When he's not pouring wine for Ruth Reichl, as Gourmet magazine's wine consultant, Michael Green  heads-up Liquid Assets, the company he founded to help Wall Street (and sometimes Bay Street) firms capitalise on their relationship between food and wine. Makes sense: how many big deals have been made at a restaurant table? Not that it's always (ever?) serious: when I caught up with him recently in Toronto, Green was planning to take a group of America's top CEO's on a "hotdog tour of Chicago" that starts at 10PM. Green followed his father into the wine trade, and began a lifelong love affair with wine and the restaurant business: he's one of Manhattan's top consultants. A great believer in "context". He delights in serving Yellow Tail Shiraz in crystal decanters to his classes, just to prove how much the "experiece" of wine matters and he eschews wine snobbery at any level. Green writes for several US magazines and websites, and as a Food Network veteran Green came up to Toronto made several appearances on Christine Cushing's show, and retains a certain Canadian connection. When we talked, he was on his way to visit a few Niagara wineries...

The Interview

Gremolata: How did you start in wine?

Michael Green: It's not as glamorous as it sounds. My father needed money to get him through college, so he got a job at a New York City wine shop. Actually it's the oldest wine shop in America, Acker Merril & Condit. Today it does more auction business than any wine shop in the world. So, I would go to work with my dad starting when I was six (he ended up working there for 40 years). Then, when I was in my early 20s the owner of the company had a very interesting concept. In the United States we have the three tier system: importer, distributer and on or off premise. He had the idea of setting up a dummy company, that was strictly legal, that gave them the opportunity to source wines from around the world and bring them into sell to the store, so we were making more profit point but still selling the wine below market value. I worked for the new company which meant that before I was 25 I travelled to most of the wine regions of the world with a million dollars of credit. It was only about ten years later that I realised what an extraordinary opportunity it was. When people talk about '89 Bordeaux, I was drinking '89 Bordeaux out of barrels.

G: It's almost like you were born into it.

MG: Well, another thing that happened before: I went to The School of Performing Arts, the "Fame School". Even though I am not in the theatre, I think I got a sense of performance and the "theatre" of sensory experience, the theatre of dining. Sometimes I think that culinary professionals, selling wine in a restaurant, don't completely... They're sometimes too close to the product or service. They don't pull back and realise, hmmm... these are some things we could do. Things we could do, that are often free, to enhance the experience.

G: Like?

MG: I'll tell you one thing: I went to a top end restaurant the other day and it was very good, almost perfect. But it blew me away that the owners of the establishment had not tackled the sound issue. It was, by the time the restaurant filled up, so noisy that we couldn’t hear our waiters. We had to scream out our orders and to each other. And that's something that could be so easily fixed. Another thing: the idea of how a menu is presented. The font size you use for the wine list, which is often too small for me. I am a big fan of white space. I want to create a wine award for the shortest wine list - the most effective wine list.

My company works on the assumption that the food experience and the wine experience are going to be excellent, or at least what they should be. But we work on enhancing the other aspects of the experience, the theatre of the experience.

G: When you consult, do you operate on the premise that enhancing the experience will please the customer and therefore lead to better business? Or do you also help your clients maximise profit?

MG: At the end of the day, a restaurant is a commercial enterprise and there's a balancing act between the art and the commerce. I'm very pro-consumer, but being pro-consumer doesn't mean giving things to the consumer inexpensively. It means giving a high perception of value. Back when I was 26, I did my first wine list that got three stars from The New York Times. That was very cool and I was pretty happy, but the restauranteur called me about three months later and said he was going to take one of the wines off the list because it was not selling. Well my company doesn't make any money from vendors - we don't take kick backs. We really just do what we think is right for the client. So, I said, "No." Instead, we reformatted the environment. I took it off the wine list at $43 and put it back on the wine list at $52, making it the least expensive wine on the "reserve" list. It worked.

G: Why?

MG: Most consumers will say it's about money, but I truly believe it's not about money; it's about perception of value. At $52 it looked like a good deal for a reserve wine. I'll give you another example. I went to another restaurant recently where I should have left the minute they brought out the bread. I think it's true what they say: you can always judge a restaurant by the quality of the bread and the lighting in the ladies washroom. But, anyway we ordered wine by the glass and they just brought us two glasses. It always amazes me when they don't bring the bottle to the table and make a display of pouring the wine. Show the label, offer a small taste! People don't realise it's the little things that matter. Like when I check into a hotel and go to the bathroom and realise there are no hooks for the towels.

When I talk to a new client, sometimes I say, "What are you pretending not to know?"

G: Is there a most common mistake made by the industry?

MG: Not realising, big picture, that it's about how you take what in many people's minds is a commodity and add the perception of value. That's where people get so upset on wine list mark-ups. You can mark up a cup of coffee or a gin and tonic 2,000%, but people won't complain about that because you're "creating" something. With wine the customer just sees you pouring it.

Most wine lists are a disaster for one main reason. Look at the other aspects of the restaurant experience: the look of the dining room, the menu, what the servers are wearing, the lighting. There is often a complete disconnect between those aspects of the restaurant and the wine list: what's on it and how it's presented. So, give me more white space. And if I had a dollar for every time Champagne Veuve Clicquot was misspelled, I could retire right now. I mean, if you're going to mark it up 300% you should at least spell it correctly!

Another common mistake: wine not being served at the right temperature. I ordered a Rioja that had to be put on ice, but if I didn't know a lot about wine and had it at that warm temperature I would have found it highly alcoholic and would not have enjoyed it.

I have another major pet peeve with the way wine is presented and served: there's a lot of bullshit. I'm not a big fan of people giving me wine geek speak when they clearly don't know what they're talking about. Actually, you can test someone at that. If you go to a wine list that has, say, 40 Napa Valley Chardonnays, and ask your server to describe the nuances between a few of these wines... it will make you want to reach for a light beer! It goes back to what I was saying about lists: if you only have one chicken dish why do you need 40 Napa Valley Chardonnays? Just give me your two best bottles and make sure your staff is really knowledgeable on them. There's too much duplication on wine lists... I could go on and on.

[Green points to his white and green paper coffee cup.] You know Starbuck's did it best. They took what many people saw as a commodity and added value to it. So now I'm sipping a coffee that cost me $2.50 - Canadian and American.

G: Can we talk a little more about adding value?

MG: There was a great article about a year ago in the Washington Post. They took Joshua Bell, who's considered one of the great violinists of the world, and put him in a D.C. Metro station for a week. He played, in effect asking for money. And the punch line was that he barely made a dime. The article complained that people couldn't stop and hear the beauty, but I think the article got it wrong. It wasn't that the music wasn't beautiful, it just wasn't in context. If Mark McEwen or Jamie Kennedy were slopping food out of a street cart on Yonge Street, they would not be recognised. It's about the whole experience.

G: Now, what about in the diner's side? Is the customer always right? Or, do we need to be educated too?

MG: The word "educator" scares the bejesus out of me, although I am in fact an educator. I really am not a big fan of sommeliers who say they want to "educate" customers. We are not there to educate them. We are there to give them pleasure and the whole idea that the restaurant experience needs to turn into a didactic dialogue about wine... NO! People want to feel validated in their choices. Sure, of course, if they want to be educated, then fine.

G: But consumers must make some mistakes?

MG: One of my tips for consumers is to get the wine list in advance. I always do this, always. It's not that I'm going to make my selection, but I'll have a point of view. Otherwise, whether or not you and I are knowledgeable, when the wine list comes out with 500 selections I'm going to have to go into my "zone" to read it. That's rude to you, and when two minutes later the server comes by and asks for my wine order, I won't be ready. I did that the other day. I looked up the list the day before and found a delicious Savennières for $35 on an otherwise wacky wine list. The prices were all over the place.

Another big mistake is not realising that the choice of restaurant is the biggest deciding factor to the experience. Think about where you're going. Now that I'm getting older I have less time for super formal dining, and I prefer something more casual. But I think the biggest mistake consumers make is to do nothing. Friends will often come to me the day afterwards, you know, chatting to me casually, powerless about an awful restaurant experience. They'll say, "I can't believe you recommended this restaurant! Everyone was so rude!" And I always tell them that when you know something's not going right, you appropriately excuse yourself from the table, you go over to the manager. You say, "Listen, I want to tell you about my experience. I'm with my wife, or I'm closing a big deal. And things aren't going well..." Whatever it is, make your needs known. In most cases they will not only appreciate that, they'll do everything in their power to make sure the experience is fine.

You know, it's not the food business, it's the hospitality business.

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Find out more about Michael Green at michaelgreen.com and liquidassetscg.com