I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Thomas Passesack on the show. Hello sir, how are you? How are you?

So you're the wine director over at the Nomad Hotel there?

Correct indeed. But before that, you, as a younger man,

you were into music playing the piano a lot.

Yes, I actually grew up here in New York City.

My family is actually of a musical background

specifically on my mom's side. We have some dancers, some singers, some

violists and pianists as well.

So for me, music was sort of always a part of my life growing up

and so naturally made sense to sort of go in that direction.

I started out as a violinist, hated it,

went into piano, and fell in love with it.

And so for that matter, stayed in piano

and was performing basically through high school

and then going into college.

And so then you got to college and what happened next?

So basically, even before getting into college when I was still in high school, I got into an accident over one of my summers.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, it was pretty bad. I got, I was bicycling, I was working as a lifeguard and also working as a pianist to make a little bit of extra cash.

Got totally sideswiped by a car, like dragged, thrown, lost a lot of skin on my legs, broke my collarbone, and unfortunately, you know, couldn't quite recover to, you know, get back into the competition circle.

Yeah, because the collarbone thing, that happened to me, and they can't set it because they puncture along.

So then you just have to deal with the pain for a long time.

...