Great Wine, Good Food and Laughter Among Friends - Joe Dressner

Thoughtfully posted by John on Wednesday, September 21, 2011.

Joe Dressner

In a world that is becoming flatter and more homogenized by the moment, I often turn to what I think most accurately represents what’s still great about the world we live in – a great bottle of wine that loudly expresses its sense of place. Without firm roots somewhere, what’s the point? One of the first Old World wines that turned me on to terroir, sense of place, ‘somewhereness’ or whatever else you want to call it was the 1989 Chinon ‘Les Picasses’ from Olga Raffault. I was lucky enough to stock a vertical of Raffault’s wines on the list at Stage Left in New Brunswick. This was before I started selling wine on the street and before I ever imagined that I would write a blog or be hired to teach others about what I thought makes wine great.

I didn’t know it then, but the ’89 ‘Les Picasses’ was one of the first ‘real’ wines I ever had – free of the heavy hand of interventionist winemaking that unfortunately crafts the majority of wines in the marketplace today. Louis/Dressner was, and still is, the importer of the wines from Olga Raffault. In a sudden twist of fate, last year, I was lucky to start selling the wines from Raffault and others that Joe Dressner spent years bringing into the United States. In the course of the last 18 months or so, I shook Joe’s hand a couple of dozen times at trade tastings and at the David Bowler office. I never met him previously, but once I met him early last year and heard him speak passionately about his growers and their wines, it became clear to me instantly why I loved drinking his wines in the past – Raffault, Pepiere, Lunau-Pepin, Closel, and Texier – all so delightful in their own way, yet all of them bound together by a common thread – real wines, made by real people from real places. And the clichéd bullshit that you find on Turnpike billboards or in magazine centerfold advertisements, but real wine that spoke from where it came.

My conversations with Joe were limited, but I was thanked him via Twitter for ‘his wines’ being special and delicious to drink and for being a privilege to sell. He responded in the typical Joe fashion, “they are not my wines – I am simply the middleman making money on the backs of growers doing all the work in France and Italy.” Another time, after he was diagnosed with the same brain cancer that took his life this past weekend, I thanked him for a great portfolio tasting that he hosted and if he ever wanted to come to Jersey, I would be more than happy to drive him around, exchange anecdotes from Casey Stengel and show him that real wine shops existed on the other side of the Hudson. He politely declined saying that, “my oncologist doesn’t feel comfortable with me in Jersey. In fact, even without my tumor, I wouldn’t feel comfortable in New Jersey.”

I found out Saturday morning that Joe passed away while I was golfing with some friends. My boss, David Bowler, wanted us to know that his friend and colleague passed away. I hardly check my phone while golfing as golf serves as an escape from the banalities of a typical work week, but I did this Saturday. My reaction was and still is that I am incredibly sad that Joe has left us after his battle with cancer. I remembered him while dining with friends Saturday night as I was mostly absent from dinner, my mind adrift thinking about his sarcasm, smile and wonderful attitude that he carried with him during his last months with us. I couldn’t call him a friend, more of an acquaintance, but most importantly – an inspiration. Joe stood for something and carried on in his personal and professional life in a manner that was uncompromising – he loved great wine that was spoofed with as little as possible by the winemaker. And as originality, typicity and expression are often lost in the monotony of 21st century way of life, what saddens me most is that we have lost a voice that champions what is great about expressive wines and most importantly, the expressive life. We should all be so lucky to understand life as Joe did. The detractors and critics of what they thought was a dogmatic approach by Joe and his wines have unfortunately missed the point as what Joe was championing most, above all, was the good life – to be paired with great wine, food and laughter among friends.

And below are links to what others have had to say about Joe since his passing this weekend.