MARIANI’S
Virtual
Gourmet July
11, 2021
NEWSLETTER Founded in 1996 ARCHIVE Cereal Box Designs, 1960s
Cer
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IN THIS ISSUE STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT By John Mariani NEW YORK CORNER HORTUS By John Mariani CAPONE'S GOLD Chapter 15 By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR DO YOU NEED A MASTER SOMMELIER TO BUILD YOUR WINE CELLAR? By John Mariani ❖❖❖ On this week's episode of my WVOX Radio Show "Almost Golden," on Wed. July 14 at 11AM EST,I will be interviewing Jeffrey Sussman, author of several books on the great boxers, incl. Rocky Marciano (right). Go to: WVOX.com. The episode will also be archived at: almostgolden. ❖❖❖ STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT By John Mariani `
Many
years ago, when Stonington was summer’s home to
Wall Streeters and
there was no train to the city, there was an
amazingly fast speedboat that
would take them to New York in little more than
an hour. That service has long
ceased, and, after an era beginning in the 1790s
when Stonington’s wealth was
based on its being a harbor for the seal trade,
the town languished until
revived as a mill town after the Civil War; then
the mills closed. They kill'd a goose, they kill'd a
hen
The town is now a fishing village with a
large Portuguese population and the Portuguese
Holy Ghost Society’s origins date to when
Queen Isabella sold her jewels to
feed the famine-stricken people in the 16th
century. ❖❖❖ NEW YORK
CORNER
HORTUS
271 Fifth Avenue 646-858-3784 By John Mariani
Three years ago when Hortus opened, it
was a very welcome
Asian-fusion restaurant in an area of Manhattan
that sorely needed some
innovative food. Just east of Chelsea and north
of Flatiron, Hortus is best
described as
within the Garment District, where good
restaurants of any kind
have been rarities, and where, after six
o’clock, the streets are pretty much
deserted. Nevertheless, partner and general
manager Suhum Jang (formerly at Per
Se, Daniel and Jungsik) persevered through the
first year of getting traction
and was then hit with the pandemic, though
Hortus was kept open whenever the
Mayor said it was safe to be. Now, on the basis
of a recent visit, things are
all headed in the right direction.
Jang is
everywhere during the evening, and,
although he seems short-staffed, he’s the one to
call for recommendations.
Sadly, although the wine list is adequate, Hortus
lacks a liquor license, but
there is a cocktail called Black Plum that
contains a low-alcohol Korean
beverage called makgeolli. Hortus is open Tues.-Sun. for lunch
and dinner. ❖❖❖
CAPONE’S
GOLD
Al Capone's Palm Beach
Island Residence
Photos of Capone residence permission from
Mario Gomes
© John Mariani, 2015 ❖❖❖ NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
DO YOU NEED A MASTER SOMMELIER TO BUILD YOUR WINE CELLAR? By John Mariani
For most people, especially those
who
live in apartments, a wine stash consists
of a dozen bottles or so in a rack in
the kitchen or dining room. But for those
with lots more space the
possibilities make for absolutely giddy
fantasies. Too often, though, many
people who really love wine do not have
even modest knowledge of how to
assemble a collection of a hundred
bottles. So, wine consultants can tell you
what to buy within your budget, what wines
to avoid and what wines to put down
for a few years. Some can even design an
extensive cellar for you. Photo: Sarah Deragon You’ve had a very checkered
career. Explain how you went from
training as a chef at the CIA to“roaming
the country with [your] knife bag,
bouncing from a Relais & Châteaux dude
ranch in Montana to a hunting camp
in Idaho; board[ing] a charter yacht in
Southeast Alaska and spend[ing] a
pineapple
scented season in Maui.”
There was a
very clear
ceiling. I started out at the top
restaurants in the country, making $7.50 an
hour at one, and working for free (staging)
at The French Laundry, then
deciding to go to the Harvard of cooking
schools, The Culinary Institute of
America in Hyde Park, NY. Once I graduated
culinary school I could no longer
afford to work for low wages while paying my
student loans, and for housing and
living expenses. I loved, and continue to
love, to travel, so taking seasonal
positions was one way to get around paying
for the housing part of it.
You worked as a private chef
for industry giants. What did they
expect of you? Nightly? Weekly? Travel
with them? Feed the kids?
I had some families where I
would live at the Atherton estate for the
weekend, arriving on a Thursday and
preparing until
their arrival on Friday evening, and then
preparing meals and
snacks during their stay, and preparing
meals for them to take home on Sunday
when they departed for their homes in San
Francisco. I had another family that
expected me to travel with them to their
homes in Lake Tahoe and Hawaii, and I
cooked meals for the five children daily.
That family inspired my decision to
get paid to drink for a living.
Drawing by Lauren Rust How did you find the time and
how long did it take to become a
sommelier?
I decided to pursue my
Sommelier certification in 2006. I did a
48-hour seminar at the CIA Greystone
campus with several Master Sommeliers, some
of whom I am still in contact with,
and passed my Sommelier exam on the first
try. I had moved to Napa Valley the
week that I graduated high school to become
a chef, and was always around wine.
I remember driving home from my restaurant
shift in the middle of the night in
November, and the smell of wine fermenting
was literally intoxicating. It took
years to fully understand pairing wine with
food. It’s not part of our culture
the way it is in Europe. Once I made the
decision to segue from the back of the
house to the front of the house, I started
opening restaurants, designing wine
programs, and then one day walked into
K&L Wines, the largest online wine
and spirits retailer in the country at the
time. The restaurant I was working
at was a sinking ship, and K&L made me a
great offer. Describe what Enotrias
software does to service clients.
I have created a database
over the years that allows me to streamline
and catch any errors in an
inventory. It is constantly being updated,
which allows a wine to be catalogued
in a fraction of the time it would take to
do it manually or using other
software. My software also works with other
well-known cellar tracking
software, including Cellartracker and
Vincellar, which makes it that much
easier for my clients to understand the
scope of their collections. You must have some good
stories about marine and aviation
services, including full-suite support for
private jets in your role as
“SkySomm.”
Ah, yes, I’ve had the honor
to train incredible flight attendants for a
private charter company, helping
them to understand how wines change at
altitude, how to prepare and pair meals
to go along with their clients’ needs, and
how to design wine collections for
their in-air service. We focus on curating a
collection of library wine from
top producers that have aged long enough for
the tannins to soften and oak to
integrate for the Cabernets and Chardonnays,
and then bring in classic
varietals from classic regions, Sauvignon
Blanc from Sancerre, Cabernet Franc
from Bourgueil, aged Riesling from the
Mosel, Syrah from Côte Rôtie, and of
course, Bordeaux and Burgundy from top
vintages. And Champagne is always on
hand.
Tell me about being certified
by the California State Bar
Association for your seminar on the
Valuation of Wine Collections.
When I started Enotrias,
one of my first clients was going through a
divorce and had an incredibly
valuable wine collection. While he was
married, they had purchased a barrel of
wine from an auction that had been labeled
specifically for them. It was by far
the largest amount of any one wine in the
collection, but because it had a
private label, it was assigned a zero-dollar
valuation. So even though they had
spent several thousands of dollars on this
lot, the only thing it was worth was
the recycling fee of the glass. I ended up
having to argue the valuation over
the phone to the opposing attorney. I told
my attorneys the story, who are also
my best friends, and they asked me to put
together a presentation for the Napa
Bar Association on The Valuation and
Appraisal of Wine Collections. I was then
invited to give the same presentation for
the Sonoma Bar and several others
after that, and in the process had my
presentation certified through the
California State Bar Association. Because of
Covid, I was able to get my
presentation certified in ten states and
teach it remotely. There is no other
seminar in the country that covers this
topic as it pertains to Family Law, and
Trusts and Estates, and I am the only
sommelier with extensive credentials in
these areas. In 2021, I will be launching a
cross-country tour giving the
presentation in-person at country clubs in
the ten states in which the
presentation has been approved. Tell me some stories about
customizing wine cellars. Over
the years I have
perfected the organization of wine
collections. I’ve been referred to as the
“Mari Kondo of wine cellars.” I work
predominantly with Artistic Wine Cellars and Thomas
Warner Wine Cellars (right) on
the West Coast to help design cellars for my
clients. We focus on the existing collection
as a whole, and then take into
consideration growth and taste changes. Many
of my clients start out loving and
collecting California Cabs and then
transition into collecting and drinking
Pinot Noir. I also hone in on whether this
is a collection focused on investing
or for personal enjoyment. Allocating room
for OWCs (Original Wooden Containers),
is a huge one for investment collections.
Carving out space for birth year
wines is another consideration I take into
account, as well as high value wines
like First Growths and DRC [Domaine de la
Romanée-Conti] that need to be tucked
away in case someone decides they are
thirsty and don’t know what to grab.
Some hints about how to
drink wine like a connoisseur on a student
budget?
Getting to know your local retailer is
paramount. They will get to know your tastes, and
your budget. And more often
than not, wine professionals are drinking the
inexpensive food-friendly imports
on a regular basis, versus the baller selections,
so those are often our
go-tos. If you can start a relationship with your
wine retailer, there is a
great chance that they know the winemaker, know
how the grapes are grown, and
the wine is made, which could not be more
important once you start to realize
the number of ways wines can be manipulated before
they hit the shelf. What’s the difference between a connoisseur and a snob? Does money buy taste?
There
is so much ego in wine. I’ve led classes
for tech companies and some of the executives won’t
stop talking about their
last trip to Burgundy long enough to hear me speak,
until I remind them that
they have paid me (handsomely) to be the one talking
about wine.
It takes no substance to be a
wine snob. Spend a lot of
money on a bottle, recite tasting notes and stick
with only a handful of
producers from a handful of regions. I’ve served
many people that were just
concerned about status but didn’t understand the
wines, didn’t appreciate
everything that had gone into the
several-thousand-dollar bottle of wine that
they were drinking at dinner. It is so easy to
spend money on wine, I get to do
it for a living, but for me, I want my clients to
have a level of respect and
understanding for the wines, an appreciation for
the final product, a sense of
place when it comes to the region from which they
come.
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Sponsored by ❖❖❖
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FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
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Gourmet is linked to four excellent
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"I’ve designed this site is for people who take
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Eating Las
Vegas JOHN CURTAS has been covering
the Las Vegas food and restaurant scene
since 1995. He is the co-author of EATING LAS
VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants (as
well as the author of the Eating Las
Vegas web site: www.eatinglasvegas.
He can also be seen every Friday morning as
the “resident foodie” for Wake Up With the
Wagners on KSNV TV (NBC) Channel 3 in
Las Vegas.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani,
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