Free Uncorked by Marco Pasanella Page B

always been initiates, and no one is willing to tell novice secrets about the way the world works. They’d be blown away. You see the face of God, you die, right?”
    Extraterrestrials, occult forces, talking mountains, nutty theories withheld until you’re “ready”: Tissot’s winemaking was startingto sound less like science and more like Scientology. Is biodynamics, I was starting to wonder, the winemaking equivalent to Dianetics?
    Oh, and that bit about the gravity of the full moon? It turns out, according to University of California–Berkeley professor Alex Filippenko, that if a two-pound bunny were to scurry beneath the vine, it would be exerting 750 to 1,000 times the pull of our small satellite.
    The only thing a rep likes better than dragging a winemaker to stores is getting one to perform at a winemaker dinner. For the most part, these events are designed to pump customers with enough wine to start them buying case after case. One slick but endearing salesman was the first to propose that we host one in our enoteca. “I sold $10,000 [for the shop owner] at the last one,” he boasted. The real carrot, however, was the winemaker, the charismatic Alessandro Mori.
    In the heart of Montalcino, Mori’s family owns Il Marroneto, a heralded Brunello vineyard. Dashing and talented, Alessandro is exactly the kind of person with whom anyone would want to have dinner. (Imagine George Clooney in the wine business.) Somebody (I hope it was not me) suggested: “Why don’t we make a few bistecche alla fiorentina to go with the wine and toss in some salad and a few spears of asparagus gratinée to start?” “Great,” we all thought.
    The day before the dinner, Janet got the best meat we could from the Greenwich Village butcher Pino’s Prime Meats: aged, well-marbled slabs ($500). I drove to Fairway Market in Harlem and bought a wholesale quantity of baby rucola ($85) and four hundred spears of asparagus ($350). Once we got everythingback to the store, it was clear that the vintage stove in our apartment was not going to be adequate to make steak for thirty-five, much less all that asparagus. Someone (I truly forget who) suggested that we rent a grill ($160, including delivery) and put it outside in the garden. Janet would man the grill in the back while I boiled and broiled the asparagus upstairs. Several hours later, the grill arrived in pieces and without charcoal. Just as we got it fired up, guests started to arrive.
    Alessandro made a series of toasts, starting with his simplest rosso. The good stuff, the verticals (selections of successive vintages) of their flagship wine, would wait until we served the steaks. Despite the late start, all was going perfectly until the thunderstorm. While, five flights up, I was madly trying to broil four hundred asparagus spears a dozen at a time, Janet decided to hang a tarp over the top of the grill pit to keep the rain off the steaks. Smoke quickly billowed through the windows and just as quickly enveloped the room. The smoke alarm went off. The gratinée was charring. Somehow we finished cooking the steaks and saved the asparagus. The wine started flowing: 2001, 1997, 1985! By the end of the evening, amid shots of Alessandro’s grappa, guests were exchanging e-mail addresses and promising to see one another again. Arm in arm and in twos and threes, the rest of the group slowly exited amid laughter. One couple lagged, making out in the soggy garden. Alessandro gave me a hug. The experience was an incredible success except that nobody—not one person—bought wine. That memorable dinner, I would discover later, had been totally illegal.
    Sometimes winemakers show up without their reps. One afternoon I returned from a portfolio tasting, a seasonal event at which you are jostled about like a kid at a kegger as dozens ofyour competitors gulp down a distributor’s umpteen offerings. I was exhausted and happy to be back but surprised to find a half dozen Frenchmen stiffly sitting