He was the best of the best

I only met Joe once recently in NY. It was in Chelsea wine vault, with some of you, where he generously opened an old Huet... I had read and learnt from him for a very long time, both in Therapy and here

This has been very sad news. Best condolences for family and friends
 
Some memorable encounters - others surely have lots more.

- A Singerriedel dinner at Blaue Gans hosted by Chambers Street Wines. At some point the conversation turned to sweet riesling and how strange it was that some of them manage to age into something totally bone-dry. I wondered aloud how that was even possible, chemically speaking, and Jamie pointed his thumb at Joe and said, "That guy could probably explain it." He did.

- The Huet-a-thon at Joe's place with Brad, Don, David S., John G., and others I know I'm forgetting. Originally conceived as a grauerburgunder shootout or something equally pointless, then happily transmogrified into one great Huet vintage after another. Joe opened a '64 petillant. He also wanted to show how well the secs can age. So he opened a '46. One of the best wines of the night.

- A 2004 Burgundy dinner at Brooklynguy's. Many beautiful wines, just a few with the greenies. In the fashion of Silent Bob at the end of a Kevin Smith movie, Joe summed it all up with one pithy sentence at the end, "People are going to have a lot more fun with 2004s over the next ten years than 2005s."

- At the bar at Veritas with some co-workers to have some wine to celebrate Eliot Spitzer resigning in disgrace. In walks Joe, to have some wine to celebrate Eliot Spitzer resigning in disgrace.

- A dinner uptown with Marty, Jay, and others. I remember bringing a Rougeard Breze. There was also a gorgeous Engel Clos Vougeot. We end up talking about how to fill your desert island case. Marty and I are making an impassioned case for including a bunch of Clos Roche Blanche, even if you only get 12 bottles, even if you don't have to pay for them, against one of the typical trophy-hunters who insists it has to be all Romanée-Conti. Joe pipes in with the smartest solution to the problem I'd heard yet, "I'd have to think about what wine goes best with coconuts."
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Some memorable encounters - others surely have lots more.

- A Singerriedel dinner at Blaue Gans hosted by Chambers Street Wines. At some point the conversation turned to sweet riesling and how strange it was that some of them manage to age into something totally bone-dry. I wondered aloud how that was even possible, chemically speaking, and Jamie pointed his thumb at Joe and said, "That guy could probably explain it." He did.

- The Huet-a-thon at Joe's place with Brad, Don, David S., John G., and others I know I'm forgetting. Originally conceived as a grauerburgunder shootout or something equally pointless, then happily transmogrified into one great Huet vintage after another. Joe opened a '64 petillant. He also wanted to show how well the secs can age. So he opened a '46. One of the best wines of the night.

- A 2004 Burgundy dinner at Brooklynguy's. Many beautiful wines, just a few with the greenies. In the fashion of Silent Bob at the end of a Kevin Smith movie, Joe summed it all up with one pithy sentence at the end, "People are going to have a lot more fun with 2004s over the next ten years than 2005s."

- At the bar at Veritas with some co-workers to have some wine to celebrate Eliot Spitzer resigning in disgrace. In walks Joe, to have some wine to celebrate Eliot Spitzer resigning in disgrace.

- A dinner uptown with Marty, Jay, and others. I remember bringing a Rougeard Breze. There was also a gorgeous Engel Clos Vougeot. We end up talking about how to fill your desert island case. Marty and I are making an impassioned case for including a bunch of Clos Roche Blanche, even if you only get 12 bottles, even if you don't have to pay for them, against one of the typical trophy-hunters who insists it has to be all Romanée-Conti. Joe pipes in with the smartest solution to the problem I'd heard yet, "I'd have to think about what wine goes best with coconuts."
Click to expand...

Many, many wonderful dinners but that uptown dinner was a great one. Marty brought the Engel (1998?), Joe brought a beautiful old Rioja and an Austrian, I brought a 1971 Drouhin Corton. Which got me buying more Corton.

That Huet dinner was where I finally met Cliff Rosenberg! Joe brought so many people together in so many fun and enlightening ways.

He left the world a better place for having been in it.
 
I remember that dinner well --- and of course Joe's great line about the coconuts.

The place was indeed uptown (La Rural on 97th and Amsterdam), which occasioned some other witticisms from Joe (a diehard downtowner) both before and after the dinner:

"remind me where this place is again---Riverdale? Yonkers?"

and

"Well that was a blast. Next time I'm in Vermont I will def check out that place again."

The Engel was an 88.

Joe brought some older Austrians that night that made me decide to run out and buy some older Austrians.
 
The Huet-a-thon was a wonderful event that he generously hosted partly because he really regretted missing the first Huet-a-thon in 2000 at Don Rice's apartment. It came about because Lyle Fass and I were arguing about dry German wines. Lyle originally proposed I believe a Trocken tasting and I immediately put the kabosh on that and proposed the Huet-a-thon, which he ended up not going to. Joe graciously hosted after it got a little too big for my place to hold. Mark Anisman even came in from Napa for it and brought his pal David Schildknect along with him. It was a truly memorable event. I can post some pictures from it when I get home tonight.

So many incredible moments and memories with him. One of my favorites was at a dinner I hosted at my parent's place because I wanted to invite more people than my place could hold. Joe brought a delicious wheel of tete de moine and that special tool you use to make the perfect curls. It's towards the end of the evening, much wine had been consumed and poor Asher Rubinstein, at one of his first dinners with a heavy contingent of Therapy/Disorder folks, starts hacking at the cheese. Joe immediately screams, "What are you doing? That's a clockwise cheese!" I'll never forget that.

He taught me so much on so many things that I'll always be able to carry with me and for that, I'm thankful. But, it's a pretty tough go right now and I'm beside myself that I was not able to make Sasha's birthday party a couple of weeks ago to at least seen him one last time.
 
Thanks so much for those stories, folks. They're proving to be cathartic in an unexpected way. It's still painful to think about him, but I feel his presence a bit better for your efforts. Since he and I have crossed paths only occasionally these past few decades and relied more on the Internet to stay in touch, I have but a few of my own to contribute:

Some time in the early aughties, getting together with Joe and another mutual friend at Slanted Door, where we had a fabulous if decadent lunch and opened several fantastic Grüner Veltliners, all while listening to him extol the virtues of Age of Riesling as a retail source after I lamented the accessibility of quality wines from Germany and Austria in the Bay Area.

After a trip to Columbia, I spoke or emailed with Joe, perhaps about the time he'd invited me to Wine Therapy, about my shopping expedition to Garnet to buy wines while in town (Garnet had been my source of KLWM imports when in grad school in the '80s). I recall telling him that I bought a '99 Dunn Howell Mountain (still in my cellar), a '99 Roumier MSD (also still in the cellar) and an '01 Knoll GV. His response: "Ooh! Livin' large, I see" which, coming from him, was most hilarious.

A party at Joe's SF pied-a-terre with many of the West Coast Therapy denizens in early '05. He introduced me to fatboy and mark e, opened a magnum of Huet Petillant '02 (Reserve? maybe) and grilled all sorts of fantastic things on the back porch, regaling us with his views on lump charcoal. The quail produced some Mayakovsky from the Russians on the back porch and I also recall a Breton Bourgueil Franc de Pied. We couldn't spend too long there that day as I was toting around our then-5-month-old son in a Baby Bjorn while swilling wine and munching on goodies.

A get-together with Joe, Jay, Dale Williams and Betsy at Cendrillon during a seminar visit to NYU. Surprisingly, this was the first time Dale had met Joe, so I guess that I can take a wee bit of credit for bringing people together. The food was fantastic, the wines were terrific (mostly Burgundy and Syrah as I recall), and of course the owners came out to chat and share our wine since they knew Joe so well. About that time, Joe opened a bottle of Vin Jaune which he shared with the table. I think that Jean and I provided him with much amusement with our recoil after smelling it. "Yeah, the acetaldehyde in the nose isn't for everyone," he said with a big smile. Afterward, Jean and I got a tour of Chateauneuf-du-Joe and, with apologies for his limited in-house stock of wines, he opened a Larmandier-Bernier non-dosé BdB ("the only Chardonnay I drink") as we took in the view from up there and reminisced until the wee hours.

My last sighting: at Ten Bells the night their chef quit, with Jeff and Sasha. We were struggling to make sense of what was going on, but soldiering on with Ganevat Cuvée Julien and a non-ouillé Savignan when in blew Joe. Our treatment immediately improved, we got a complete explanation of what was going on, and the whole evening took on a much cheerier cast (the brandade they were then able to produce helped immensely).

Then, of course, there were the email exchanges. The most memorable of the non-business-related ones was on the subject of the Steve Verlin auction put on by HDH. Knowing Joe to be a frequent presence at their bar, I emailed him about the backstory and, as usual, he knew the whole story, Russian hookers and all.

People who know me think that I know a lot about a lot of different things, but when I was in Joe's presence, I always learned so much about so many different topics. And, yes, he was able to do that without ever being in the least bit condescending or patronizing. He was always inviting you along on the ride, and was the most gracious person I have probably ever known.

Mark Lipton
 
Reminder: A great stash of old Joe stories is still to be found at the Compleat Wine Geek website. (You can use Google to hunt up specific names within, like this.)

originally posted by Brad Kane:
...and I'm beside myself that I was not able to make Sasha's birthday party a couple of weeks ago to at least seen him one last time.
Click to expand...
Even Joe was getting loopy by the end of the Saturday activities. Around midnight he was somewhat impatiently waiting for other bottles to finish going around so that he could open this one:
2014-08-10_00.52.14.jpg
 
I have the "clockwise cheese" writeup somewhere, I'm sure. The original thread was lost in one of the many various internet purges, but I can post that or any other good Joe stories here, if people think that's appropriate, in the spirit of swapping fond memories.
 
originally posted by Chris Coad:
I have the "clockwise cheese" writeup somewhere, I'm sure. The original thread was lost in one of the many various internet purges, but I can post that or any other good Joe stories here, if people think that's appropriate, in the spirit of swapping fond memories.
Click to expand...

Chris, please do, and thank you.
 
I didn't know Joe as long as quite a few of you, but did get to eat and drink with him every now and then over the last four years. And each time I felt lucky to have the chance to do so.

I was trying to remember when I first met him and it hit me earlier today that it was at one of the Etna/Cornelissen dinners that Chambers St put together. That was September 2010. I Tulli in NYC. I vividly remember going up to him, trying not be all fan-boy, asking if he was SFJoe and striking up a conversation about Disorder. I don't know if the seat next to him had been empty or if the person sitting there had gotten up to walk around but I sat there next to him the rest of the night talking about wine and all the personalities of the bored here. His calm, generous, engaging nature that others have mentioned was evident immediately. I even found an email I sent to Levi after that dinner (I think he may have been the one to tell me about it) where I said that the dinner wasn't very good but that the best part of the night was finally getting to meet Joe. "Joe is awesome" was his reply. Indeed.

Then there was the molé dinner that Josefa had put together for him the next summer in Chicago. A memorable night. Re-reading the thread is making me weepy.

Over the next couple years I was able to meet up with him off and on, generally whenever I was in New York and generally at Ten Bells, but always the highlight of my time in NYC. Over this time I also got to know Sharon and the company of both of them is what being a part of this Disorderly community has been all about for me.

It was at Ten Bells this past May that I found myself drinking with Joe and Sharon once again; the start of lovely night where we were going to have dinner at Fung Tu with Kirk Wallace and his partner. Much wine and merriment commenced. Good food, good wine and great conversation in spades. There was an older Huet, there was something called La Lune that was amazing and there was a Vouette et Sorbee Rosé. And then there was goodbyes and hugs to Sharon and Joe as we stumbled our way out into the Manhattan night.

The next night I decided to go see Arno and check out Racines after work. I was there for quite some time hanging out by myself when I saw a bottle of Ganevat Vin Jaune get opened and sent over to a table of three men. Impressed, I asked who was getting that. Arno had said it was Joe. Joe who I asked (I had almost drunk a bottle of Metras by this time and was on to an 05 CRB Cot). Uh, Joe Dougherty he said, kind of like I should know. I had totally not seen him this whole time! He had had his back turned to me. I promptly sent over glasses of the CRB for him and his clients and in turn he sent over some of the Ganevat. Then he puts his clients in a cab and comes back in to hang out and chat. Then a bottle of 99 Overnoy is opened. Then Levi comes in and we're drinking and laughing and it's another joyful night with SFJoe.
 
Midtown Italian restaurant, probably February or March 2002. Joe Dressner, Joe Dougherty, Sasha Katsman and Steve Plotnicki. That was a very good dinner, suffused with warmth.

Slanted Door, of course, when he was out there.

Then all those times when we just missed each other in London or Paris, the latter because I stubbornly refused to drive into town.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Some memorable encounters - others surely have lots more.

- A Singerriedel dinner at Blaue Gans hosted by Chambers Street Wines. At some point the conversation turned to sweet riesling and how strange it was that some of them manage to age into something totally bone-dry. I wondered aloud how that was even possible, chemically speaking, and Jamie pointed his thumb at Joe and said, "That guy could probably explain it." He did.

- The Huet-a-thon at Joe's place with Brad, Don, David S., John G., and others I know I'm forgetting. Originally conceived as a grauerburgunder shootout or something equally pointless, then happily transmogrified into one great Huet vintage after another. Joe opened a '64 petillant. He also wanted to show how well the secs can age. So he opened a '46. One of the best wines of the night.

- A 2004 Burgundy dinner at Brooklynguy's. Many beautiful wines, just a few with the greenies. In the fashion of Silent Bob at the end of a Kevin Smith movie, Joe summed it all up with one pithy sentence at the end, "People are going to have a lot more fun with 2004s over the next ten years than 2005s."

- At the bar at Veritas with some co-workers to have some wine to celebrate Eliot Spitzer resigning in disgrace. In walks Joe, to have some wine to celebrate Eliot Spitzer resigning in disgrace.

- A dinner uptown with Marty, Jay, and others. I remember bringing a Rougeard Breze. There was also a gorgeous Engel Clos Vougeot. We end up talking about how to fill your desert island case. Marty and I are making an impassioned case for including a bunch of Clos Roche Blanche, even if you only get 12 bottles, even if you don't have to pay for them, against one of the typical trophy-hunters who insists it has to be all Romanée-Conti. Joe pipes in with the smartest solution to the problem I'd heard yet, "I'd have to think about what wine goes best with coconuts."
Click to expand...

Insomnia. It's been on and off since Brad called me on Monday afternoon and said, "you'd better sit down." Tonight it's on. Keith's memories prompted a few thoughts, a return from Hiatus.

It was a Saturday to my recollection. Just 3 Saturdays ago. I was sitting at Sasha's dining room table in Connecticut. I had recently finished my 4th or 5th inspired meal over the past 3 days that had been prepared primarily by Joe and Sharon, prepared for 20-30 people each time. '21 Le Haut Lieu Moelleux was in the glass on the left. '24 on the right. Again, of course, these were courtesy of Joe, and one of the many times he'd generously pulled a bottle of these wines, as many of us know. Each bottle was perfect. Each wine ridiculous. Linear, then spherical, back and forth.

Joe was standing in front of me across the table in the ***********, seemingly reflective. I asked why the '24, which was still rich and must have had significant residual sugar, had aged into a wine that was completely dry. Joe: "As the wine aged, the sugar and acid molecules form a compound that your tongue doesn't taste as sweet." I asked if it was a complex. "No, there's a covalent bond. When it hits your stomach though, the compound rapidly reacts back to sugar and acid." The explanation was simple. It was direct. It was provided enthusiastically. This was not the first time I'd asked Joe about the chemistry of wine. I didn't know it would be the last.

It was a rare trait that Joe could perfectly fuse the romance of wine (and life) and the science of wine (and life) without either losing their charm or power.

One other quick memory. Maybe a combination of memory and legend. Dressner was hosting his big winemaker's dinner, either 2002 or 2003, at Cendriillon. Dougherty had arranged with Remi to make sure everything was perfect for Dressner. For the occasion Dougherty was pouring incredibly fresh '64 Huet Petillant. From Magnum.

No one else like him.
 
The last time I saw Joe was on June 9th. Marcia and I and our two year old had just arrived from Brazil and dropped by Leonard Street with a birthday present (for the man who has everything, a carbonic Pinotage), minutes before he sped off to the airport for one more business trip. Chatting in the kitchen with Joe and Sharon, he served us some Clos Saron blind, daring me to guess. I was way off, of course, but he graciously made my guess sound half-way perspicacious, as was his nature. Joe said something like "Gideon used to be a follower of G.I. Gurdjieff" and I blurted "Gurdjieff? Wow, compared to him, Rudolf Steiner was like a..." not quite knowing how I was going to finish the sentence. With a twinkle in his eye, Joe did the honors without skipping a beat "member of the Rotary Club!" He seemed to think with such agility yet, as many have pointed out, managed to make you feel intelligent as he made you more thoughtful.

Many have spoken of his generosity whenever we met, he would always say “you have to remind me which wines I have promised to open for you.” He could be fiercely critical, and did not suffer fools gladly, so that just being his friend was reason enough for self-satisfaction. Yet he never seemed to put others down just to raise himself. He didn’t need that.

In Sharon he found the perfect foil, the Bonnie to his Clyde; I can’t imagine a better-matched couple, across the spectrum of compatibilities. These will be the hardest imaginable shoes to live without.

Joe insatiable curiosity didn't seem uncomfortable with uncertainty, with not knowing how things work. For example, he was fascinated, like many of us, with how different soil compositions impact the flavor of wine, yet always caveated that no pathways have been found to prove this connection. He would poke gentle fun at my constitutionally-driven search for certainties, refusing to be an accomplice, always making me think harder, without dogma. If the ability to hold contradictory notions is a measure of anything good, he had it in spades.

In parting, I confess that I fell for Joe when he used, in a Loire report, one of the most effective pick-up lines ever devised: Serpentine is a fabulously cool rock formed in the deep ocean at spreading centers like the mid-Atlantic ridge. It can only be produced from magma at very high pressure with lots of water around. It’s undergone quite an adventure to find itself in the Muscadet—the spreading center must fail to keep up with a subduction zone and the whole thing gets pulled under a continent, and then eventually uplifted. The covering rock and surrounding landscape must then all be eroded away to produce such a hill. Well, I think it’s cool, anyway. (He had me at "subduction zone.")
 
I feel Joe might object to the posting of raw orography on the site, but that he'd approve no less of some humor in this thread. His quips were often brilliant, his own humor penetrating.
 
I met Joe was probably the day I met Dressner or the day after. A little fuzzy.

It was 2001.

There were wines open at the Spring/Lafayette office, what’s his name from Connecticut was there, the wine shop. There were others, maybe about seven. Manuel, Chris. perhaps Brad.

There were other gatherings, Dressner’s 50th, for example, but the first time I ever really saw him was when I piggy- backed on the 2002 Dressner Loire trip, for a few days. At Clos Roche Blanche he embraced Catherine Roussel and then presented her with what seemed to be a gunny sack of dried morels that he had picked. "Oh, Joe!" the smile on her face followed by embarrassment of the riches.

The gift was tremblingly generous, given with joy.

Later in that trip, it was Joe who at dinner plunked on Puzelat's 1997 Brin de Chèvre. It was at a Relais &Chateau hotel near Angers, he needed internet access-at the time-- not exactly widespread in the hinterlands. The group, used to more scruffy venues, smaller than today's posse, went to eat with him.

He saw the wine, stupidly cheap.

That taught me the joys of aged menu pineau. Almost thirteen years later with no notes taken, I can taste its evolved wildflowers. I'll always associate Joe with that wine, not the Huets.

The look. The mirth. The laughter. The smarts. The wit. The brain. The generosity. The apologies that I couldn’t have the mole or whatever else was headed for the meat or in the meat. His always making sure there was something for me, like the good Jewish mother he didn’t have, as if I cared. Bread. wine, and people, what else mattered?

Reading Oswaldo’s reprinted emotionally charged view of serpentine, made me realize the loss of letting what I later felt as his dislike of me get in the way of seeing him more. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I had this paranoia that Dressner’s later love/hate with me somehow influenced him. Nevertheless, he and Sharon (a pairing that had a neon sign which said ‘fate’ flashing above their heads) delighted me more than I’m sure they knew, by showing up at my book party for Naked Wine. So perhaps it was my own shyness that got in the way of being able to be closer to that mind and person who is responsible for the energetic yet understated, “It’s undergone quite an adventure to find itself in the Muscadet—the spreading center must fail to keep up with a subduction zone and the whole thing gets pulled under a continent, and then eventually uplifted.. (Thank you, Oswaldo).
 
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