Dagorn pointed to a table of three men who looked like the cast of Cheers out for a boisterous, free-spending evening. Hoping to improve my self-esteem, he sent me their way. “There’s your first tip,” he predicted. They ordered mineral water. “To expect tips is to leave yourself open to disappointment,” Dagorn said.
By ten p.m., I was hungry and starting to dislike all the privileged people eating the wonderful food denied to me. I had dined, if you could call it that, with the rest of the staff in the in-house cafeteria before starting work. We’d eaten Salisbury steak and gravy, not chef Christian Delouvrier’s medallions of veal with juniper sauce. Out of the kitchen came a fragrant chocolate soufflé; once pierced, it filled the room with the bouquet of dark chocolate. “Not so good for the wine,” Dagorn mumbled. Even worse for my morale, I thought. I cheered up when Dagorn told me that leftovers were served to the staff after the restaurant closed. Since the wine steward is usually finished before the waiters and captains, he gets first crack at the food. I had rack of lamb.
My second night started with the Champagne challenge. I was ter-rified, but the Mumm’s Cordon Rouge opened with an ethereal “poof.” I poured the way I had seen Dagorn do it: I placed the thumb of my right hand in the punt (the indentation in the bottle’s bottom) and cradled the bottle with the fingers of that hand. By pouring this way, a technique that requires the lower-arm strength of a power-lifter and the hand-eye coordination of a fighter pilot, I managed to dribble wine down the side of the host’s glass. (No tip, and none deserved.) Dagorn advised me that in such cases, when sheer ineptitude prevails, the only recourse is a joke. I tried this the next time I crumbled a cork into fine powder. I told the astonished customers that my performance was the theater that went with their pre-theater menu. They chuckled (but did not tip).
F O R K I T O V E R
2 9 3
An Englishman was seated at one of my tables. The English are perhaps the most predictable wine drinkers in the world. “He’ll order the Château Talbot,” whispered a captain. He did. “He’ll say it’s too cold,” whispered Dagorn. He did. After tasting the wine, the Englishman said to me, “This is a fourth growth, isn’t it?” I replied in a deferential tone,
“I believe so, sir.” Actually, I had no idea. I would rather memorize the periodic table of elements than the 1855 Bordeaux classifications. I pressed on, obsequiously adding, “And I believe it deserves a much higher rating.” He replied, “Indeed.”
I was certain my first tip would be forthcoming. It was not. He was probably saving his money to buy a third growth.
A likable fellow from the Southwest started asking so many personal questions I decided to confess that I was a wine writer, not a wine steward. He was amused. A guest at his table, a rude young man of the sort who flourishes when the stock market is going up, decided I should be the beneficiary of his bad manners. He had already whined to the maître d’ that none of the waiters or captains would go to the lobby and make telephone calls to arrange his personal transportation. As I walked around the table pouring wine, he grabbed my taste-vin and yanked hard on it, saying, “What’s this, buddy, an ashtray?” I was reminded of Harrison Ford in Witness, living among the gentle Amish but unable to resist smashing the face of a bully. I pictured a staff of grateful waiters carrying me from the restaurant on their shoulders after I had performed a similar act of retaliation. I did nothing.
“Patience,” said Dagorn, who saw everything, including my finger-ing the knife blade on my corkscrew.
Soon afterward, I got my only tip. A woman ordered a glass of white wine, and she so enjoyed it that her husband asked what it was. I scribbled “Trimbach Pinot Gris” on a slip of paper, and he pressed two one-dollar bills into my hand. I was exceedingly proud. While I am not quite ready to give up my day job as a writer, I have on many occasions been paid far less per word.
GQ, march 1989
G R E A T E X P E C T O R A T I O N S
A comprehensive new wine book, The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine, contains a surprising omission between the entries for spiritueux (French for “spirits”) and spitzen (German for “peak”).
The missing word is spitting (English for “not getting drunk at wine tastings”).
I attribute the exclusion of this topic not to error but to modesty, because the man who recently revised the encyclopedia, Alexis Bespaloff, is without question the greatest wine spitter in America today. Because he is humble by nature, he is loath to agree. “I’m not a spit-meister,” Bespaloff protests. “I’m just a wine taster, and spitting is a method of self-preservation. If you don’t spit, you’ll be pickled before lunchtime.” I am of a different opinion, for I recognize greatness. Bespaloff may not be quite the equal of the venerable John Smithes of Portugal, who is described by Ben Howkins of the port firm of Taylor Fladgate as a man who can “hit the ear of a dog at twenty paces,” but he is a national treasure. Being rated the greatest domestic spitter is nothing to purse one’s lips at.
Spitting is a mandatory activity practiced by oenophiles, yet it is seldom given its due. Christian Moueix, the co-owner of Château Petrus, says, “Sometimes I must tell people tasting my wine that it is all right to spit. They are not comfortable. They think the wine is too good or too expensive.” The word spitting has odious connotations—other than wine tasting, I cannot think of
