I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Juliet Pope on the on the show today.

Juliet Pope is the wine director at Gramercy Tavern in the Flat Iron District of Manhattan. Hey Juliet, nice see you.

Hi Levy, nice to be here.

So you got your start in New York working as a line cook and you're at Zoe.

What was that like? Intense. It's all about being in the fire and surviving it and getting out alive and feeling really satisfied for having gotten through it and

then going for a beer with your mates afterwards.

Do you meet anyone there that ended up being more important to your life?

Pretty much. I met my husband there.

He was my first Sioux chef and he actually asked me out for a beer, my first night.

First night.

First night.

Takes care of business right away. Yeah told his friend who was the executive

Sioux chef to back off. Really? Yeah. Just put that right on the prep list?

Right out there. And I said yes innocently because that's what people do. They go out for beers after their shifts.

So sure, go for beer. Except it was just us. So anyway.

You're like, where's all the other oh yeah, so that worked out really well and a few months later I was living in Astoria and in his place so and how long were you at Zoe? I was at Zoe for a little over a year.

And they were kind of doing the seasonal American menu at that time?

seasonal American, which I think maybe then in the early mid 90s was a fairly cutting edge American

focused an all American wine list which I was hardly paying attention to but

that was kind of its thing under Scott Lawrence literally a

hundred percent American wine list so and you were in the back like throwing

pans around the fire and like telling dudes to pick up right sticking my hand

...