Illustration by James O'Brien
How did you become interested in wine?
I was first intrigued as a child when my parents were visiting my chemist father’s associates in Germany. Fifteen years later, at a German university, I revisited them to discover what it was they’d been drinking back in the ’50s. Turns out it was Riesling from a famous ex-Carthusian estate. My truly epiphanic wine experiences were awine edctually with Napa cabernet and with a Rhône wine from Cornas that didn’t seem like it could come from grapes.
Does your background influence your wine education?
A background in the humanities is simply the best preparation for any endeavor that requires creative thinking, writing, argumentative skill, and insight coupled with empathy into one’s fellow humans.
Tell us about Cincinnati Wine Academy.
Cincinnati Wine Academy came about through incredible luck. I live 15 minutes’ walk from Mt. Lookout Square. I’d been thinking about getting back into “the trade” and got wind of Michelle’s [Nguyen, Vinology founder] plans to turn Lookout Joe into a wine bar. When we met by accident I suggested she might want to tap my expertise. Eventually, she Googled me, then asked for a meeting, where she revealed her ambition to open a shop and do some sort of educational outreach. We’re two years in.
How did you develop your interest in Austrian wines?
I came to Austria late, in the mid-’90s, a decade after I’d started regularly writing from Germany. The country’s emergence to international renown has been thrilling to witness and help engineer. I even received the Austrian government’s annual Bacchus Prize for service to wine.
Has Cincinnati been receptive?
Nearly every class I have taught includes relative novices and folks with lots of both tasting and book knowledge. That’s what I like. To teach basic material but in an unorthodox way that will be refreshing and enlightening to those who have experience. The last time I had the pleasure of offering formal classes was back during the ’80s in Washington, D.C., which was then America’s commercial and journalistic wine center. But today’s serious amateurs and budding professionals in Cincinnati are more numerous and know more than students did back then.
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