Mack - 99 BOTTLES: the wines that changed my life (and can change yours too)

CHAPTER NO 1
THE EARLY YEARS,
OR HOW I GREW UP AND FIRST LEARNED THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS WINE AND SPIRITS

CHAPTER NO 2
THE PALM STEAK HOUSE,
OR MY LIFE AND TIMES COMING UP AS A WAITER

CHAPTER NO 3
BOHANANS,
OR MY FIRST JOB AS A SOMMELIER

CHAPTER NO 4
THE FRENCH LAUNDRY,
OR HOW I ENDED UP WORKING AT ONE OF THE BEST RESTAURANTS IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER NO 5
PER SE,
OR WHY I MOVED TO NEW YORK CITY

CHAPTER NO 6
MOUTON NOIR,
OR WHEN I KNEW IT WAS TIME TO STRIKE OUT ON MY OWN

I GET IT, at least to a certain extent.

For example, when was the last time you saw a sommelier, winemaker, and overall wine and beverage expert in Air Jordans, sporting earrings in both of his ears, a Mickey Mouse wristwatch, thick-rimmed spectacles, a graphic T-shirt, and a baseball cap? The stereotype of a wine dude is a man who wears, at the very least, a tailored three-piece suit and wingtips, with cuff links and a Tag Heuer. Thats not really how I rollalthough the watch would be cool.

Theres another thing I guess I should mention. I also happen to be African American. According to Wine & Spirits, my skin tone alone makes me rare as a unicorn when it comes to working in the wine business. Im mostly a lone presence in a profession once described in the media as so, so dominated by white people. What does that mean? Not much, really, except for one thing: My perspective on what I do and the world that I work in is, in a word, unique. The way I came up in this business is very different from the way most other folks did.

I hope the fact that Im an exception to the norm is exactly the thing that brings you to the book thats in your hands right now. I wrote this book for one key reason, and its that I want to show people who love to drink that theres a different, and an even better, way to think about beer, wine, and spirits. For example, perhaps theres a way to think about drinking, and to discover what you like to drink, that doesnt involve anyone telling you what to do. Maybe, instead, learning about wine and spirits could be a fun experience rather than a daunting one. Sounds good, right? So I think its time to put away those same-old, musty wine guides, the ones stuffed with the same tired winespeak that describes fruit forward flavors of wet horse blanket with notes of tobacco that regular people cant relate to, in favor of a more exciting and yet chill method.

black sheep |'blak shp|

NOUN (INFORMAL)

a member of a family or group who is regarded as a disgrace to them: the black sheep of the family

ORIGIN

late eighteenth century: from the proverb There is a black sheep in every flock

If that sounds good to you, then Im your guy and heres who I am: My first restaurant job was in a McDonalds. My first introduction to fine wine was on an episode of Frasier. The fact that I am where I am now, that Ive been able to acquire so much knowledge of wine and spirits and so much experience working with it, making it, and teaching people about it, speaks to the fact that the universe of wine and spirits is not entirely impenetrablein fact, far from it. That Im still a lone wolf when it comes to people who work in the wine and beverage industry just speaks to the fact that we need new ways of teaching people about it.

I am passionate about helping people who love wine and want to learn more without feeling too intimidated to do so. Thats why an overhaul of dry, dense wine guides is in order. And Ive felt this way from the time I was getting started as a sommelier in San Antonio, Texas. I was waiting tables at a steak house, trying to taste as much wine as I could to figure out its nuances of flavor and understand the way grapes from different regions are grown and all the rest of it. But for someone who hadnt grown up in a world with regular wine drinking or in a household with any kind of wine knowledge, the information was not easy to findand it was even harder to access.

What do you do when you want to know more about something? You try to read as much about it as you can, of course. I remember thinking to myself even then that there had to be not only a better but, more important, a more enjoyable way to learn about wine and spirits than what was out there. Because I couldnt relate to the way in which wine education was performed in those days, I became determined to find my own path. All I could do then, of course, was just hopehope that I had what it took to learn about this exciting foreign world of wine, and hope that if I made it and became a wine-world professional, that someday Id be able to share the path Id forged for myself with all kinds of other people, including the ones who happened to look a little more like me.

As you can easily see, phenotype, fashion sense, and circumstances of upbringing are just the beginning of the ways in which I differ from other people who work in the world of wine. I look at wine and spirits from a new angle than they do not in spite of my differences but because of them, and I think thats a good thinga great thing. Way back when other restaurant workers first called me the black sheep, I felt offendedI wanted to fit in, not be singled out because of my skin tone. Now I embrace that nickname and all the individuality that comes with it. And I think the fact that I look different and think different, too, is what helps me turn other people on to the pleasures of drinking delicious wines and spirits. One of the ways I get people excited to learn about wine is to invite them along on my journey to the highest heights of the wine world. To see how I became a sommelier in one of the most exclusive restaurants on earth, and then transitioned into making my own wines and teaching folks about entrepreneurship. Come with me and I can promise you a solid ride, one full of ups and downsbecause it was by no means a conventional climb to the top, and it was definitely not an easy one. It was, however, delicious. And one of the best parts was that, along the way, I stopped trying to fit other peoples ideas about what a wine guy should be, and began creating my own.

What does my story have to do with you, a person interested in wine who wants to learn how to enjoy it more? Wine is personal, and by following my story, youll learn the 99 bottles that have been important to me throughout my life, for one reason or another, and that will hopefully free you from the old-school drinking recommendations based on arbitrary, allegedly objective, and impersonal points-and-rankings systems. Those point ratings and scales were made without taking your life and your tastes into account, so what do you need them for? What I can offer you instead is access to the hard-won knowledge I have gathered during my years of working in the restaurant and beverage industry, and my stories of what that has been like.