Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
To be asked to do the pairing menus by Alamos Wineries in Argentina [was the most interesting opportunity]. There are so many chefs out there, and so if you were to say, "The dude who used to host Man V. Food is doing pairing for Jim Beam," you'd say, "Okay, that's kind of conceivable." If you're talking about the dude from Man V. Food is doing pairings for fine wine, then I think people might not necessarily anticipate that.
And now it goes as it goes and where it ends is Fate. And neither by singeing flesh nor tipping cups of wine nor shedding burning tears can you enchant away the rigid Fury.
I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.