Wine Not?

My professional wine career began, unexpectedly and unintentionally, in the mid-late 1980s in New York City. I was working at Vanity Fair magazine, where my title was “research associate”—a fancy name for fact-checker. My main duty was to go through articles before they were published in search of errors, misquotes (compared to transcripts or tapes), misspelled names, inaccurate historical references (super fun) and, in certain cases, potential liability/legal issues, which would be referred up a few floors to the legal department at 350 Madison Ave. From Armani (who had “a smile like a triangle”) to Anne Rice with an “e” at the end (whoops, missed that one!), every week brought a different challenge. Then I was assigned the wine column.

Every month a shipment would be delivered to my desk, postmarked North Carolina, filled with (drum roll, please!): empty wine bottles! Joel L. Fleishman, who worked at Duke University, penned the column. At the time, I thought he was the college president and wondered how he’d have time to drink and write about wine. Turns out he was—and still is—a law professor.

After carefully opening the cardboard box, I’d pull out each bottle and place it on my desk. Anyone passing by probably wondered what a 30-ish California girl with long brown hair was doing with a dozen empty wine bottles on her desk? (Then again, that’s very California, don’t you think?)

“My job was to make sure the labels matched the copy (everything spelled correctly—this was long before the Internet and Google) and check the prices quoted for accuracy in case readers wanted to run out and buy a bottle.”

One time, I sliced my finger on a bottle that had broken during its journey north. I complained to Mr. Fleishman, noting that the least he could do was send ONE bottle with wine in it.He laughed.I don’t recall that he ever did.My job was to make sure the labels matched the copy (everything spelled correctly—this was long before the Internet and Google) and check the prices quoted for accuracy in case readers wanted to run out and buy a bottle.That meant calling a few wine stores around the country.This was the perfect excuse to make a long distance call for free. I’d call David Russell at The Wine Cask wine shop in Santa Barbara, ostensibly to confirm prices, but really to find out what was happening in my hometown.

From that time on (and to this day), I wrote travel stories and restaurant reviews that included covering wine. Whenever an oenophile friend and I would visit vineyards or attend wine industry events together, my pal (blessed with a bear’s sense of smell) detected about 30 more layers in a glass of wine than I ever could. (Maybe I’m one of those people deprived of certain olfactory capabilities?).But I knew what I loved when it came to taste.Could I describe it? Sometimes.

I told Hugh Margerum that the “witch’s hat” cheese he selected at C’est Cheese recently, when we grabbed bread and cheese to accompany our wine-tasting foray through the Presidio Neighborhood, smelled like old socks.

However, I rarely taste or smell cigars or old socks or other things wine writers tend to use in their descriptions. Maybe that’s a good thing.I have whiffed butterscotch, if that counts.Rewind a couple of years, back to when I applied for and was awarded a fellowship to the Napa Valley Wine Writers Symposium. Journalists from around the globe attend to improve their wine writing skills. Special lecturers that year included the admirable, acclaimed English wine writer Hugh Johnson, who came from London, and wine columnist-cumnovelist Jay McInerney, who lives in the Hamptons.

As luck would have it, I came down with a horrible cold prior to the four-night symposium at Meadwood Resort, the Culinary Institute and various wineries in the Valley.

Not only could I not smell or taste, but I was coughing, hacking, blowing my nose and bundled up to stay warm at lovely evening events which, more often than not, took place out of doors.

It seemed as if everyone but me knew what he or she was doing. (Cough, cough.) They sipped with finesse. (Ah-choo!) They swirled with conviction. (Hack! Hack!) They chatted in a language I didn’t fully understand. I felt like the awkward girl in ballet class who can’t quite keep up or plié, so she keeps wiping her pink slippers in the chalky stuff in the back corner.

In the years between fact checking and becoming a “fellow,” I’ve been enjoying wine just fine. I’ve had a ’53 Margeaux and a great $3.99 Syrah from Grocery Outlet. French wine, Italian wine, “down under” wine, South African wine, and Spanish and Portuguese wines sipped in Spain and the Douro Valley. And yes, wine from my home state of California—from Mendocino to Lake County; Napa to Sonoma; Monterey to Paso; Santa Barbara to Ojai.

Once, I even tried pineapple wine in Hawaii. (Please. Just don’t.)

This is a long way of saying I’m just a regular schmo when it comes to wine. Because in the end, it really doesn’t matter if a wine wins an award or if it costs $500 or $5.99, as long as it tastes good. And you like it.

by Leslie A. Westbrook