Vinepair: Natural Wine Takes Australia

For the last decade or so, natural wine has slowly been making its way into the global conversation thanks to a group of winemakers who have bucked conventional methods for a more stripped-down and bohemian approach to viniculture. There are plenty of producers from Old World locales who have been driving this way of thinking and working, but there’s a growing movement in the New World, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Australia.

It’s important to remember that Australian wine isn’t all Yellowtail or expensive Shiraz. There is a whole world of experimentation happening Down Under, especially in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills and Basket Range, in nearby Barossa, and far-away Margaret River, just south of Perth in the west. Ten years back, in Adelaide, a rogue’s gallery of winemakers, Sam Hughes, Anton van Klopper, Tom Shobbrook, and James Erskine, formed Natural Selection Theory. They looked — borrowing an overused tech term — to disrupt conventional winemaking ways, starting a growing community of more thoughtful vignerons who wanted to portray what Australia really tastes like, one bottle at a time.

What is looked at by the winemakers as a return to ancient, more simple methodology can get wrapped up in marketing mythology. Because even though humans have been making gallons of vino since around 6000 B.C., there’s still no legal definition of natural wine.

And while the individual definition depends on which winemaker you ask, the generally agreed-upon one is, as importer Tess Bryant of Tess Bryant Selections puts it, “Nothing added, nothing taken away.”

Meaning: The winemakers go to great lengths to make a product with as little intervention as possible. That translates to organic farming methods, dry-farmed vines (meaning no irrigation), no spraying of herbicides or pesticides in the vineyards, no fining or filtering, and — in some cases — no added sulfur. It should be said though that, yes, sulfur is a naturally occurring byproduct of the fermentation process, and yes, many consider it an important part of the winemaking process. Sulfur dioxide (SO2 for the honors students) is added to preserve the wine and counteract its butterfly-like desires to metamorphose into vinegar. The amount necessary of said SO2 depends on the producer, but there’s a faction of natural winemakers who use minimal amounts (>100-70ppm) and some who abstain from it entirely.

Aussie natural wine’s white knight is undoubtedly Anton van Klopper, who identifies himself as staunchly anti-sulfur. Coming from a traditional winemaking background, he opened Lucy Margaux winery in the Basket Range and has spent the last decade fine-tuning his methods of making wine that is, as he puts it, “as wild as the wind.”

Van Klopper’s first vintage was 2007, with each of his small-production wines yielding only a barrel to a barrel and a half each year. His aspiration is to make something raw, untamed, and expressive of cool-climate Australian terroir. His Pinot Noir vines on the windswept hills look nothing like the manicured fields of Burgundy; he’s allowed the earth to reclaim its property and avoids all spraying and any pruning.

Alex Alan, wine director at Brooklyn’s Hotel Delmano, has focused his wine list almost exclusively on natural wines. He even traveled to Australia last year to work a harvest with van Klopper and was struck by the precision of his approach. For one, van Klopper ferments his wine not in stainless steel but in porous ceramic eggs, which adds even more complexity to his bottlings.

What makes the Adelaide Hills and Basket Range such a fruitful nexus? The community. It’s where Australia’s natural wine movement started. James Erskine, of Jauma in McLaren Vale, is a big reason Bryant started her business. Bryant’s first trip to Australia had her finding these natural producers serendipitously. She says: “They [van Klopper and Erskine] have in their own ways been mentors to young winemakers, [like Tim Webber and Monique Millton of Manon and Sophie and Jasper Button of Commune of Buttons], being really open and generous with their time. James opened a lot of bottles and barrels for me, and opened my mind to natural Grenache,” a grape she had overlooked for its old-world traditionalism.

James Erskine, of Jauma in McLaren Vale, is a big reason Tess Bryant started her business.

Grenache vines in Australia date back to 1850, but everything changed for Erskine when he experienced Priorat Garnacha in Catalonia. He, along with van Klopper, is a no-sulfur-adder, and today his bottlings range from Shiraz to Chenin Blanc/Muscat blends and Cabernet Franc to an array of Grenache. He sources organically farmed grapes from McLaren Vale and Clarendon, just south of Adelaide Hills, and produces terroir-driven wines made holistically.

As word has spread about these Aussie natural wines, so has their distribution. It’s now not uncommon to find Aussie natural wine in Japan, Texas, or Copenhagen. Sure, there’s always the help of an artsy label, euphoric word of mouth, and limited supply, but the real reason is the excitement of tasting a wildly new expression of a grape you thought you knew.

So drink it now and drink it often (in moderation, naturally), because what’s happening now in Australia is certainly worthy of our attention.

This article is sponsored by Wine Australia.

https://vinepair.com/articles/natural-wine-takes-australia/

Vinepair: The Legend, Myth, and Majesty of the Pickleback

Let’s talk about hangovers.

Hangovers are like 10th grade math. They get more difficult, and then nearly impossible to deal with as we get older. Hangovers in your 30s are no longer a badge of honor from last night’s exploits; they’re a scarlet letter, a not-so-friendly reminder from the universe that you aren’t that young anymore.

Avoiding hangovers becomes a “Good Will Hunting”-type of equation as you age, a rich tapestry of densely competing concerns. Did I eat enough? Will I be okay if I have wine after that cocktail? What time do I have to wake up tomorrow? Nobody needs a shot, Matt.

Whether you are a 22-year-old who feels good as new after a greasy breakfast, or a drinker of a certain age for whom the all-day struggle is real, hangover cures abound. A Google search for “best hangover cure” reveals no fewer than 1.27 million results, ranging from water to herbal supplements to FDA-disapproved substances.

As you squint through the pain, you wonder: Is it B12? Bananas? Raw eggs? Cold-pressed juice? Greasy food? Is it… more booze?

Yes. As both a term and concept, the hair of the dog has been around for a while. John Heywood coined the term in a 1546 six-volume collection of writings titled, “A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue, Compacte in a Matter Concernyng Two Maner of Mariages.” If you really feel like impressing no one at all, then go ahead and recite this Heywood ditty the next time a friend has enjoyed too much of the sacrament:

“I pray thee let me and my fellow have
A hair of the dog that bit us last night –
And bitten were we both to the brain aright.
We saw each other drunk in the good ale glass.”

Heywood’s term “hair of the dog” hails from an ancient remedy for rabies. According to extremely questionable science, the cure for a rabid dog bite was once believed to involve putting burned hair of said dog on the wound. I’m not a medical doctor, but I did used to be a lifeguard and strongly do not recommend this.

That said, many believe drinking a Bloody Mary or downing a beer first thing in the morning is the best way to cure what ails you, which, if you think about it, is kind of like treating a third-degree burn with more fire.

Which brings us to the pickleback, or pickle juice paired with a shot of whiskey. If it seems counterintuitive to put more booze into your system after putting too much in the night before, how about consuming booze alongside salty liquid, a known dehydrator? The concept strikes most of us former lifeguard types as an unlikely hangover preventer, yet that’s exactly what pickleback adherents claim.

“Pickle Brine is Why the Polish Don’t Get Hangovers,” Munchies wrote in 2017. “Why Pickle Juice is the Ultimate Hangover Cure, According to Science,” a Notre Dame undergrad posted on Spoon University two years prior.

Most drinking fads, unless they’re something like Four Loko, are based on longstanding traditions. Swigging pickle juice with your booze isn’t anything new. If you’re Russian, it’s practically required.

The pickleback shot became popular in America, however, in 2006, thanks to bartender Reggie Cunningham. The salty solution came to his attention one very hungover day when he was working at lovable Brooklyn dive, Bushwick Country Club.

Documented in what looks to be a found footage YouTube interview, Cunningham says that a woman from Florida with a raspy voice parked herself at his bar and asked for a shot of Old Crow bourbon with a side of pickle juice. Luckily for Cunningham, the now-famous McClure’s Pickles retailer was located just two doors down, and happened to be storing jars in the bar’s basement.

Served alongside a shot, the salty brine seemed to eliminate the taste of the whiskey, which certainly helps if you’re not into whiskey. Cunningham begrudgingly joined his patron for one pickleback shot, and then several more. There in that hazy moment a Brooklyn legend was born.

The pickleback craze exploded, becoming a bartender’s handshake of sorts. It spawned all sorts of salty variations, too. Tequila plus pickled watermelon. Pickled beet juice with vodka. Mezcal alongside pico de gallo juice. And a whole bunch more.

In addition to finding picklebacks delicious, advocates insisted that pickle brine served as a panacea to dehydration; that somehow the combination of water, spices, and cucumbers unlocks secret powers of re-hydration and muscle un-cramping.

The craze spread so far that a company even went as far as monetizing it as a Gatorade-esque sports drink. So the next time you’re parched after a hot day on the gridiron reach for a cold Pickle Juice Sport (picklepower.com).

*

But the real question is: Does it work?

And the short answer is: no.

Kevin Miller, PhD, of Central Michigan University, tackled the pickle juice postulation in a 2009 academic paper, “Electrolyte and Plasma Changes After Ingestion of Pickle Juice, Water, and a Common Carbohydrate-Electrolyte Solution.” The question he set out to answer is whether pickle brine (because of its sodium content) could effectively increase plasma electrolytes in a person experiencing exercise-associated muscle cramps. If so, it would make for a useful athletic supplement — and, thus, a helluva hangover cure.

Miller tested blood samples from nine men around the age of 25 (sorry, women) after they ingested small volumes of pickle juice, and determined that there was little to no change in the plasma sodium concentration. Large quantities? That’s a different story for a different study. “Ingesting greater quantities of pickle juice has the potential to increase plasma sodium concentration; however, the effect of such a practice is unknown,” he writes.

Sounds like a challenge.

https://vinepair.com/articles/pickleback-history-hangover-cure/

Vinepair: Neoprene Dreams - The Definitive History of the Koozie

In the future, when visitors from a far-off galaxy discover our planet and sift through the rubble of a once-great civilization, they will undoubtedly stumble upon a koozie.

Their alien phalanges will brush the dirt away to reveal a squishy, neon-blue relic. They’ll travel back home, eager to show their species the riches from the long voyage and pass along the message from a deep corner of the universe: I’m Not Drunk I’m Awesome.

*

It’s safe to assume nearly everyone reading this article has, at one point or another, had a koozie of their own, though that is not a SurveyMonkey anyone wants to take. If you’ve attended a wedding, barbecue, or lakeside hang with friends in the last 10 years, you’ve likely encountered a koozie.

Emblazoned with company logos, custom hashtags, or boozy idioms, koozies are an almost-useful, ubiquitous way of insulating cold beer from warm hands. They go by many names, including coolie, beer sleeve, drink sheath, beer rubbers, coldy-holdy, candom, and more.

Kitschy products are rife with tall tales of exact origin. The koozie is no exception. Here’s what we (mostly) know.

Beverage insulation has been around for centuries, thanks to very adorable and very British tea cozies. The concept of keeping a beer cold, however, has only existed since the late 1960s.

Australian inventor Alex Lang is believed to have been the first to build a contraption devoted to beer chilling. His was perhaps the greatest-named product in the history of invention: the stubby holder. (Beer in Australia either comes in a standard 750 milliliter longneck or a 375 milliliter short and, well, stubby bottle.)

The first iteration of this iconic invention may have come from Down Under, but the koozie in its present form is as American as John Deere tractors, bald eagles, and Paul Revere waking folks up in the middle of the night.

Idaho inventor Bonnie McGough filed a patent in 1980 for an “insulated beverage cozy for use with cold drinking utensils such as a twelve-ounce beverage can.” McGough’s design wasn’t exactly the tacky darling we use today — she intended hers to be stuffed with goose down.

Within two short years, however, Radio Cap Corporation (RCC), a company specializing in customizable baseball caps, began producing Styrofoam can coolers. To keep costs low and improve efficiency, it switched to more pliable foam and neoprene models. Norwood Promotional Products (NPP) acquired RCC in 1991 and the koozie brand effectively came to be what it’s known as today.

Official KOOZIE® products are now manufactured out of Red Wing, Minn. The company website touts its design as having a “tough, light, leather-like exterior” as well as “on-trend colors and stylish designs.” There’s even a promo video with voice-over that they decided would be a good idea to make.

Still, it hasn’t been all sunshine and butterflies for the the humble beverage insulator. The promotional products industry was thrown into mild disarray 10 years ago. In what is likely the least thrilling legal battle of all time, trademark owners NPP (a subsidiary of Bic Graphic, the pen and lighter people) filed suit against KustomKoozies, an online retailer, for allegedly violating the terms of a previously discussed agreement that involved the K-word in all caps with the appropriate subscript.

To save you the 35-page agony of reading legalese about fucking neoprene, an Indiana judge ruled in part for both: There were valid contracts that KustomKoozies breached but, ultimately, Norwood didn’t provide KustomKoozies with an adequate notice before they tried to terminate the licensing contract.

Shrug emoji.

That hasn’t stopped hordes of entrepreneurial drinkers trying their best to jump on the koozie craze. Over the years there have been countless knockoffs, iterations, and variations, including but not limited to a Chewbacca model, absurdly expensive burlap koozies, Vino Hug so wine drinkers won’t feel left out, and far too many others to name in this article. There’s even one for those quiet Saturdays of Netflix & Take Down an Entire Bottle of Jägermeister.

The question remains. Is a koozie just an easy way to hide the fact that you secretly still drink Bud Light, or does it really work? Five years ago scientists at the University of Washington set out to determine the actual science involved. They concluded that the condensation on the outside of a can or bottle on a hot summer day carries heat and will lower the temperature of a beverage nearly 6 degrees Fahrenheit in just five minutes.

“Probably the most important thing a beer koozie does is not simply insulate the can, but keep condensation from forming on the outside of it,” UW professor Dale Durran said.

What we can infer from Professor Durran is that summertime drinkers have three options. You could shell out nearly $30 for a high-tech insulation system. Alternatively, save yourself the money and bedazzle an old (clean) sock. Or do it the old-fashioned way: Just drink faster.

https://vinepair.com/articles/history-of-beer-koozie/

Vinepair: San Francisco's Best Bartender Finally Has His Own Bar

The sun beams through the windows of The Saratoga, a year-old cocktail bar and restaurant in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Hosts, cooks, and bartenders buzz about, readying the ship for a busy Friday night. The back bar, which seems to stretch toward the heavens, sparkles in the afternoon light.

Brandon Clements, co-owner of The Saratoga and bar director of the wildly successful and Michelin-starred Bacchus Management properties, is multitasking. You may not have heard of him, but for the last 10 years he’s quietly been creating some of the best cocktails in the Bay Area.

He waxes romantic on the new space. A nationally registered historic landmark, it was one of the first buildings in the Tenderloin rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. What originally opened as the Elk Hotel eventually rebranded to the Saratoga Hotel sometime after 1907. A hundred years later, before Clements and company took over, the last iteration was as a bodega of sorts.

“We got down to the basement and discovered that there was a completely illegal, completely shitty bar that had been running down there somehow,” Clements says. “There were glowsticks taped to the wall, bottles everywhere. When I saw that I was like ‘oh, this is the spot’.”

He’s come a long way from his first job as a host at a Romano’s Macaroni Grill in Southern California.

“I felt gravitationally pulled toward the bar. I was curious, always asking them questions,” he says.

Then, as metropolitan origin stories go, he moved to the Big City with nothing but $300 in his pocket and a tiny apartment room he shared with a friend. He had a hunger to learn the trade — both figurative and literal. “I remember eating boxes of Rice-A-Roni mailed from my grandma,” he says.

On his first day in the city, he walked into Max’s Opera Cafe with a padded resume and got a job as a singing waiter. Soon after, the powers that be gave him his first shifts behind the bar. He learned the basics from “a grumpy old man”— admittedly without nearly as much technique, flourish, or skull-head bar spoons as one finds today. He eventually moved over to the lightning-fast bar at the perpetually busy Betelnut restaurant. At this defunct former Cow Hollow hotspot, he learned the importance of working hard and fast. That’s when he started playing around with cocktails.

*

It takes a certain personality to pull off a waxed moustache, carefully manicured hair with a tie and vest, but Clements is a rare commodity. He is a quintessential barman with a soul from another era.

Clements studied spirits and classic drinks exhaustively and, after a stint at Mecca, working with renowned bartender and mentor Neyah White (Nopa, Redwood Room, Bourbon & Branch), he began to see bartending as less of a stop-gap job and more of something he could parlay into a career.

The Saratoga, though technically under the Bacchus umbrella, is special for Clements as it’s his first solo venture. Seen as a complement to the award-winning food in the other restaurants, cocktails here get center stage and he has more breathing room to experiment. Clements estimates it has over 700 bottles in house. He has a dedicated section for Rare and Forgotten Spirits: offerings of vintage whiskey, Fernet, benedictine and other dusty treats. One particular bottle of chartreuse available to taste dates back to 1870.

Nifty bottles aside, the other integral part of a cocktail is the ice. And where some cocktail bars underestimate its importance, Clements quadrupled down; he uses four different types for service. Every week a gargantuan frozen block is delivered, soon to be chainsawed and manicured into perfectly sized spheres delicately placed into a cocktail or spirit.

As for his latest recipes, there’s something for everyone — and that’s always been the point. “It’s his biggest strength: He can appeal to just about everybody,” Emily Parian, head bartender and colleague for more than seven years, says. “It’s not like one cocktail misses and three are great — it’s consistent. And there’s no pretense.”

*

A lot has changed since he moved to San Francisco in the dot-com boom of the late ’90s.

With what seems like a cocktail bar on every corner, the odds of getting a decent drink nowadays are higher than they’ve ever been. But Clements knows, even with the vintage bottles, handsome garnishes, and the occasional burst of flame, that the bells and whistles are small pieces of a much bigger picture.

Hospitality and guest experience is key, and the bars he runs are ones where everyone is welcome, where everyone will find something they like, and where everyone leaves happy. Word travels fast these days and a more educated drinking public has a lower threshold of nonsense to tolerate. They want the whole package, not just the drink.

“You’ve got a much higher level of expertise from the guests because they go to all these cocktail bars now, which is great,” he says. “What I’m looking to do is stay hospitality-focused, push myself to create interesting drinks that actually taste good and never put style in front of substance.”

It’s why his bar seats are always full and why his team members are a diverse, focused, and dedicated group who push themselves. Parian, a former sommelier, weighs in: “As for bartending, he taught me how. The standard he sets is very, very high and consistent and that for me has been a great learning experience.” And Clements is there to give it to them.

Parian heads to the downstairs bar as there’s more work to do before showtime. Clements’ phone buzzes to life. Duty calls. In a few short hours, thirsty patrons will belly-up and the once-quiet space on Larkin Street will come alive with the Friday night symphony. A shot of green chartreuse appears next to my notebook. He’s done it again: another happy customer.

EOS: Magic on the Dark Streets of Gotham

The train of her dress floats in her wake as Juliette Campbell, creative director of Shanghai Mermaid, the renowned underground cabaret, strides from room to room making sure every detail is just so. A man in a fez follows close behind, clipboard in hand. The theme for this evening’s fete is Egyptian, and the time, about 1927. The historic Down Town Association in Manhattan has been transformed, looking, in the dim red light, less like the cavernous halls of Wayne Manor and more like late-Empire beau monde Cairo.

An hour later, the partygoers arrive, decked out in sequined dresses and chic suits. And in no time, a sea of fezzes, fedoras, and flapper headpieces is bobbing on the dance floor to the haunting, serpentine melodies of live Egyptian and Arabic folk music. The belly dancer’s gyrations stop, perfectly timed with the band’s final note, and Juliette introduces the next act: a performance honoring the Egyptian cat goddess Bast. Two masked women in black bodysuits prowl through the crowd and slink into a synchronized dance that looks as if it were taken from the hieroglyphs on a dusty wall in Alexandria. Later, a fire performer cavorts through the room, sprinkling rose petals to tantalize the entranced onlookers. These are the meticulous touches on which Juliette has built her reputation. She carries herself like a queen, lips fire-engine red, finessing technical hitches here and there, overseeing her magnificent creation.


Two weeks later, she is telling me stories over whiskey and garlicky asparagus at Café Argentino in Brooklyn. A streak of hot pink offsets her otherwise jet black hair, and her smile is engaging and warm. Juliette laughs between bites of empanadas and theatrically recounts the year she spent assisting the notoriously brash Hollywood executive, Harvey Weinstein. She describes how at eighteen she escaped conservative Orange County, California, to be an actor in the wilds of New York, just like everybody else. She entered the NYU undergraduate program in theater to mollify her parents, but the itch to work overcame her, and she dropped out after two years to join a national tour. She did that for a few years, deciding eventually to step away from the frenetic pace to “become a person,” as she puts it.


She grew into herself in her new city, a process she describes as tremendously underrated. “Aging is a wonderfully empowering thing,” she says with gusto. “I feel like I could do fucking anything.” And as her CV attests, she has. She shot a documentary on witches in New York City, spent years designing custom jewelry, and toiled away as an assistant at Miramax – just a few items in her lengthy repertoire.

All the while, though, Juliette’s subconscious was nudging her back to the stage. One day, as she sat in Barbès, a tiny bar and performance space in Park Slope, the music and setting lulled her into a vivid daydream. “I was in a nightclub in Paris in the ‘20s. And it was all very clear to me … everyone was dressed in the styles of that era, and there was a great band playing,” she reflects with a nostalgia-soaked voice. Her next venture had revealed itself.

That was eight years ago.

Juliette’s idle daydream turned into Shanghai Mermaid, and its inaugural soirée took place in a humble basement in Brooklyn. After an exhausting year of getting shut down by the police and the chronic anxiety of eleventh-hour bookings, the search was on for a permanent venue. Eventually she found an empty warehouse in Crown Heights and set up shop, christening it the Red Lotus Room. Neglected for sixteen years, the building was in desperate need of attention. “I did everything at first,” she sighs. “I cleaned the floors, scrubbed the toilets.” She pauses, and her eyes glimmer. “But there was magic in there. I wish you could have seen it.” Unfortunately, gentrification of the neighborhood forced the building’s owners to sell, and Juliette had to close the doors of her successful venture and move on. The consistency of one location had been comforting, but never to be deterred, she once again began combing the city for worthy haunts like the early days, giving the footloose cabaret some of its old extemporaneous charm.

A few weeks after our chat, I make my way to the Down Town Association once more, which buzzes with life on the night following Halloween. The theme is a celebration of late-Victorian decadence, and a tinge of the occult seeps into the evening air; in one room a séance is under way. As I drift toward the dance floor, I encounter a smattering of top hats, bow ties, and a variety of gowns. On the far side of the hazy room, a bespectacled man croons into the mic, a Western Electric 600A, between silky runs from the clarinetist. Laughter and chatter and the clinking of glasses are all I hear as I shoulder my way through the crowd and the hot jazz roars to life. Lost in the moment, I twirl and dip a grinning beauty in a beaded drop-waist dress, and suddenly I experience the magic about which Juliette coos. I gaze around me, struck by the notion that I have slipped out of the present and into a different time altogether.


When she speaks about old jazz, a Mae West scene, or the nightclubs of Hemingway’s Paris, you realize Juliette was born in the wrong era; she would seem more comfortable, perhaps, wearing a sleek ivory gown on the silver screen, trading wanton glances with some Phillip Marlowe type, a glowing cigarette between his lips. She is a curator of the past, reconstructing the tastes, sounds, and feelings of days gone by. It’s an exercise in immersion for her loyal followers and newcomers alike, both groups multiplying with every event. “Sometimes,” she says, “we really need to feel like we’re transported,” and her Shanghai Mermaid, this ever-evolving, sentient artistic expression, is a means to that end. The handsomely-clad devotees come in droves because they yearn for the sensation conjured by these dimly lit nights, an aesthetic as subtle and seductive as the olives in the martini or the muted whimper of the trumpet solo.

Juliette, like that beautiful daydream, has undergone her own maturation, a far cry from the California teenager staring up at the flickering minarets of a new city, wondering with childlike awe what would come of it all. She looks forward now, down the dark streets that are strange to her no longer. Though uncertainty may lie ahead, she arches her eyebrow and smiles in knowing anticipation, for what’s to follow is sure to be dazzling. The magic made in Brooklyn eight years ago rests in the palm of her hand, at the ready until the moment beckons, and all of New York waits to see what she’ll do with it next.

Image courtesy of Elizabeth Waterman

Images courtesy of Elizabeth Waterman

http://eosisnow.com/juliette_campbell/

57 Degrees: Holding the Onion

He paddles out for one last set. His legs are tired but adrenaline gallops through his body, keeping him steady and agile on the board. This is Mark Sullivan’s reprieve before he heads into the office. The calm before the cluster of white shirts dance around grills and fryers and prep stations. The printer shrieks orders as spatulas ting, pans clink, and rib eyes hiss in the symphonic maelstrom of a Friday night.

Executive Chef at Bacchus Management Group, Sullivan joined Tim Stannard in 2001 to open the now Michelin-starred Village Pub in Woodside. Since then, the group has opened eight restaurants, including a single origin coffee roasting company, a five-acre organic farm, and San Francisco favorite Spruce in 2007, which garnered its first Michelin star in 2011 and, like the Pub, has kept it since. I ask how the star feels and he takes a long pause. “It feels like you’ve made it,” he says. Chef is modest about the accolades, and expresses gratitude for all the moving parts that make the big wheel turn. The star belongs to the dishwasher and the line cook and the food runner, just as much as it does to him.

When Chef talks about cooking or the art of hospitality, his eyes glimmer. This predilection for taste began in his parents’ kitchen. He pestered his mother to help make breakfast. With saintly patience, she taught her four-year-old how to cook a proper French omelet, a mainstay on his menus and something Sullivan has all his new hires learn. “From a very early age, I can remember the idea that one can make a profession out of making food,” he says, “which excited me.” He sat his parents down and presented a business plan to open their house up as a restaurant to friends and family. He was six.

Chef speaks in measured tones now, with the journeyed timbre of someone who’s been in a thousand kitchens, shouldered between the precious few who find solace in the chaos. He learned all this by getting behind the grill or the pan or the cutting board, and doing it, not in the pricey classrooms of culinary school. Admittedly carefree in his 20s, Sullivan ventured to France to refine his craft in the old world kitchens. He returned with direction in a career that, he says in the fondest of ways, swallowed him whole.

The philosophy degree on his wall from St. John’s University only accentuates his perspective on cooking. “It’s mystical, it’s like a vision,” he says, reflecting on his creative process. The ingredients appear in his mind and he pores over cookbooks in his study, but it’s not until he’s in the field smelling the eggplant or deconstructing the pig that the bulb flickers on and the dish appears. This tactile, sensory experience transports the philosopher outfitted in kitchen whites to the deep recesses of his subconscious. Only then the dots begin to connect and the once empty plate comes to life.

It’s been a while since Chef’s humble beginnings as a line cook at Jack In The Box or even the first few months at the Pub. Bacchus has flourished and his work is needed outside the kitchen. “I can’t be the guy writing the menu everyday,” he says. His chefs de cuisine take point in the kitchen, with Sullivan close by until he feels it’s time to pull back. His philosophy is concise but weighty: keep it simple and cook good food. He has no formal training, but this is in his bones. You see it when he speaks with a prep cook, or arranges the tenderloin, or holds the onion.

Chef knows that things come and go, and counsels his motley crew to never strive for the star. The purpose will always be to create goodness and ensure nobody leaves hungry. Customers visit the mystic because they want the unknown. An ingredient they’ve never tried, a dish that hushes the picky, or a stretch of time where numbers blur on the clock and all that matters is in between the knife and fork. They’ve eaten these things before, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll taste it for the very first time.

Photos by Hemali Acharya Zaveri

57 Degrees: They Gave Us the Bruschetta So We Don't Riot

Walking into the quiet corner office, I’m greeted by a gentleman in Friday attire with a broad smile and a robust handshake, reassuring me I’m in good company. He immediately jumps into a story about the birds outside his fourteenth floor window, and then shows me a video on his iPhone; something he’ll continue to do the rest of the day. This is Randy Ferguson.

He takes me gently by the elbow and walks in the direction of food, interrupting one story to tell another; a recurring motif. Randy speaks with the measured pace of someone with a weighty tome of anecdotes archived beneath his ivory swath of hair.

Randy grew up in Southern California, in a house his father, Thomas, built. It was the same house Thomas would later die in at the age of 101. Randy’s mother, Eliza, was a writer, and his father was one of the 600 original FBI agents. After the war, Thomas segued into the burgeoning wine industry in Northern California, an occupational change that would soon influence his eager son.

He shows me a picture of Thomas at a party looking stoic, regal. His mouth is taut, but content. Seated to his left is Andre Tchelistcheff, a close friend and business partner at Buena Vista Winery, someone that many have called the “dean of American winemakers.”

A wistful twang saturates Randy’s stories, of which he has an endless supply. He sips his wine and the angelic expression returns as he speaks more of his father and his upbringing.

The most poignant story begins with Randy surprising his family on Thanksgiving 30 years ago. Thomas held court as Randy walked into the living room. His father took him by the elbow before they sat and talked, for seemingly the first time as two adults, two equals. It turned into a conversation that lasted until Thomas died in Randy’s arms in 2009.

Randy derails his train of thought to introduce me to somebody. It seems he knows everyone within a seven-mile radius.

His father preached hard work, and Randy has: from picking grapes on his father’s vineyards, to attending law school, and growing his own grapes in the Carnernos fields. Entitlement, he thinks, is for the birds. “We’re not raised that way,” he says. As a law student, he advocated for Native American rights, advising Richard Oakes before his murder. He found customs law while working in Germany and made it his own, building a significant reputation. “Go, go. Eat, eat,” he commands me as he finishes his anecdote.

Randy’s repertoire is vast, and conversation swings from jurisprudence to the subtle variations of sauvignon blanc, music, and everything else under the sun. He takes his time. He wants you to soak in the experience as he did. “I tell these stories...” he pauses, “because I spent all my life as a kid not being able to tell stories.”
Randy lost a pronounced stutter in the mid-1970s, an obstacle that both plagued and identified him for 30 years. Now it seems he has some catching up to do. His pursuits are so varied one can’t help but wonder if there is a chemical dependence to vocation, but he eschews a singular title.

“I don’t want to be known as a customs lawyer, I don’t want to be known as just a surfer. I don’t want to be known as a wine guy.” He stops, seeking verbal precision. “I just want to be known as someone who thoroughly enjoys this ride.”

The day ends at a trattoria on Fillmore Street, and he introduces me to the entire staff. At the end of the bar, we sit barely an arm’s length from the bustling kitchen. “They gave us the bruschetta so we don’t riot,” he says, a boyish glint in his eye. When we exit the noisy restaurant, it is dark. Conversation concludes and he gives me, a perfect stranger, an enormous hug before stumbling home our separate ways. Randy is someone whose innate drive is to connect with people, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. That much, above anything else, is clear. This is Randy Ferguson.

Photography by Hemali Zavery

Photos by Hemali Acharya Zaveri