When I was growing up, Easter was a distant second banana to Christmas. No surprise, as Christmas involved a plethora of seasonal decorations with stockings not hung by the fire and a tree resplendent with ornaments and presents underneath. Easter was meager by comparison, with a few baskets filled with hard boiled eggs, colored with industrial dyes, and some foil-wrapped candy. Hopefully one’s Easter basket stash included a Cadbury chocolate bunny. If it did, you immediately unwrapped it and bit the head off. That was the protocol.
But there was one particular Easter Sunday when I tasted wine for the first time. My family had been invited to the Carlson’s for a holiday brunch. The Carlson’s lived down the street, literally a half-dozen houses away. Jake and Sparky Carlson were good friends of my parents. Like us, the Carlson tribe, which included 11 kids ( 10 of whom were girls), went to our church and school. One of their kids was in my class that year.
After hoovering the canned ham, pineapple slices, and potato salad served up on a festive pastel paper plate, I spotted Sparky refilling her plastic cup from a box of white wine. I was curious and waited until no one was looking before pouring a splash into a stray unused coffee cup. Then I tried it. It was utter crap; the most bracing, battery acid-like stuff I’d ever tasted. “Who in their right mind would drink this, I thought?” No doubt the alcohol part of the equation was completely unknown to me at the time.
All of which is to say that I didn’t grow up with wine. My parents drank nothing but bourbon and coke. Wine wouldn’t have worked because much stronger water was needed to raise six kids in a chaotic household. But I would become well-acquainted with wine later.
“Later” occurred in grad school. By then, Carla and I had moved to Ann Arbor so I could get a MM in classical trumpet and study with Armando Ghitalla, former principal of the Boston Symphony and one the 20th century’s greatest classical trumpet players.
Within the first few weeks, Carla also got a bartending job at a restaurant called the Earle. This was important for two reasons: first, it meant that for the next two years I would drink for free. Second, the restaurant’s wine list was off the charts, something that would loom large in my future.
At the time, Ann Arbor was unique in the American wine scene in that it was close enough to the East Coast to have access to all the major European bottlings. But sommelier Steve Goldberg had also been to California at least once, and was already championing producers in Napa, Sonoma, and the Santa Cruz Mountains. In short, it was a great list with over 500 wines and two-dozen wines by the glass. So Carla had to quickly learn about wine. And as she did, so did I.
At some point that first October, Carla was invited to a trade tasting of French and Italian wines. I tagged along and stalked Steve Goldberg and his partner Dennis Webster as they went from table to table. I was close enough to hear them talking about a particular red wine, saying things like “mushroom,” “garrigue,” and “lavender.” After they moved on, I rushed up to the table for a taste of the same wine. I put my nose in the glass expecting to find the mushrooms, garrigue (whatever the hell that was), and lavender. But try as I might, the wine smelled like … red wine. I shook my head thinking they were either full of it, or that I was just inept at tasting wine.
But there was hope in the form of the Ghitalla’s. Mundy, as we called him, and his wife Pauline were incredibly generous in feeding the droves of trumpet students who regularly showed up at their house around 5:00 in the afternoon. Dinner at the Ghitalla’s always began with Mundy shoving a large tumbler filled with Johnny Walker Red and ice into your hand. Friends, this is where I learned to drink Scotch. But Mundy was also an outstanding cook in his own right, as well as a huge wine fan. So there was always copious quantities of wine with dinner. Mind you it wasn’t great wine, but it didn’t have to be.
During the second year of school, Carla and I decided not to make the thousand mile trip home to New Mexico for the holidays and stayed in town. Thankfully, the Ghitalla’s took pity on us and invited us to Christmas dinner at their house. The other guests that night included H. Robert Reynolds, director of bands at the music school, and his wife.
Some weeks before, good friend Bob Reyen, who would go on to be my daughter Maria’s godfather—and who literally just officiated at her wedding last month, had given Carla and me a bottle of ’76 Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet. I’d never heard of the winery much less tasted the wine, but he assured me that it was outstanding. The bottle became our donation to Christmas dinner.
After the soup course was cleared, Mundy and Pauline disappeared into the kitchen to carve the roast beast. Carla and I were left to make small talk with H. Bob (as he was called) and his wife. I also opted to open and pour the bottle of Silver Oak.
What happened next is not easy to describe. After serving the wine, I sat down and picked up my glass. Reynolds, who had just been extolling the virtues of the bottles of ’61 Bordeaux in his collection (totally meaningless to me at the time), smelled the Cabernet in his glass and then immediately said a quiet but emphatic, “Wow!” At the same time, Carla said that the room smelled like flowers. I quickly put my nose in the glass only to be assaulted by a tsunami of blackberry jam and spice box. I had never experienced anything remotely like it before with any wine. It was the very first time a wine didn’t smell just like wine, it smelled like something—something I recognized.
In that moment, everything changed and wine would never be the same. I would never be the same. The bright lights shined and the angels sang—the whole enchilada. I finally got it. I finally knew what everyone was talking about. In short, I had my first wine epiphany. From then on, whenever I put my nose in a glass, wine would for evermore smell like “things” instead of just wine.
There have been many Christmas bottles since that cold wintry night in Ann Arbor, but none more memorable—and for many reasons. Sadly, Mundy and Pauline are no longer with us. But the memories of that night including the company, the wonderful dinner, and the superb bottle of wine will always remain.
Happy holidays!
