The Tasting Room Guy

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Girlfight
by Robert Devere

The tasting room was nearly empty while the large assembled crowd danced to a popular local band in the middle of their second set. The only other person in the Tasting Room besides my partner-in-pouring Kate and me was a slightly stocky eleven year old girl. The girl was sitting alone in a booth; every now and then she arose to grab some tasty Goldfish crackers from the tasting bar, leaving a trail of crumbs back to her table. I noticed she was softly crying.

I walked over to her booth.

“Hi, what’s your name,” I asked her.

“Jazzy,” she sobbed. “Short for Jasmine.”

“Are you okay, Jazzy? Where are your parents? Kids are not allowed to run around here without their parents,” I mildly scolded her.

“My dad yelled at me.”

“Oh, no! What happened?”

“I accidentally punched a kid in the face.”

I looked over to Kate at the bar. She was suppressing a smile.

“We’ve all been there, Jazzy,” she said.

“Hon, you just take all the time you need,” I told her.

A clamor from the sales room interrupted us. I spotted Raul through the hallway trying to calm things down. Raul, a former Marine on register two today, was gesturing for quiet to the mob yelling something about a fight on the patio.

“Okay, I’ll get some security down there,” he said as he tried to get the crowd to move away from the end of the counter.

“It’s a girlfight!” someone shouted. Raul catapulted over the counter and ran to the sound of the fight.

There he found two women, one tall, thin and muscular, the other short and a hundred pounds overweight. They each had a handful of each other’s hair, punching away with their free hands. Apparently the short round one found the rhythmic thump of the woofers irresistible and was performing an erotic (in her mind) grind upon one of the speakers. The Sound Equipment Defender was a friend of the band who was disgusted by the display.

Raul separated them at arm’s length, yelling, “Enough!” loud enough to be heard at the Tasting Bar. Things calmed down for a second; then the Dancer reached in front of herself, pulled off her tube top, and started punching again. Raul blanched as he was being pummeled by the twin attack of her fists and, well, the twins. Soon the Dancer’s husband showed up and, with the help of Raul and the Woofer Defender, subdued the feisty fighter.

Raul said he has never hit a woman, but came really close during that skirmish. He headed to the Tasting Bar, where, lacking whiskey, I gave him a glass of Chambourcin to steady him. “It wasn’t the punches that got me,” Raul said, and indeed as a hand-to-hand combat expert he blocked every blow. “It was just the sight of those…” He trailed off as he shook his head.

I assured him that workers’ compensation would not cover permanent psychological damage.

Raul added that someone mentioned the Dancer was from Lonedell, and claimed to be a cop. Lonedell makes St. Clair seem like an OC zip code.

The young girl in the booth then came forward for some more Goldfish. Kate, tired of grubby little fingers digging into the bowl, gave her a cupful.

“Here, Jazzy,” Kate said, “These are for you.”

Jazzy opened a fist and a shiny quarter landed on the bar.

“And this is for you,” she told Kate.

As Jazzy took her seat, Kate flipped the quarter to Raul.

“Here, Raul, you earned it.”

##

"The meat is more sweet when flattened on the street."

--Chester McBadbat of The Fairly Oddparents

By Robert Devere, April 30, 2009

Tossing and turning in my restless sleep, I put out my hand and felt the reassuring presence of my loyal canine Narc. I scratched him behind the ears; he always did like that. But Narc slept downstairs…and he went to doggie heaven twenty years ago. Slowly I awakened to find that I was indeed scratching a furry noggin behind the ears. I turned on the light to discover the freshly severed head of a raccoon in my bed. Apparently the St. Clair Mafia had paid me a visit during the night. They left me just the head because they no doubt had cooked and eaten the rest of the beast.

There have been a disturbing number of recent articles on the internet about the rising popularity of raccoon “It’s what’s for dinner” meat. Maybe the economy is pricing beef out of many food budgets. Maybe Redneck Chic is coming into vogue. Or maybe it’s because “the treadmarks hold the gravy real good,” as they say in St. Clair.

The first time I encountered the concept of eating raccoon was at the commercial desk at my local home improvement superstore. One of the guys there was talking about how he stayed up to ambush a pack of raccoons who were raiding his trashcans.

“Yep, so here they come, around three in the morning, so I blasted them. Nailed four of ‘em, and the other two never came back.”

Now there is nothing better than fitting in with the guys who hang out at the commercial desk at the home improvement mega store, so I chimed in, “Too bad you can’t eat them.”

Eyeballs rolled at me as the marksman declared, “The hell you cain’t!” I learned that first the carcass is soaked in brine overnight, then boiled for a couple of hours, then spiced up with garlic, onions, and whatever else you have on hand, slathered with barbeque sauce, and slow roasted for an undetermined number of hours, the object being to make it taste like anything other than raccoon. Then you shoot it a couple more times, just to be sure.

To be a purveyor of raccoon carcasses means knowing that legally one paw has to be left attached to the critter. This is so the buyer knows that he is not purchasing the ill-tempered Pug or Tabby next door. I hear there are some areas in Los Angeles where they leave the hoof attached to rump roasts so that horsemeat is not foisted upon an unsuspecting street market.

I asked around a bit to see if anyone around here had ever eaten raccoon. A well-known chef in the St. Louis area said he had never cooked up varmints, but was skilled in preparing game. The gal who cuts my hair said they were so poor growing up that raccoon was no stranger to their table. She said the meat was dark and greasy. My brother-in-law said he has never had it, but I think he was lying.

Pairing wine with something I haven’t tried can be a tricky business, but I will go out on a limb here and go with something red in a screw top, and rhymes with Light Rain.

Raccoon is described as the other dark meat. I still haven’t figured out what the first dark meat is. I was going to pair a rustic Norton with it, but if I am going to spring for a nice bottle of Norton, then I am going to spring for a nice steak too.

Without the attached hoof, please.

Waiter, What Is This Musca Domestica Doing In My Soup?
By Robert Devere
March 7, 2009

A housefly has come out of hiding and is buzzing around in the midst of winter. Old and slow, he is like a Japanese soldier after WWII, for years hiding out in caves on a Pacific island outpost, waiting for the enemy to get close enough to attack. The fly buzzes my head on several fly-bys. Then in a desperate final attack, the fly dives right at my face. I dodge the kamikaze assault, so the he picks out a secondary target: my wine glass, upon which the fly scores a direct hit. I wince; the little terrorist is flopping about in the glass, which has a generous serving of the Governor’s Cup Cynthiana. I capture the soggy beast, and hold him up between my finger and thumb for the passing of judgment.

He was out of uniform, so I could have him shot as a spy. I could use harsh interrogation techniques to make him talk, tell me where his friends are hiding; I should send him to Guantanamo and have him wine boarded. I could release him to wild, where the freezing nighttime temperature would get him. And then there is always summary execution.

Then the thought came to me that I should devour the marinated mischief maker. The housefly certainly is low enough on the food chain to be a snack of many a predator. But the critter also carries scores of nasty pathogens. I checked to see if there are wine pairings with bugs, and it turns out that The Wine Spectator has already covered that subject. It seems that some people are willing to spend big bucks to eat things I normally would step on. I’ve been told that the average person while sleeping swallows eleven spiders a year. Perhaps I could assume I swallowed a spider last night, and that would balance out the eating of a fly.
“Help me! Help me!”

I could swear I heard the little fellow imploring me not to crush him. So I afforded him the same courtesy that I would want should the Earth ever be invaded by giant flies. I released him to the great outdoors. With a flick of the finger he was on his way…straight down to the lawn. Probably still drunk.

What should I do with the contaminated wine? This was an expensive bottle of great wine. I could rationalize drinking it. The alcohol killed all the germs, that’s the ticket. Would I be questioning whether to drink it or not if this was a glass of Oak Leaf Cabernet Sauvignon? Just $2.97 a bottle exclusively at Walmart (official Devere rating: Not Horrible). I could proclaim the Five Second Rule to be in effect, after all I did with haste snatch the usurper from the valuable libation. I also considered, briefly, leaving it for my wife, score some Oh Honey points. “Look Hon, I saved you the last glass of the Governor’s Cup Cynthiana.” But she reads this column, so that was out. Of course, my brother-in-law would have downed it, fly and all.

So I took the tainted wine to the backyard, close to where I liberated the fly, and I dumped it in the grass, saying “And one for my homies.”

That night I had a dream that the fly had found its way back to the Mother Ship orbiting Earth. “Spare the one they call Devere,” he told the giant flies.

In my morning coffee, I found a ladybug flailing about in my cup. I packed up my computer and headed for the coffee shop, where they put lids on cups.

A Winter’s Day in the Tasting Room
 by Robert Devere
February 21, 2009

The parking lot at the winery was filling up with snow faster than Rick, the owner’s son, could clear it when I arrived to work on a wintry Saturday morning. The snow was predicted to miss us entirely, yet here we were, six inches already and the radar showing blue for hours more.
 
“It will be a slow day today,” I yelled to Rick, but I knew that we would have a few courageous drivers who would find their way to the winery.
 
After checking the bottles in the tasting fridge, I mulled some wine, poured it into the air-pumper, and headed out to the log pile to stock up on firewood for the day. It’s my task to keep the fireplace stoked on these cold days, and thanks to my childhood in Chicago I had a lot of experience. My father was a sales rep at Brunswick, and he had access to a seemingly endless supply of broken bowling pins. It was my job to stack them up against the garage and, when so ordered, brush off the snow and ice and stack them in the fireplace. Dad set the pins afire, the flaming plastic coating dripping to the floor of the firepit to the fascination of the youngsters. I thought this was normal; the neighbors I’m sure thought we were weird.
 
“Hey Robert, stop reminiscing about your dysfunctional childhood, and unlock the doors for the customers,” my coworker Marie shouted from the sales room. I don’t know how she does that. I opened the doors to an older couple arriving at opening time.
 
“Welcome, and thanks for braving the snow to make it here today.”
 
They said they followed a snow plow for twenty miles to get here. They already knew what they wanted, so they made their purchase and met me in the tasting room, which has seating for fifty.
 
“You know the snow was predicted to miss this area,” I remarked as I poked the fire. “If I had a coin, I could predict the weather too.”
 
The couple froze for a second as they shared a look. Then the husband stood up and, with that barely perceptible northern mid-Missouri accent that only other Missourians can detect, said, “Well I am a retired meteorologist, and you wouldn’t believe how tough it is to predict localized snowfall totals.”
 
Open mouth, insert foot. I need to figure out what wine goes with foot. In the meantime I was treated to a twenty minute college-level dissertation on the difficulties of predicting localized snowfall. Somehow I managed to poke the fire the entire time while hoping another customer soon came in. I should watch out for what I wish.
 
A group of four rescued me from the BS in Meteorology, three Americans and an Eastern European, judging by his thick accent.
 
“So you all are from St. Louis?” The three nodded, so I addressed the other, “Except for you, sir, where are you from?”
 
“Haha, you guess where.”
 
Oh, great. Okay, we have a sizeable local population of immigrant Romanians in the area who help out at harvest time. He could be Hungarian. I go with my first guess.
 
“Romania.”
 
“Good guess, but no. I am from Bulgaria. You guess Romania in football season, I beat you up.” He roared laughing.
 
Ah, Bulgarian humor.
 
A couple from Illinois joined the tasting, and I walked the entire bunch through the wine list. We finally made it to the end of the list, and it was time to break out the mulled wine.
 
“Here is some semi-sweet red wine which I have warmed up with mulling spices. It makes the whole house smell good, and makes the neighbors jealous.”
 
Everyone made the yummy sound at the spicy aroma.
 
“I make mulled wine with this bottle of red, half a bottle of water, a cup of brown sugar, and this mulling spice bag, which we conveniently have available for purchase. I bring it up to a warm state, but not even a simmer, because at about one hundred eighty degrees, the alcohol goes bye-bye.”
 
The man from Illinois says, “One hundred seventy three degrees. Ethanol boils at one seventy three on the Fahrenheit scale.”
 
Everyone looks at him.
 
“I’m a chemist.” Always nice to get some technical assistance with the presentation. Now I have to deal with a BS in Chemistry.
 
“Now the tag instructions say to leave the spice bag in the wine for at least an hour, the longer the better,” I explained. “To get this taste you have in your glass, I steep the spices for five or six minutes after it comes up to the warm temperature,” I glanced at the chemist, “at some point under one hundred seventy three degrees. That’s when I take it off the heat and set the timer. If you left it in for an hour, the wine would be embalmed.”
 
“We just came from a funeral,” said the chemist.
 
I caught myself from saying, “Oh, then you know what I am talking about,” and quickly continued with, “You would have to toss the spice bag after that, and probably the wine too as it would be overspiced, but we use our spice bags five or six times. We keep ours in the fridge here because we use it every day, but for home use I keep mine in the freezer.”
 
The tasters finished up, tipped generously, made their purchases in the sales room, and came back to settle in the tasting room. Soon the Bulgarian was arguing with the Meteorologist. I heard him say, “In Bulgaria, we call this ‘flurries,’” when another couple approached the tasting bar. I put down the Chardonel I was quality testing, and after greeting them, I noticed the interesting French accent the man had.
 
I asked the fateful question. “Where are you from?”
 
Before the man could answer, the Bulgarian interjected, “Make him guess!”
 
Oh, snap. All eyes were on me now as I analyzed the accent. He wasn’t French Canadian; I knew a few hockey players, and they didn’t sound like this.
 
“Well, you could be from France of course, but you seem to be too polite for that. So I will say you are from Belgium.”
 
“Très bien, my friend, indeed I am from Belgium.”
 
The patrons broke into a round of applause, more enthusiastic than a golf clap, but less so than when Detroit Lions fans cheer for the visiting team.
 
“If you had said France, he would have to beat you up,” noted the Bulgarian, and everybody nodded knowingly.
 
When I got home that night, I sat down at the computer, went to a search engine, and typed in, “What are the difficulties with localized snowfall predictions?” Near the top of the results list was a site for psychic readings. So I was wrong, I didn’t need a coin. I needed tea leaves.
 
#
 

February 1, 2009

Wine Drinkers and Heck Raisers
 By Robert Devere

The roar of a half-dozen Harleys drowned out the band on the pavilion as they created their own parking spots next to a No Parking sign. Six couples in riding leathers, do rags, and very cool sunglasses knew that even the band was watching them make their entrance into the winery.

A second pack of Harleys thundered into the parking lot. They parked right next to the first group. Road-weary and thirsty, the bikers stashed their helmets and stretched a bit before they inconspicuously entered the winery.

I make no assumptions as both groups approach the tasting room bar, but after a few qualifying questions, I discovered what I already knew: both groups really wanted a cold beer first, and some from each group liked dry wine, while others had a taste for the sweets.

The main difference between the two types of riders is that the first group rides recreationally on the weekends, while for the second bunch the motorcycle is their primary mode of transportation. But neither group is to be confused with the Biker, whose main hangout is the Biker Bar. Wine isn’t served there. One test to see if you are in a Biker Bar is to get everyone’s attention and ask loudly, “Who’re the sissies riding the Harleys parked out front?” This is not recommended unless you weigh 400 pounds, wear riding leathers and have multiple badass tattoos, or unless you can run very very fast.

Go into a winery and ask the same question, and you will all have a good laugh over cheese and crackers, with the appropriate wine of course.

I see a lot of motorcycle enthusiasts here at the winery. The enjoyable one hour ride from St. Louis through the gently rolling hills of eastern Missouri is rewarded with a friendly gathering of fellow wineaus and music lovers. The patio literally oozes Gemütlichkeit.

One of my tasks as the Tasting Room Guy is to walk customers through the wine list, which can be intimidating to the casual wine drinker, and find a wine that is acceptable to the group. But what to do if a middle ground cannot be found? If the group has agreed on drinking a red wine, they have to choose either dry or semi-sweet, usually one of each to please everybody. Occasionally there is the one who wants a semi-dry red, which the winery does not make. I just pour a bit of dry and sweet together, give the glass a quick swirl to make it look like I know what I am doing, and make another two bottle sale.

The customers who stand to be the most disappointed are our motorcycling friends who really wanted that beer. First I find out where their tastes lie, on the sweeter side or the dryer side. Then I ask them to expand their tasting horizons by pouring a semi-dry white wine.

“This is a semi-dry Traminette, in between the sweetness level of dry and semi-sweet.” I get suspicious looks from everybody there.

“Traminette is a Gewürztraminer hybrid,” I continue.

“A Gavursta what?” from one group and a “Yeah, what he said,” from the other.

“Gewürztraminer is a European grape with great floral qualities.” Flowery is not what the riders had in mind.

“Its hybrid, Traminette, retains those aromatic florals.” Eyes are glazing over.

“And on the finish, there is a hops note, like you have with beer.”

Suddenly they all are paying attention, wanting second samples, and leaving large tips.

It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

   January 17, 2009 

Beer drinkers and hell raisers
By Robert Devere

“Hey Ma, get over here and get yer drink on!”

The Oktoberfest line at the tasting bar was six deep and twelve wide when the middle-aged gal wearing the “I’d Rather Be Drinking Beer” t-shirt was finally able to elbow her way to the front. Ma was off to the side leaning on her walker. She took a couple of steps with the walker, then abandoned it and strode to the bar. There had to be an active lawsuit in that story somewhere.

“So, are you all from St. Clair?”

T-shirt lady was amazed. “How’d you know we’re from St. Clair?”

Every county has that community that is a bit run down, where zoning laws, and most other laws are ignored. Kansas City has its Raytown, Sacramento has its Rio Linda, and neighboring Franklin County has St. Clair. Somewhere a family meth lab was missing its lookout.

“Er, just a wild guess. What kind of wine do you ladies like?” I asked as I set two plastic cups on the bar. We usually use glass stemware at the tasting bar, but Oktoberfest didn’t allow us to keep up with racks of glasses. It was apparent that these two wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

“Wine! You got any beer?” Ma knew what she wanted.

“Yes, but in my fridge at home, not here. Here we serve Missouri wine made entirely with Missouri grapes.”

“We’ll just go to your house. Where do you live?”

“Vermont,” I deadpanned.

Blank stares.

“It’s a state.”
Ooookay.

So I started them out on the sweet blends, pointed them to the sales room, and saw them walk to the parking lot where they probably decided to go to the next winery in their quest for suds.
Budweiser is more of a religion than a beer in the St. Louis area. My customers who enjoy the finer microbrewed beers also enjoy our selection of wines at Berchetesgaden, but the customers who think there are only two beers in the world, Bud and Bud Light, often regret their first encounter with wine. I sometimes give them a wine list to take home so they will know where they had been.

I have a brother-in-law who is a beer drinker (doesn’t everyone?). I’ll call him “Bill” which is better than what I usually call him. A few years ago Bill invited my family over to his place to watch football and surprised us with a couple of boxes of Franzia. He opened up the china cabinet and for the first time the crystal wine glasses they received for wedding presents were used. Bill was quite proud. He proceeded to sit down on the couch and watch football, and for two hours drink wine like it was beer. Finally the Call of the Bathroom Sirens got his attention and he stood up. Immediately he wobbled saying, “Whoa!” as he lost his balance and sat down on his crystal wine glass on the coffee table.

Bill was feeling no pain as he stood up hunched over, and turned his backside to me. The bell of the wine glass had snapped off, and the stem was stuck all the way to the base into his gluteus maximus (or “ass” for those of you from St. Clair).

By this time his wife was screaming, but it was not because Bill had a two-inch shard of glass protruding from his rear. She was upset that it was the wedding crystal that had been broken, and the pattern had been discontinued.

“Is it bad?” Bill asked me. “Can you pull it out?”

Ignoring the temptation to give the base a twist first, I pulled out the ragged glass stem. It made a sucking sound as it came out, and it had a nice red patina. Whenever this story gets mentioned nowadays, Bill is always willing to show his scar. Be thankful this isn’t a podcast.

I still have that relic packed away somewhere. I think I will put it on eBay, dress it up a little by mounting it on a stand inside of a glass dome display.
Maybe Ma will buy it.

January 10, 2009

     At a high school class reunion (I won’t say how many years we were commemorating) I was seated by chance with the wine writer of a west coast newspaper. Upon discovering her vocation I announced that I had just been hired by Berchetsgaden Winery to work in the tasting room. “Hmmm,” she pondered, “I am not familiar with that one. Is that one of the new ones in Oregon or Washington?”

     “No,” I replied, “It’s in the wine country of eastern Missouri.”

     “Missouri!” The word came out of her mouth as if she had spat out one of the greasy hors d’oeuvre piled on her plate at this third-rate country club clubhouse. “Let me see if I can name your grapes. Norton aka Cynthiana, Chambourcin, Seyval, Rayon d’Or, Vidal, and Vignoles. Did I get them all?”

     “Chardonel,” I added.

     “Ah yes, Chardonel, the Chardonnay wannabe. Missouri wines will never be as good as California wines.”

     I could see I wasn’t going to change her mind, so I steered the conversation to a less incendiary topic: politics. She was wrong about that too.

     As the Tasting Room Guy, I see that attitude all the time. Visitors to St. Louis get dragged by their hosts into the car for the one-hour drive to Missouri Wine Country. They are somewhat placated by the scenic drive through the rolling foothills of the Ozark Mountains, but by the time they make it to the tasting room, they get all irritated and uppity.

     “I only drink California,” they say, or “Even though I hate the French I still drink their wines.” I point out that they are standing in former French territory, and that phylloxera-resistant Missouri root stock saved first the French wine industry in the late 1800s, and then later California vines (via France). It seems that California growers couldn’t stand the thought of anything Missouri grafting onto their vines.

     Some things never change.

     But once the adventurous wine travelers sample the wine, they invariably like what is going on in the glass. They buy a bottle and settle in on the patio to listen to our live music, anything from bluegrass to jazz.

     Now I could go on about the long history of Missouri wines, about the 1851 Vienna World’s Fair, where Missouri wines dominated the gold medals; about how Missouri was the country’s second leading producer of wine until Prohibition; or about great food and Missouri wine pairings, but I will save those topics for another day. Future columns will cover not only wine, but life at the winery, surviving Oktoberfest, the happy (wine dinners) and the sad (“You’re putting ice in that wine?” “Well, it is an ice wine.”).

     I did a search on that west coast wine writer’s name, and found that a short time after our conversation she wrote some nice things in a national wine publication about Missouri Nortons. So maybe I have found yet another convert to the ways of Missouri wine.

     Now if I could get her to read The Road To Serfdom, maybe her politics will fall into line too.