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Sample Excerpt: Business Feature Article for Arizona Gourmet Magazine
Tucson wine educator Joe Galkin wants you to know he is not a wine snob.
Not that he doesn’t agree that good wine can elevate and refine a person’s enjoyment of life. But after more than 40 years in the wine and liquor business, Galkin believes both that fine wine is for everyone, and that everyone doesn’t have to agree on what makes a good wine, a good wine.
Let Them Drink Wine
"I think if people like a specific wine, they should enjoy that wine,” Galkin says. The sacred, traditional standards for what wine goes with what food, for instance, need not always apply.
"Say it’s a fish appetizer and you want a red wine,” Galkin proposes. "Who am I to tell you no? If you like it and the combination’s good for you, that’s fine. That’s why it’s really up to the individual and what they like. It’s subjective.”
Those who attend Joe Galkin’s recurring wine tastings at Tucson’s Lotus Garden Restaurant find this approach liberating. One tasting was aptly titled "Wine for Independent Thinkers and Drinkers.”
"I try to tell [my students] the reason for the pairing of wines during the tastings, for example, so that they can get an idea for the reason behind it,” Galkin explains. "Everybody’s taste is different.”
He qualifies the traditional methods of wine tasting as "universal rules that have been sent down throughout the centuries” based on "why wine was originally consumed—why food was prepared in certain ways and what wines were chosen to go with it.”
While allowing room for personal style in his tastings, Galkin doesn’t completely throw out these traditional methods. He simply softens the tone and focuses more on the practical benefits of knowing a good wine, whatever your social status.
"I don’t talk down to people,” he stresses. "When you ask questions, I think it’s great. That’s how you learn. If you walk away saying, ‘I don’t understand what he meant by that,’ what good is it? I talk down-to-earth about how good a wine is, why it goes with this particular food.”
Becoming an Educator
Galkin’s affection for wine is rooted in decades of service to the industry and its customers. He recently ended a 17-year occupancy at Sunrise & Swan, the Gourmet Emporium & Cheese Shop, where he had been giving in-house wine tastings since the ‘80s.
Early on in his ownership of the Emporium, Galkin’s natural enthusiasm for food and wine began to rub off on his customers, and they began coming into his shop for advice.
"I had customers wanting to know, ‘What wine should I have? I’m making this tonight.’ I’d say, ‘This would go well with what you’re having. This would go good, etc.,’” he recalls. "Everybody used to say to me, ‘You should give classes. We would come.’”
So one night a month, about five years after opening the Emporium, Galkin began holding wine tastings. "I would select five or six different wines, prepare some appetizers and other food, and we had full houses every time. We were always sold out at least two weeks prior to the tasting. People enjoyed it.”
From Emporium to Lotus Garden
During his ownership of the Emporium, Galkin met Darryl Wong, current owner with his parents of the Lotus Garden Restaurant, and a longtime friendship began. When the Emporium’s landlord eventually raised the rent too high for Galkin’s good sense, he was forced to close his doors and Wong stepped in with an interesting proposition.
"Joe’s options were to either retire or open up another store,” Wong recalls. "He decided to close it and not restart again. So I asked Joe to do a wine program for me like the one he did in his store with his clientele.”
Last year, Galkin and Wong began hosting a series of wine tastings at the Lotus Garden. "We’re on our third series right now,” Wong says. "They’ve been very successful so far. I also have Joe doing talks for private groups.
"Some people want Joe’s type of homestyle, down-to-earth talk,” Wong says. "If you have a question, he’ll be there to address those specific questions. Like we say in Chinese, ‘you have to pick the right horse to make sure it carries you to where you want to go.’ People always come time after time to register for his classes.”
Wong is also happy to say the tastings have been good for business, putting Chinese food in a different light. "It’s not just inexpensive wines and Chinese beers. You’re going to have quality wines paired with quality food for that evening.”
Food and Wine
Perhaps the most important first step in wine education is to realize, as Galkin puts it, that "wine is not just a beverage. It is part of food and enjoying a meal. It’s not something you just guzzle down to get high. "A meal can be made more pleasurable by pairing it with a proper wine.”
Galkin typically sits down with Wong before a tasting to select the wines and decide what dishes would be good with the wines. "We try to pair them so that people have a chance to taste maybe seven or eight wines,” Galkin says, "usually four whites and four reds. We will have dishes that will really help you understand why we’re combining them with that kind of food.”
But, food aside, Galkin mostly wants to empower people to choose for themselves. "The most important question is, do I like it? If I do, I want to buy some and we’ll have it at home. It adds another element to living that helps you enjoy life.”
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