I’ve been rejecting wine professionally for over twenty years, which is to say, as a wine buyer, my main activity is saying no. There is a yes here and there, but mostly it’s no. I’m an agreeable fellow, temperamentally content and conflict-averse. I would much prefer to say yes most of the time, but space and budget constraints prohibit this, so mostly I say no, or rather, no, thank you.

I’ve been serving wine for more than thirty years, and I’ve witnessed many responses to an uncorking - from wide-eyed delight to unbridled disgust - mentally logging the results for future reference. Thanks to the slippery language of wine, and to subjective perception, predicting a bottle’s reception can be a tricky game. What one taster calls fruity, another will declare sweet, and a wine that pleases some with a bright vibrancy will strike others as sharply acidic.

I am not what they call a super taster, nor do I have other specialized tasting skills, just endurance and doggedness. My memory for wine is average and a result of endless repetition. I buy wines for the shop that I enjoy, and also wines I think customers will appreciate, and often these criteria happily coincide. Folks sometimes think I travel far and wide to find wine for Oakland Yard, but this is not the case. Some weeks, I do not leave the block. Retailers can purchase wine directly from California producers, but if a wine is made out of state, we must buy it from a licensed distributor, so we host regular tastings with vendors. We currently deal with more than sixty distributors, most of whom represent hundreds, if not thousands, of bottlings, so, as you can imagine, I’ve spent a good portion of the last two decades sipping and spitting in restaurants, retail stores, and event spaces all over New York and San Francisco, and for the last five years, mostly here at 420 40th Street.

This kind of wine buying is more exhausting than glamorous, but it is never boring. Vintage variation and the limited production of our selections render the market everchanging, and my job is to stay abreast of what’s available, and every so often, to say yes. Every week at Oakland Yard, we sell the last of some lots and make space for a few more, and this vinous ebb and flow is what makes me, and I hope many of you, want to come back to Oakland Yard day after day, year after year, and say yes to something new.

Cheers,
Max