I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Today on the show we welcome John Gilman. He writes the newsletter called

View from the Cellar. He's a wine critic and longtime wine drinker that brings a lot of experience to the table.

Mr. John Gilman on the show today.

Hello sir, how are you?

I'm very well Levy.

Thank you for having me.

So these days you apply a trade as a wine critic and you write the view from the seller newsletter but originally started in retail in the Massachusetts area.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

Well, when I was going to college, I was fortunate to fall into a group of good wine tasters.

And so worked in wine shops in college and got a job working as a buyer for the biggest store in New England when I was just

graduated from college. From that point on, you know, just sort of worked in

retail about 15 years and migrated down to Manhattan looking for to source better wines and you know to really be in the

epicenter of the wine world as I saw at that time.

Because he felt like some things weren't available in Mass.

Oh yeah that was totally true. I mean you know for we'd scramble to get things that were

readily available in New York and you'd get you know three or four bottles

would be your allocation if you bought a hundred other cases of things so it was

nice to be able to buy anything you wanted and you know the best importers were in New York I thought at that time

And this was the 80s? Yeah this was the 80s you know I graduated from school in the early 80s and lived here out in California and then migrated down

here and throughout the 80s and early 90s worked as a retailer before moving on to my Somalier

career.

And what were you often serving or selling in the retail days?

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