MY STORY

My love of Pinot Noir came later in life. When my band, Devo, signed with Warner Brothers Records in 1978, we left Ohio for the promise of California. In many ways it wasn’t at all what the exported myth promised, but it delivered as an explosive wake up call to food and wine. Commensurate with our “new wave” music revolution, there was a gang of new wave chefs inventing culinary dreams in California. I met restaurateurs Michael McCarty, Bruce Marder, Wolfgang Puck, Piero Selvaggio, Jeremiah Tower, and many more. I became a disciple of the new California cuisine and the California wines with which it was often paired. I attended an endless array of California winemaker dinners, meeting many of the best, and drank my way to knowledge.

I was young and my tastes were for the big, fruity, knock you back Cabernets and oaked up Chardonnays and Syrahs. Pinot Noir? Hmmmm. Devo toured the western world seven times over and by 1990, I had added Barbaresco, Barolo, Brunello and the Super Tuscans in Italy, and Vega Sicilia from Spain to my “go to” list. It wasn’t until a French promoter started opening some legendary DRC’s one long, gluttonous, 1990 night in Paris that the Pinot Noir light bulb went on in my head. Then came a temporary career and money freeze four years later. I begrudgingly gave California Pinot Noirs another try. They were cheap (e.g.$14.00) and in low demand. That’s when I had a bottle of 1989 Williams Selyem Pinot Noir with breast of duck. I was off and running and have never stopped.