Life, on the Line (14 page)

As Bill wrapped up his life story I asked him about the job.

“Basically the person has to wear many hats. Up until now I have done all of the winery work myself—pressing, pumping over, racking, and maintaining the wines once they're in barrel. But I'm not getting younger, and my wife, Joan, and I are building a new house on the back of the property. So I need someone to lend me a hand. You'll do all of those things, plus help the vineyard team prune and plant. You'll probably help out around the new house, too. Joanie likes tulips, so we'll give her some tulips around there,” he said with a shrug and a smile.

I had toured a few of the big wineries in the valley and they were anything but romantic. Dozens of workers wore hard hats and lifted zip palettes of wine on forklifts while giant fire hoses moved enough wine to fill a small pond. La Jota was the opposite of that—it had character. The stone structure was built in 1867 and was largely unchanged. The surroundings were magical, and Bill seemed to be the gentle grandfather of every kid's fishing dreams.

Bill showed me around the cellar and grounds and then we settled into his office. “Well, Grant, you sure are quiet. I like that. Do you want a job?”

“I do. Thanks.”

Despite everything Bill had told me, I was expecting to find some technology at the vineyard once I started. At the very least I assumed there'd be automated machines for the pressing, pumping, and bottling of the wine. Once I got there I found that the reality was as far from my expectations as possible—in a good way. Absolutely everything was done by hand.

I spent the first few weeks preparing for the onslaught of the harvest. I cleaned the large stainless-steel fermenters using buckets of bleach and citric acid, climbing inside with a scrub brush attached to a long pole. I spent days organizing the cellar and moving in the new oak barrels.

Bill and I measured the grapes' Brix—or sugar content—religiously as they hung in the vineyard nearly ready to pick. While we were collecting samples one day Bill mentioned that the fruit at the Sonoma vineyard where he purchased his pinot noir grapes was ready. “Jim says they look good and we should plan to pick tomorrow or the next day.”

“Cool,” I thought, “I finally get to make some wine.”

The following day we drove to the Sonoma coast with our vineyard team and harvested the grapes into three large bins and trucked them back to the winery.

“Bill, why aren't we unloading these up top by the press?” I asked.

He explained that with the pinot grapes he liked to do things differently. He put them through what's called “whole berry fermentation.” The fruit is encouraged to begin fermenting inside its own skin, which helps develop flavors like banana, cherry, and even bubble gum. It also helps reduce the malic acid and increase the chances of higher alcohol content—Bill liked strong wines.

It was cold enough that we could cover the grapes for the night and start processing them in the morning.

The next day I walked into the office to find Bill sitting at his desk doing some accounting. He welcomed me as I pulled up a chair to hear what the plan was for the day. Bill paused, looked at me, and a big grin came over his face. “Grant, today you're going to crush the pinot grapes in the fermenters outside.”

I clapped my hands together, excited to be really making wine and said, “Okay . . . show me what I have to do.”

Bill's grin widened further as he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a pair of purple swim trunks. He tossed them in my direction. “You'll need these.” I figured that it would be a messy process and he was trying to spare my jeans from stains.

He led me outside and down the hill to the front of the winery where the fermenters were located. They were three white plastic tubs, each chest-high and six feet square. He glanced at the shorts and told me to put them on as he lifted the lids off the fermenters.

I was starting to figure out what he had in mind but wouldn't let myself believe that he was going to ask me to take my clothes off and wade around in the warm grape bog. As I was getting undressed he said, “There are a few bees on the surface and the cap will likely hit you about waist high, so, well, you aren't allergic to bee stings, are you?” He was now laughing out loud in a good-natured way. I glanced into one of the fermenters and shook my head at the swarm of bees gathered on top. Every second a few more would dive-bomb into the vat of sugar. It vanquished my romantic notions of crushing grapes underfoot in the middle of wine country.

“Uh, Bill. Why are we doing this? I mean, don't they have machines for this kind of thing?”

“They do, but we want to be very, very gentle on the grapes. Your feet are nice and soft.”

I managed to wade carefully through the grape baths without a sting while I gently crushed the grapes. It even became enjoyable. But while hosing down after finishing, I stepped on a bee. Seems I needed one sting to prove I did it.

A few months later, after the wine was well into the barrel and the vineyard was cleaned up for the following spring, Bill asked if I could cook a dinner party for a small group at the new house. “Of course,” I said, happy to show him what I could do in a kitchen.

“Good then. By the way, it's for
Food and Wine
magazine. They want to do a profile on our Cab Franc.” Whoa.

Once
Food & Wine
found out that Bill had hired an ex-French Laundry cook as an assistant winemaker, they decided to turn the article into a dinner-party theme, with me cooking dishes that paired well with the luscious Cab Franc. It was my first press of any kind and a fairly substantial piece.

I thought it was pretty cool that my photo and food were in a major magazine, and when the article came out I got plenty of phone calls from people I hadn't spoken with in quite some time. One of them was Angela from The French Laundry. She had seen the piece—someone had pinned it to the wall in the coffee station in the restaurant.

Angela and I met at the restaurant in 1996. She was by then already considered a longtime employee, one of the few people around that knew the “old” French Laundry. That basically meant the period between 1994, when the Laundry opened, until the first of many major renovations in 1996, just before I arrived. Angela and a few other veterans would tell stories about taking reservations while sitting on milk crates, since there was no real furniture around. Thomas would create four-star meals from a residential stove and refrigerator in a kitchen the size of a small bathroom. Angela had worked during that heady time as a reservationist, hostess, and, as the restaurant grew, the director of group sales and private events.

When I left, everyone there thought I had committed career suicide. So to make a splash with the
Food & Wine
article somehow legitimized my departure, at least in my mind, and this phone call from someone at the Laundry let me know that they had indeed seen it. It felt great.

 

After working at the winery for ten months I realized I wanted to be more entrepreneurial and to start making some money.

I talked to Bill about starting my own wine label, and he agreed to help me get going by giving me some space in the La Jota cellar and loaning me a few old barrels. He put me in touch with key people to help buy quality grapes. I started taking viticulture and winemaking classes at Napa Valley College three nights per week and making industry connections to give me insight into how to plan for my own bottling.

The idea was to start small—by necessity but also by choice. If I could find a vineyard owner willing to sell me a ton of grapes, I could produce two barrels, or about seven hundred bottles of wine. It was a modest plan, but doable.

As time went on, the work at the winery slowed significantly compared to the high season when we crushed the grapes. Most of my days were spent doing vineyard work such as installing irrigation lines and planting rootstock, pruning the vines, repairing trellises, and weeding. I was farming. It was a side of the wine industry I hadn't considered. The pace slowed, and as it did my desire to make my own wine waned. I became anxious about what I was doing with my life.

I talked about these uncertainties with my mom and Mark, and both of them suggested I return to The French Laundry. I had no idea how I could possibly do that. It had crossed my mind, but I couldn't see myself joining the team having missed nearly a year. I would be pushed back down through the ranks in terms of seniority, and more significantly there would be the awkwardness of my relationship with chef Keller. I went from being one of his most dedicated cooks to—in my mind—letting him down.

One morning I popped in to see Bill and get my tasks for the day. He wasn't in yet but his daughter, who handled some office work for him, was behind the desk. She said hello and handed me a piece of paper. “There was a message on the machine for you this morning.”

I looked down at the Post-it note and saw the name “Thomas,” followed by the familiar number of the French Laundry kitchen. I walked outside in a confused panic. Why would he be calling?

Chef Keller and I played phone tag for a couple of days before we were able to connect. When we finally talked I was surprised to find his manner warm and friendly. He asked about the winery, how I was doing in general, and what was new. This was the first time I had ever heard him make small talk. Finally, he got to the point of the call. “So, I have a sous chef position opening up. Are you interested?”

I was flabbergasted. “I am hugely interested, Chef. But give me a few days to think about it, if you could.”

The decision was not completely cut and dry. Despite thinking that perhaps winemaking was not for me, I greatly appreciated Bill, La Jota, and everything I had learned there. I found the free time wonderful as well. I had never had a seven-hour workday in my life, and I now had time to devote to other interests. But with all the stress of a long-distance relationship and different long-term goals, Cindy and I had broken up. And without her around, I really had no other interests. I returned to The French Laundry as a sous chef in June 1999.

I
was only at the winery for ten months but the Laundry had gone through significant changes in my absence. Chef Keller was spending more time away from the restaurant, and many of the faces in the kitchen were new. Eric was promoted to chef de cuisine and Greg to sous chef. The restaurant had become more corporate in its organization—the cooks had a posted schedule to follow instead of arriving whenever they felt they had to in order to accomplish the work, a series of clipboards outlining tasks hung on the kitchen wall, and the kitchen management was asked to post entries in a journal after each shift. Instead of having one expediting station there were now two. Chef Keller would still call in the tickets but focused primarily on the canapé and fish stations. Because the majority of my time on the line was at the fish station, chef Keller typically had me take over for him when he was away. I was twenty-five years old and standing in the shoes of one of the most respected chefs in the world.

In a conversation with Angela at work one morning, I mentioned that I was running out of time to find a new place to live. Conveniently, she was looking for a roommate. The fact that I had no furniture or even a security deposit made it as easy as moving my clothes, books, and knives once again. I moved in with Angela—and
then
we started dating. Pretty much the opposite of what most people do.

Chef Keller treated each of us like specialists, delegating the responsibilities of the kitchen to us based on our strengths and personalities. Greg led the morning team and did most of the ordering, Eric would oversee the entire operation but concentrate on the meat and butchering stations, and I spent most of my time looking over the fish and canapé sections. The creative process was always collaborative, but it became clear that Chef appreciated my imaginative spirit. He knew that while I respected the idea of flawless repetition required in the pursuit of perfection, I grew bored easily. I found making the same thing the same way monotonous, and I commonly pestered him to change my dishes.

In a menu meeting, Chef threw out a challenge to the group: to come up with a new summer-focused caviar dish. We'd run the same two—“Oysters and Pearls” and “Cauliflower Panna Cotta”—for a long time, and even though the former dish is amazingly delicious, it is very heavy for the summer months. I went home that night and sat down with a few books and a pad of paper to figure out a new dish.

I wanted a cold preparation, something that was light and refreshing—the complete opposite of the rich, hot sabayon in “O & P.” As I started to think about caviar my mind naturally drifted to champagne. It is a classic match, and the cold effervescence of the wine is energizing. I next thought of things that paired well with champagne. I imagined a cocktail reception with people wearing fine clothes, sipping champagne, and eating . . . prosciutto-wrapped melon on a toothpick.

Cantaloupe, champagne, and caviar. It makes sense.

I called the produce purveyor at 3:00 A.M. and added a few cantaloupes so I could play around the next day.

I arrived early with a condensed page of notes and an annotated sketch I drew up showing each of the components and their composition in the finished dish. After giving it more thought, I wanted to create a dish that highlighted the texture of the caviar itself. I decided to turn the melon into a
bavarois
, or mousse, so it would gently dissolve in the mouth and give a textural priority to the eggs. A thin layer of champagne gelée would form the barrier between the caviar and the mousse, and a paper-thin slice of ripe melon would act as a foot to prevent the
bavarois
from melting if the plate was not super cold.