Ep. 92 Monty Waldin interviews Jeffrey Porter (Batali & Bastianich Group) | Monty Waldin's Let's Talk Wine Biz

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wide podcast with me, Monteu Walden. Today, my guest is Jeffrey Porter. Jeffrey is the beverage operations director of the Batali Bastianich Group, which is based in New York City. Welcome. Thank you very much, Monty. Let's start at the beginning. How did you get into wine? Well, I was in college. I needed a job. And as you know, in the United States, to sell wine legally, you have to be twenty one years old. And I I needed a job. I was nineteen years old, and, I got a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant. Because I had no skills whatsoever. To which in which state were you in at the time? I was in, Texas, and this was in Austin, Texas. And that's your native that's your native area, isn't it? My native area. And I said, I'm gonna call you where you're born. We're doing native grapes on the restaurant. Exactly. And the chef there, it was a family owned German restaurant. So a lot of schnitzels. And the chef's name was chef Hans, and I think you felt sorry for me because when you're a dishwasher, you smell bad when you get done working because it's hot and it's gross. Yeah. It hasn't changed in your clothes. No. It's a very small studio. And at the end of every shift, he would give me a glass of wine. And he would tell me the story. I my parents drank wine, but they weren't collectors, and they just drank for because it was still good, I guess. And I became very fascinated about it. And I told my father, I was like, dad, I'm tasting all these wines are really interesting. And then day, I came home to my dorm room and there was a package for me. It was a big box. And I opened the box, and there was a book by Hugh Johnson, his first book, nineteen sixty eight wine. And with it were twelve bottles of wine from around the world. And the note said read this book, drink this wine, and learn about the world. Amazing. And I went in deep and then worked through the restaurant, became a cook. And then there was a wine shop in Austin, and I really wanted to work there, but I wasn't twenty one yet. So I kept hanging out there. And then eventually on my twenty first birthday, they offered me a job. It's amazing. I had to wait until twenty one to join the the beverage industry. Mhmm. But that was how it was. Yep. And what was the next step? So I was there for about two years, and I became a a buyer for them. I really wanted to get out of Texas, and I was just trying to think of the way to do it, but I also had this bit of an altruistic streak, and there's an organization called teach for America where you teach in underserved areas of the United States. And so I wanted to do something more than what I was doing, selling people wine, and I, joined teach for America. And I taught high school in South Central Los Angeles, and that's when I found out my passion was really wine. I love teaching, but I love the stories and history of wine. So after my commitment to there. I moved to the Bay Area in San Francisco, and I became a wholesaler selling wine, but that wasn't enough storytelling. And then by luck's sake, thank god. I got a job. I had no right to have at age twenty five to be the wine director at a restaurant Travinia in Napa Valley, and that's when it really took off. So you've make it sound also simple, but it can't have been that simple. I mean, to I'm not saying you were lucky, but you've really made the most of well, you have a talent for, you know, you got an incredible memory and a talent for tasting and a talent for dealing with people. What about some of the and downs on that initial journey that you made. You know, luckily there's not been many downs. The downs are the the stumbles and falls that you make making mistakes, but I was I guess the way I was raised is just you always learn from them and you try not to make them more than once. The honesty in truth of wine is is what made it so fun. And you can connect to strangers, even as a twenty one year old, and people would be like, are you old enough to drink? And I'm teaching and guiding people who twice or even three times my age at the time into wine. And that was because I read, I tasted, I visited, I asked questions. The big thing is I've never been afraid. And when you're not afraid, and you know, at the end of the day, it's it's really just wine. It's not heart surgery, it's not rocket science. You're here to make people happy. And with that attitude, it's been just it's been easier to to exist in a world where you you know your goals just to make someone smile. You talked about fear. I mean, you obviously come from a family that has a sort of social conscience, but I imagine you weren't brought up in extreme poverty. When you're working in South Central Los Angeles for those of you that don't know, South Central is a rough neighborhood. How did you get your teaching message across in that area at that time? And did you have any kind of fear or was was, you know, actually f scared physically? I was never scared physically. I'm a a big guy. But for me, it's the fear fear of failure. And it was the fear of failing the students because I was I was a novice. Being a being a teacher is extremely difficult. I love teaching that the that the thing that drew me to wine was being able to to teach the stories. And I love talking to the students to hear their experiences and then share my experience and maybe combine their life experience with my life experience for a path that they may see as a way to to achieve what they want to achieve. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life because I was in a place that I had no cultural connection to a different state, a different socioeconomic class that I had to learn a lot and learn really quickly, but through empathy, through happiness, and through passion to the States, I'm in touch with some of my students, and it's almost twenty years. That's great. And and a lot of them are very, very successful. Well done. Okay. So you went from Los Angeles teaching to the Bay Area, first job in wine. What was the next step? So why was at this restaurant in Trevina, in the heart of Napa Valley. You know, I was able to touch producers, touch wine. I dabbled in winemaking in two thousand four. I bought two tons of syrah and had a a friend of mine who was a winemaker help me go through the whole process of from picking to to bottling. Was that a didactic thing for you then? Or did you actually think that you're gonna start becoming as big as say Gallow and, you know, Porter, Jeffrey Porter on the front leg? You know, it was one of the ideas was to see if I wanted to maybe move in that direction. But for me, I also took it as is didactic. Like, if I wanna be able to tell the story of wine, I really need to see it and feel it from beginning to end. I'm a hundred percent with you on that. And, it still means I haven't made wine since I've attended harvest. I've worked harvest, but not in such a, you know, a a two year process of picking the grapes, crushing it, punching it down three times a day for two weeks by myself with huge blisters on my hand, leaving the restaurant to go punch down, working service, then going back at midnight punched down again, and then putting it barrel and smelling and being like, oh my god, I just ruined this wine. What the hell's wrong with me? And they're like, be patient. And I think that's that's that's been the lesson of wine. You have to be patient about everything. Be patient with a gas be patient with your staff. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with wine, and they will give you what you need. And with your podcast test. Was it wine any good? It is. It is. I was surprisingly pretty I still have some wine. I was really going at the time. So one of my favorite producers is in Cross hermitage Allen Grier. And so I did one ton whole cluster with the Rachuses and all and one ton whole berry. Ranges is is is the stems. And, at the time of two thousand four, limited sulfur, I didn't know about native east then. So we used a hermitage strain of east, and, it came out good the alcohol, you know, it's like fourteen percent, but for Napa Valley, it's not that bad. Okay. So wine making in California. Next step. So my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, she couldn't find steady work in Napa Valley because she's not in the wine industry, and it's kind of an insular place, because it's all about one thing and one thing only, and that's wine, which is kind of boring within itself. So we moved to San Francisco, and I was looking for jobs all over the country trying to be a sommelier at fancy restaurants. And I didn't get a didn't get a Why not? I mean, if you'd worked at Trevenia, sorry. I mean, surely, that's a pretty good calling card. I thought it would be, but I think maybe my ho Texan demeanor didn't go over well with some of the fancy restaurants I applied with, but I was lucky enough there was a a small family owned grocery company called Endronos Market in the Bay Area, and they wanted to change their wine program and make make the wine shops in their grocery stores more feel like a wine shop with with dedicated wine people in them kind of Somalia S. And so I was tasked with redoing the program there. And I did that for four years, and it was great. And I was able to, like, my favorite thing that I ever did there is we did a private label wine that was biodynamic, Frank in Terrain Savignon and sold it for ten ninety nine, and we did a thousand cases in one month. It must have flown out. It was amazing. And it was so cool to see people at a grocery store buy biodynamic Cameron franc in two thousand and six. So I did that to two thousand nine. I really missed the restaurant industry. In the in this whole time, I was moving through the Court of Master Somalia program set for the advanced Psalm and o five didn't pass and then sat again in o eight and then passed. And then was like, okay, I'm gonna go for the Masters, but I needed to work on the floor of restaurant. And so a friend of mine said, Hey, there's this restaurant group in LA, run by this woman named Nancy Silvertin who's partnered with Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. Would you be interested? And I was like, Yeah. Have you had you heard of I knew I knew of those people very, yeah. She played it because, Maybe you have a good time or customer. Exactly. So they'd heard of you. Mario definitely not heard of me nor Nancy, but Joe, I'd met because he has a winery and he had sold me wine before. Joe bestyanage. Exactly. So I met with, the team there. Luckily, I got the job and we moved down. It was still to this day, one of the most fun, exciting restaurant jobs I've had being the wine director at Austria Mozza. Why was it so exciting? Is it just exciting to sell a really expensive bottle of wine to somebody sitting down at a starched table cloth table? No. The the restaurant was rock and roll in Hollywood all at the same time and expand on that one. It it was that we played loud rock and roll music, like they did at Babo. Babo was the first restaurant of Joe and Mario that kind of started the trend in America to play, have white table cloth play really loud rock and roll. But then you're in the heart of Hollywood and you were the hottest restaurant. We were the hottest restaurant at the time. So every famous person in Hollywood came. And so it's to to serve some of your favorite movie stars was fun, but outside of that, the thing that caps should be about Los Angeles was outside of the movie stars, just everybody was coming for dinner. And we only sold Italian wine. So in California, that's challenging, but people were open to it. They're like, why I really like this? And you're like, have you ever had La Gryne? And they're like, nope. They're like, let's try And that was it was refreshing to be with people who just had a curiosity. Because in San Francisco and and and to an extent New York, they're curious, but, you know, there's established wine culture there. And they feel like they're more in the nose, so they wanna kind of tell you, and they're not as open as I found as they were in Los Angeles. Isn't there a way of dealing with that as a sommelier to sort of coax them without coaxing them to to get something that you Absolutely. Absolutely. Think that they're gonna like Absolutely. Rather than something they've read in a famous magazine and say, I wanna have a good one hundred points. No. No. We we do we do that every day, day in and day out. But in LA, it was it was just fun to have people who had no preconceived notions about anything and just wanted a good bottle of wine. What about the social hours you know, you're married. Were you married at the time when you're working in I was. LA. I am still. Yes. Oh, okay. I mean, how hard is that for your partner? Do you have any kids at the time? We didn't have any kids. It's challenging. I am blessed to have a wife that knows this is our lifestyle in a fiercely independent woman who does what she wants to do. And I think to an extent she likes having that time alone. But when we're together, I think the thing that makes us work is we communicate effectively and when we're together, we're together. We do as much as possible. We fit it all in. Well, that was another edition of relationships weekly. Jeffrey will be back with some more family tips next week. Okay. So LA next up. So I was in Los Angeles and it was like eighteen months. It was really quick, but I got a call from Joe Bastianich, And he was like, would you like to come out to New York? And I've wanted to be in New York City my entire life since I was a little kid. When I was, eighth grade Right. Eight, thirteen years old, I went to New York for the first time, and I was just mesmerized by the intensity, the power, the energy of the city, and I'd been to get there ever since. I applied to university there. Didn't get in. I applied for teach for America there and didn't get in. Applied for jobs there and didn't get in. And then this was the this was the golden opportunity, and it was to be the wine director at the posto. And it was that further step of finally validating all the hard work as a sommelier, that I could be myself and be at a four star restaurant in New York City. Give us the name again? Del Posto. How do you spell that? D e l, Newward, p o s t o. What was the interior that was it? It's a no rock music presumably. No. It was interesting. It's funny. We have a live piano player, but one of the, if if you're listening, you'll be like, you'll be eating your, like, beautiful, orchiette, hand rolled, hand pressed into the little ear, and then you'll be like, is that ACDC on a classical piano? And so the the piano players have taken modern rock songs and turned them into kind of jazz or classical pieces. Okay. So that's kind of revolutionary musically, but the food was very, obviously, modern, but modern Italian, but traditional modern Italian. Yeah. Not not like it's it's modern Italian rooted much more in tradition or what we like to say is New York Kayze too. It's got kind of the Italian American push to it because the ingredients we have are from the United States. So it's not we don't want to say it's authentic Italian food because that would be a service to what it is. But it's not like the three star Michelin Restaurants of Italy, which lean even more French in my opinion than they do Italian. We're kind of somewhere near that, but it's a it's a grand super opulent space, marble, huge Bankettes. We use gear dons for service, which are the little trolleys. We wheel up to your table with our with our wine. We prime the glasses, it's a whole Broadway show. It's beautiful. I love that restaurant. It's so much fun to work the floor there. Do you kind of like the performance aspect of it? Is your goal is the performance part of the wine knowledge that you can give? If the guest wants that, it is. It is. So how do you how do you work that out? Is that just intuition? I mean, do you ever get it wrong? Sometimes, not often. But I've been, luckily enough able to read tables well, but you always get, you know, you serve thousands of guests a year, you're bound to get something wrong. And sometimes you're like, blah, blah, blah, and they're like, we don't really care. And you're like, okay, head down, tail between your leg and you, like, that just won't have a glass of one. Exactly. And they're just like, shut up. Get you out of get you out of the face. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But there's there's there's a lot of people because Del Posto's, an event kind of place you go to for anniversaries, for birthdays, for something special in your life. A lot of people want the theatrics because of the space lends itself to being bigger than normal life. And because the price of of dinner there is the price of going to a Broadway show. It's the same length. Three hours for two people is a normal dinner. We wanna give them the show that they want. So just through talking with people through discussing wines and what they wanna do, you kinda figure out how you wanna play the table. What do you do to unwind? Well, now I have a four year old, so I like playing with her a lot. I read. I try to work out, not effectively enough. When you say you read, you read what Noble's history? I read currently the past few years has been bioger fees of US presidents. I was gonna ask if it was political. Yeah. Because you're quite a political animal. We won't get into politics, but, you know, you certainly know which side of the tracks you you very much like. Does that also come through in your work? You're the values not talk about either side left or right. We just some of the values that you hold dear on a personal level and on a familial level, does that influence how you work? Absolutely. I believe that every action specifically is a buyer that I make is somewhat political. The people you work with the producers you buy from, the way you price it, the way you sell it. You know, at at New York restaurants, it's it's expensive. It's it's not egalitarian at the end of the day. But what I always try to tell my sommeliers and and work with our list no matter our pizzeria or fancy fine dining restaurant is that you have to know that people that save all their money because they love food and love the experience are gonna come. So you need to be able to have wine that's accessible to them. So that's a forty dollar bottle of wine. It better be the best forty dollar bottle of wine you've ever had and put it on your list and be proud of it. And someone's gonna spend ten thousand dollars and do the same thing for them. So that there's the egalitarian approach I try to have for those special few people that do come or save their money. Because when my wife and I first started dating, we both love food, than dining out, but we didn't have a lot of money. But that's what we put our money towards instead of buying clothes or going to see concerts or doing other things. It was always about food. And the restaurants that really meant the most to me were the people that treated me just as well as the people that were in Gucci and Couture at the next table. Just think at the end of the day, the industry that we work in is beautiful because it's agricultural, it's historical based, it's a people, it's a movement, and you can, as a sommelier, as a producer, grower as a consumer, you can affect change, for the world, for the better by knowing what you're drinking. I suppose we can get on to it. We'll leave that for the next discussion, Jeffrey, about we'll talk about maybe organics, biodynamics, alternative wine growing, natural wine going, whatever you wanna, however you want to describe it. Just wanna say thanks very much to my guest today, Jeffrey Porter, Beverage Operations Director of the Potali Bastionics group in New York City, fascinating to talk to you. Well, thank you. No. I hold you in very high regard. A as a as a as a as a wine professional, and it's very easy in wine to confuse knowledge with professionalism, and you have both. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. And humility as well, which is very nice. And I should learn to try something. Oh, you're good at it. I just wanna say how much I like Monty. No. No. No. No. I've got to say that. Just send the check. It's easier. Oh, and, we do it out to talk about that publicly. Sure. Thanks very much to my guest today, Jeffrey Porter. Real pleasure to have you on the show. Love listening to your personal history and your views online. And it's always nice to talk to somebody who combines ridiculous amount of knowledge with a large amount of humility. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Follow Italian White Podcast on Facebook and Instagram.