Show Notes

• Hawaii to Bordeaux, France
• Becoming America’s first Master Sommelier
• Early influences in extending hospitality
• How to think like a somm
• The Three B’s of wine
• When is the best time to taste wine?
• How to “WOW” an existing or prospective client
• More ways to “go the extra mile”

Connect With Eddie Osterland

Website –  www.eddieosterland.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/eddie.osterland/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/firstmastersomm/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/eddieosterland

Summary

Eddie Osterland, America’s first Master Sommelier, is an internationally acclaimed expert in the culinary arena of food and wine. Eddie reveals his power entertaining secrets that will help you make an unforgettable impression at your next dinner or business event.

Full Transcript

Brian:

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques, and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Eddie Osterland, America’s first Master Sommelier, is an internationally acclaimed expert in the culinary arena of food and wine. While completing his degree in professional tasting at the University of Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France, Eddie passed the grueling Master Sommelier Diploma in London in 1973. Today Eddie speaks at corporate events around the country showing audiences how to create memorable client dinners and experiences. He’s the author of the book, Power Entertaining: Secrets To Building Lasting Relationships, Hosting Unforgettable Events, and Closing Big Deals From America’s First Master Sommelier. Thanks so much for being on the show, Eddie.

Eddie:

Hey, glad to join you, Brian.

Brian:

Becoming a Master Sommelier is a big deal, and I don’t know the exact number, but I think there are only about 270 people in the world who have ever earned the Master Sommelier Diploma and maybe half of those American. You are the first American to do so. I know it’s been a while, but give us a sense of what it was like to prepare for and pass the exam, and tell us what it means to hold the distinction of America’s first Master Sommelier. That’s so cool.

Eddie:

It is because it’s always fun to be first at something. Nobody ever climbed to the mountain before me. I was living in Hawaii going to graduate school and I got involved in a wine business. It was kind of interesting, I’ll tell you how it happened. I was working as—back then they called them a wine steward— somebody who served wine in a restaurant. I was 23 years old. And one night I heard that a guy who owned a chateau in Bordeaux, Henry van der Voort, who owned Chateau Bellegrave, was coming to Honolulu with his family on vacation. And I thought, I’d like to meet this guy. He had this wine called Chateau Bellegrave. I was working in a restaurant called The Trattoria, it was a trattoria. We had Italian wine, that’s it. So I put his bottle of wine on the first page of the wine list. And every time someone walked in the door at 6:00 PM, when we opened up, I tried to sell them a bottle of Chateau Bellegrave. I would say, have you ever tried Chateau Bellegrave? They would say we’re looking for something like Chianti. And I said, oh no, you really want to try to try this Bellegrave. Anyway, whatever they said I would bring out this bottle. I would offer them a discount and finally would bring them a glass of the wine and say here, try this. I practically wanted to give it to them. Anyway, I sold 19 bottles of this guy’s wine on tables. And he came in at 8:30 at night with his family and I strategically placed every bottle so that it faced the door as he walked in. The guy walks in and he says something like, qu’est-ce que c’est?…WTF would also work because it was a Twilight Zone. So everybody’s drinking his wine and he’s in an Italian restaurant and he’s got a French wine. He’s going, what? Who did this? And some waiter said, oh, that guy over there. So he brought me over and he said, why did you do that? And I said, well, I just want to make an impression on you and wanted to meet you. He goes, well, you sure did. Anyway, long story short, he had me sit down with him. And at the end of the night, two hours later, we closed the restaurant and he said, young man, if I were you rather than studying behavioral psychology, I’d study wine tasting at the University of Bordeaux. The most famous teacher is a friend of mine, Dr. Emile Peynaud. And if that interests you I’ll introduce you to him. I’ll put you over there and get you in the University of Bordeaux. You will, of course, have to go to another university for a year to learn French. But if that interests you let me know. And I said, put me in, coach.

All of a sudden I’m living in France, studying French and going to the University of Bordeaux. And I graduated with a degree, the DUAD, which stands for Diplôme Universitaire d’Aptitude À La Dégustation des Vins, registers my tongue with the French government. Then I had known about this thing called the Master Sommelier Exam in London. And as I said, no American had ever tried it. And I thought, let me see how good I am. So I went to London and I took the exam and, son of a gun, I passed all three sections on the first try. So I remember in 1973 I was the only Master Sommelier in the United States. That lasted about three years, but that was kind of a fun distinction. I worked at Hotel de la Poste Bonne in Burgundy, and I was a Head Sommelier there. I had the fun of saying I’m the only American Master Sommelier. They didn’t know what a Master Sommelier was in France at the time. 

Brian:

Well, and that’s a big deal. And still there aren’t very many of you. So it’s a big deal just to be a Master Sommelier, let alone to have been America’s first. I think I read that each year, an average of just five people globally earn the Master Sommelier Diploma. I think one year there was a high of 16, maybe 2005 or something. And there have been years when no one earns that. So it really is a big deal. I have to ask you though, even with that introduction and with the person you met [who you] obviously made a huge impression on, I’m referring to the Bordeaux University and eventually the test, only 10% of the people who take that test pass. And so given that it’s such an ambitious endeavor, what causes people to pursue that? And then the other thing that I’d really liked to hear you tell us about is what does that do for someone’s career and for their life to have that Master Sommelier distinction?

Eddie:

Well, there’s four levels of the certification going through to a certified, and advanced, and then master. What does it give you? A feeling of enormous pride because so many people have taken it five or six or seven times, and just can’t muster the moxie to make it work. And it’s almost a game of nerves. Anybody who is allowed to take that exam has proven that they can pass the exam. They’ve taken tests—same exact tests—but when you present on game day, your nerves start to play. You start calling a red wine, white if you look at it too often. You’ve got to go on your first impressions and you got to take the exam several times. I was lucky, like seven people out of 175 ever passed it on the first try. So it’s rare. But it’s a lofty distinction, getting harder and harder to pass every year because the wine world is growing and growing and growing. Pretty soon you’re going to be seeing lots of Chinese wine. So it’s in a constant state of flux. It’s a club that, to me, is the coolest club in the world. Once every two years we meet and look around the room and go, wow, all of us pass that monstrous exam. We all wear the same gold pin, we’re all equal. It comes in different flavors but it’s a real fun club to be in.

Brian:

Well, and it’s a very impressive accomplishment, obviously. Now there are other exams, like maybe the Bar exam or the Medical exam, or the CPA exam. I don’t know how to make the comparison, but for our listeners and viewers, there’s a documentary and it’s called SOMM, that gives you some sense. Maybe you can share a little bit about that and tell us whether that’s what it was like, or whether it’s off a little bit.

Eddie:

It was put together a couple of years ago and it follows three or four guys who are underway through the exam. If you look at the movie SOMM, get a bottle of wine, open it up with your wife or friends and watch it. And you’ll now know what it takes to become a Master Sommelier. And it’s a bear. I mean, I would never think of doing it now because you have to have no life, no wife, no kids, no job that takes you down. You got to be able to commit, and commit for a couple of years or more.

Brian:

Well, it’s a harrowing experience for sure. And if you watch the movie, the documentary, obviously they weren’t trying to encourage people to take the exam.

Eddie:

Well, I wouldn’t say that. I just think that they call it Master for a reason. There’s an advanced level, which is pretty darn close to Master, but when you hit the Master, you’re 10% more acutely aware of everything they’re going to ask you, which is the world. I mean, it doesn’t sound right that they fire questions at you. You can’t even hesitate. You’ve got to know that stuff so cold that you just spit out the answer. If you have to hesitate and think about it, bye-bye.

Brian:

Eddie, you grew up in New Jersey and I was reading a little bit about your upbringing and I know your parents loved to entertain. It seemed like they did it fairly often and they were very good at it. Let’s go all the way back to your childhood because I got the sense that that influenced you and influenced you to become the person that you are today. What lessons did you learn from your parents about how to throw good parties and about extending hospitality to guests?

Eddie:

Well, my mother was a professional singer in New York City and my father was a singer as well. And they just liked to throw parties. I grew up in a town called Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, which if anybody from New Jersey has ever been there, it’s like a little town of about 5,000 people. And back in the fifties and sixties, there was a party every weekend at somebody’s house. And I just saw my parents do that. And I thought, well, that’s what people do. You grow up and you throw parties. So that’s how they influenced me. Then I got out to Hawaii and I got into the restaurant business and it became part of me—in my blood.

The idea is…in my book, I tell people to think like a Somm. A sommelier is not just some guy [who] pulls corks and sells bottles of wine in a restaurant. He or she, asks you a couple of questions to find out what are your likes or dislikes, what your experience is, and then says, okay, fasten your seat-belt, Brian, I’m going to take you on a little culinary excursion and I’m going to pop you with things that you probably never had before, both in the neighborhood of food and wine. And we’re going to learn how to taste them together. Meaning most people treat wine as only a beverage. So they eat their steak—chew, chew, chew—swallow it, then have a sip of wine to wash it down. What I try to teach them is you need to combine the food and the wine together in the mouth at the same time. I utilize the equation, one plus one equals three synergy, where each—the food and wine—should amplify each other’s assets. So just like ketchup and a French fry, you wouldn’t eat a French fry and then have a spoon of ketchup after, that’d be dumb. Well, you shouldn’t have your salmon and have your glass of wine and throw it down after you finished the salmon. You need to get them together in the mouth. And when people start to see that each of them amplifies each other, it changes the way everybody thinks about the food and wine experience. It’s no longer just a beverage. It’s a condiment. The wine can change the way your food tastes if you select the right one. Like styles—the ones with big alcohol, ones with big acidity, they change the way the flavors of the food taste and once people have seen that, light bulbs go off. They go, wow, I never thought of it that way. Never thought about putting a liquid in my mouth while I’m chewing a steak. Yeah? Try it.

Brian:

That’s a fascinating concept. And I love how you dumbed it down for people like me and using the French fry/ketchup analogy. But seriously, we can really understand that. I might not understand mixing salmon with wine or mixing food with liquid, but I certainly understand the French fry/ketchup analogy.

Eddie:

That’s an easy one to get people to understand or start to approach [it]. When you choose a wine to go with your food…you squeeze a slice of lemon on your salmon. Sure, we do. You don’t even give it a thought, they taste better together. Well, when you choose a wine to go with your salmon or your tuna, the wine—white wine in this case, let’s say—it needs to be a stunt double for that lemon, meaning it needs to have the requisite acidity. It needs to be tart, sharp. And those wines are not always friendly by the glass. They need food—screaming, give me some food, I want it. I want to temper my edge. The wine is like a knife’s edge, it’s sharp. And if you put it in your mouth, on it’s own—a white wine, a lot of acidity on its own—people might grimace, saying that I don’t like that, it’s a little too sharp. Well, now put some food in your mouth with the wine and each of them softens each other’s edges, then you’re off and running. Once you do that for someone, they go, I never thought about that before.

Brian:

It’s a game changer.

Eddie:

It’s a game-changer, it really is [inaudible] are going to cost you twice as much money for the rest of your life.

Brian:

Eddie, you wrote that it’s your passion and your mission in life to educate people about fine wine and food. And as you said, how to put them together in enjoyable combinations, when did it first become clear to you that this was your life’s calling? Because clearly it’s a gift that you’ve been blessed with.

Eddie:

Well, I moved from Honolulu to New York City because I kind of saturated the market in Honolulu. I had a wine school there where 5,000 people took it and I saturated the market. So I moved to New York. I moved to the International Wine Center and I offered the same courses I was giving in Honolulu. Then I noticed that the people taking my courses were all execs and businessmen and [business]women who could see that if they knew something more about wine and food than their peers or their competitors, it gave them an edge. It was a tool, it was…power entertaining is a new operating system. It’s another way within which to work. And most people who have never…you don’t get that kind of training in college, they don’t offer it. So unless they’ve worked in a serious restaurant and they get a hint of it…

They flocked to my courses because…I saw them just staring at me…what? You’re talking about serving people the best thing that you have all night long in the first 15 minutes? Why? Well, that’s when people are hungry, people—you, guys and me—we don’t like being hungry. So what happens? When we come into your house, you’ve gone out and put out a bunch of hors d’oeuvres or a spread, whether it’s dips, chips, nuts, guacamole, whatever the average folk put out. Your friends come over, they look down, they’re starving, so they start wolfing hors d’oeuvres. And they’re going to dine on your hors d’oeuvres. In 20 minutes, they’re going to take their appetite, which starts at a ten out of ten and drop it to a four, eating salted nuts, and salami and hunks of cheese. That’s so under underwhelming. Why would you do that to anybody? So the idea is you need to serve the best thing you’re going to have all night long in the first 15 minutes, I call it the magic window, and you take no prisoners, you get them. They put it in their mouth and go wow.

I’ll give you an example. I had somebody over, about a year ago, and they came in and they were in front of the bar and they’re wolfing down these little nuggets, and then say, hey, Eddie, what are these things? And I said, oh, those are Percebes, it’s a mollusk from Portugal. And they went, wow, that’s great. Where did you get them? I go, um, Portugal. You connect the dots. I had to FedEx them in two days ago to get them here. So you’d have something in front of you that you’d never had before. And I did that. Why? Because I want to know you. I want to meet you. I want to do business with you. I want you to be my girlfriend, whatever. But food and wine are the international currency for connection. And so if you learn how to serve people, not a lot, and you don’t need to become a chef or anything. I’m working on a video course right now. People learn how to serve certain things that go well together, like champagne and Parmesan cones. I mean, these things are magnetic and you only need to learn how to make a couple of them to drop the hook. And once people do that, they say, give me some more tips. What other wines do you want to drink? Well, ABC, anything but Chardonnay, anything but Cabernet, that’s what everybody else serves, don’t be like everybody else. Be outrageous, it’s the only place where it’s not crowded.

Brian:

Well, let’s talk about that for a minute. So for novice wine connoisseurs, I think there are a couple of traps that are easy to fall into. The first one is thinking that the most expensive wine is the best wine and that you have to spend a lot of money in order to enjoy a good bottle of wine. And then I think the second thing, and I’ve done this before, true confession, I’ve given this advice before. It’s a little embarrassing. I shouldn’t even say this to any Master Sommelier, let alone America’s first Master Sommelier, but this notion of once you’ve found a decent bottle of wine, serving that to everybody, all the time. The trap that I fell into, what I thought…and I mean, just talking with you for a couple of minutes, I know how crazy it seems, but I always thought, why not find a bottle of wine that everybody would enjoy. And it’s sort of middle of the road. You’re not being outrageous. You’re serving something that you think everybody will enjoy—people who drink a lot of wine, people who don’t drink a lot of wine. Tell us why—you’ve already talked a little bit about that—but tell us why we shouldn’t think like that and what we should do instead.

Eddie:

Well, I think the most important thing is that because everybody serves Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet and Merlot, you should go deep, go different. And so the idea is to put something in front of someone that they probably never had before. Something that’s affordable for them that they can go out and buy it themselves and repeat it. Whenever you’re entertaining, what I always do is I serve two wines at a time, not one, because you can’t learn much from tasting just one wine. I mean, it’s a wine, it’s better than no wine, but if you put two wines out there…let’s say you take an Oregon Pinot Noir and you compare it to a California Pinot Noir and you put them out in front of your friends and go, okay, which one you think is from Oregon? They’re going to give you the old, I don’t know. So you teach them. Oregon is more northerly than California, it’s colder up there. So the grapes don’t get as ripe and then they’re high in acid and they’re a little lower alcohol, because they’re not as ripe. California is hotter than hell and the grapes get real ripe and jammy. So you tell them that and they pick up the two glasses, they taste them. They go, well, this one here must be the Oregon Pinot Noir. And you go, yeah. And then they pat themselves on the back. Wow. I just did that. You’ve taught them how to do that. And I guarantee you, within 60 days, they’re going to have some people over to their house, they’re going to serve an Oregon Pinot Noir versus a California Pinot Noir because you showed them how to do it. That, my friend, is power entertaining because you have take-away value to your [inaudible]. You’re not bringing over just to take them up to altitude and send them home in a cab. You want to want to teach them something so there’s take-away knowledge. And so they’ve got new skills, new entertaining skills. And it’s intellectual. The two wines side by side, there’s a question:  which one do you like better? Here’s two Cabernets—one’s $24, one’s $34. Which one do you think is $10 more? And generally speaking, you kind of get what you pay for.

So I have a fun thing in my book. You can see it if you open it up, it’s called the Three B’s—B apostrophe S—of Wine. There’s a pyramid in my book and the bottom two-thirds of the pyramid is called B for Beverage. Beverage wine is five to seven dollar wine that you can give out to everybody, a bottle each, and you’re not out of pocket very much. And they don’t really care, they just want to pound a bottle of wine. 60% of my friends are in that league. Then if you go up to the next level [of the pyramid] Beverage Better, Better wines are, retail, about $35 a bottle, significantly more expensive. But when you put your nose in the glass, you know what’s there, you know it’s Pinot Noir, you know it’s Syrah because there are these certain smells that only come from a wine that starts costing $30 to $35 a bottle. And those are for your very good friends. And then at the very top of the pyramid is Best. So Beverage, Better and Best, Best wines start at $75 a bottle and go up pretty quickly. And those are for your very best friends who’ve demonstrated to you that they recognize excellence, and are willing to pay $75 because they know that no other wines on the planet can taste like that. So this pyramid—Beverage, Better, Best—is a means within which you can filter your friends, because there’s some that go into beverage and occasionally you got a handful of friends that you invite over and you taste wine [inaudible].

When the wine is so important I choose food to play a subordinate role to the wine so that food doesn’t threaten it. So I cook a chicken. Chicken is like a Q-tip with some attitude, it’s not going to threaten any wine. So the wine is being teed up on a pedestal and food plays a subordinate role so the wine stands out.

That’s what I do, bring people over at noontime on Sunday, tell them they can only eat an apple before they come over, then I whack them with something really good. That’s when food tastes best, at noontime. All the wine tastings they did in France were done at noontime and they’re over at 12:30 because you’ve only got about a 30 minute window when people give a you-know-what about food and wine. And then end by drinking it and getting up to altitude, having fun partying. And so you have that small window when you bring them over and say, hey, you better come over here hungry. I call it “starve them and stab them”, bring them in hungry and launch the first 15 minutes. If you go to a potluck party, bring the best you could possibly bring first because I don’t care if you burn it, they’re going to love it—they’re starving.

Brian:

So in your book, Power Entertaining, you share 20 secrets of successful power entertaining. And you’ve probably shared, I don’t know, maybe half a dozen of them, but share more if you would, about the food. So we got the wine covered and we know that for our acquaintances we use the bottom of the pyramid, and for our pretty good friends we use the middle of the road, and if we’re really trying to schmooze somebody—you use personal schmoozing or maybe business entertaining—then we use the higher dollar wine. Tell us about the food equivalent of that.

Eddie:

I’ll just say this, that people don’t like being hungry. They want to end it as fast as they can. What I find that too many people [are] spoiled by restaurants that serve too much food, too big of portions of food. Your degree of success when you’re entertaining is directly in proportion with their amount of hunger or appetite. If they run out of appetite, it’s like running out of altitude if you’re a pilot—which I was for 35 years—you’re out of luck, game over. So you need to serve small little morsels of things that are bite size, one spoon of something and one sip of wine is enough. You don’t need a big six ounce glass of wine. When my wife and I used to go to restaurants, we would always order wine by the glass and we’d say, bring another empty glass. And we’d split it. We don’t need six ounces. Likewise, you don’t need…who in the world needs a 16 or 24 ounce piece of steak? I mean, as good as it tastes, it tastes. That’s 50 bites. You don’t need 50 bites. You need three or four bites then move on to something else. Tasting portions and a small glass of wine so you can have eight or nine tastes of wine and eight or nine little skewered things that taste fun. That’s more fun. Who doesn’t like to sit down to a rib-eye and a baked potato? I do, but it’s pretty redundant. It’s more and more of the same until you run out of appetite and then you’re done.

Brian:

So why do restaurants do that? You’ve worked in a number of very fine restaurants.

Eddie:

People expect it. People measure a successful restaurant with how big is the doggy bag you take home. We’ve got a two for one portion here.

Brian:

Or how the bread is? That’s the first criteria. The first thing that people get served is bread. And we judge whether the bread is good or not. And then we judge the restaurant based on how warm the bread was or what kind of bread.

Eddie:

I do dinners for a living. I do corporate dinners where I have to beat whatever they did last year to entertain, and find client appreciation events or client attraction events. First thing I say to them [is] don’t bring any bread out. Why? Because people will eat half of their appetite in bread because bread is good, but bread is bread, I’m sorry. So I just say, bring the bread, but bring the bread when the entree comes, don’t put it out first because people are going to dine on whatever’s in front of them, whether it’s dips, chips, nuts, guacamole, or whatever it is, they’re going to do that. And they’re going to ruin their appetite. Your mother said, don’t do that, you’ll ruin your appetite. It’s the same thing. You can’t… people are no different. They cannot stand being hungry. So they’re going to wolf down whatever’s in front of them. So you’ve got to carefully know what you’re going to load upon these people. You’ve got to tell them, please come over hungry. Tell them, I’m going to treat you [to] some fun things that perhaps you’ve never had before. Then you’ve got to write it all up so that when they leave, they know where they can buy this stuff, where to get this cheese, where to get these Procebes from Portugal or Nebrodi from Spain or Italy. Nebrodi ham is from black knuckle pigs. It’s very expensive, but sometimes you have to buy something, you have to spend a little money to get people’s attention. And with food, you can do it.

Brian:

You mentioned earlier, the wine tasting at noon in France. Should we consider maybe luncheons on a weekend versus an evening dinner for that reason?

Eddie:

Are you kidding me? I am absolutely doing it. All the people…I’ve had like 15,000 students in my life and many of them, to this day, say to me, Eddie, when you told us that food tastes best at noon or one o’clock…some of my friends have a phrase, they call it “live-in at 11:30” because they bring their friends over, everybody brings a hundred dollar bottle of wine and we taste the wines first. We don’t taste the food and down it with wine. No, no, no. We taste all ten wines first when we’re starving. And we experiencing them at the same time, because if you experience wine and food, then a little more wine or food later, a little more wine later. By the time you’re getting down here, you’re running out of appetite. You’re not tasting the same way. So you want to taste them quickly, analyze the wines on their own as to which vintages you like better, et cetera, then bring on the food, then taste the wine with the food.

People who really follow what I like to say…like everybody else entertains on Friday night and Saturday night. How about you entertain on a Saturday or Sunday and bring people over by 12:30, serve champagne, and then serve the really good stuff at 12:00 to 4:00. That way you’re not ruining everybody’s day, they can take an Uber home or whatever, but they’re not killing the night. And people tend to, at the end of the week, on a Friday night, they might drink more than they should, just because their week is over. But you bring people over at one o’clock on a Saturday or a Sunday, they’re a little more respectful and it’s fun.

Have people dress up a little bit and have people…sometimes you say bring your favorite bottle of wine. No, you need to create a theme, like a night or afternoon in Italy, so everybody is bringing Italian wine. Or you can go out and get the ten Italian wines you think everybody should be aware of. You buy them because you know what goes together with what. And everybody chips in 10% so that they paid for it, but it’s not like they’re bringing whatever they picked up at a store. No, you’ve got to think it out. You’ve got to have a theme for the wines so that they go together. Certain vintages need to be tasted side by side so you can see the difference with one year over another. People love to see that—these are two of the same wines, but one’s from a better year, and why? Because it’s got a longer aftertaste, that’s a better vintage.

Brian:

So it sounds like you really need to be intentional about it. And also go the extra mile to make these things happen. It’s not the things that you’re describing are difficult to do, but most people don’t do those things.

Eddie:

They rush out to Costco and get a pre-made plate of salami and cheese, and bring it home and then an hour later there’s a party. It’s convenient, but it’s boring and it’s expected. So you want to have people come over to your house and go, I wonder what they’re going to do this time, because Eddie never, never disappoints. We always walk away with some new tips or new new flavors or what’s this wine. Oh, it’s called Godello—G O D E L L O—from Spain, kind of like Chardonnay. Most people ever heard of Godello, it’s $25 a bottle and people need to know about these things. So I love to bring these things up. In fact, if I really want to play them, I send them home with a bottle of what I served them so that they can repeat it themselves. There’s the takeaway value. Again, it’s we’re not having people over to have a refueling, here’s all the wine and food you can drink and eat. No, no, let me show you what you can take to your friends and go, what do you think of this Louis Martini Cabernet from Sonoma versus Louis Martini Cabernet from Napa? The labels look the same, but one of them is $40 and one’s $20, which one you think is $40? And then you tell them how to judge a wine and know that the longer the aftertaste, the better and more expensive the wine is. And that’s generally a Napa wine over a Sonoma wine. So that’s where people really look forward to coming over and saying, what’s he going to do now?

Brian:

So we’ve talked a lot about creating memorable experiences in the home, power entertaining in the home. Let’s switch now and talk about business entertaining or power entertaining in a restaurant. So if we really want to make a favorable impression, either with an existing client or a prospective client, what can I do to be outrageous, to use your term?

Eddie:

Here’s exactly what you can do. Don’t assume that if you’ve got a reservation on a Friday night at a famous restaurant that you’ve got it made. Because 30, 40 other people have that same eight o’clock reservation and when everybody comes in that restaurant at eight o’clock, every waiter is, what we call, “in the weeds”. They’re trying to survive because everybody is going, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. So the idea is how to be different and how to be outrageous. First of all, you need to do what—I use the phrase in one of my chapters in my book, “bond with a Somm”. You need to call up the sommelier, he or she, maybe three weeks before you’re planning on having your party of six or 12, whatever. First thing you say is I’d like to meet with you a couple of weeks before and discuss a very important event that means a lot to me. I love your restaurant. I know you have a private dining room and I want to use that private dining room. Because if you’re out there with—[we] used to call them the cattle—the 200 people in the main dining room all going gimme, gimme, gimme, it’s too loud. It’s too loud to concentrate on wine. I can’t believe how so many people would spend a lot of money on wine and then go out into the cattle pen…and you’ve been at a table before, when you’re looking across the table talking to somebody at a table of eight and you can’t really hear what they’re saying, but you’re doing this—yeah, yeah, I agree. You can’t hear what I’m saying. That’s too loud to try to enjoy the aromatics and the fine Bordeaux wine, you just can’t get that. And guess what? The wine’s marked up 300%. So it’s three times more expensive, and it’s served at room temperature. Serving people red wine at room temperature is an insult because the alcohol in the wine and the aftertaste is caustic. It burns like vodka or tequila. But if you drop the temperature of that wine by 10 degrees, if it’s in a wine cellar it’s at that temperature, 58 degrees, whatever. Or you have to put it in an ice bucket for five or 10 minutes to chill it up. But the idea is you don’t want to be out there with the cattle, you want to be in a private dining room. So what I do is bond with a Somm, it’s real simple.

I tell people…I wish I could send you a chapter from my new video course, because I have a whole video I took in a restaurant where the people come in the restaurant, eight o’clock, Friday night…Osterland reservation for eight, and of course the hostess says—oh, Mr. Osterland, your table’s not quite ready. Perhaps could we offer you a seat at the bar? That’s normal restaurant protocol. Let’s ding you $60—four drinks at $15—before we sit you down. I don’t like that. I don’t want them. I got an eight o’clock reservation, I want to come in and sit down. So if I’ve arranged this with a sommelier, I walk in, I’m ushered off to the private dining room where I’m served champagne. I’m by myself, I’m in my own room, the menu has already been designed by me and the sommelier. He or she is going to tell me, here are the best things you could possibly have in this restaurant. Don’t give anybody any menus. They don’t need it. These things blow people’s minds. Here’s the wine we can serve with them. Here’s the more fancy glassware than the we use in the dining room because we don’t have a lot of expensive glassware. You do all that stuff. When the dinner is over, you sit back and your friends say, hey, we’ve got to do this again and no check came because no check should ever come. Why? Because you’ve seen it. As soon as that check comes to a party having a good old time like that…boom check drops. Some people look at it like, oooh…check. Some people actually feign, like they’re going to grab their wallet and pitch in. Anyway, it brings the game to a close. So the idea is no check should ever arrive. You’ve already given the sommelier your credit card, you already told him to put a 25% tip on it—not 20%, 25%—that’s industry standard. And so when you walk in the room, they’re saluting you. Your guests feel like, are you a part owner of this place? Because everything is cool and everything is seamless. And portions are small and temperatures are perfect and right on. Whites are served cool, not too cold, white wine out of a refrigerator with a keg of beer in it—it’s too cold—antarctic, cryogenic temperatures where the wine has no aromatics. It smells like cold, white wine. So that’s the way you do it.

I tell people, when you go on a cruise ship—if you’ve ever been on a Crystal Harmony cruise ship—they have big wine coolers. At 7:30 at night, 2,500 people descend into the dining room. 50 captains have to take care of 2,500 people. That’s 50 per person and they all come in at once. So who are you going to serve first? These guys are really good. They know how to read people, how they dress, what kind of cocktails they order, and they know how to put who’s on first, who’s going to get the love first, and then who’s going to get it last—the guy who orders a Miller Light or something. Anyway I tell people, you go on a cruise ship and you’re hoping that they’re going to take good care of you. Here’s what you do. You go on that cruise ship and everybody else comes into the dining room at 7:30. You come in at 7:15. You find out from the maitre d’ what’s your table number, oh, table 26, Mr. Osterland. You go to table 26 and you look for the captain who’s in charge of that space. He’s polishing some wine glasses waiting for the onslaught of people. And you go over there and you say I’m Mr. Osterland at table 26, and you put a hundred dollar bill in his hand and use the following phrase, “bring it”. Then the guy is at your table every night first, for the rest of the cruise. Simple as that. He knows there’s more to come because you’re sophisticated. You know the gig, how it’s done.

There’s a guy…Jason Thompson, wrote a book called Heads in Beds, in which he runs the riot act on the hotel industry and tells everybody, like Anthony Bourdain did on restaurants. You want a nice room in your hotel. He goes, here’s what you do. You walk up to that young gal who graduated from Cornell hotel school last year. As you’re checking in, you go, Hey, Susie, I’m here with my wife—don’t tell her it’s your birthday, don’t tell her it’s your anniversary. They hear that ten times a day. You just say, listen, if there’s any possibility of us getting an upgrade…and you put a crisp $20 bill down in front of her and you walk away…we’d really appreciate that. I guarantee you, if there’s a room available, you’re going to get it. It’s the same thing I’m talking about cruise ships, it’s called front loading. Don’t guess if they’re going to take good care of you and then at the end, tip them better. How do they know? Don’t let them wonder.

Brian:

So only 20 bucks for the room?

Eddie:

[Inaudible] almost every hotel has an up-gradable room. Why? Because people bitch. So they need to have a couple on deck that they can feed out. Every cruise ship has two or three cabins that every 13 days, when the cruise starts all over again, the first night dinner, I guarantee you two or three customers are going to complain about their cabin and they need to be prepared. While these people are at their dining room table, they can send a team to the other side of the ship, find a new cabin, transfer everything right down to a lipstick and put it in the same spot it was in the room. So when these people get up from the table, they go, oh, by the way, your cabin has been moved to number 96 on the upper deck.

Brian:

And the cruise ships have to do that?

Eddie:

Being a little savvy of hospitality is what it’s all about and trying to make people feel special. So it’s as simple as that. What can you do to make these people feel like, wow, you really went out of your way. Whereas most people don’t go to that effort. So it’s a new operating system. It doesn’t take that much, but it does take extra effort. You have to be thinking of what am I going to do? I’m the kind of guy who, on an airplane, might be sitting next to some woman who works for Estee Lauder. And we’re talking and she mentions, oh, I like food, I’m having dinner tonight with my best girlfriend at this restaurant. I’ll listen. And then when I land, I’ll call the hotel and find out if she’s got a reservation in that restaurant. And if she does, maybe I’ll send her a half a bottle of bubbles and just say, my email is skysomm@gmail. I’m a sky sommelier, I’m a sky Somm. It might get a reaction from her. Usually I would do it if I thought I’d like to call that person and this would get me a follow-up call because you’re going to get a reaction that comes back.

Here’s another thing I do. Let’s say you want to do some business with some company and you know who the CEO is, but there’s no way he’s going to pick up your phone call. There’s no way you could send anything, an email, the gatekeeper’s got him blocked off. No, no, no, no, no. What I do—I don’t have one to show you right now, but I carry one with me always. I send them a can of tuna fish and the can of tuna fish is called Ventresca. It’s the belly portion of the tuna, which is the most mellow, delicious thing. Almost no one has ever had it. It’s hand filleted by people in Spain and Italy. And it costs $10 a can instead of two, but it’s wrapped in beautiful red, and I buy them on Amazon by the case of 12. And I just put it in a FedEx envelope. I choose whether I want to identify myself by putting my card in there or not at all. I FedEx this thing to the CEO. It goes right by all the gatekeepers, delivered right to his desk. He opens it up and he’s saying to himself who the hell sent me a can of tuna? I’ll put a message in there saying, don’t make tuna fish out of this, eat this on a cracker, or I’ll put my name in it, or I won’t say anything for a month and then I’ll send something else like, did you get that can of tuna I sent? The guy will be scratching his head and saying, so you’re the guy who sent me that can of tuna? But anyway, you get by the gatekeeper, you get to your mark and chances are you’ll at least get a phone call back from the guy going, that’s pretty cool.

Brian:

Once again, it’s going above and beyond, going the extra mile, doing what no one else is doing so that you can get results that no one else is getting.

Eddie:

But still nobody does it. Unless…I would say I’m the only one that tells them—other master sommeliers are the same way—but I’ve made a living out of saying to people, if you operate like this, with this new power entertaining operating system, people are going to take note. And when your call comes in or when your invitation to an event happens…

Maybe they have me speaking at the event where I’m doing, stuff like that…for example, everybody goes to networking receptions. In business, we go to those things. But nobody likes to network. Nobody likes to make idle chit-chat with people they don’t know. So they come in with their best girlfriend. They go to wherever they’re dispensing alcohol and they camp there for 45 minutes. Then they go to dinner. Networking—might as well take the word off the program. What I do is, because people don’t like moving around and they’re shy, I issue them a passport. This thing looks exactly like an American passport. Inside it’s got five pages which represent five stations where I have an egregious food and wine combination the likes of which most people have never seen or heard before. And I strategically place these stations all over the venue. I tell them, don’t get a hotel ballroom, go to an aquarium, go to an aircraft hanger, go to some museum, go somewhere different than a ballroom—it could even be your company headquarters. So position these stations in places you want people to go to, because they will take your passport and they’ll follow each station. They could even get the passport stamped at each station, but it forces movement. So now you’ve got a networking reception where people are actually networking and they’re seeing food and wine combinations they’ve never seen before. You might have a drawing to give away some of these food and wine combinations at the door. You might tell the people, if you get your passport stamped at all five stations, you go into a drawing for a free weekend at the Ritz-Carlton. Every hotel has got free rooms. Every hotel always says rooms available. So you’re not asking them for anything. It gets people moving.

These passports, they look so real. I had them printed like a stunt double. I was in Miami with 600 people from Merrill Lynch a couple of years ago. And TSA stopped me because I had 600 passports in my case. And they said—they’re all wrapped up in rubber bands—they were going to bust me. And I said, you have to look inside. They didn’t find any humor in it at all. They looked like passports, but inside there were menus. But the people who went to the event brought these passports home and put it on their desk. And somebody goes, Hey, Brian, are you traveling? I see you got your passport. No, that’s a food menu for an event I went to. So it sits on a desk for a month or two with your logo, your phone numbers, contact, then people talk about the event. That’s a networking reception.

Brian:

That’s awesome. That’s brilliant, Eddie.

Eddie:

It was a good idea. I did one for 11 years in a row for National Australia Bank in New York City, same event every year, because it works.

Brian:

That’s awesome. So you’ve alluded to this program that you’re creating. And I know we’ve talked about it a little bit. It’s not quite ready yet, but I will say that when it is, and you’re ready to start marketing it, we’ll be happy to put it up on our podcast.

Eddie:

That would be such help because I’m not a marketing expert, but I’ve got everything I’ve ever learned or said to anybody in this course. And it’s like a nine module course that people can take online and it’s got quizzes and stuff. But I tell people, this is not going to make you a wine expert. This is going to give you just enough information to be dangerous. Just enough information to learn that if I’m going to Italian restaurant or a Greek restaurant or a French restaurant, here are the anchor wines. Here are nine of the wines that I guarantee you will be on every wine list in every city. If you look down at your phone and you’re looking at it like a cheat sheet, say you’re at an Italian restaurant, here’s four whites:  Fiato, Doblantino, Pieropan, Souve. Here’s three reds:  Barbera, Barbaresco, Barolo. You can’t go wrong if you choose one of these wines, because I say so. It’ll be a fun thing.

Brian:

Well, it’ll be great. And again, we’re happy to promote that when it comes out. If it’s anything like this podcast and YouTube show has been, it’s going to be just off the charts. And again, it’s another way for people to set themselves apart, whether it’s personal entertaining in your home or business entertaining in a restaurant or with prospective or current clients. Again, Eddie’s book is Power Entertaining. And also look at the links on the podcast or YouTube show, however you’re listening or viewing this. Eventually you’ll see some information about Eddie’s program also called Power Entertaining, right?

Eddie:

That’s right.

Brian:

Thanks so much for being on the show. I really appreciate all your wisdom. The big surprise for me is your knowledge of food. I think when people think about sommeliers, they think about wine and obviously their training is in wine. But what you’ve shown us is that it’s really in the combination. And a lot of people can pick a good bottle of wine, but that pairing that you talked about—combining it with great food, just really creates an extraordinary experience rather than a great experience, doesn’t it?

Eddie:

That’s exactly it. It can be great, or it can be greater. Most people entertain, some do it better than others, that’s all. And if you do it better than others, you’re going to have people following you. People hang out with celebrities and professional athletes. Why? Because [they] hope something rubs off. People hang out with foodies and people who know food and wine, because you share stuff with them that they can do themselves and share themselves. So it’s a skill that once you learn it, you will not regret learning it.

Brian:

You’re obviously the master teacher. We appreciate your wisdom, your insight, your time today. It’s been great getting to know you and I look forward to talking again soon.

Eddie:

Thank you, Brian.

Brian:

Thanks Eddie. Thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about it on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.