I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Ralph Kutel of Trusson-10 on the show today.

Hello, sir, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Nice to see you.

Likewise, it's a cool day today, but yeah.

So you're actually our first chef guest on the show.

Usually we do Sommeer's wine directors, importers, retailers, writers, but you're a chef who also buys the wine for his restaurant,

which is something you don't see that much of anymore.

Maybe we could talk about how you got started as a chef.

You were in Switzerland?

Yeah, grew up in Switzerland. My dad was a game warden. Mom was a homemaker and always liked cooking, always been around food, always been around farmers. Then when I was 15, 15 and a half,

started an apprenticeship, about 30 miles, 40 miles away from home and Lake is Zurich.

The dead for three, four years,

worked in several places in Switzerland,

Lausanne, Rosa, Zurich, then came to the United States, a tender age of 24.

So your dad used to buy a little wine for the house?

Yes, we always had a flag and 50 liter flag enough what I suspect was Merleau at home from the

Ticino Italian speaking part of Switzerland. Oh okay all the way down at the bottom.

Yeah yeah. So the big

semi will come by every few months drop one of those off and carry off the empty one

and it was my job to siphon off, did the red wine into clean bottles, then cook the corks,

hammer them in and bring the bottles down into the cellar. We always had wine around or beer. And this was like when you were 15?

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