Professional Drinking: A Spirited Guide to Cocktails, Wine and Confident Business Entertaining

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

PART ONE: PROFESSIONAL DRINKING

1. What Is Professional Drinking?

2. How I Became a Professional Drinker

3. Which Glass Is Mine?

4. Don’t Get Drunk, Ever

5. Hangovers: Avoiding and Curing Them

PART TWO: DRINKING BEFORE DINNER

6. Beer Basics

7. Champagne as a Cocktail and More

8. The Lowdown on Liquors

9. Mixology

10. The 20 Cocktails You Should Know (and Try)

11. What Your Cocktail Choice Says About You

12. Going Global: Drinking What the Locals Drink

PART THREE: WINE TIME

13. The Basics of Grapes

14. Making Wine

15. Old World vs. New World Wines

16. A Quick Overview of the Wine World

17. Wine Naming: Grapes or Places

18. The 100-Point Wine Scale

19. The Difference Between a $10 and $100 Bottle of Wine

20. Is This a Good Wine?

21. What’s Better, Screw Cap or Cork?

22. The Wine Business at a Restaurant

23. How Does Wine Get to You?

PART FOUR: ORDERING ON YOUR OWN IN A RESTAURANT

24. The Beverage Service Dance

25. Wine-Food Pairing Basics

26. Ordering Wine

27. How to Get the Most Out of the Wine List

28. How Much Can You Spend of the Host’s Money?

29. Low-Risk Ordering Strategies

30. Wine List Value Plays

31. What if Your Business Dining Partner Doesn’t Drink?

32. How to Bring a Bottle of Wine to a Restaurant

33. The Bitter Secret About Sweet Wines

34. How About a Port for After Dinner?

35. Women and Professional Drinking

PART FIVE: DRINKING WINE LIKE A PROFESSIONAL

36. What Do You Do with the Cork?

37. What Do You Do When You Taste the Wine?

38. How to Smell Your Wine

39. Using Three Senses to Drink Your Wine

PART SIX: GETTING HELP WITH YOUR WINE FROM A PRO

40. The Difference Between a Server and a Sommelier

41. How to Tell Your Sommelier What Kind of Wine You Want

42. What Does a Sommelier’s Lapel Pin Mean?

43. Good Sommelier vs. Bad Sommelier

44. How Do You Tip on Wine?

45. Top 19 Things Your Sommelier Wished You Knew

PART SEVEN: EXPAND YOUR COLLECTION AND YOUR PALATE

46. 14 Wines for a Professional Drinking Cellar

47. What Makes a Wine Age-Worthy?

48. Never Buy Fresh Wine Again

49. Storing Your Wine

50. Great Places to Buy Older Wines

51. Accessing Library Wines from Great Estates

52. Expand Your Palate with a Wine Club

53. Wine Tasting with Friends

PART EIGHT: ENTERTAINING AT HOME

54. The Decision to Entertain at Home or a Restaurant

55. A Basic Bar and Wine Cellar Set-up

56. How Much Wine to Have on Hand

57. How to Open Your Still Wine

58. How to Open a Bottle of Bubbly

59. When Do You Decant a Wine?

60. Gifting Wine, Spirits, and Wine Accessories

61. How to Clean Your Wine Glasses and Decanters

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

FOREWORD

As you progress through your career, you learn more and more about just how much business is conducted in a bar, in a restaurant, at a networking happy hour, or in another social setting. Okay, it may not be where the contracts are signed, but it is almost always the place where relationships are created, trust is won, and decisions are made.

I wrote Exactly What to Say as a primer on how to put people at ease and bring them along a path, using well-chosen words, to a positive outcome for you both. Many of the examples are designed to help readers progress a conversation, gain clarity in decision making, and overcome indecision. What I didn’t cover is how to create the context and the environment for an engaging and progressive conversation. Let’s face it, if you are comfortable and at ease, you are going to do a better job of listening to what someone has to say. You will also do a better job of being heard and inevitably make more of your conversations count.

Since many critical business conversations happen in social settings and often over an alcoholic drink, the ability to operate confidently and elegantly in any of these environments is critical to the art of persuasion and business. People do believe that skills in one area transfer to another, and if you are to be credible, you can’t fumble with the wine list or be awkward with the Sommelier.

Jim Schleckser addresses all this and more in Professional Drinking. I know that I learned a bunch of things that I will put into action in my life, both personal and professional. He covers a great variety of information on wines, beers, and spirits without creating a typical boring wine or cocktail book. This basic knowledge of all beverages is sure to give you confidence in any environment. I will say, as a bourbon drinker, that section could have been considerably longer!

Perhaps even more interesting and helpful were the tips on handling yourself in a restaurant, ordering wine, tasting wine, managing the wine service dance with the wait team, and tipping a Sommelier. The section on entertaining at home was equally important given that more and more, we are doing business at home. I have brought people into my home a few times as part of a business process and the results really have been remarkable in terms of the deep relationships that developed. Even if you never intend to use your home in that way, the material is equally relevant for entertaining friends and family.

My career has brought me all over the planet, entertaining and being entertained by all kinds of people. Some of those experiences were remarkable—and not always in a good way! Many have been forgettable. And some were magical, elegant events where the time flowed effortlessly and the end came all too quickly. Incredible relationships that will last for the rest of my career were created. The business became easy. In retrospect, I know now that I was in the hands of a professional drinker—somebody who was confident and elegant and prioritized the goal of enjoying time together and building life-long relationships.

This book is essential reading for all, whether you think you entertain for business or not. Ultimately, the relationships we build and retain are what define us, and this book offers skills and knowledge that help us create, enhance, and maintain powerful relationships.

Phil M Jones

Author of Exactly What to Say

INTRODUCTION

Far too often, powerful and intelligent executives are reduced to a quivering mess of jelly when handed the wine list at a fine restaurant. They’re completely out of their element and wary of being embarrassed in front of important business partners or even friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, the usual way to learn has been by making mistakes, which is mostly how I did it, or by subtly asking for the advice of a friendly and knowledgeable business associate.

Professional Drinking takes on that challenge by offering a clear understanding of entertaining around wine and spirits, including the basics of booze and how to handle yourself like a pro in a restaurant, at a business event, and at home. If you want to be comfortable in all of these settings—and learn a bunch of great tips, enjoy fun stories, and have a few laughs along the way—this is the book for you.

We will cover the basics of the most popular wine and spirits, the most common questions, and some suggestions from a professional drinker. Then we will head into the restaurant environment, where most business entertaining happens. You’ll learn how to handle yourself with the wine list, working with a sommelier, tipping, and a bunch of potentially socially disastrous and embarrassing situations. We then wrap up by entertaining at home, when to do it, and how to do it with elegance.

If you are looking for a comprehensive guide to wine, spirits, and cocktails, this isn’t it. I have found that the more a book presents, the less I retain. The good news is that you will be armed with the basics you need to feel confident in almost any business entertaining situation—and hopefully not be too bothered when you don’t know something.

Many people take wine too seriously, especially in professional settings. It’s designed to loosen people up and to have a good time. To be fun.

There are very few bad wines out there and all wine fits a purpose, even cheap wine. If you’re getting the chance to sip wine with friends, any wine, while having a great time, what could be better?

That leads me to my two most basic wine rules:

Rule #1: Like ice cream, sex, and pizza, there is no bad wine.

Rule #2: Wine is fun.

So, grab a glass, find a comfy seat, and let’s explore the world of professional drinking together.

Pro Tips and stories

You will see over 50 of my best tips and stories scattered throughout the book, marked by the wine glass icon. If you don’t read anything else in the book and just buzz through the Pro Tips, you’ll be a much better and more confident Professional Drinker.

PART ONE: PROFESSIONAL DRINKING

[ 1 ]

What Is Professional Drinking?

The term professional drinker may evoke an image of a fraternity brother, with the same phrase on the front of his T-shirt, crushing his 12th beer can of the evening on his forehead. But that isn’t what we mean by the term in this book.

If you have been in the presence of a professional drinker, you know it. They order an interesting cocktail and encourage you to give one a try as well, and it’s delicious. They’ll confidently take the wine list and engage with the sommelier, ultimately ordering well-priced and delicious wine that pairs well with everyone’s meal. They know the cadence of the wine service, how to taste the wine, facts about the grapes used for various wines, and maybe even a story about the wine you are all drinking.

Few of us have the kind of background that lets us serve our clients and guests in that manner. There is simply too much to know, and people in the wine and spirits industry revel in their advanced knowledge. They don’t make it easy. But it would be great not to sweat when handed the wine list or feel the need to always go back to one wine we know most people like. There are thousands of great options, and exploring them with friends is great fun, but the risk of making a mistake or embarrassing yourself with a bad wine at a business function is formidable.

Ideally, we would all be comfortable entertaining our clients in any setting, from a restaurant to home. It really doesn’t mean you have to take on a part-time job studying wine and spirits. A basic set of concepts and rules of thumb will serve you well and increase your confidence around the table.

My intention for this book is that you finish it with exactly that, the confidence and knowledge to be a professional drinker. You should end the book with the basics of most drinks, but it doesn’t go into the level of depth of a traditional wine, beer, or cocktail book. Rather, we will drive through most of those topics reasonably quickly and spend a lot of time on how to handle the situations that normally arise when doing business entertainment. You’ll have all the knives in the Swiss Army knife of professional drinking, but the nine-blade version, not the 30-blade version! Armed with tools and techniques for almost any situation, you will be a professional drinker, impossible to fluster, and able to show a good time to people you work with and want to impress.

[ 2 ]

How I Became a Professional Drinker

You might wonder how I became a professional drinker.

I want to be clear: I would not recommend my path to most people. Many of my wine friends have a wonderful knowledge of the space and did not put themselves through this process I am about to describe. The good news for you is that I did, and I will share the most important ideas I learned to help you become a confident professional drinker.

My first experience with wine and spirits happened when I was young. My dad would let me sip sweet cordials after holiday dinners. But what really stands out in my memory was a case of wine, a 1982 Château Haut-Brion, he was gifted by a business associate. This was an incredible first-growth Bordeaux and, at that time, possibly one of the best years in a very long time. He would open a bottle and cook up a nice steak every time I came home from college, and we would indulge. I never knew wine could be like this. It changed my views and interests in this mysterious beverage. W. C. Fields said, It was my first wife that drove me to drink. I’ve never written to thank her. In my case, it was my father who started me on my journey with wine and spirits.

I then embarked on a global business career, where I’ve entertained with fine food and drink in 28 countries. Most recently, I have been running a CEO advisory business that involves dinners with these high-level clients. Those experiences have given me some insight into business entertaining at all price points. It was a wonderful period of discovery, seeing new lands, meeting interesting people, learning different cultures and customs, and, of course, sampling the food and drink of each country. During these many years of business entertaining, I was able to refine my wine palate a bit. But few wines equaled that magical case of the red wine my father had served. Over time, I have shifted to embracing an attitude of gratitude around wine—I just want to enjoy it. I have also yearned to know more.

In time, I fell in with a group of wine lovers, led by my friend Scott Greenberg, the Vine Guy, and I struggled to keep up with their wine smarts. A dozen wine books graced my bookshelves, but I must admit the knowledge never stuck. So, I decided to pursue a certification in wine to increase my knowledge. Like a lot of people, I watched the Netflix movie Somm, and I thought the level of mastery demonstrated by the sommeliers was incredibly impressive. After a little bit of research, I signed up for the Introductory Sommelier class and certification at the Four Seasons Hotel in Baltimore—though I only put in a marginal amount of studying.

Being a sommelier is a time-honored position that goes back hundreds or even thousands of years. It requires a ton of knowledge about geography, viniculture, viticulture, wine laws, and service