Todd Behrend writes I am a Sommelier based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Since there are no coincidences, the wine bug found me, and is chronicled here. I have traveled to Spain over 25 times to almost every region from Catalunya to the Canary Islands, having visited its major cities many times over, including towns, villages, and wine regions off the beaten path. In fact, we should be in Madrid right now. I hold a WSET Level 4 Diploma and I am a Certified Sommelier with the Court of Master Sommeliers
The young-ish man and the sea
We were slammed. And I knew nothing. Yes, the wine in the decanter smelled like wine. But something else stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Torero,” Rudy said. “Table forty-two needs you.”
Brine. The bay. Sea gulls. The horizon and its summer haze. Seaweed twisting in the mud beneath my heels.
“They are ready to order.”
It was the Christmas season 2004. I was working at one of the busiest steakhouses in downtown Chicago. Large groups of coked-up traders from the Chicago Board of Trade overpaid their bills in cash, eating dry-aged New York Strips and Porterhouses slathered in Roquefort butter, au poivre sauce, coffee rubs, and shallot butter. They washed it down with magnums of Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon and Penfolds Grange, Vintage Port, and pineapple Martinis. Beluga and Osetra caviar were on offer, a pretense that the restaurant was at least fine dining adjacent. Our sommelier, Paul, often placed decanters of wine in the side stands to protect them from the drunk savages. We had no guéridons, no areas for proper wine service. With his deep knowledge and impeccable hospitality, he had a pristine memory of what went where, and you never touched them. But I had nothing but time. The bartender was busy pouring Margaritas in rocks glasses for other servers, drinking from his own Grolsch Blonde. I smelled from the decanter again. My server assistant Rudy returned.
“Matador. Are you going to the table?” It was a nickname, having taken many trips to Spain.
“Rudy. I can smell the ocean,” I said. “Can you find Paul?”
I was a novice about wine. I had worked with wines from California at a previous steakhouse job, and with Fetzer wines as a banquet server one summer during university at the DoubleTree Hotel in Colorado Springs. But, in that moment, I realized that there’s fermented grape juice – and then there’s wine. Before the pursuit of wine certifications, of thousands of bottles opened, tasted, and assessed, of miles traveled and conferences attended, and of years of practice with tasting groups – there was only the astonishment at a wine’s delicate, transformational power that could bring a grown man back to his childhood in a flash.
“Paul said he’s too busy.”
Sommeliers are always too busy.
At ten-years-old, I had to get away. The reasons why were not clear then. In summer, I would wade into the Great South Bay where I grew up in New York, with a plastic white bucket in hand. You could dig for clams with your heels. Chest-deep water was best. Eyeline with the horizon, you felt around the roots of seaweed for the rounded edges, lifting each with both feet, treading water with one arm, grabbing it, then dropping it into the bucket. Later, I would steam them open in a saucepan, and eat them with melted butter. You could see the shoreline, cattails in the breeze. Quiet. Solitude.
“Todd. What’s up.”
Paul was standing with two decanters in his hands. I was embarrassed. How do I ask a consummate hospitality and beverage professional, in the middle of a crazy-busy service during the holidays, why a wine reminded me of the ocean?
“This wine,” I said, pointing to the decanter in the side stand. “What– “
“Château Haut-Brion. 1999. Table twenty-one. I’ll come back for it.”
He was weeded. Forgiveness. Because this wine moment I would never forget turned into a career and a mentorship I didn’t think was possible. A curiosity and a passion about how wine was made, how its provenance informed its character, and why the service and salesmanship of it can create memorable, unforgettable experiences for our guests. How any bottle I have ever presented, poured, and shared with any technical proficiency and hospitality is because of Paul.
And how there are no coincidences in life.
After shift, we caught up at a dive bar O’Neil’s down the street – appreciated as much for its proximity to work as its proximity to taxis at 3am on Michigan Avenue. He took his time. He explained to me about Pessac-Léognan, Cabernet Sauvignon, gravelly soils, the Garonne River, Bordeaux, and about terroir. It was a conversation that started from a decanter in a side stand that changed the trajectory of my life. I was thirty-two-years old. Not young. But young-ish. Late to the wine business, perhaps. But, more importantly, a before-and-after moment. Before the advance of age gets a hold of you. Before I lost a nephew after thirty days of life; before my parents were displaced by Hurricane Irma in 2017, where many family secrets were revealed; and before my father started down the long road in his battle with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Looking back, that encounter with a 1999 Château Haut-Brion wasn’t just about the wine, but a conduit into the thing itself: the terroir of memory. That unbeknownst to a ten-year-old boy, those trips into the bay were a respite from things yet known – when there was only sun, sea, and sky, and the simple knowledge that all of the rivers run into the sea.
The photo is the author's own. Caption: 'La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. Looking east towards Africa'.
