How I Got Started

My Mom & Dad went to Italy two years in a row when I was 12 & 13. That led to a bottle of wine on the dinner table every night. In high school, I was blessed with a mythology teacher who dated a friend of mines’ Mom, who was French… and of course could really cook! One night a group of high-schoolers were over at this teacher’s house. His gal friend made a multi-course extravaganza, and the teacher went to his wine-cellar to gather up a wine to go with each course. This was the beginning of our “Wine & Food Society.” Each of five very young adults would con their moms into making a food course. Our host (the mythology teacher) would gather the appropriate viticultural partners for those courses and off we would go. This group met monthly. The following summer, I spent six weeks (thru the same mythology teacher) in France, Italy, and Spain on a trip sponsored by the American Institute of Foreign Study. Without knowing it, I was an in-training sommelier, and getting started as an enthu-siastically contagious communicating wine-know.