Funny Wine Stories
Wine is, for the most part, serious business. Unlike the endless possibilities proffered by politicians—Marjorie Taylor Greene immediately comes to mind—wine is normally not fodder for late night comedy shows. That is unless Stephen Colbert decides to mock the pretension and/or geekiness which often envelop the industry from the producer to the seller to the buyer. However, while funny wine moments are uncommon, when they do occur, they are always a welcome antidote to this somewhat rarified world.
I recently canvassed several friends, all experts, for this post asking them to mine their memories for amusing wine-related experiences. It turns out, each of these six anecdotes revolves around people within an unpredictable situation. After all, this is normally where humor begins, right? Isn’t it the incongruity between the normal or the expected and the strange or absurd which surprises us and produces laughter?
A commercial workhorse
Please allow me to start with a story my husband, Ed Lauber, recounted early in our courtship. At the time, he was working at Buckingham-Wile, an importer which marketed, among other brands, the wines of Château Mouton Rothschild. Their portfolio included the famous Bordeaux producer’s huge profit workhorse, Mouton Cadet. On this occasion, Ed had invited the wine media and top members of the trade to his office for a vertical wine tasting of eight different vintages of Mouton Cadet Red. One of his guests, pesty, a second-tiered wine journalist, insisted that he be allowed to come early.
When the wine writer arrived 45 minutes ahead of his colleagues, Ed's team was still setting up. Eight bottles of each vintage had been opened to allow the wines to breathe. Each bottle was neatly lined up in order of age, from youngest to oldest. The journalist grabbed himself a glass and a spit cup then proceed to pour himself a sample of each wine, one by one. He performed the normal ritual of tasting, however, as he had an audience—albeit one scurrying around getting things ready—he grossly exaggerated the steps.
Putting on a show
First, the journalist tilted his glass and examined the color and clarity of the wine against a piece of white paper held dramatically high for effect. Next, he ceremoniously swirled the wine in his glass releasing its aroma. Then, as Ed
described it, “the writer stuck his bird-like-beak-of-a-nose into the glass as far as it would go.” He took two short, quick sniffs holding his mouth barely open while inhaling, almost like a reverse whistle. Satisfied that his brain had recorded what the wine smelled like, the writer proceeded with taking a sip of wine swishing it around in his mouth as if he were chewing it. Finally, he slowly swallowed the wine. Then, he carefully jotted down his critique of each wine in a small notebook. As he was a bombastic kind of fellow, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to express his opinion out loud. According to him, the singular differences between the eight vintages were astounding. Or so he thought.
Eight vintages, all distinctively unique
The amusing part of the story is that the journalist tasted eight glasses of the same vintage. He was so busy showing off that he neglected to even look at the wine labels with the vintage clearly indicated. Ed said he was so entertained by the guest’s outrageous posturing that he never corrected him. When the wine writer’s article appeared in the newspaper the following week Ed could hardly contain his laughter.
Be careful where you spit
Marguerite Thomas, wine, food, and travel writer is one of the funniest people I know. She loves to poke fun at how wine writers can sometimes be quite pompous, even without being aware of it. Marguerite told me a story about spitting. Strange as it may seem, this is a technique wine professional use to remain sober during their work. “One thing that always sort of amuses me is the occasional person who absent-mindedly takes a sip out of his or her spit-cup instead of wine glass. The expression on their face when they realize what they’ve done is pretty funny. Oddly enough I don’t recall ever seeing someone mistakenly spit in their wine glass…”
Traveling halfway around the world to say one word.
Wine marketing wizard, Lars Leicht, described an incident which illustrated how unpredictably funny cultural differenced can sometimes be. “When I was selling Castello Banfi wines internationally, Japan was an important market with precise protocols. I was always assigned a translator for sales calls to top accounts, but soon realized that the formality of my presence as a brand representative was far more important than anything I could say – the local reps took care of that quite eloquently in their native tongue.
“So, when I was invited to ‘host’ a winemaker dinner at the Osaka Prince Hotel, I seized the opportunity and worked it into other commitments in my schedule. I had already agreed to present our wines at a very important dinner for 200 wine lovers at the Westin Calgary just the day before, leaving enough time to get to the Osaka dinner. Rather than going to bed after the Calgary event, I went straight to the airport for a 3 am flight to Vancouver where I connected to an 8 am flight to Tokyo. Once there a car service shuttled me for an hour in traffic to the central train station to catch a 3-hour bullet train to Osaka. Forty minutes after my arrival in Osaka my taxi arrived at the Prince Hotel; they told me at the front desk that I had a half hour to freshen up before dinner. While changing, I wrapped up the thoughts I had been reviewing on the long trip for how I would present the winery in a way that would appeal to the Japanese culture.
“When I got to the reception, I was told that in a few minutes they would introduce me and I was to stand, raise my glass, and say “Kampai” to lead the toast. I asked how long I had after that to make my presentation, and they advised me that after saying “Kampai” I was to sit down and enjoy my dinner; somebody else would talk about the winery and wines in Japanese. All that practice, all those miles, all those hours just to stand up and say “Cheers?” Well, I can assure you I delivered my one line with gusto, and the audience’s singular loud “Kampai” in response was overwhelming!!!”
Never put your own wines in a blind tasting
Another friend, a Napa Valley “Great,” asked to remain nameless. Here’s how he/she/they/them described this tale of a wine country mishap. The use of multiple pronouns is intended to protect the name of the innocent and also a much-valued friendship.
The storyteller belongs to “A tasting group of many years composed nearly entirely of winery owners and winemakers focused on expanding their wine knowledge through blind tastings. One such tasting inadvertently proved the need to keep the ground rules in mind. A key rule: never put your own wine in the brown bagged lineup when it’s your turn to host.
“Several years ago, one member was on a business trip, not to return until late the night before the morning tasting. His spouse, knowledgeable about wines but unaware of the group’s then mostly unspoken rules, was enlisted to organize the tasting. The spouse sets up a vertical tasting (six vintages) of the traveling winemaker’s own delicious wine, carefully decanting them into various bottle shapes/sizes/finishes to eliminate visual cues. The unidentified wines were silently swirled, sniffed, tasted, chewed, spat, and ranked by preference. Scores were tallied, discussion ensued - tasters had trouble ranking them (not unusual with good wines) - and results revealed. Afterwards, the spouse gleefully revealed that the wines had been made by her just-returned spouse, who was embarrassed at not recognizing their own wines. Everyone else was mortified by some of the opinions expressed during the discussion.”
Don’t mind if I do!
Here’s a tale told by wine guru Tony DiDio who worked from my husband at Lauber Imports for over a decade. Tony accompanied Ed on many business trips abroad. They had a deal. Ed always did all the driving. Tony, who speaks several languages, had the task of navigating all of his boss’ linguistic need. Tony also very discreetly made sure Ed did not get into any mischievous trouble.
“For many years I had the pleasure to travel the world with my boss and dear friend Ed Lauber. The highlight of all our trips together was always Italy attending Vinitaly in Verona. One year we arrived on a Friday late afternoon and drove to a new hotel different from where we normally stayed. After dropping off our suitcases, we immediately ran out to a dinner that one of our wine makers was hosting. Suffering from jet lag, I reluctantly accompanied Ed to the dinner which seemed to drag on forever. Drinks, food, speeches. More wine. More speeches. Interminable. Finally at one point I said to Ed, ‘I can’t take it anymore. Let’s go. I’m wiped out.’ Ed turned to me and said ‘Don’t you tell me what to do. I tell you what to do!’ This was a theme in our relationship for many years and it was hard to argue with Ed Lauber‘s logic, given he was the man signing the pay checks.
We were at separate tables that evening. Suddenly our host started pouring large glasses of grappa for everyone. Being totally exhausted, I declined the offer but turned over to Ed at the next table. Putting on my chaperon hat, I said to him. ‘Don’t you dare drink any grappa as we have to drive back to the new hotel and I don’t know even know where we are staying.’ Again, Ed gave his famous retort, ‘Don’t tell me what to do. I’ll tell you what to do!’ I faced Ed just as he motions to me with a full glass of grappa and gleefully downed it in one swallow. I was furious and went over to him and in front of all the guests admonished him saying ‘How can you drink that when we need to leave, we’re miles away from the hotel and I don’t know how to get there!’ He turned to me with a wicked trickster smile and simply replied, “Tony. It’s only water.”
Making mincemeat of snooty wine collectors
The final story was recounted by Anthony Giglio, someone I call a Renaissance wine man. By that I mean he wears many hats, all of them exceedingly well: Sommelier, wine educator, writer, auctioneer, marketer, and raconteur. As he described the background of his story, “I really dialed into the zeitgeist during the pandemic, figuring that if people stuck home were connecting via Zoom, perhaps I could send them four bottles of wine to taste together virtually. Word of Anthony’s virtual tastings spread like wildfire expanding from his normal corporate client base to friends of attendees. Since April 2020 he’s hosted over 400 virtual tastings.
“All to say, I use my humor to neutralize the minefield of wine speak. Follow me to the end here (sorry!): I often get questions about collecting -- during a zoom with all these different people who have never met, some don't know one grape from another, there's always a ‘Collector’ —and I say: I'm not really your expert consultant on collecting. I'm sort of a heretic among sommeliers... I have a very different view than most experts and collectors about the idea of putting wine down for years and years out of what often seems to be hubris -- treating wines like trophies, instead of living, breathing liquids.”
So, here are the questions Anthony throws out when confronted with a collector who wants to show off:
“Forgive my impertinence, but how old are you?
How may bottles are in your collection?
Have you done the math on how many days it might take to enjoy a bottle a day, assuming you drink wine every day? Or, if you only bring out the 'good stuff' on weekends, how many years of weekends are we talking here?
Did you buy these wines from the winery directly? Do you have any idea if they ever sat in unprotected storage (like customs) for weeks, months? Retailers always polish the bottles to make them look great, but they might have been through hell before that...
Does your spouse or offspring take your collection seriously? I hope so, because I have gone to plenty of estate wine sales hosted by spouses or kids who are happy to unload their deceased loved one's unknown bottles of whatever for $15 per bottle...
And time after time, those estate bottles are as dead as their former owners, because they kept them too long... or maybe bought them dead and didn't know it — it's a trophy!”
Anthony concludes his battery of questions with this proclamation: “My advice is to drink your wine! Drink it now! Drink it while you are alive AND it's still alive! Because, unlike a Purdue 'Oven-Stuffer Roaster' Chicken, there is no little white button that will pop up on your bottle to tell you it's ready!”
Anthony has always had a gift with using humor to turn wine snobbery on its head. His wise-cracking, quick wit, delivered with rapid fire speed and a New Jersey accent never fails to leave his audiences chuckling. Even the greatest wine-obsessive snob doesn’t realize what is happening.
Well, now that I’ve told theses amusing stories, I’ve just realized that I disproved my own initial theory. It looks like the topic of wine can be funny after all.