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I've cut back on my annoyingly long fucking posts, but here's one to fill the gap. Not even sure how to classify it. Cal Fussman is a writer, and arguably one of the best interviewers out there. I heard a quote today: "Read more. It allows you to borrow someone else’s brain." So in that spirit...
In one interview that Cal gave he told a story about how he was given a chance to interview Mikhail Gorbechev. Right before the interview his time was cut from 30 min to 5 min, which totally defeated the point of the article he was going to write. He went in, and with one question had Gorbachev tell a 10 minute story about him and his father and an ice cream cone right before WWII that led to a 30 minute conversation. Twice Gorbachev's aides interrupted and tried to hurry him along to catch a flight and he said, "No, I want to talk to this man" so to say he knows how to get to the heart of something is an understatement. Anyway, this one took him 10 years to write.
In one interview that Cal gave he told a story about how he was given a chance to interview Mikhail Gorbechev. Right before the interview his time was cut from 30 min to 5 min, which totally defeated the point of the article he was going to write. He went in, and with one question had Gorbachev tell a 10 minute story about him and his father and an ice cream cone right before WWII that led to a 30 minute conversation. Twice Gorbachev's aides interrupted and tried to hurry him along to catch a flight and he said, "No, I want to talk to this man" so to say he knows how to get to the heart of something is an understatement. Anyway, this one took him 10 years to write.
Drinking at 1,300 Ft: A 9/11 Story About Wine and Wisdom
By Cal Fussman
SEP 8, 2011
This story needed an ending before it could find its first sentence. So please forgive me for delivering it ten years overdue.
Maybe it shouldn't have been so hard to write. Looking back, it had everything: merriment, adventure, and a journey to the top of the world. It contained a crash into ground zero on one of the darkest days in America's history and a search for fulfillment afterward. Yet for ten years, the words were trapped inside me and I couldn't get them out.
We all know the feeling of wanting to do something so well and so badly that we try too hard and can't do it at all. In the end, though, there's no trick to being yourself. So I'm simply going to tell this story the way it happened.
It started fourteen years ago, when a new editor was hired to guide Esquire. The magazine was in distress. You might find only a dozen pages of advertising in an issue, and most of them were pitching hair-replacement schemes and promises to resurrect lost sex drive. The new editor called upon a group of writers whom he'd assembled over the years to join him.
He was on a mission to resurrect a great American magazine, and he wanted good ideas. One of mine was to become the Perfect Man. The concept was to identify the subjects every man should know, and then have experts in each field show me how to master them. I was certainly up for the task. The only reason I call myself the Perfect Man, I used to joke, is that I have so many flaws to correct.
The idea turned into a monthly column, and what a blast it was. The legendary Jack LaLanne showed me how to get in shape and eat right. I learned how to project my voice from boxing announcer Michael Buffer; how to smoke ribs at the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue; how to walk with grace from a Victoria's Secret model; how to prolong my orgasms from specialists in tantric sex. (My wife is eternally grateful.) The last area I poked my nose into was wine.
Wine makes a lot of men uncomfortable. It's not as if sweat would bubble above my upper lip every time a waiter handed me a wine list. But I always felt uncertain and small in those moments, especially if I was taking out a woman or hosting a group. It was much easier to crack open a beer and mock snooty wine drinkers for their full-bodied aromatic claptrap than it was to admit I didn't have a clue. But in wine, you pay for your ignorance. A haughty waiter can roll his eyes and make you feel smaller than a raisin. A fast-talking one can chump you into ordering a bottle that will launch the check into the stratosphere.
Anyway, the editor generously sent me off to wine school to finalize my education in self-improvement. In return, I agreed to showcase what I learned by becoming the guy who recommends wine to diners at an upscale restaurant. The sommelier. Then I'd write a story that would show how, with a little effort, any man could feel comfortable around wine.
The Windows on the World Wine School, the best in the city, was down the corridor from the famous restaurant by that name, at the top of the World Trade Center. The elevator took fifty-eight seconds to reach the 107th floor, and you could always tell who was taking the ride for the first time. Halfway up, everybody's stomach did the same sudden somersault, and the rookies would grasp in panic for support ... and then return the smiles of the vets remembering their own first trip.
The classroom was a ballroom filled with tables topped with columns of empty wineglasses. Everyone who entered wandered first to the long stretch of floor-to-ceiling windows. On a sunny day or moonlit night, the view of lower Manhattan from Windows on the World was like the first time you heard Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York." It was amusing to look down at helicopters. Just thinking about the acrobat who once walked a three-quarter-inch steel cable between the tops of the Twin Towers made you wonder what wasn't possible. You had to hand it to the architect who envisioned that millions of people would travel millions of miles to dine some 1,300 feet above sea level. For a time, no restaurant in the United States took in more money, and no restaurant on the planet sold more wine.
The guy who ran the wine school was, and still is, sort of a cross between a stand-up comic and Monty Hall from Let's Make a Deal. His name is Kevin Zraly. I could never describe all that Zraly passed on during this eight-week course in 1999. Time and a storm has eroded most of the memories. But a writer who prided himself on never keeping a diary once told me that "the good shit sticks." Nine years later, I'm left with what stuck.
So here's a story that gets to Zraly's core: As a young man, Kevin was interviewed by the legendary restaurateur Joe Baum for the position of cellar master at Windows. Baum's first question was, "So, Kevin, what can you tell me about wine?"
Now, that may appear to be a casual way to start an interview, but it's a terrifying question for an applicant who's depending on the answer to get a job. The question's too big. What possible answer is there?
"I like to drink it," Zraly replied.
He knew how to shrink the complex to the simple — a good quality to have if you're going to introduce people to wine. For example, he'd point to the three major varieties of white wine — Riesling, sauvignon blanc, and chardonnay — and ask you to visualize them as skim milk, whole milk, and cream. Before you'd even tasted the wines, you had an idea of where they stood from light to heavy. Then he did the same for reds. Pinot noir: skim milk. Merlot: whole milk. Cabernet sauvignon: cream. With that information alone, you could go into a restaurant, order a thick sirloin, and know that it was wiser to muscle up to the steak with a hearty cabernet than a willowy Riesling.
Classes passed quickly, and the wines that Zraly exposed us to began to work their magic. They encouraged us to go out and seek, to lose ourselves in a world that no one person could ever fully explore.
The first day I got lost was a memorable one. April 20, 1999. When people who loved wine heard that I was attempting to become a sommelier, they immediately took me in as a long-lost brother. I had been invited to a wine-tasting lunch at the great restaurant Daniel, where eleven wines from Chateau Lagrange, in the French region of Bordeaux, were to be poured. One of the first things you need to know in order to function at a tasting is how to roll the wine around your mouth, spit it into a bucket, and define the flavors left behind. This allows you to discern the different styles and tastes without getting drunk. Unfortunately, novice that I was, I hadn't quite figured out how to spit and taste by the time of that lunch. So I drank all eleven glasses. Then, in a warm fog, I walked downtown to class at Windows on the World, where another dozen wines were poured, then drifted off to dinner with a winemaker, during which several more bottles were opened. It was like the best day of school you could imagine, when you also discover you have an enormous family that you never knew about. The Brotherhood of the Grape, someone called it.
I learned, I laughed, I embraced. It was one of those days that end with you peeling off your clothes, lying down, and drifting off to sleep happy to be alive. And I did just that, completely oblivious to the fact that early that same day, twelve students and a teacher were gunned down at Columbine High School.
There's only one way to know which bottle of wine to order at a restaurant or buy for a friend: taste it.
Problem is, how do you taste them all? Something like sixty-five hundred French wines alone can be purchased in the United States. Tens of thousands of labels are imported from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Austria, New Zealand, South Africa, Greece, Argentina, and New Zealand. Wine is produced in all fifty states.
Where would you start? There are good answers to this question. I was most impressed with the shortest: Vinexpo.
Every other year in Bordeaux, winemakers from around the world pour their juice for more than fifty thousand buyers to sample. By brazenly promising to taste nearly every wine on the planet over a few short days, I wrangled some expense money from the editor and jetted off.
My bravado evaporated the moment I stepped into the convention center and felt the bottom of my jaw dangling beneath my balls. I faced a hall that was — no exaggeration — a mile long and two football fields wide. I'm usually the type of guy who never says no unless you ask me if I've had enough. But this ... was almost too much.
By Cal Fussman
SEP 8, 2011
This story needed an ending before it could find its first sentence. So please forgive me for delivering it ten years overdue.
Maybe it shouldn't have been so hard to write. Looking back, it had everything: merriment, adventure, and a journey to the top of the world. It contained a crash into ground zero on one of the darkest days in America's history and a search for fulfillment afterward. Yet for ten years, the words were trapped inside me and I couldn't get them out.
We all know the feeling of wanting to do something so well and so badly that we try too hard and can't do it at all. In the end, though, there's no trick to being yourself. So I'm simply going to tell this story the way it happened.
It started fourteen years ago, when a new editor was hired to guide Esquire. The magazine was in distress. You might find only a dozen pages of advertising in an issue, and most of them were pitching hair-replacement schemes and promises to resurrect lost sex drive. The new editor called upon a group of writers whom he'd assembled over the years to join him.
He was on a mission to resurrect a great American magazine, and he wanted good ideas. One of mine was to become the Perfect Man. The concept was to identify the subjects every man should know, and then have experts in each field show me how to master them. I was certainly up for the task. The only reason I call myself the Perfect Man, I used to joke, is that I have so many flaws to correct.
The idea turned into a monthly column, and what a blast it was. The legendary Jack LaLanne showed me how to get in shape and eat right. I learned how to project my voice from boxing announcer Michael Buffer; how to smoke ribs at the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue; how to walk with grace from a Victoria's Secret model; how to prolong my orgasms from specialists in tantric sex. (My wife is eternally grateful.) The last area I poked my nose into was wine.
Wine makes a lot of men uncomfortable. It's not as if sweat would bubble above my upper lip every time a waiter handed me a wine list. But I always felt uncertain and small in those moments, especially if I was taking out a woman or hosting a group. It was much easier to crack open a beer and mock snooty wine drinkers for their full-bodied aromatic claptrap than it was to admit I didn't have a clue. But in wine, you pay for your ignorance. A haughty waiter can roll his eyes and make you feel smaller than a raisin. A fast-talking one can chump you into ordering a bottle that will launch the check into the stratosphere.
Anyway, the editor generously sent me off to wine school to finalize my education in self-improvement. In return, I agreed to showcase what I learned by becoming the guy who recommends wine to diners at an upscale restaurant. The sommelier. Then I'd write a story that would show how, with a little effort, any man could feel comfortable around wine.
The Windows on the World Wine School, the best in the city, was down the corridor from the famous restaurant by that name, at the top of the World Trade Center. The elevator took fifty-eight seconds to reach the 107th floor, and you could always tell who was taking the ride for the first time. Halfway up, everybody's stomach did the same sudden somersault, and the rookies would grasp in panic for support ... and then return the smiles of the vets remembering their own first trip.
The classroom was a ballroom filled with tables topped with columns of empty wineglasses. Everyone who entered wandered first to the long stretch of floor-to-ceiling windows. On a sunny day or moonlit night, the view of lower Manhattan from Windows on the World was like the first time you heard Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York." It was amusing to look down at helicopters. Just thinking about the acrobat who once walked a three-quarter-inch steel cable between the tops of the Twin Towers made you wonder what wasn't possible. You had to hand it to the architect who envisioned that millions of people would travel millions of miles to dine some 1,300 feet above sea level. For a time, no restaurant in the United States took in more money, and no restaurant on the planet sold more wine.
The guy who ran the wine school was, and still is, sort of a cross between a stand-up comic and Monty Hall from Let's Make a Deal. His name is Kevin Zraly. I could never describe all that Zraly passed on during this eight-week course in 1999. Time and a storm has eroded most of the memories. But a writer who prided himself on never keeping a diary once told me that "the good shit sticks." Nine years later, I'm left with what stuck.
So here's a story that gets to Zraly's core: As a young man, Kevin was interviewed by the legendary restaurateur Joe Baum for the position of cellar master at Windows. Baum's first question was, "So, Kevin, what can you tell me about wine?"
Now, that may appear to be a casual way to start an interview, but it's a terrifying question for an applicant who's depending on the answer to get a job. The question's too big. What possible answer is there?
"I like to drink it," Zraly replied.
He knew how to shrink the complex to the simple — a good quality to have if you're going to introduce people to wine. For example, he'd point to the three major varieties of white wine — Riesling, sauvignon blanc, and chardonnay — and ask you to visualize them as skim milk, whole milk, and cream. Before you'd even tasted the wines, you had an idea of where they stood from light to heavy. Then he did the same for reds. Pinot noir: skim milk. Merlot: whole milk. Cabernet sauvignon: cream. With that information alone, you could go into a restaurant, order a thick sirloin, and know that it was wiser to muscle up to the steak with a hearty cabernet than a willowy Riesling.
Classes passed quickly, and the wines that Zraly exposed us to began to work their magic. They encouraged us to go out and seek, to lose ourselves in a world that no one person could ever fully explore.
The first day I got lost was a memorable one. April 20, 1999. When people who loved wine heard that I was attempting to become a sommelier, they immediately took me in as a long-lost brother. I had been invited to a wine-tasting lunch at the great restaurant Daniel, where eleven wines from Chateau Lagrange, in the French region of Bordeaux, were to be poured. One of the first things you need to know in order to function at a tasting is how to roll the wine around your mouth, spit it into a bucket, and define the flavors left behind. This allows you to discern the different styles and tastes without getting drunk. Unfortunately, novice that I was, I hadn't quite figured out how to spit and taste by the time of that lunch. So I drank all eleven glasses. Then, in a warm fog, I walked downtown to class at Windows on the World, where another dozen wines were poured, then drifted off to dinner with a winemaker, during which several more bottles were opened. It was like the best day of school you could imagine, when you also discover you have an enormous family that you never knew about. The Brotherhood of the Grape, someone called it.
I learned, I laughed, I embraced. It was one of those days that end with you peeling off your clothes, lying down, and drifting off to sleep happy to be alive. And I did just that, completely oblivious to the fact that early that same day, twelve students and a teacher were gunned down at Columbine High School.
There's only one way to know which bottle of wine to order at a restaurant or buy for a friend: taste it.
Problem is, how do you taste them all? Something like sixty-five hundred French wines alone can be purchased in the United States. Tens of thousands of labels are imported from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Austria, New Zealand, South Africa, Greece, Argentina, and New Zealand. Wine is produced in all fifty states.
Where would you start? There are good answers to this question. I was most impressed with the shortest: Vinexpo.
Every other year in Bordeaux, winemakers from around the world pour their juice for more than fifty thousand buyers to sample. By brazenly promising to taste nearly every wine on the planet over a few short days, I wrangled some expense money from the editor and jetted off.
My bravado evaporated the moment I stepped into the convention center and felt the bottom of my jaw dangling beneath my balls. I faced a hall that was — no exaggeration — a mile long and two football fields wide. I'm usually the type of guy who never says no unless you ask me if I've had enough. But this ... was almost too much.
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