Sipping With the Sommelier
By Wine Atlas, Wednesday 7 December 2005 :: Wine - United-States :: #93 :: rss
To the novice wine drinker on a budget, no one is more feared than the sommelier at a stylish restaurant. This is the person you expect to frown when you order the least expensive bottle of wine, and the person who will later terrorize you by offering a fraction of a glass of that cheap bottle, while he stands by, ostensibly awaiting your approval. But despite the formal exterior and unpronounceable title, not all sommeliers are creatures of intimidation.
Finn Anson, wine steward for the Emerson at Woodstock, is the kind of person people fall in love with. Single and married women of all ages adore him, as do the men who accompany them. Warm hearted and generous, he welcomes anyone into his wine-drenched world, and makes even a neophyte oenophile feel as if he or she belongs. An Irish citizen who was raised outside London, Anson, 37, recently lived for several years with his wife in the Dordogne region of France, an area that attracts poets, artists, and inspirationists—as well as epicureans who come for its food and wine. A few years ago, an influential member of the wine trade imported Anson to America, and he eventually moved to the Hudson Valley with his wife and two children.
Anson has toiled in the mud pruning vines in a monastery's vineyard, is schooled in the science of viticulture, has been wine director for a famous wine-producing estate, and has learned his craft—sip by sip—from some of the world's finest collections. He is a friend to bishops, barons, monks, and peasants, and if anyone can inspire a person to soar beyond their fears, and to begin an education—its him. "Wine does not have to be expensive to be good," says Anson, breaking down the fundamental myth that quality wining does not permit budgeting. "On the contrary, some very expensive wines are not particularly good."
Indeed, the finest wine Anson ever tasted was a non-vintage made from grapes so young that they never should have been harvested: "But it was a fantastic wine," he says. However, ask Anson to describe his most memorable wine, and he will fairly faint upon recalling his experience with a vintage from an ancient barrel in a Spanish cellar, dating back to 1789, the year of the French Revolution. Anson will blush and stutter as he tries to describe the taste. The words I can make out, through his bubbling British accent, tell of an experience that sent him "elsewhere."
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