Selling wine is all about sizing people up, and it takes a certain amount of chutzpah. The tableside bottle sell is a very funny thing - you take a look at the guy's blazer, what kind of shoes he's wearing, what kind of broad he's with. Is he trying to be a hero?

The stories of wine lords who trade wine on intimidation or food critics who trade free meals for reviews those are the stories of my life. I am telling the stories of my life in a true way.

New York is the best food city in the world.

I was raised in restaurants. My parents opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, in Queens when I was just 3. This business has always been my way of life. As a kid, home was reserved only for sleeping. After school, you could find my sister and I helping out at the family restaurant.

It's kind of like a midlife crisis kind of thing. When you turn 40, you have to run the marathon, while all the parts still work properly.

With four-appetizer, four-entree menus, it's like, give me a break. That's not a restaurant, that's a dinner party.

Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist.