yeah, so I was way up and down academically.
[00:09:10] It really seems like you left Brooklyn and I never went back.
[00:09:14] Growing up in Brooklyn, growing up in Brighton Beach, the citizen of a small town.
[00:09:19] New York was something that was kind of far away.
[00:09:21] I worked there when I was in high school in the summer but it was a world away.
[00:09:26] It was an hour or 20 minutes by subway to midtown.
[00:09:29] So I was always a little bit overwhelmed by New York.
[00:09:33] It was fascinating to me but how expensive it was, how crowded it was, how much time it
[00:09:39] took to get from one place to another, how you had to think about everything as opposed
[00:09:44] to just sort of be relaxed.
[00:09:46] So I was more comfortable in a smaller city and Boston turned out to be just right because
[00:09:52] it was close to New York.
[00:09:53] I could see my family but you know, you could be in the country in 20 minutes.
[00:09:58] You were interested in the intellectual side of academics but it got a little lonely
[00:10:04] and it got a little frustrating and you were like, oh this wine thing is also intellectually
[00:10:08] interesting and it seems more fun.
[00:10:10] That's exactly 100% right.
[00:10:13] I was working on a doctoral dissertation on a fascinating subject but I think I was too
[00:10:16] young and restless to really dig in.
[00:10:20] And I had issues with it for a couple of years but I just couldn't finish it.
[00:10:25] And when I got into the wine it was like wow, this incorporates everything.
[00:10:30] Geology, history, language, culture, gastronomy, you know biology, chemistry.
[00:10:37] It was endlessly fascinating.
[00:10:38] I felt like there would never be a time I'd be bored and that's essentially been true.
[00:10:43] Honestly I haven't looked back but at the time it was really difficult for me because
[00:10:48] you put a lot of work into something and then to not see a come to fruition because you
[00:10:52] don't have the discipline which is the way I looked at it at the time was a challenge.
[00:10:58] I remember when I first got into wine thinking that it was very cosmopolitan because all
[00:11:02] of these labels were coming from such far away places and I felt like kind of a part of
[00:11:06] that as a guy who hadn't really traveled much, I don't know how you felt.
[00:11:10] My first wine trip, serious wine trip was on my honeymoon actually in 1985 and the first
[00:11:17] appointment I set up and again we're going back to pre-internet so writing letters and
[00:11:24] was at a Shatanaf du Pop property.
[00:11:27] It was Domain de Vitella graph, one of my favorites to this day.
[00:11:31] And I remember driving with my bride to the address what I thought was the address and
[00:11:40] I said this can't be it.
[00:11:41] This is a suburban farmhouse and I knocked on the screen door and there were two women
[00:11:47] in peasant garb with a hand-corking machine and I don't know I was thinking Shatanaf du Pop
[00:11:56] something magnificent and beautiful palace.
[00:12:00] Right, this is where the Pope used to live so it must be really nice here.
[00:12:04] And so I walked in the door and I said excuse me in my bad French, I'm looking for Domain
[00:12:09] de Vitella graph and they said he's see you know.
[00:12:13] So that was a shocker because I think I had this image that you just described of majesty
[00:12:20] and there were farmers.
[00:12:22] Yeah, so that was an amazing revelation to me that the image that I had from 3,000 miles
[00:12:28] away is not exactly the way it is.
[00:12:31] Of course now when I go it's completely different thing I'm looking at it in a much deeper
[00:12:36] lens onto the viticulture or the vindication and it's satisfying on a different level
[00:12:42] but you know it's like your first kiss.
[00:12:45] There's never anything like the first time you discover it.
[00:12:49] And that was like a three week trip right?
[00:12:50] That was a three week trip, yes my wife is not particularly into wine.
[00:12:55] This was a good task because I guess she's particularly into me or was.
[00:13:00] No she isn't and there was one nice restaurant in Shatanaf du Pop and I looked at the list
[00:13:07] and everything on the list was Shatanaf du Pop.
[00:13:11] And not only was everything on the list Shatanaf du Pop it was priced according to vintage.
[00:13:16] So the Chateau's wine as well as bulkastel, of your telegraph, all the other grates, there
[00:13:23] were all the same price in the 78 vintage and then the 76 vintage they were all the same
[00:13:28] price.
[00:13:29] And that was a revelation to me because being in the trade in a place like Boston you have
[00:13:34] an opportunity to use things from all over the world and by that point I actually had
[00:13:40] added California wines and had other wines from other regions on the list but it just made
[00:13:46] sense.
[00:13:47] It was like oh yeah we're in the wrong valley you're going to drink the wrong wines.
[00:13:51] But I was thinking that you'd see Bordeaux burgundy everywhere.
[00:13:56] In this country the road was just starting to take off right in the 80s?
[00:14:00] Yeah and I think that was one of the real contributions among many of Parker he's
[00:14:05] shown a spotlight on it and was very enthusiastic.
[00:14:09] That's what opened my eyes to it.
[00:14:11] So back to water town?
[00:14:13] Yeah how was it going engaging with guests?
[00:14:16] I enjoyed it.
[00:14:17] It evolved from the time I started to the time I moved on to a larger restaurant about
[00:14:21] five years later.
[00:14:23] At the beginning, to be honest with you we were serving very classical French cuisine,
[00:14:27] tornados for scenie and lobster thermidor and I go up to a table and I'd say what
[00:14:34] were we thinking about for wine and three out of the four people would look at me like
[00:14:37] I was crazy and they say I'll have another amaretto sour please.
[00:14:41] I'll have a perspiterian.
[00:14:44] Can I have a gin and tonic?
[00:14:45] And there might be one wacko that would say yeah maybe I'll have a glass of wine what do
[00:14:49] you recommend?
[00:14:50] So that was at the beginning by the end of the time I was there, wine had become more
[00:14:55] acceptable and more.
[00:14:57] I mean this was a restaurant that people specifically sought out because of the cuisine
[00:15:02] and the ambiance.
[00:15:04] So most people were drinking wine so that was a shift, cultural shift.
[00:15:08] You know I think the last figures I saw were that in 1980, 4% of the alcohol consumed
[00:15:15] in the United States was wine and that just shot up.
[00:15:19] So it hasn't shot up that much but it started to really escalate.
[00:15:24] So that was an exciting time.
[00:15:25] I mean there are trends sometimes that you can see that are taking off and that was
[00:15:30] just a lucky period for me to have gotten into wine because it started to take off in
[00:15:34] general.
[00:15:35] Yeah people would look at me my parents included like you're doing what?
[00:15:40] I mean it was just odd and it was coming out of the Reagan era where alcohol was you know
[00:15:44] just saying no, it was lumped in with hard drugs by some people.
[00:15:50] So it was definitely out of the mainstream but as we were talking about before I just fell
[00:15:55] in love with it and decided this is you know this has a long tradition.
[00:16:00] I don't think it's going away anytime soon and it seems like it's growing.
[00:16:04] I learned a lot from the purveyors that I worked with.
[00:16:08] There was a gentleman, I don't know if you knew him when you were in Boston named Randy
[00:16:11] Shin.
[00:16:12] He went on to work from Martinetti and he was one of the editors at the quarterly
[00:16:17] review of wines but he was a wealth of knowledge.
[00:16:19] I learned a lot from him.
[00:16:21] He had an academics background.
[00:16:24] One of the things that I did take from my dad was you can learn something from everyone.
[00:16:29] So I tried to, I was on that path where I was so hungry for knowledge.
[00:16:33] Hopefully I wasn't too obnoxious but I was always at, they were trying to sell me stuff
[00:16:38] and I was trying to get information.
[00:16:41] Being a buyer in the Boston market for a while one of the things I really liked was that
[00:16:45] there were these people that were quasi academic and also really into wine and like to, they
[00:16:53] like to drink some wine but they also like to appreciate some of the finer parts about
[00:16:58] it intellectually and also a lot of those people found and niche for themselves that lasted
[00:17:03] for decades.
[00:17:05] And both of those things are a little bit difficult in New York.
[00:17:08] It was very common for a Somme A in Boston to be there for like a long time.
[00:17:14] It's very common in New York for someone to be there for like two years.
[00:17:17] Yeah, well I agree with you.
[00:17:19] I think that that's also a change in the culture all over but Boston gets a bad wrap
[00:17:25] for being a little bit clannish like if you're not from there hard to break in.
[00:17:29] I found it very easy, I found the people very welcoming and a really good group of
[00:17:34] whole sales which later I joined myself.
[00:17:37] I don't know what I added to the picture but there were a lot of good companies out there
[00:17:40] that you could learn from.
[00:17:42] Before you did that you moved to a bigger restaurant.
[00:17:44] Yes.
[00:17:45] And what was that bigger restaurant experience like?
[00:17:48] It was good.
[00:17:49] It was taking something that I had learned and playing it on a larger stage and having
[00:17:54] more impact.
[00:17:55] I mean this was a restaurant that seated about 280.
[00:17:59] It was called the Mill Falls.
[00:18:02] It was an interesting process because wine by the glass was just coming into prominence
[00:18:08] before that it was almost all by the bottle or you'd have a house wine.
[00:18:12] You served by the craft.
[00:18:14] So at this point we're like in the mid 80s?
[00:18:16] Yeah, this was 86.
[00:18:18] And it was an exciting thing for me to apply the knowledge I had slowly gained over five
[00:18:24] years to a larger stage.
[00:18:27] Motivate a whole staff at any point there were 18-20 waiters on, I say waiters there were
[00:18:33] a couple of waitresses but it was a pretty male dominated field and tried to juggle so much
[00:18:38] happening at once.
[00:18:39] I tried to get to every table on Saturday nights it was a little difficult but you know
[00:18:43] so I always had like four or five or six things backed up like get the table 32 talked
[00:18:48] to them about their appetizers.
[00:18:50] You know serve this on table 45.
[00:18:53] It was a real education in how to juggle a lot of things at the same time.
[00:19:00] So I did pretty much everything from order the wine to change the wine list mechanically
[00:19:07] you know on a dot matrix printer to receive the wine unpack the wine, put it in its
[00:19:13] bin.
[00:19:14] It was a very exhausting job but it was also fruitful.
[00:19:20] And that was a place where I discovered that I wanted to pursue the master wine program.
[00:19:25] You know after a couple of years I kind of had it down, I had it under control so I was
[00:19:30] playing tennis every day and my wife and I just had our first child and I was like I
[00:19:37] got to do something serious.
[00:19:39] And a good friend of mine who you know Bill Nesto we were talking and he said you know
[00:19:44] the institute of masters and wine has internationalized.
[00:19:48] And I said I did hear about that he said do you want to pursue this?
[00:19:53] And I said yeah it seems like the kind of thing you can't do on your own but maybe with
[00:19:57] a group.
[00:19:58] So we put a group together, we would write letters to London get a letter back with a
[00:20:04] packet of old tests and guidelines like two weeks later three weeks later so that became
[00:20:11] a place where I would spend my daytime hours we were in open at lunch time working on
[00:20:17] blind tasting, working on my wine knowledge all those books that I was like I'll read
[00:20:22] it next year.
[00:20:23] Suddenly I had a group of three other people and we reported to each other.
[00:20:27] We took it like this law school model like it's too big to bite off so you study the
[00:20:33] most all I'll do the Ryan Gal you do the Ryan Hessen and you do the false and then we
[00:20:38] taste and we report and we write up notes for each other so that was very beneficial
[00:20:45] although a couple of years of learning that way.
[00:20:48] But kind of felt like you guys were off in your own in the colonies while the British people
[00:20:52] had this structured test and you guys were just kind of figuring it out.
[00:20:57] Yes and that was actually very valuable because most of what we did the first year was not
[00:21:04] related to the exam at all but it was still a groundwork of knowledge that was really
[00:21:10] really important to have.
[00:21:12] We learned about the classic regions and what their wines tasted like and we took structured
[00:21:17] notes and then we got into the single blind and then double blind tasting which were
[00:21:23] but we did it on our own pace.
[00:21:24] I mean there were no Americans who had passed this exam so I had no expectation that I would
[00:21:31] pass but I just knew that discipline, course of study was something that I had kind of failed
[00:21:36] at doing or I've you myself failed at doing when I was in working on my doctorate so this
[00:21:41] was kind of like an opportunity for redemption.
[00:21:44] I guess at that time there actually would have been more books published right?
[00:21:47] I mean this is kind of when Jans is an Osclark or coming onto the scene and they're writing
[00:21:51] more books about wine which you know previously it was kind of the Schoonmacher Alexus Litching
[00:21:57] and Trio.
[00:21:58] That was it.
[00:21:59] And then by the time you get to the mid 80s there's kind of a not a lot of books but there's
[00:22:04] more.
[00:22:05] Yeah, there were monographs on particular regions you know there were books on Shabli
[00:22:09] or there were books on the Rome, John Livingston, Learmouth, Rosemary George you know there
[00:22:14] were books on Al-Zaz so yeah it was it satisfied that hunger and it came along just in time
[00:22:20] for us to learn about him.
[00:22:22] What was it like because you did eventually pass and get the master wine so that was
[00:22:26] a multi-year process for you so I assume it was a lot of different experiences but what
[00:22:30] were some of the standout moments?
[00:22:32] I took it twice.
[00:22:33] So there are two parts and then there's a dissertation.
[00:22:37] The two parts are the practical which is the blind tasting 36 wines over three days
[00:22:42] and then the theoretical which is 13 essays over four days on viticulture of ineffication,
[00:22:49] commercial aspects of wine etc.
[00:22:53] There have been some people that have passed the whole thing one year but I think a handful
[00:22:57] maybe a dozen over the years so I kind of looked at it as a two-year project and so I
[00:23:03] passed the theoretical first.
[00:23:06] Again things came full circle, I found that the essay writing that I learned to do in
[00:23:09] graduate school was really helpful.
[00:23:11] You can be a genius but if you can't write an essay you can't pass that exam and then
[00:23:16] I passed the practical the following year.
[00:23:20] To be honest with you it was a little bit like an athletic performance.
[00:23:25] You had to be in good shape, you had to be focused.
[00:23:29] Most of us had been out of school for a long time, I had been out of school for 13 years
[00:23:35] and you had a writing essay under time pressure.
[00:23:39] I had no illusions about it, I have no illusions about it today.
[00:23:43] Mastering wine is a misnomer.
[00:23:47] You've learned how to pass a test and the test is hard but that's all it means that
[00:23:52] you've learned how to pass that test.
[00:23:53] I figured out how to pass the first part and then I figured out how to pass the second
[00:23:57] part.
[00:23:58] The reason I say it's like an athletic contest is I was tasting very, very poorly up until
[00:24:04] about a week before the exam.
[00:24:06] I was just blowing everything and then I just got in the zone and when I was in that room
[00:24:13] I was also under a threat from my wife.
[00:24:15] By this point we had two little kids and she didn't want to see me away every weekend
[00:24:20] spending all my time blind tasting so she said please pass this year.
[00:24:27] I was really motivated and all I can say is that the wine spoke to me.
[00:24:32] I looked at the glass, I smelled the wine and I said ah, that's a blunt, a blunt champagne.
[00:24:40] That's a blunt noir from California.
[00:24:43] I just had this insight into the wines and I don't know if I'd taken the exam a couple
[00:24:48] of weeks earlier I probably wouldn't have.
[00:24:51] I want to bring in here the perspective of Master of Wine David Riggly.
[00:24:57] David began working for the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in 1990 and passed the Master
[00:25:02] of Wine exam in 1994.
[00:25:05] He retired from the WSET having worked in international development and teacher training
[00:25:10] in 2020.
[00:25:12] The milestone dates of David's career almost exactly match up with Sandy Bloch's own
[00:25:17] progression over the same period of time and it is worth hearing what they have to say
[00:25:22] about the same topics.
[00:25:25] Good exam technique counts for far more than you might think in my view, rightly or
[00:25:31] wrongly in an exam like that.
[00:25:34] You have a certain amount of time to get a certain amount of answers done.
[00:25:39] If you don't play the percentage game and have the discipline to make sure you answer all
[00:25:47] the questions that you're asked to do, even if you don't answer them all perfectly, you
[00:25:52] are probably going to get more marks out of the final result than you would if you answered
[00:25:59] one question really, really, really well and then dashed off another two or three more.
[00:26:04] So when I passed the MW, I was in the very lucky position of my chief executive at WSET
[00:26:11] saying to me at the time, I don't care what you do just pass.
[00:26:18] So I took two weeks off and I spent the two weeks practicing writing essays to the timetable
[00:26:25] that I was going to meet in the exam, to make sure that I could get the right number
[00:26:32] of essays done in the time.
[00:26:35] Nothing to do with my knowledge.
[00:26:39] And so it's things like that that I think if people can and I know so many people who
[00:26:46] have, who ought to be members of the institute who are not because they haven't somehow been
[00:26:55] able to finish the tasting papers in time or all that sort of thing and it's an exam technique.
[00:27:07] Really.
[00:27:10] And really what you need to do is to have the ability to take a step back and to see
[00:27:15] the overview and to compare how things happen in one part of the world as opposed to another.
[00:27:23] If you can do that and bring some good examples to bear, then you're a long way towards
[00:27:29] being competent to pass the MW theory exam.
[00:27:35] I think more people are capable of passing the MW than think they are.
[00:27:41] I think some people see it too big very often as an insurmountable thing and it puts them off.
[00:27:51] It is a challenge and it wouldn't be worth having if it weren't, but I think it is a challenge
[00:27:58] that more people are capable of rising to than think they are.
[00:28:03] And I can see maybe if people do build it up in their mind maybe they get overly nervous
[00:28:07] and then have trouble finishing.
[00:28:09] I think that's part of it.
[00:28:10] Like getting nerves.
[00:28:12] I think you get into this awful state of mind where you really, really feel that you've got to be putting out
[00:28:23] everything you possibly can on a particular topic because this is Master of Wine.
[00:28:29] This is the big one.
[00:28:31] I've got to show the examiner the full depth of knowledge and all of that takes time
[00:28:38] and if it takes too much time then you're sunk unfortunately.
[00:28:45] I can imagine mentorship is a big part of it really.
[00:28:47] Yeah, it is.
[00:28:48] I mean it's one of them once went through a tasting notarote and with a red pen took out all
[00:28:56] the quite slightlys a little, all those sort of heggy, fudgy words that I'd written and
[00:29:05] he said now read it.
[00:29:07] And it was much more definitive, much, much better answer.
[00:29:13] Do you see people grow as people while they take this thing?
[00:29:16] Yes, yes.
[00:29:17] It's one of the most rewarding things of the whole process.
[00:29:21] What are some of the markers of that?
[00:29:23] What are some of the things that tend to develop over taking a test?
[00:29:27] I think the first thing is confidence.
[00:29:31] You just see somebody in front of a glass of wine who can articulate what it is about
[00:29:37] it that they see with conviction and they're very happy to do it, they're very happy to
[00:29:46] talk to people about it.
[00:29:48] And it's that sense of confidence that a combination of study and practice can bring
[00:29:55] that I think is really the most rewarding thing.
[00:30:00] We'll be back with more from Sandy Block right after this message.
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[00:31:33] You were one of the first people in the eastern part of the United States, right?
[00:31:37] Yeah, I was the first one on the East Coast.
[00:31:39] Yeah, the other three years before me were all Californians.
[00:31:44] And did you find it a culture shift?
[00:31:45] Taking a test that at the time was largely administered and proctored by British people?
[00:31:51] Yes, I found it a challenge because at the seminars there was this sort of British old
[00:31:59] boy network, even though a bunch of the people that were giving the seminars were women.
[00:32:04] But there was this kind of stiff upper lip.
[00:32:08] I remember I asked a question about San Giovanni versus Pinot Noir to one of the British
[00:32:14] MWs that had come over to educate us.
[00:32:17] He said, come on, oh boy.
[00:32:19] Can't you work that out?
[00:32:21] And I felt really like, wow, I'm really stupid.
[00:32:24] But well, the hard part was one of the groups of wines that I tasted on the exam were Bulgarian.
[00:32:31] And those are big wines in the UK where they were at the time and there were no – I'd never
[00:32:35] tasted a Bulgarian wine.
[00:32:37] So I didn't identify the wine, but I said enough good things about it to – I tasted
[00:32:42] it accurately.
[00:32:43] I just didn't deduce what it was.
[00:32:46] I remember that because with you, I studied for the WSTT and I remember the Eastern European
[00:32:52] Cabernet, the Romanian Cabernet section because it's such a big supermarket item over there.
[00:32:57] And then I would go back to my restaurant and sell a lot of Caymus Cabernet.
[00:33:01] It was just a disconnect.
[00:33:03] Right.
[00:33:05] After the period that you were in the course, we actually changed the course.
[00:33:09] We departed from the WSTT and we made it more US-centric because we didn't really see
[00:33:15] the point – if you wanted to get the WSTT, there are other good teachers, but we didn't
[00:33:19] really see the point of preparing people for a lot of wines that they weren't going
[00:33:23] to be familiar with.
[00:33:25] I didn't know that they changed it.
[00:33:27] Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:28] Starting in the – I would say about 2003, 2004, I think you were in the course in the
[00:33:33] late 90s, right?
[00:33:34] Yeah.
[00:33:35] That period, late 90s, California was coming on so strong.
[00:33:39] And there was very little about California.
[00:33:41] Exactly.
[00:33:42] Well, you know, if you look at the original Hugh Johnson Atlas wine, the first edition
[00:33:46] which I actually have, there's one page on the new world.
[00:33:51] Well, I remember he – at one point – and I like Hugh, he's been on a show and obviously
[00:33:55] he's great.
[00:33:56] But I remember at one point he was like, you know, if the California shirt needs to
[00:33:59] have a – you can just add a little parier.
[00:34:01] You know what I mean?
[00:34:02] It's just a different taste than – yeah.
[00:34:07] You know, speaking of Hugh actually, he's a good writer and one of the things that I came
[00:34:12] to learn about you is because you are my instructor is that you really appreciate good writers.
[00:34:16] Like you were the guy who turned me on to Gerald Asher.
[00:34:19] Oh, I was just thinking of Gerald Asher.
[00:34:21] To me he's the – I love Hugh Johnson's writing and Jansus Robinson.
[00:34:25] In terms of essays, I thought Gerald Asher was really the best.
[00:34:31] I think a lot of times people get into wine and they want to collect the wine knowledge.
[00:34:34] Yes.
[00:34:35] But what I appreciated about you early on – at least early on for me – was that you
[00:34:40] were looking at how well someone had crafted the message, you know, the written part, like
[00:34:45] how well they had done it.
[00:34:47] Which makes sense later because you became a fiction author maybe you were at that time.
[00:34:50] But you were looking at the – actually like how well is this done?
[00:34:54] You know, I think a lot of people don't look at it that way.
[00:34:56] Oh, thank you.
[00:34:57] Thank you.
[00:34:58] To me, it's all about communication and wine is part of a larger context and I think the
[00:35:03] more we set it into that context, the more meaningful it is.
[00:35:10] You know, it can be fetishized and I'm guilty of it.
[00:35:13] I think a lot of people are guilty of it.
[00:35:16] It's a wonderful thing and it's added immensely to my life and it's been my career.
[00:35:22] But I think you can make too much of it in a sense.
[00:35:25] And I've seen this over the years, a lot of people kind of come into it and they're like,
[00:35:30] I want to drink the best and you have no context for what the best is because you don't
[00:35:34] know what's out there.
[00:35:37] You don't know why it would be the best other than the fact that it's expensive.
[00:35:41] So that's the other aspect of – I always tried to incorporate in my career and my teaching
[00:35:45] where possible the blind tasting component because it does level the field and it kind
[00:35:50] of – it puts you back focused on what's in the glass as opposed to what's on the label.
[00:35:56] Over periods of time have you seen different kinds of students or have they largely seem
[00:36:00] to follow the same sorts of trends?
[00:36:04] There's always a lot of career changes, people that they're 30, much like I was and they
[00:36:10] decide, you know what?
[00:36:12] I don't really want to be an accountant anymore or I'm bored with law or I don't like
[00:36:18] marketing or I – you know, and they're fascinated with wine.
[00:36:21] So that's always a component.
[00:36:23] Then there are people who are in the trade who want a little bit more rigorous education
[00:36:28] or whose managers or the owners of the store or the restaurant have sent them there.
[00:36:33] And then there are some wholesale distributor reps that want to go beyond just calling
[00:36:38] on accounts and they want to broaden their knowledge.
[00:36:41] I think that that has remained relatively constant over the years is there's always
[00:36:44] that mix.
[00:36:46] And it's good.
[00:36:47] I like having consumers mixed in with people who are more career.
[00:36:50] Are there things that you've noticed about students in the wine field where you're
[00:36:54] like, oh, this is a very classic thing to have happen?
[00:36:58] In general what I have noticed is that everyone's very reticent to speak at the beginning of
[00:37:03] the class but after the first class that I do anyway they're really loose.
[00:37:09] They really open up and they're more apt to express their opinion.
[00:37:13] I try to encourage them right from the beginning that if you're smelling it, it's real.
[00:37:18] Don't think that you don't know what you're doing.
[00:37:21] You may be the only one in the class that gets it but other people will learn from what
[00:37:25] you're picking out.
[00:37:27] So I try to be very inclusive and encouraging that way and I think they do respond to it
[00:37:31] because usually by the end of the class they're much more garyless.
[00:37:35] What was it like when you were coming up with curriculum for teaching people?
[00:37:39] This has started out as basically like your friends in a tasting group.
[00:37:43] Bill was a Somie, you were a Somie and you guys got together.
[00:37:47] How do you then take that to saying okay we're at a study center at Posting University
[00:37:52] where charging people money, this course might be two years long.
[00:37:56] How do you translate that?
[00:37:57] It's just me and my friends to a curriculum.
[00:38:00] Well it was an interesting process.
[00:38:02] Bill has a different take on things than I do and we thought there would be a value
[00:38:08] in team teaching it.
[00:38:10] He was pushing for certain information to appear in the curriculum and I was pushing for
[00:38:16] other information and somehow we worked it out.
[00:38:19] As I said we're good friends, I think we respect each other's differences.
[00:38:23] I wanted to put it into a context that was broader and talk more about commercial issues
[00:38:30] and talk more about the positioning of the wines in the market and I think Bill was always
[00:38:35] pushing more for the technical information and that everyone needed to have a great grounding
[00:38:40] in issues that to me were maybe a little esoteric for that level.
[00:38:47] But anyway we worked it out and I think we arrived at somewhere in the middle, that was
[00:38:51] a good medium.
[00:38:53] And one of the early collaborators there was also Alex Murray.
[00:38:56] Alex Murray yeah.
[00:38:58] What I liked about him is he could synthesize a lot of information really well actually.
[00:39:02] He was the guy who said to me you know if you're going to study share you have
[00:39:05] to realize that the prevailing wins are important.
[00:39:08] And you know you could read a lot about Sherry, tranquil out of Sherry and no one would
[00:39:14] mention to you the wind factor.
[00:39:15] You know he just had this way of laser focusing in on this important aspect.
[00:39:19] Yeah absolutely Alex is super insightful, conscientious, knowledgeable.
[00:39:26] So yeah it was three of us and I would say Alex did somewhere in the middle maybe
[00:39:30] was his influence that got us to give and take a little bit.
[00:39:37] So if I were to sum up you three, three amigos here's my take from that period in the 90s
[00:39:43] when the luxury aspect of wine was really taking hold.
[00:39:47] Like I was working at a restaurant that was very expensive and serving wine in retrospect
[00:39:51] the wines prices we were serving are would be very cheap now.
[00:39:54] But at the time they were considered expensive and it was moving in that field of like wine
[00:39:59] should be about going to a place with Flaugra, caviar and expensive wine.
[00:40:05] The interesting thing about you three guys is you are never about that like you were always
[00:40:09] value guys.
[00:40:11] Bill like the good county and you know you were into your Portuguese wine.
[00:40:16] And the other thing about the three of you is that you were always appreciators of classics.
[00:40:21] I think once you have an understanding deep understanding of what the classics are you
[00:40:27] appreciate their singularity and you really understand in your palate and in your mind that
[00:40:34] they can only be made in certain places.
[00:40:37] And that those places are what their identity is.
[00:40:41] I think there was a resistance to some of the trends that were starting to happen that
[00:40:45] we all felt at the time, over-oaking, high alcohol, homogenization.
[00:40:51] Wasn't an anti-California thing by any means but I think it was maybe an anti-trophy
[00:40:56] wine thing.
[00:40:58] I think that we all felt that the more you knew about this, the more you realized you didn't
[00:41:02] have to spend $100 on a bottle and you could find things that were really more suited
[00:41:09] to the food that were very reasonably priced.
[00:41:14] I guess it took me a while to get there, you know, on that.
[00:41:17] At the time I was like why are we tasting Negromaro in class when all of these people are spending
[00:41:24] a lot of money on Peter Michael in my restaurant, you know what I mean?
[00:41:27] Yes I do.
[00:41:28] And I had the big light bulb go off when I was doing a staff training at BeeBud.
[00:41:34] Do you remember BeeBud?
[00:41:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:36] It was the spot.
[00:41:37] And I saw the sommelier there are a bunch of wines and he said come on in and do a training
[00:41:44] and he wasn't there so I did a training for this weight staff that was about 15 or 18
[00:41:49] people on four or five wines that I brought in.
[00:41:52] I went over like a lead balloon, like you read about comedians bombing.
[00:41:56] I mean there was absolutely zero reaction and I tried to engage people and they just
[00:42:02] weren't into it at all.
[00:42:03] At the end there was one of the waiters and I knew I was like what's going on today?
[00:42:06] He said let me explain something to you.
[00:42:08] It was like I was an idiot which I was.
[00:42:11] He said we work for tips.
[00:42:14] These are all really great values but there's no way we want to turn people away from
[00:42:19] like a $75 wine to this $35 wine.
[00:42:21] I was like oh yeah, I guess so.
[00:42:25] One of the things that actually you've done in terms of curriculum is you eventually
[00:42:29] developed a history of wine course that really looks at the history of wine in a global
[00:42:34] context for many centuries and what was it like developing that?
[00:42:38] I always learned something when I teach that course from the students.
[00:42:43] We're reading a book a week.
[00:42:44] It's a very heavy course load but it's fascinating because it does take wine out of the context
[00:42:52] of this special product because for most of wine's history, it's really only the last
[00:42:57] three, four hundred years that it's been a connoisseur's beverage.
[00:43:01] It's primarily been food and it's always part of the culture and it's always had a
[00:43:07] positive image as being more healthful to drink than water which was almost always
[00:43:13] polluted.
[00:43:14] It's been currency, it's been a very meaningful product in people's lives over many, many
[00:43:22] different cultures.
[00:43:25] I always find that the students are, their minds are blown by how recent this whole phenomenon
[00:43:31] is of fine wine and wine as a connoisseur's product.
[00:43:38] I always learn a lot from their comments.
[00:43:41] Other things that really stood out for you that would be less obvious things than
[00:43:45] people may not already know.
[00:43:46] Yeah, great question.
[00:43:49] One of the things about wine has been that it's been used as a political and economic football
[00:43:55] by various administrations, governments, monarchs over the years, taxation.
[00:44:02] It was a necessity of life so it wasn't something that was a choice for most people.
[00:44:09] That's what they drank.
[00:44:11] So taxing it had major implications.
[00:44:14] One of the things that people were always surprised by is how during the French Revolution,
[00:44:21] one of the major grievances and it's right there in Charles Dickens but we don't think
[00:44:24] about it was all these taxes moving wine from the vineyard area to Paris, each gate that
[00:44:32] you had to pass through, you had to pay an extra fee.
[00:44:36] That's one thing that to me is fascinating about it.
[00:44:39] There's also how it transmits cultures across time and how the pharaohs were buried with
[00:44:47] casks of wine so that they could take it to the afterlife.
[00:44:51] The Romans used it as a method of conquest when they moved north into the Provence
[00:44:57] Gaul at the time.
[00:44:59] They used it to enslave the local tribes who didn't have the technology, you needed agricultural
[00:45:05] setup to make wine really.
[00:45:09] They used it as they're a divide and conquer kind of thing.
[00:45:12] They would get local chieftains drunk and then they would buy slaves from them and then
[00:45:17] they would enslave them.
[00:45:19] More recently, one of the fascinating books to me in the course is Wine and War which
[00:45:24] is a monograph studying what went on in various regions of France during the Second World
[00:45:30] War during the German occupation and how the Germans used their control over French wine
[00:45:37] at the time to crush the spirit of the people who, to whom wine was so much a part of their
[00:45:43] identity and their national pride and all the good wines were taken out and they were
[00:45:50] left with plunk.
[00:45:52] Fascinating to me also is the more modern period and we always read biographies of Robert
[00:46:00] Mondavi.
[00:46:01] It was such a seminal figure he really, without him I don't think we'd be where we are today
[00:46:06] but he had a, I teach it at someone as a Greek tragedy somebody with the best of intentions
[00:46:12] with the noblest of intentions ending up in a different place than where they thought
[00:46:17] they wanted to be.
[00:46:19] So yeah we do a lot of reading.
[00:46:22] Part of the course that is most confusing to people I think is that ancient period where
[00:46:29] wine is considered a magical product particularly going back to the Hebrew Torah to the Bible.
[00:46:37] It was a symbol of all good things it was God's gift at a time when we had a really
[00:46:42] subsistence diet in the Roman Empire a little bit later.
[00:46:46] It was one of the mainstays of nutrition so you'd have grain, oil and wine and that's
[00:46:53] basically what most people ate.
[00:46:55] So it just takes into a different context than what we normally think about as wine and
[00:47:00] then I also find fascinating the various competitors to wine over over the years.
[00:47:07] We're still not a wine drink in culture I mean we know that it's about 17% of what we drink
[00:47:12] today but you know over the years in England the gin craze, you know gin supplanted wine
[00:47:21] because I needed something stronger and it was to soak up excess grain that was causing
[00:47:28] crop surpluses and starvation actually paradoxically enough.
[00:47:33] So people stopped drinking wine because they were all bombed on gin so yeah it's just
[00:47:39] got so many different facets to it.
[00:47:42] Every so often I see a new discovery like we've discovered this chip earthenware amphora and
[00:47:48] now we think this is the oldest because of these new discoveries the books are out of date
[00:47:52] sometimes.
[00:47:53] It's never clear to me exactly where was it the Babylonians, was it the Armenians, was
[00:47:59] it the Egyptians, was it the Manelans, you know who made wine first?
[00:48:04] It's not really clear but what we do know is that it spread really quickly I think the best
[00:48:08] information I've seen is that wine is about 8000 years old and we have evidence of this
[00:48:14] wine cellar in northwestern Iran, Turkey that part of the world that had shards of earthenware
[00:48:24] that definitely have grape residenones that's about 8000 years old and beer about 9000.
[00:48:30] And I guess the American reset of prohibition is in many ways kind of unique in terms
[00:48:37] of modern countries I'm sure there's some historical parallel but in terms of it being
[00:48:41] outlawed and then you know all these wineries go out of business and then the culture
[00:48:45] just resets later when they say okay now you can make it again.
[00:48:49] It's fascinating because where the wineries went out of business I think there was seven
[00:48:53] that had had the license to make sacramental wine so they continued but where the wineries
[00:48:59] went out of business the grape business was thriving because there was a provision in
[00:49:03] the amendment that allowed 250 gallons of home wine making so they had to pass that
[00:49:11] to get enough votes and it was mainly about the cider industry but what that meant was
[00:49:17] that people were shipping box car loads of grapes and essentially hardy red grapes east
[00:49:26] to Midwest, to Chicago and to New York and Boston and people were making wine there and
[00:49:31] of course selling it but they weren't supposed to be selling it.
[00:49:35] So one of the reasons why there's so much old vines, infant, dell and caranian is because
[00:49:40] those were the grapes that would survive the trip in a box car, unrefidurated box car
[00:49:46] east but there was well documented we drank a lot more during prohibition than we did
[00:49:52] beforehand.
[00:49:53] It was suddenly racy and illegal so it was cool.
[00:49:58] Most of it was imported whiskey and gin but the grape industry was thriving they were
[00:50:05] all set up.
[00:50:06] Do you think that that side cultural ramifications up to the day in terms of how people approach
[00:50:10] wine, that prohibition era?
[00:50:13] I think that there has always been an effort on the part of the wine industry to separate
[00:50:17] themselves from beer and spirits where the healthy drink so there's always been an effort
[00:50:23] to elevate wine to a higher level but in the end of the day it's alcohol too.
[00:50:31] I think often you look at wine almost through that financial lens of what's the tax structure,
[00:50:37] how does it move?
[00:50:38] What does that cost?
[00:50:39] That kind of like on the business side of it and I remember that some of the master
[00:50:44] wine questions were geared that way some of the WSET questions were like if you were a
[00:50:48] sherry producer and you were going to blend to this what would you do?
[00:50:52] Explain your reasoning to make a viable business doing this kind of thing and so I guess
[00:50:57] that probably would have appealed to you to write those kind of answers and then to think
[00:51:01] if you're thinking about it that way.
[00:51:03] Yeah, you know it's funny it was 27 years ago now and I remember those questions vividly.
[00:51:11] One of them specifically that I had was your advisor to the sherry industry right
[00:51:16] at paper on how to get the industry going again.
[00:51:20] They've been writing that paper for a long time.
[00:51:23] And that was a really interesting challenge, that was a mandatory question I had to take
[00:51:27] that question so I had to think quickly because I didn't know a heck of a lot about sherry
[00:51:31] at the time but yeah the exam itself was an extraordinary experience as I said I was just
[00:51:39] totally zoned in and I remember the next year I went I came back to proctor the exam.
[00:51:46] He was at the windows of the world, you know the top floor of Lake Lamented World Trade
[00:51:51] Center.
[00:51:52] This guy came up to me very unmistakable look handle bar mustache he said hey Sandy how
[00:52:00] are you doing?
[00:52:01] And I said sorry have we met before and he looked at me like I was crazy he said I sat next
[00:52:05] to you for four days last year and I said I'm really sorry I just wasn't he said we had
[00:52:09] all these long conversations and I really felt terrible but I just he didn't look
[00:52:14] familiar to me because I was just like so focused.
[00:52:17] It almost sounds like kind of an out of body experience for you.
[00:52:20] It almost was yeah yeah.
[00:52:22] You think that was a relation to stress or like runners high or?
[00:52:25] Yeah I think it was more like runners high I think I was just like super super motivated
[00:52:30] I didn't want anything distracting me and I just tried to channel the information that
[00:52:35] I had and the skills that I that I had and you know as I said there is an athletic aspect
[00:52:41] to it you have to really be on point for two hours writing writing these first of all
[00:52:46] diagramming the question writing the notes introduction conclusion evidence in the middle
[00:52:55] can't be dogmatic after you remember all these things so that's what I did.
[00:52:59] So how do you think that passing a test and getting the credential affected the rest
[00:53:03] of your career because this is 92?
[00:53:05] Well, it's a nice club to be part of just in the sense that when you meet me and
[00:53:11] you meet other MWs you know that they've been through some similar experience.
[00:53:16] It didn't have any impact initially and in fact what I would suggest to people that are
[00:53:21] interested in pursuing a pursuit because it's hard and because it's a challenge and because
[00:53:25] it's interesting and you learn a lot not for the reward by this point I was in the wholesale
[00:53:31] business I was I was a manager of the distributorship 1992 and walking down the halls in the company
[00:53:40] that I worked at and the owner of the company came up and he saw my picture in the wine
[00:53:43] spectator somebody showed it to him and he shook me shook my hand he says I have no idea
[00:53:48] what this means but I know it's good it's going to be good for our company.
[00:53:52] Yeah, it had a it actually had an interesting circular kind of impact inside the company
[00:53:59] it had somewhat of a it shook people up and outside the company it caused people you
[00:54:07] know who I knew to look at me differently and I would say it was a gradual thing.
[00:54:13] I did not tell anyone I was stoning for this.
[00:54:16] I didn't want that added pressure this is something as I said I didn't think I was going
[00:54:21] to pass it so I didn't want that oh how are you doing you know so I just did it with the
[00:54:27] three people I worked with and so it was a shocker to a lot of people when it came out
[00:54:32] but eventually you know I don't want to put too fine a point on this but there was
[00:54:38] a lot of recognition from outside of Boston and inside Boston came a little bit more slowly
[00:54:46] and you know eventually with my company with customers with suppliers we were rebuilding
[00:54:52] a portfolio which is difficult to do in a franchise state and I worked with with another
[00:54:57] gentleman that was kind of my partner in that project and it became easier far easier
[00:55:03] to sign on interesting suppliers that we whose wines we really liked because again the
[00:55:09] shorthand it was like oh he's an MW he'll know how to sell this.
[00:55:13] And you know it's been it's been great for my career it's been really great for my career
[00:55:17] but I guess what I'm saying is that it wasn't like an instant jolt it was it was a slow
[00:55:22] gradual accretion of positive effects.
[00:55:26] I think maybe most most MWs probably have that attitude that I express that it's it's we
[00:55:32] passed an exam.
[00:55:34] You know it's it's a great it was a hard exam but you know it doesn't make us geniuses.
[00:55:41] Coming up after the break some real surprises emerge.
[00:55:45] These were wine regions that prior to their taking off would have been very hard to foresee
[00:55:50] because there would be as weird as if today somebody said you know hey Lithuania is really
[00:55:56] the place you know it's just off everybody's radar skiing.
[00:56:01] That and more after this message.
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[00:57:10] I think you've seen a number of trends and micro trends happen over time how would you
[00:57:15] explain that curve what was important to say the last forty years of wine.
[00:57:20] I think wine became hot and trendy and it and it trended up for really for a long while.
[00:57:27] I don't see it as continuing that growth curve honestly.
[00:57:31] I don't think we're going to become France and France of course is changing too and so
[00:57:36] as Italy what I see among the among the twenty somethings that work for me and that are
[00:57:42] some of my customers versatility they're not they don't have allegiance to any particular
[00:57:48] category you know they might start off with a beer then they might go into wine they
[00:57:53] might they might have a cocktail on Tuesday night and maybe have a wine on Wednesday night.
[00:57:58] But there isn't I don't think the same level of fascination with it that there was with
[00:58:05] people maybe in their thirties forties fifties I think that there's a little bit of a backlash
[00:58:11] against wine among among some younger consumers it's like this is too complicated this
[00:58:16] is too hard I don't know whether we as a trade have have done enough to reach out.
[00:58:22] I know that sometimes when I go into a restaurant or a wine bar and I see fifteen wines by the
[00:58:28] glass and I have no clue what the varietals for twelve of them are I'm wondering how anyone
[00:58:34] who's not a specialist handles it so not to say that everything should be plain vanilla
[00:58:40] but I think that you have to work kind of hard to figure out what wine you want and some
[00:58:46] of the some of the restaurants that are hot today and I think there's a cost factor I think
[00:58:52] we charge too much for wines in general you know and I mean this has been an age long age
[00:58:58] old restaurant I'm sure back to your sommelier days there's always pressure to like let's get
[00:59:03] another few percentage points out of the wine program so you know I think it's a little bit
[00:59:08] short-sighted there are opportunities to find value and pass on to the consumer and you know
[00:59:15] again as we said earlier maybe the wait wait staff doesn't like that but they probably like a
[00:59:20] busier restaurant and you know I think that there's definitely a suspicion on the part of
[00:59:26] the public well-founded that the restaurants charge too much for their wines you also worked in
[00:59:32] distribution and import for a long time I did you saw some some rises in certain categories
[00:59:39] and and some categories that kind of failed to ignite and what was your experience you know all
[00:59:45] you had to do is stay one one chapter ahead and you could you could add value I remember literally
[00:59:51] going into restaurants in the early nineties and saying hey I got a way that you could actually make
[00:59:58] some more increase your wine sales what's that how about if we did a shardinay by the glass you think
[01:00:04] so and you know they try it and then it just takes off and it's like wow this guy really knows
[01:00:11] his stuff whereas it's just it wasn't rocket science one of the major trends I saw was the
[01:00:20] development of Chile and Argentina a little bit later with Chile in the early mid-90s
[01:00:28] Australia in the mid-90s and then Argentina after late 90s and these were wine regions that prior
[01:00:37] to their taking off would have been very hard to foresee because there would be as weird as if today
[01:00:43] somebody said you know hey Lithuania is really the place you know or it's just off everybody's
[01:00:49] radar skiing maybe a little bit less so with Chile because Lafitte bought Las Foscas in 1988
[01:00:55] but those were eye-openeres how quickly they happen and how dramatically they affected things
[01:01:02] and I think also the rise of the rise of shardinay and cabernet you know to the point where
[01:01:09] they became pretty much now that's all you see in Napa right?
[01:01:13] In terms of wine making I feel like there's been some shift what was that parker error rollercoaster
[01:01:20] like for you people liked extraction customers liked richness texture with texture you know
[01:01:29] one of the great things about parker and paino were that they talked about sensuality
[01:01:35] literally when I first got into wine and I didn't know what I was doing but salesmen would come
[01:01:41] and they'd taste me on wines and they'd be like this is going to be great in four years
[01:01:45] I was like well I got to serve it tomorrow but you know it was all about structure and
[01:01:50] angularity and reputation is like if you didn't like it I mean this is Chateau-Bachival you know
[01:01:57] there's something wrong with you obviously so I think paino first and then parker dialed it back
[01:02:03] to texture and what's happening on your palate and I think it was a it was a very very welcoming thing
[01:02:11] the other the other aspect from when I first got into the restaurant business was a varietal thing
[01:02:16] you know so suddenly I was or at least my original incarnation was obsolete because I didn't have
[01:02:22] to translate what's on Sarah and and Cote Roe T were anymore because suddenly we had a seven or
[01:02:30] eight varietals that most people memorized they could walk in a little bit more jauntty because they
[01:02:35] they all have a sub in a block they were they might pronounce it at the time but they had a
[01:02:40] sense as to what they were ordering I'm supposed to I'm helpless you know figure this out for me
[01:02:45] you're the guy with the ash fair around your head you know and so I think the varietal boom the growth
[01:02:50] of the new world southern hemisphere wine regions of flying wine makers I mean Australia was just
[01:02:57] that caught everyone by a little bit by surprise you know they went from zero to 60 really really
[01:03:03] quickly and easier pronounced for most Americans than Latin America same varieties same names you
[01:03:12] could confuse them with California wines and they were they were they were brilliant marketers at the
[01:03:18] time so I think that that the textural changes the ripeness changes these were all things that were
[01:03:26] good and then like all good things there is a swing to extreme and we're looking for something
[01:03:33] that's smooth and rich and tastes good but now we have something that's like super overroaked and
[01:03:40] over extracted and maybe taste good when you're tasting 50 wines but isn't going to really work
[01:03:46] well with my filet mignon you know I think it's a constant pendulum do you find that Boston has
[01:03:53] particular tastes that maybe are unique to Boston or that the certain tendencies that are
[01:03:58] more pronounced in Boston by reputation more classically oriented more European oriented
[01:04:07] I think everything's becoming very homogenized nationally now I think that
[01:04:11] rosé maybe may have hit Boston a year or two after it hit New York but you know it's in full flower
[01:04:18] have there been trends that either surprised you or that you just really did like it over the years
[01:04:24] well I think yellowtail and it's associated phenomenon caught everyone by surprise um you know
[01:04:30] that the race downward in terms of lack of uh specificity and I'm not a basher of yellowtail
[01:04:38] really they did something right to sell that many cases compared to others that would you know
[01:04:44] would love to have done that but yeah that was surprising to me how people were enamored of cutesy
[01:04:49] labels and basically an hockey was wine and and and we're so happy to display it you know and uh
[01:04:56] yeah that was that was a big surprise to me and I think it brought ultimately ended up
[01:05:01] bringing the whole Australian wine industry down with it you know commoditized things
[01:05:07] that was the flip side of the coin of it's all Shiraz and it's recognizable right because then
[01:05:12] if it's all Shiraz and then there's one that's five dollars why not get that one right well
[01:05:17] I'll tell you what surprises me is how incontrovertibly delicious Shiraz is everywhere whether you're talking
[01:05:28] about the classics or new world I mean it's just it's an amazing wine and yet how impossible
[01:05:37] it's still is to sell on how earned your value it is it's interesting because you know when I did
[01:05:42] the Bill Nesto interview I interviewed Bill and obviously he along with you were previous instructors
[01:05:46] in mind I realized that there were certain things that he was saying that I had heard as a
[01:05:51] student and kind of internalized as a worldview and then you know I hadn't really associated with him
[01:05:56] oh right just think like this is what I think you know I'm out here in the world making decisions
[01:06:01] and I'm realizing speaking to you that I have a tendency to want to fight the good fight even
[01:06:08] when it's kind of a losing battle on value like to say like no this is a great wine for the money
[01:06:13] you guys should like this I know you don't but you should you know what I mean yeah and I'm
[01:06:18] realizing that that's not just me that thinks that I always knew you were that person but I never
[01:06:23] really made the connection that you were also my teacher and that I had sort of internalized that
[01:06:28] message does that make sense it does and you know what there are people that perform that role
[01:06:33] in my world and I can't remember exactly who said why to either you know to me Kevin's
[01:06:40] rally was a very influential person I really respect his pedagogical skills his knowledge his
[01:06:46] passion and what he's done over the years and every once in a while I find myself quoting him without
[01:06:52] you know without attribution because he's informed so much of my thinking so back to that important
[01:06:59] distribution side when you were looking at the same business from import and distribution as
[01:07:05] you had been from restaurants and then now again you're in restaurants what's different on that side
[01:07:11] like what's key in that business juggling the demands and expectations of your customers with your
[01:07:20] suppliers and motivating pretty stuck in their ways sales force to devote their attention to
[01:07:33] something that you believe in it was a really interesting challenge an interesting job and so I
[01:07:40] had a number of different companies that I work for and a number of different roles within the
[01:07:44] companies but you know I started off of having been a sommelier and wine manager as the on-premise
[01:07:51] manager meaning dealing with specifically with restaurants and then I kind of moved on to
[01:07:58] vice president of product strategies which was a little bit broader and then I ran an importing
[01:08:05] company within a within a distributorship that was focused largely as you said earlier on Portugal
[01:08:12] and that was a fascinating experience I had a partner who was Portuguese American who was a
[01:08:20] phenomenal talent great salesperson his wine knowledge at the time wasn't that broad so we went
[01:08:28] over to Portugal and we were tasting things and I was saying to him Jack we're gonna sell thousands
[01:08:35] of cases of this this is unbelievable for nobody knows what Trinca Dara is this is a whole story
[01:08:41] so that was that was fascinating to me the the ability to not that we discovered Portugal but you
[01:08:48] know at the time in the late 90s we signed up what I considered the murderous role you know the
[01:08:54] all-star team of Portugal we had Luish Pato and Barara we had João Portugal Ramos in Alentezio
[01:09:02] we had this port producer family own port producer called Barros that had 50 60 year old
[01:09:08] collierta ports we we had all these cool duro properties we had a cause of the Santar up in the
[01:09:16] Dow and these were all really great properties that nobody I it was the same feeling I had when I
[01:09:21] went to the art museum I think the Goldbentian Museum Museum in Lisbon wow there were amazing
[01:09:31] post-impressionists and pointy lists and you know all these schools of 19th and 20th century art
[01:09:38] I learned through France there were great people in Portugal doing similar things now maybe they
[01:09:43] were derivative or maybe not I don't know I'd never heard of them but it was just like mind-blowing art
[01:09:48] and these wines were just like crazy good and inexpensive and nobody nobody knew what they were
[01:09:54] so we really focused on that for about two to three years then the company was sold and I decided
[01:10:00] to move to a different company but it was it was very gratifying but I've also heard you talk about
[01:10:06] it is kind of like it didn't quite hit the commercial success that you expected it didn't it didn't
[01:10:13] one thing that I've learned over the years is that quality can be at a certain level but unless
[01:10:20] there's a coordinated marketing effort that goes beyond the efforts of one particular company
[01:10:25] it's hard to sell the wine so we did an amazing job of selling them in various markets and
[01:10:32] in particularly Portuguese ethnic market but also you know to retailers they didn't sell it all on
[01:10:38] premise I remember I I sold some into the fourth seasons at one point in Boston and six months later
[01:10:45] like nobody bought these you know so Portugal still to this day although much more successful than
[01:10:52] they were but I think there's an insularity in Portugal where they don't quite understand what's
[01:10:57] going on the charm is also the the flaw so they don't quite understand what's going on in
[01:11:02] the rest of the world they don't understand why somebody pays $50 for a bottle of this in in
[01:11:08] Lisbon they shouldn't do the same in Boston or New York but you know I chucked it up to learning
[01:11:15] process and you know it was it was it was hard to get accurate maps from Portugal you know we
[01:11:22] traveled through the country we went there three times a year and the the grape variety name has
[01:11:29] been changed to Alente Hano officially yes and then you go to the next region north and like no
[01:11:36] it hasn't so it was like hard to get an accurate story or even accurate boundaries or
[01:11:42] varietal information it was really really really loose I think they've gotten it together more
[01:11:48] since then but it was it was kind of like the Wild West back then but the wines were exciting
[01:11:53] that that was what turned me on but yeah haven't haven't been too successful over the years with
[01:12:00] Turegonasianal or or any of the varietal there's a there's a there's a waifurite named Rinto from
[01:12:08] the Boussella area and it's grown elsewhere that I think is wonderful and we were selling as a
[01:12:14] 20 years ago as a is an alternative to Saviom Blanc it's got that citrus aspect but you know
[01:12:21] unless there's a summary on the floor nobody's ever going to order it I guess that Portugal
[01:12:27] experience for you I mean you had worked in restaurants and so you're like wow you go to the table
[01:12:31] and you saw them on this cool good value wine yes and then when you moved into distribution and
[01:12:37] import at the beginning you were like yeah we'll bring in these great value wines and then they'll
[01:12:42] make it away to the table but you weren't that last link anymore but you were buying like a
[01:12:47] sommelier would buy but there wasn't someone there to close the loop for you and so then I was
[01:12:53] frustrating it's always a challenge to take it to the next level and it's never clear because if
[01:12:58] it was really clear somebody else would have done it already so oh four you came back in a restaurant
[01:13:04] restaurant correct yeah it wasn't a planned career move it was just something that was too good to
[01:13:10] not do so I was visiting restaurants I was I was working with salespeople and I was advising
[01:13:17] customers and doing wine dinners and things like this and all of a sudden the logic suddenly occurred
[01:13:23] to me like I can get to do all the things I've been urging other people to do and and so that
[01:13:28] became very appealing to me and I'd been good friends with the CEO of the company and I actually
[01:13:35] want to see him to recommend some people to replace his previous wine buyer who had left and he said
[01:13:41] how about you and I was like I don't know I don't think so it was just it wasn't something I was
[01:13:47] thinking but we met seven times and the logic really came came to me as to this would be a great
[01:13:55] opportunity and that was Roger Birkowitz that was Roger yeah he collected wine he used to own a
[01:14:01] winery in southern France and he actually had he used to have a radio show and he interviewed me
[01:14:10] after I became an W so you know and I'd done various events for him and stuff so yeah we I knew
[01:14:17] that we saw eye to eye on a lot of things particularly pricing that is your longest term job right
[01:14:22] that's right that's right I think it's the most successful restaurant group in Boston right if I
[01:14:28] were to think of a restaurant group I think so yeah I think you know in terms of revenue oh yeah
[01:14:33] yeah I'm pretty sure one of the things that's really surprised me about legal seafoods is how it's
[01:14:39] really diversified the brand that sounds kind of like marketing speaks so let me explain what I mean
[01:14:45] when I lived in Boston it seemed like legal seafoods was kind of legal seafoods correct and the one
[01:14:50] in the airport was a little different than the one in Park Place maybe but in general menu was the
[01:14:56] same idea was the same style service was the same and now when I did the research on you it seems
[01:15:02] like there's all these different concepts that are really different concepts under the same corporate
[01:15:06] umbrella correct it makes my job much more interesting and much more difficult and I have a
[01:15:13] whole staff to administer it yeah when I first came on board we had two wine lists now we have
[01:15:18] like 23 we have legal harborside which is three restaurants and one one of which has a collection
[01:15:26] of wines that aren't available anywhere else in Boston we have the legal C bar brand which is very
[01:15:32] bar-forward bar-centric what do you think the thinking was behind developing those different concepts
[01:15:39] well you know Roger is very forward looking and he was the first restaurant that I know of that
[01:15:46] band smoking band trans fats things like that he's always trying to look ahead he's very he's
[01:15:53] always this is meant in a positive way it's always running scared a little bit like because if you
[01:15:58] rest on your laurels in the restaurant business you're absolutely quickly I remember that
[01:16:03] smoking thing that was a big deal yeah it was huge at the time I got a lot of criticism for it
[01:16:09] but the concept was that more and more people are dining at the bar
[01:16:14] more and more people are dining casually the days of white tablecloth and appetizer entree
[01:16:22] and dessert are it's they're still room for it but you know it's more celebratory now we people
[01:16:29] looking for smaller plates legal seafoods is seafood but you know in some of the other concepts we
[01:16:35] can have a higher percentage of non-seafood items whether vegetarian or meat items
[01:16:41] um and just to diversify and appeal to a younger demographic what do you look for when people
[01:16:48] come to apply for a job with you you know you've seen a lot of students come through your courses
[01:16:53] so when you're actually hiring when you're saying okay what's important to you uh the smile
[01:16:59] you know the knowledge piece we can I teach a course within the company it's 18 hours
[01:17:07] and uh you know I wrote a book loosely loosely modeled after the BU course but more specifically
[01:17:13] to what we do so uh you know I can teach them anything but you know unless they have that hospitality
[01:17:20] gene it doesn't matter it doesn't matter to me what they know it matters to me you know what
[01:17:26] they're attitudes I just hired somebody that was my great great young woman who was my
[01:17:32] um assistant or a course um facilitator at BU in the history of wine course and she's she's
[01:17:40] awesome she has her own wine education business but she's uh she's working for me now
[01:17:45] but she had it all you know she's smart very knowledgeable great presentation style and
[01:17:52] very very outgoing there is definitely a you know you have to sell it now going as a part of it for
[01:17:58] you yeah it is definitely something I think you know in the restaurant business because it's all
[01:18:03] about hospitality I think a good a good server a good sommelier can make something taste better
[01:18:09] or it can make it taste worse so yeah I mean I'm always looking for that that positivity and
[01:18:17] over the years I've had some great people work for us but the one time it didn't work out is when
[01:18:23] violated that rule and got somebody who was very knowledgeable and super nice but shy
[01:18:30] very shy and that shyness uh didn't play well looking back over your career it almost seems like
[01:18:39] kind of a fluke that you got into wine and then he did quite well with it it's been good to you
[01:18:44] I think in many ways like it's worked out for you yes absolutely but it seems like you know
[01:18:50] you could have been a dentist you know I mean like well you know I think people end up where they
[01:18:55] belong and whereas it wasn't it was a fluke in the sense that it wasn't planned I don't think it
[01:19:02] was a fluke entracing back the steps that led me there you know I think all that work that
[01:19:08] caused me so much anguish that I didn't finish my doctor it stood me a very good stead
[01:19:13] in passing the master wine exam I think I think very often we think we're driving the car but you
[01:19:20] know there's a lot of things that are influencing us some of her unknown I don't want to I'm not
[01:19:25] that philosophical I don't want to talk about fate but this seems like it was the right thing for
[01:19:30] me to have done and I think I was also very fortunate um you know we need luck and
[01:19:37] right opportunities opened up for me at the right times and and then we have to capitalize on that
[01:19:41] luck well I have that same dream because I left college so I have that dream where I wake up and I
[01:19:47] you know I'm late for the test everyone knows the answer and so I know what that feeling is like not
[01:19:52] to have completed something I mean I didn't make it nearly as far as you did but I know exactly
[01:19:56] what that's like so that's really interesting to me that not finishing the PhD and kind of a
[01:20:03] sense of guilt or that led you to be more focused on the wine side in terms of the academic side of
[01:20:10] it in terms of the credential absolutely I don't know about guilt but it was disappointment in myself
[01:20:16] so the number one question I'm asked by consumers students in the class is how do I get into this
[01:20:22] and I think people have illusions that it's all glamour it's all going to dinners and you know
[01:20:28] et cetera et cetera and the first thing I tell them is you have to have you have to have a
[01:20:34] super passion for it because it's not that lucrative compared to other things somebody's intelligent
[01:20:39] as you could be doing and secondly there is no one path you just have to immerse yourself in it
[01:20:45] when you take that right turn you're going to see a few doors that you don't see now and you're
[01:20:50] going to go through one of those doors and they're going to open up another few vistas that you
[01:20:54] didn't see when you're at the first crossroads and you just have to continue to immerse yourself
[01:21:00] and have faith in yourself that you'll figure out a way to do this and a number of people have
[01:21:05] followed that and they're happy they're doing it but I think it's when we look for the quick fix
[01:21:13] sometimes that we get very frustrated with this business with this field you know I tell
[01:21:21] everyone it's a glamour so to speak glamour feel a lot of people want to go into it when a lot
[01:21:26] of people want to go into something there are only so many opportunities you know you have to
[01:21:31] have something to distinguish yourself what's next for you I mean what do you still want to achieve
[01:21:38] I'd like to see us grow our sales that keeps me up at night because when I first came to legal
[01:21:43] seafoods for the first 11 years every year we sold more in last four years it's been very sideways
[01:21:52] so I know there are there are larger trends but you know I'm always always trying to figure out how
[01:21:56] to sell more wine and I hate to take it in the context of selling I don't talk to our staff about
[01:22:03] upselling I don't like the idea we're not gonna use car lot but still I know that the more knowledgeable
[01:22:09] they are and the more time they take to learn this the better sales will be kind of a testimony to
[01:22:16] how kind of humble you are as a person that you would say that because you've actually trained
[01:22:20] thousands of people at legal seafoods but you kind of feel like it's an unfinished job like I think
[01:22:26] other people would be stressing over years thousands of people have been trained by me you know
[01:22:31] you know and you're kind of doing the opposite saying like well there's still a lot of work to do in
[01:22:35] terms of training people it's like I don't know a lot of people have spent more time training you know
[01:22:40] what I'm saying yeah I think it kind of it's the speaker of the tale coming through as much as
[01:22:45] the tale thank you one thing that's nice about having trained so many people is it's hard for me
[01:22:50] to go out in Boston and order a glass of wine without and pay for it because most of the people
[01:22:56] are running the programs have been through the course Sandy Block went through a door and found
[01:23:00] three other doors behind it all of which worked out well for him thank you very much for being
[01:23:04] here today thank you it's real pleasure to reconnect Sandy Block passed away in November of 2021
[01:23:13] may he rest in peace all drink to that is hosted and produced by myself
[01:23:18] Lavi Dalton Aaron Skella has contributed original pieces editorial assistance has been provided by
[01:23:25] Bill Kimsey the show music was performed and composed by Ramousse and Thomas Barlett show our work
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[01:24:14] so
[01:24:27] there's been a lot of fluctuation in the lobster price some price thing of lobster absolutely we
[01:24:32] had to go we hate to do this but we had to go to market price on the lobster because we got
[01:24:37] I think there was a period of about two weeks where we got caught short and it was hundreds of
[01:24:44] thousands of dollars you know when we had a price on the menu and we had to honor it but maybe
[01:24:48] you should do that for the wines market price let's make a deal ask me i'll make a view one of the
[01:24:55] trends that I see in wine that I really don't like in restaurants is I go into certain restaurants
[01:25:02] and it says burrollo 49 dollars which burrollo is this and they kind of look at you like
[01:25:10] uh it was like how dare you ask why do you need to know which one it is and I find it very off
[01:25:17] pointing i don't know if you've seen that but uh yeah there's a burger place down the street for
[01:25:21] me that's a famous burger place some people go down a lot and that their menus like that you
[01:25:26] I actually took a picture of it once because I was like this this is hilarious which of any of these
[01:25:30] is this oh look they have barbarra yeah yeah yeah exactly and then you kind of wonder if you like
[01:25:37] if you spin the wheel if you're just gonna you know oh my god it's jockamokin terino barbarra by the
[01:25:42] glass 7.1 vintage yeah yeah you know they're just like uh you know it's the only one we had down there so