Complete Wine Course

Előszó

Foreword
The year 2000 is very special for me. Not only do I like celebrations and a good party, but I celebrate my fiftieth birthday this year. It also marks the thirtieth year since I became fascinated with the study of wine. I can honestly say that after all these years, I am still having a tremendous amount of fun learning new things every day, and I feel lucky that I chose to make wine my profession.
It all began in 1970 when, as a college student, I started working as a waiter in the Depuy Canal House Tavern in High Falls, New York, two hours north of New York City. At that time, Craig Claiborne, the New York Times restaurant critic, came to review the Canal House with two other great chefs, Jacques Pepin and Pierre Franey. Although we had just opened and I was the oldest waiter at 19, Mr. Claiborne bestowed the ultimate four-star rating on our restaurant. All of a sudden, we were besieged by customers, especially from New York City.
I quickly became the bartender (we were only 32 seats and never had need of a bartender before) and had to order all the beverages, including wine. I thought our wine list was pretty good. We had the top three: red, white, and rosé! Our customers wanted more. And I had to do it.
It's still hard for me to believe that thirty years ago I was so afraid of opening a bottle of wine, I used to pay one of the chefs $1 for every bottle he opened. Today, I have just finished rewriting the Millennium Edition of this book.
By the time I left the Canal House to go to Windows on the World in 1976, I had assembled a wine list of 125 selections. During that time, I had to try a lot of wines. I remember vividly my first glass of fine wine and recall that from that point on, all I wanted to do was learn all I could about wine. Vissza