A1: I grew up in the ever-disappearing almond orchards of Riverbank, California. The area is now mostly a subdivision but still pretty right along the Stanislaus River. I went to High School in Modesto California with many of the Gallo kids which was why we lived there, Gallo was my fathers first job out of b-school.

A2: Started mostly with pilfered wine coolers from my fathers sample/party stash in the garage, probably around freshman year of high school. I didn’t really get into wine until my father began sending me mixed cases of wine from a local wine shop in Boulder Colorado where I was going to school.

A3: Pretty much in college. I remember a particularly eye opening moment with a couple of bottles of Cosentino red and white (an acquaintance of my Dad’s) that my Dad had sent out to me. It was then that I thought, hey maybe I want to be a winemaker.

A4: Everywhere.

A5: Everything – I love the new experience side of wine…the Wine Adventure. I just finished tasting a couple of Margaret River Semillons which totally blew my mind…not to mention a $7 Romanian Pinot Grigio that was very pretty wine. We may end up importing it.

A6: Thai, American Fusion anything, Italian, Classic French, Japanese (Sushi). Pretty much will eat anything, as long as it is attentively made.

A7: I love Boulevard in SF, Aperto up on Portrero Hill, Boulettes Larder in the Ferry Plaza, Viognier in San Mateo, Marche in Palo Alto and just about any one of the vendor carts at the Ferry Plaza Farmers market. To be honest, I have 2 and 4-year-old kids so lately much of my dining out quotient has been spent at places like Stacks and Crepevine in Burlingame. Not very sexy. Sorry.

A8: Hell, I’m a simple guy. Steak and Napa Cabernet with some age on it. I once worked for a guy who was a pairing genius and my favorite pairing of his was aged, very dry gruyere cheese and a particular Madiran we were importing. They formed this wonderful blueberry and earth mélange that I can taste to this day.

A9: If so, what kind of food and for whom? I used to cook a lot and was pretty good at it but then my wife (DC/NY Jewish girl for whom cooking equals slavery) and I birthed a company and had two kids. We work together so neither of us feels like cooking when we get home – no time, no energy. We pretty much rely on our nanny, a wise Latina woman, who cooks for the whole family. Pretty good setup I must say. As an illustration of what happens once you have children let me recount a recent cooking incident (or lack thereof). I went to make my famous Bolognese the other weekend and bought all the veggies at a local farmers market before getting distracted with the kids and not making it to the grocery store. This was about 9 days ago – I just had to throw out the rotting tomatoes because I have had neither the time nor the inclination to get the rest of the ingredients!!!

A10: I hate this question. To be frank, I hate drinking any beverage containing alcohol unless it is served under 65 degrees; otherwise, it’s a waste of time. I can’t tell you how many restaurants I have been in lately (on the road that is) where they serve red wines at room temp – which most of the times is a quite warm 74-78 degrees. The wines then blow out on the midpalate and just suck. Drives me nuts to pay $12 for a glass of wine that sucks. Now, supposing I had a cooler on that desert island, it would be filled with Coopers Sparkling Ale, Trumer Pils, and Sam Smiths’ Organic Pale Ale. It’s hard to drink wine out of the bottle mush less a coconut shell (another pet peeve…open lipped or bowl-like red wine glasses, hate ‘em). If I assume that I would have the time to carve out a coconut shell into proper stemware or maybe a tumbler then I would definitely opt for a loaded vinotemp. No cooler or vinotemp? then just give me good old water. I love water. As for food, it would have to be pizza to maintain some diversity. I mean, how many different kinds/combinations of pizza are there? If not that, then shredded beef tacos (or maybe enchiladas verde), rice and beans from El Ranchito out in Riverbank where I grew up.

A11: I do, but I cannot tell you about them.

A12: Well, besides the warm by the glass pours I get all too frequently, most of them are business related. Like the time 4 containers of wine showed up from Australia with obviously pre-bottling damaged wines. Someone had pretty much committed one sort of winemaking mistake or another and had either over sulfured the wine or made an unrequested acid addition. They all sucked (for instance – a once beautiful old vine shiraz came in with a 3.3pH (like a cool-climate chardonnay) versus the 3.8-3.9pH it should have. After much back and forth with the supplier they admitted culpability for most of it and we sent the wines to China to disappear. Apparently, we are a hot brand over there now.

A13: I like going into the affordable wine category and just looking to see what is floating people’s boats these days. If it sounds interesting we’ll go look at the region and see what we can come up with.