A few times a year I get to meet and learn from a true expert about a subject I am less than familiar with.  Yesterday was one of those days and the subject was Mezcal.  I’d had good Mezcal before and been to great restaurants like Frontera Grill in Chicago where Mezcal was a part of an exciting cocktail with that distinctive smokiness that it can bring to a libation.  I knew very little about its production or the reverence that its producers and ardent fans had for the spirit.  Enter Ron Cooper.

One of my tricks to holding on to certain wines long enough to drink them at their peak is having a healthy supply of affordable wines to drink throughout the week and when we have guests over.  These are wines from lesser known appellations or producers or from regions that may not be that well known yet.  These wines drink like wines that cost more and are the perfect buffer between me and a more expensive and harder to replace wine in my cellar that still needs time to age.  The good news for anyone looking to buy some of these “house wines’ is that there are more of them and they are of better quality today then ever before.

Starting a wine collection at the house can be a daunting task, especially if you are just getting into wine.  I can say from my experience that it is much easier for me to buy for my personal cellar than for the restaurants because I know what I like and I don’t like. At the restaurants I try to have something for everyone’s tastes but at my house there are only two customers (my wife and I) that really matter.   So for those of you who have been considering starting your own wine collection these next few blogs should give you a few simple guidelines.

October is a very important month in the wine industry both here in New Orleans and around the globe.  Many wine regions are harvesting grapes or are preparing to begin soon.  Who knows?  2009 could be the third vintage of the millennium!  Locally we are coming out of the dismal summer months in which retailers, restaurants and hotels see business slow down considerably.  The people I buy wine from seem so used to being told “no” all summer that every time I said “yes” they seem surprised.

I apologize for the tardiness of this blog...normally I try to get these hammered out on Monday or Tuesday.  It’s been one of those weeks, but the topic has been bouncing around in my brain all week.  I run restaurants.  The restaurants that I run were designed to do things in an efficient and orderly manner (mostly.)  You’d be surprised how many charity events that most restaurants do every year.  The restaurant community is always giving back and many times it is by providing food for a charity’s off site event.

This pertains to wine only in that wine is usually served at these events and like the food and the service we are providing has been donated by one of the local distributors.  I’ve been doing off sites with restaurants for over 12 years now and I have learned a lot about how to make them successful on our end.  First, your approach must be similar to that of a small military force being dropped behind enemy lines (without the threat of death).

For those of you not familiar with fantasy football I will give you a very brief introduction: It’s Dungeons & Dragons for sports nerds and has had a very dramatic rise in popularity over the last decade.  I’ll admit that NFL football cast a level 5 charm spell over me very early in life and I have been playing fantasy football since my sophomore year of high school  (which was more than a few vintages ago.)  The similarities with wine geekdome are many… lots of hard to pronounce names, numbers (vintages) are of huge importance, and most normal people find in depth conversations about both subjects to be a tad bit boring.

As the end of the month looms, I find myself checking the calendar to find out what day of the week dreaded inventory will fall upon.  Will it interfere with a scheduled day off?  Will the long hours of a busy day at the restaurant only be extended by hours spent counting bottles of wine?  I’ve spent many a New Year’s Day nursing a hangover and counting wine in a quiet restaurant while my fellow coworkers are resting comfortably in their beds.

My Katrina story starts like most you’ll read this week on NewOrleans.com.  I left, it flooded, I lost everything and then I started over.  When I say I, I mean “we” and by “we” I mean my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) and I.  Shannon is as vital to my story as I am...and easier on the eyes. 

First, here is a little background on my life Pre K.  I was a Manager at Herbsaint and heavily involved with the wine list but not in charge of it.  Shannon and I had just finished the renovation on our side of our Mid-City shotgun double.  I had spent the week Herbsaint was closed in July building a deck in our backyard which came out pretty nice.  Things were good.