What
attracted you to the Auction World and the position at Christie’s?
I
was in London in that first summer before my Eurorail pass ran out and I went
to a Christie’s Auction at King Street, beautiful amazing Christie’s Auction House on King Street in Saint James. I sat there all through a morning and
afternoon auction and I was mesmerized! Michael Broadbent, one of the great
figures of the wine world, Master of Wine, Head of Christie’s, Chairman of Christie’s
wine department is up doing the auctioneering and a gentleman says “You’re
a patient young man, you’ve been sitting here all day but I haven’t seen that
you’ve bid,” and I said, “Well, I don’t have any money, I’m a student,” and he
said, “What do you want to do?” and I said I wanted to learn about wine. Then
he said, “You see that man up there? That’s who you have to meet. If you can
wait around until the end of the auction I’ll introduce you to Michael
Broadbent.”
After
the auction he took me up and introduced me to Michael Broadbent…and he said,
“Young man, be at my office at 11am on Tuesday.” So I went to visit him and he
said “Well, what do you want to do?” and I said, “I want to learn about wine.”
Then he said, “Well you have to take all the courses of the WSET, but you’re
too late for the summer courses. What I suggest is work a harvest, stay in
Europe, come back to London in January and begin the courses.” But the greatest
thing he said, he said, “Son, what are you going to do?” and I said I got a
Eurail pass and he said “Get the hell out of my office, get on the first train
and get in those vineyards in France and go to Burgundy and Bordeaux and Loire
and Rhone and Spain and Italy and go to Germany. Go to all the vineyards you
can possibly go. This is the greatest opportunity of your life and I’m not
going to waste another minute of your time. When you get back in January call
me and we’ll have lunch.”
When
I went back to London in January of the following year, I stayed for two years
and I was at Christie’s every single week for wine tastings and of course saw
Michael all the time. So I fast forward to 2011 and I was offered the job at
Christie’s…to take over as Head of Wine of the Americas and of course the first
person to call me was Michael Broadbent and he was like “Good job, Lad! It’s
about time you joined Christie’s!” How great was that?
What
was a typical day at Christie’s like?
It’s
easier if I do it by calendar year. Christie’s America holds eight sales a year
in New York. Generally…March, April, May, June, September, October, November
and December. The process of putting a sale together takes months and months of
preparation…the process includes getting the consignments, inspecting the wines
manuscripting the wines and developing the catalogue. All the wine is
appraised, inspected and picked up by the specialists and sent to Christie’s
temperature controlled New York
warehouse. Every bottle accepted for sale, once inspected receives a Christie’s
seal that is placed on the back of the bottle, even if the wine is in wood case
that’s never been opened. The wood case is carefully opened and all bottles are
inspected, no matter the wine or the rarity. Everything is noted about the
condition of the wine: if there is a nick on the capsule, a tear or stain on
the label, the level of the fill, will be written down in the manuscripting
process and thus go into the catalogue. There is a lot of work involved.
There’s this amazing laborious process that goes into every single sale.
You’ve
accomplished so much during your career, is there anything else that you would
like to do?
That’s a great question,
I’m always toying with the fact that I was in the Master Sommelier program and…I think I very much would still like to do that. I don’t know if it’s in the
realm of possibility because I’m so incredibly busy and it takes just a
tremendous amount of study. I have to say that it has just been so great, it’s
been so rewarding, so gratifying that probably the answer is, I just want to continue
doing more of what I’ve been doing, I think I’ve been lucky enough. I’d like to
write more and there’s certainly a book in the making or two that I’ve written
outlines [for]. I’ve gotten some fundamentally good ideas particularly I think
first I’d tackle Bordeaux but in a totally different light then other books
that have been written on the subject. But you know my passion continues always
to teach and lecture. I love getting up in front of students and interested
consumers and people who share the same passion.
What is your favorite food and wine pairing?
I
love Asian food, I’m an Asian food fanatic, and I really am! I love Japanese,
love Chinese so I personally I think we’re so lucky here in New York…for this
plethora of great Chinese restaurants particularly down in Chinatown, that’s
where I go. I always take wine every restaurant I go to, and of course Japanese
as well, I think Japanese cuisine is so exquisite. Where do you begin? I love
red, I love white but I am certainly a Riesling fanatic so I drink a lot of
Riesling from Germany, Alsace, and Austria. To be fair we’re making very good
Rieslings in Washington State and certainly the Rieslings in Clare Valley
[Australia] are well undiscovered. I drink a lot of Riesling at a lot of
different sweetness levels and age categories. I think with Asian food Pinot
Noir is a natural, I think it just goes so well; however, I never stop there
because I was in the Bordeaux business so what do you think I own a lot of? I
own a lot of Bordeaux! So I’m constantly bringing Bordeaux to prove that there
is no such thing as red wine with meat, and white wine with fish. Interestingly
enough Bordeaux sells very little white wine in Japan…the majority of
everything the Japanese import from Bordeaux is red and of course I’ve been to
Japan a lot and what do you think the Japanese do? They drink a lot of red wine
with fish, which just proves that there are no rules.
What’s your favorite everyday wine?
What’s your favorite everyday wine?
Riesling Grapes |
Tell
me about your wine collection.
I’m
not a collector, I’m a gatherer. I guess it comes from my Irish Scots heritage
that I can’t throw anything out. I’ve gathered a lot of wine and I truly need
to get drinking or I’ll just have to share a lot of wine with friends and
family. Right now I probably have somewhere between five and six thousand
bottles somewhere in the universe.
Most of it is here in New York City. I’ve got a little farm house in
upstate New York’s Hudson Valley where I keep a thousand bottles or so. In my
humble little piso in the West
Village in NYC I normally keep about two or three hundred bottles of ready to
drink wines. In France I still have two or three hundred bottles mostly in
Bordeaux that I bought and never moved. As well I have a caché of wines in a
storage facility in the Presidio in San Francisco.
What’s
your favorite beer?
Well,
my favorite beer growing up was a local beer called National Bohemian which is
beer from Baltimore. I love National Bohemian for the nostalgia point, brewed
on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. I can’t get National Bohemian in New York
so I’m partial to Sierra Nevada. It’s a beer that is friendly and most
delicious. I try other beers of course. I’ve been a partner in several pubs in
New York City that are all strongly micro brewery oriented. The only pub I’m
still involved in we have twenty beers on tap and one beer is more exciting
than the next but Sierra Nevada always hits that sweet spot.
A big thank you to Robin Kelley O'Connor for sharing his fascinating story and helpful advice for those pursuing a career in the wine industry. To read the previous installments, please check out Part 1 and Part 2 here on The Glamorous Gourmet.
Cheers,
A big thank you to Robin Kelley O'Connor for sharing his fascinating story and helpful advice for those pursuing a career in the wine industry. To read the previous installments, please check out Part 1 and Part 2 here on The Glamorous Gourmet.
Cheers,