Sediment

An essay on the wine industry:

How do you walk away from something that you did for 5 years? It’s not long, relatively, but when it was the thing that kept you afloat, made you happy (seemingly), and, worse of all, you were good at, how do you walk away from that? How do you recover?

I am in recovery from an abusive relationship: working as a sommelier. This is not hyperbole. I believe the profession, the industry, breeds a reliance on the suffering of the participant (who is willing, under duress).

One of the first sommeliers I worked with was a ruthless, power-hungry monster wearing high heels. People like her thrive in an environment like fine dining: scoping out tables to make the highest sale, meanwhile scoping prospective advantages to her circumstances through the bedroom. She was fired for, allegedly, propositioning a high-profile guest.

For someone like me, though, who is emotional and vulnerable, the wine industry introduced me to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope with insufferable hours, insufferable people, and insufferable management. On occasion, you would get a table of guests that love you, appreciate your knowledge, and value your service. Like a battered housewife, I allowed these moments of love to keep me in, continuing to spend time in this industry. Why did I bother with this industry to begin with? Does anyone know? Because now I don’t.

Yet, I do feel a passion for wine.

Yet, I have so much hurt and sadness in me.

I was swished and spat out.

I am thrilled by, interested by, and invested in wine, but in order to work in this industry at the caliber that fine dining demands, this has to be your special interest. This has to be your life. Then, when wine is your entire life, you have no regard for the lives of the people you work beside.

At my final job, I spent several hours every day off the clock studying the wine list, which consisted of over 2000+ unique bottles. I thought it was fun! I love to learn. I fantasized about how I would sell wine to guests. I was keen to sell Marquis d’Angerville to anyone who would listen! We had a fantastic vertical of that producer, who is legendary in Volnay for the land they owned (and land is everything in Burgundy).

Then, when I got the opportunity to sell to a guest, I was happy to suggest, then sell, a 2017 vintage of d’Angerville. I knew well the guest, what they wanted, and felt confident they would love this bottle. A bottle that I studied, that I understood, that I wanted, loved, to talk about. I would learn later that they did love it too, but only after the other sommelier, Matt, pulled me aside when I left the table:

“Jove, complaint,” his teeth were so yellow from drinking on the job that it’s all I could stare at, “you don’t approach tables like that, and you can’t take that long talking.”

This was a peer, not my manager, on my first day of training. After working with the monster-in-heels, and working as a head sommelier, I had a strict policy to advocate for myself. I immediately reported this interaction to my beverage director, whom I loved dearly. The beverage director at the Fateful Last Job was fantastic, around my age, knowledgeable and passionate, and I felt that we were going to click!

“That’s so strange,” she said, her face contorted in the best facsimile of surprise she could feign, “rest assured, he’s not usually like that.”

Then, when Matt berated me again after I told him a table was ready to order wine (“I have my system, Jove, you don’t get it”), I reported this to a floor manager.

“I’m sorry that happened,” a tall ginger man, like my First Beverage Director, “But, Matt has been holding down this program for a long time, so I’m sure he’s just stressed. We can’t have a moderated conversation at this time.”

At the bottom of a bottle of wine, especially one that has been aged or unfiltered, there is sediment. Sediment is, essentially, dead wine bits. I am at the end of the bottle now; my tongue tastes nothing but bitter death.

I think the most traumatizing thing that was said to me was by an Assistant General Manager, whom I am friends with now, “You could be so good at wine if you just leaned into it.”

When I was essentially fired as a Head Sommelier, because the beverage director found a way to push me out by taking advantage of my weakened state (having just been denied a visa to my grad school), I was applying to jobs like mad. I had so much hope. My General Manager, when I was a head sommelier, handed me my final warning and said, “There are people already reaching out to me about you. You have other options.” This General Manager promised me letters of recommendation. Those job offers, those letters of recommendation…

They never came.

I had several regulars express how sad they were that I was leaving because of how “good” I was. They didn’t know how the conversation went in the basement with my beverage director went. “I’m sorry that you didn’t get your visa. It’s not nice. You want to be here, but how can we trust you to stay for this job”, she said, meanwhile the bar director, who celebrated my grad school announcement, meanwhile my general manager, who just celebrated at our job his graduation from grad school, looked and said nothing.

“You are fantastic. You are so hospitable!”, said a guest I had just met, who also worked in the industry, who then suggested I apply to his sister restaurant. Then, I did. I never heard back. I had applied of my own volition for the Wine Spectator awards, and I won it for my restaurant — I couldn’t even get an interview.

“Name three Champagnes. One Blanc de Blanc, one Blanc de Noir, and one Vintage”, said the head sommelier from an art gallery/Michelin restaurant in the West Village, a gentleman late to his interview, so stressed he couldn’t even breathe during our interview, who stared at me as if to say “RUN”.

The second worst thing about working as a sommelier is interviewing to be a sommelier. It’s miserable, somehow worse than applying for residencies as a playwright. Who are you? What do you know? How reliable are you? And are you willing to suffer for this?

There are many factors to consider when trying to get a job as a sommelier: the location, the commute, the hours, and, most importantly, the money. I was recommended to apply to La Tête d’Or by a good friend of mine who works as a distributor, and he tried to get me an interview after hearing what happened at my Head Sommelier job. I, funny enough, met the guy who was the hiring manager at La Tête d’Or at a wine tasting and I mentioned my résumé, but was assured the position was already filled. Several weeks later it was still available online. You can be award-winning, you can be suffering, and you can be unemployed with no prospects.

But that’s not my point. My point is I was recommended for a high-volume restaurant with great wine and great clientele; I could make serious money again! Serious money to do… what with? The only hitch was an hour commute from my place (not including train transfers) and I would be getting off at 12AM to then try to get home before 2AM.

Wouldn’t you do cocaine to cope?

I was failing as a head sommelier. I was failing as an artist. I was failing as a human. I failed Jove. When my General Manager asked me if I was okay after sleeping through a scheduled meeting with Empire Wines, I told him, “I’m okay, that’s never happened before.”

No one could understand what I was going through, so it felt… I had friends but no way to connect with them, because I was getting off at 11PM. Because everyone is trying to make it, to figure their own shit out. Because I was worthless if I was not “making it”. How was I to “make it”, then? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. But drugs became a predictable way to fulfill the need: the need to feel happy. When this is what you’re good at, when this is what funds your writing, what choice do you have?

What I liked least about my time as a head sommelier, other than the entire bar team justifying my addiction by doing it themselves (on the job) and assuring me that this was “just a phase” and “everyone has a cocaine problem”, was the pressure to sell alcohol.

I’m bitter, clearly. I’m trying not to take it out on the industry as a whole, but the fact of the matter is restaurants need you to drink alcohol if they are to make any money. Servers will talk shit about you and all of your guests if you do not order alcohol, because you will leave less of a tip, which means they struggle to pay rent this week.

It’s not fair to anyone that drinking poison is a necessary evil to fill the pockets of immature entrepreneurs. Then again, to many people wine is not poison. To many people wine is a manufactured need.

Napa Valley is desperate. They sell you the idea that Cabernet Sauvignon must be had with steak, because the land is so expensive that they cannot afford it, afford the labor, afford the morals lest it sells their wine. Much of the wine world insists upon itself and its importance, and as prices increase outrageously, there is less and less storytelling that a sommelier can do at the table to sell a bottle of Burgundy.

My first beverage director would drink on the job, heavily, “I’m working 60 hours a week and I’m still fucking broke!” he said, the day after his on-the-job bender. When being a head sommelier was at the end of my rope, I was drinking heavily too. I knew I had to stop doing cocaine, so I had to do something else because I felt awful. Because this industry is, often, awful.

“But sometimes it’s good, sometimes I feel love.” Phrases said by the abused. The abused who do not know it until they are in three hours of group therapy three times a week, and one-on-one therapy twice weekly. Until they have to reconcile the fact that what they thought they loved for five years was an illusion, and that love was yet to be discovered.

What am I supposed to do then? I have the gift of writing and I have acquired the knowledge of wine. One would think these miracles should come together, naturally. To do what? How? Do you know what I should do? Do you know how to do it? Because I do not.

That’s what’s most devastating of all: all this time, all this sacrifice, and all this trauma, for what? Again it comes back: how can I make a dime off this? What if I don’t? What if I just shared with you what an unfortunate experience I had? What if I shared with you, you (you!), how sad I am without any expectation. Without trying to sell you a bottle of wine, without selling you an aperture to pour wine, without selling you a story? What if this was just what it was, and I faded into total obscurity?

I do not know what I can say to anyone about the wine industry other than: stop drinking wine. Stop drinking everything, for that matter, because it’s a manufactured need that is actually a luxury, and we all think that we need this luxury, and since we will pay the price they will raise the price. They will never stop raising the price, like your landlord will not stop, because You Have No Choice. You Have No Choice but to justify this expense because Marquis d’Angerville grows yummy Volnay, and he/they/she/we will continue to grow it and you will continue to drink it because drinking wine is prestigious.

I feel like a disgusting pig. At Easy Lover in Bushwick I paid $40 for two vodka Red Bulls. Not including tip. And I paid it. Because what else are you supposed to do?

As I write this I am at Cowboys & Angels, the signature bar at the maw of Zion National Park and I’m drinking “Gunsmoke”, described to me as “sort of a Negroni”. I would agree.

I am a hypocrite is the point.

There is something so wonderful about wine. To learn all the differences between varietals, then how those varietals express in different locations, then how those varietals express in different years, then how those varietals express in specific plots of land in those locations, then how those varietals are matured by the hand of a winemaker, then how those varietals are vinified by a team of artists, then how those varietals, now wine, end up on your table, and they made it there because some poor sack (or rich sack, depending on the portfolio) had to lug it in a stroller to your restaurant (after several train transfers) to try and convince you to buy it on the company credit card (after they did a seminar tasting with the head creative of Wine-Making Genera) — but you don’t know what to buy because you have wild ideas about your wine program because the night before you were so high on cocaine you cooked up the brilliant idea that buying wine should be like clothes shopping and “everyone should be allowed to try it on, first.”

In thirty years I want to be told I could’ve been great at wine if I just leaned into it. I could not live with myself if in thirty years I was told I could’ve been a great writer if I just leaned into it.

I will not drink the sediment.

I will drink on the memory of wine: how it felt to meet the winemaker: how it felt to pour wine to a smiling face.

Cheers,

Jove Tripp-Thompson