I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Robert Simonson, a writer of spirits and wine and theater and culture. Welcome to the show today, sir. Thanks. Happy to be here. So you

came from a theater family. Family was a lot of different drama. That's right.

I like to say that we're probably the most prominent theater family in Wisconsin.

My brother's a director and writer.

My sister is a costume designer.

Her husband is a theater administrator.

My brother just married an actress.

And I guess I was the black sheep.

I became a theater critic.

And was that just so that you could like criticize your own family?

Like have free reign to be like, no, you're doing it all wrong.

But at the time I knew that I wanted to be a writer and I liked theater, but in retrospect I sort of realized that I started doing that just as a way to stay in the family business.

You know, I mean because if you go to my house, pretty much people talk about theater 90%

of the time.

If you're not doing theater or seeing theater, you're not part of the conversation.

So I don't want to say that I don't like theater, I do like theater.

But if I hadn't come from that family, I probably would have started out my

writing career, my journalism career, writing about something else.

So it was like a doll's house where you went back and you're like, no more macaroons

for me. I am not talking theater to you people

anymore. Something like that. I think, yeah, no, my family probably was surprised when I switched

focuses, you know, if I could make a meager living writing about

...