I’m not a big gin drinker. But my wife Carla likes the occasional Martini. I made one for her the other night using Plymouth 80-proof. Plymouth is also my go-to gin for Negronis with Carpano Antica the vermouth of choice and the required Campari. Negroni aside, Carla finished her Martini at the table just as we started dinner, which was sauteed tilapia filets with lemon. The vino du jour was a recent vintage of Alois Lageder’s Pinot Bianco. Citrusy and mineral-driven, Alto Adige Pinot Bianco is a white wine chameleon that pairs well with just about anything short of red meat. It’s also a quintessential restaurant white because it’s delicious and a good value. More places should pour it by the glass.
Seeing Carla’s Martini glass next to her dinner plate reminded me of one of my road trips for Heitz Cellars, my first job out of the restaurant business. Actually, it’s the first non-restaurant wine job that still gets listed on my CV. My first actual job off the floor was six months spent working as an educator and special accounts person for a now-defunct distributor called Julliard Alpha. JALCO, as it was called, was the third largest distributor in the Bay Area. At the time, JALCO held a competitive advantage with fine wine because it was the Northern California source for Seagram’s Chateaux and Estates, a portfolio of top Classified Growth Bordeaux, Burgundy, and other outstanding producers.
However, like the Far Side cartoon where the nursery is next to Ed’s Dingo Farm, there was trouble a’ brewin’ as soon as I started the job. Even before the end of my first day—which was a sales meeting, I was hearing rumors about the union clashing with the owner’s son, soon to be in charge. The other notable thing about that first day was that it ended with the Jägerettes of Jägermeister fame dancing onstage in skin tight black spandex outfits to deafening disco music in front of a raucous crowd of aging liquor salesmen. At that moment, I realized that maybe the job wasn’t a good career move. But it wouldn’t matter as the gig would be short-lived.
As it turned out, the most important thing about the JALCO gig was the health insurance. I started on April 1st. On June 27th, our son Patrick was born premature at 26 weeks, weighing just one pound-eleven ounces. He would stay in the Children’s Hospital Neonatal ICU unit for almost four months. To say that the insurance was a godsend is the understatement of a lifetime.
Meanwhile, things at JALCO kept getting chunkier with threatened strikes and walkouts by employees and lockouts by the owner’s son, now in charge. Finally, the proverbial other shoe dropped on August 1st with employees showing up to the office in Brisbane, a small hamlet south of the City, only to find the premises locked and bolted with armed security personnel patrolling the outside of the building. The day before, the owner’s son decided to shut the company down in order to break the union. Rumor had it that he would reopen it as a non-union house. But that never materialized. Instead, the JALCO portfolio was chopped up and auctioned off to the highest bidder. I was given two month’s severance, including the priceless insurance plan which I was able to extend through COBRA.
By year’s end I found a new gig working for the Heitz family in Napa Valley, producers of the iconic Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. I was the first dedicated Northern California person the winery ever hired. Over the next two-plus years, I would give them over 120 new accounts, most in the City. After the initial six months, Kathleen Heitz, my boss, started sending me on trips for the winery. The first was a quick trip to LA for a distributor presentation. But soon there were more jaunts to exotic locales like Dallas and Atlanta. There was also a trip to Kansas City. And now I’m finally circling back to the cocktail glass on the dinner table thing.
It was my first time in Kansas City. It being the historic moo-cow capital of the Midwest, I decided to have dinner at a famous steakhouse near the hotel that carried Heitz wines. The concierge made a reservation and I walked the 15 minutes or so to the restaurant. On entering, I immediately pegged the décor as late 19th century upscale brothel: dark paneled walls, red carpeting, lush veloured booths, huge chairs, and the rest. The joint was also filled with a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke, a sign of the times. It was, after all, 1994. A hostess sat me at a deuce near the lounge and handed me an enormous faux-leather bound menu listing dozens of cuts of beef, some priced by the ounce. By comparison, the wine list was a one-page laminated affair with maybe 50 total selections, most red.
My waiter brought the Campari and soda I ordered in short order. After studying the menu, I opted for an eight-ounce strip steak with a baked potato and other sides. Once the waiter left, I sat back with my cocktail and surveyed the crowd. Most were couples in their 40s or older. Practically all had drinks running with scads of Martini glasses on the tables. Less than half the tables had wine. In fact, the four-top next to me comprised two older couples who were busy tucking into enormous steaks. The two men were drinking Martinis. They were also smoking cigars, the kind with the green candela wrappers that stink beyond all reason. Mind you the cigars were going throughout dinner, with the odd puff taken now and again between bites. Both women were drinking black coffee. In seconds, the combination of cigars and black coffee with steak froze my hard drive.
Fortunately, my steak was done to a perfect medium rare. The baked potato was the size of a Kleenex box and filled with an entire stick of butter. The “steamed” broccoli had been shot on site in the kitchen and was now a faded khaki-green. I ordered a glass of Heitz Cabernet so I could justify writing off the meal as a company expense. And dinner was good.
In the years since, I’ve thought about that particular dinner many times. What strikes me is how the best thing that’s happened to restaurants over the last 25 years—here and abroad—was to make them smoke-free. Otherwise, what I observed at the restaurant that night was a holdover going back to the 50s or even earlier; a time when cocktails were de rigueur both before and during dinner. However, since that night in Kansas City, I’ve often wondered if the U.S. would ever develop into a true wine culture like Europe. I didn’t think so back then. With the exception of major metropolitan areas and resort destinations, not so much now. There are always exceptions. As for Martinis with dinner, it was a thing back then and still is. But black coffee with steak? That’s messed up.
