Let’s face it. As fascinating as the subject of wine is per se, there would be no wine without actual people (at least so far) so the nexus of this series of interviews takes on the greater subject of influencers, whether they be winemakers, collectors, chefs and foodies, educators, or benefactors whose path has somehow conveyed intrinsic value to the world of wine. It was my distinct pleasure to interview Brian Owens, an Austin Texas wine collector and educator that has had a profound effect on many professionals in the wine industry and countless others that have had the good fortune to know him.

Due to his father’s US Air Force pilot career Brian lived in a lot of places, like kids do that come from a military family, and from the age of sixteen his dad was stationed in London. At seventeen Brian was shuttling from the US to Europe and back and after high school he started traveling through Europe. Brian traveled mostly throughout France and Italy at the time, thus wine became the order of the day. His early introduction was mostly focused on Spanish and Italian wines, somewhere around wino grade, but at that age quality is not the first thing on anyone’s mind. 

After a couple years of graduate school Brian came back to the US but not before traveling around Europe with his best friends, who once back, opened Jeffery’s (consistently one of Austin’s best fine dining restaurants). Acquiring a taste for European wines at a young age paved the way for Brian to become who he is today: a highly esteemed and respected wine collector and wine educator with a great palate, knowledge, and passion that he willingly shares with most anyone who’s interested in learning more about wine.

Amongst his many formidable accomplishments, Brian first created and now plans and presides over a wine event known as the Austin Wine Salon. Each month at Wine Salon collectors, sommeliers, restaurateurs, and wine industry people get together to share great and interesting bottles of wine, compare notes, and generally propagate wine knowledge in a planned and organized format. A typical Wine Salon will pour anywhere from 36 to 40 bottles and each event has a theme such as ‘Definitive Bordeaux’, ‘Blind Is More Fun’ or ‘Definitive Burgundy’. Wine Salon usually is host to 32 to 36 people and the waiting list to be a part of this coveted function is long and in high demand.

Brian is very well spoken and eloquent and has a wonderful ability to make complex subjects easy to understand without ever being condescending or intimidating. Like many of us, he embraces the opportunity to be around people that love wine as much as he does and he shines brightly in this environment. Without further ado, I give you Brian Owens:

So when you came back to the US you landed where?

I started working in television in Washington DC for the National Cable Television Association and I was traveling a lot and later I was in California a lot, so what do you do? You start visiting wineries. So when I was 24 or 25 I discovered California wineries. I was going to Napa and Sonoma and drinking Zinfandel, which were all of $2 or $3 dollars a bottle. Zinfandel was very misunderstood at that time but I got hooked beyond the European wines.

It’s interesting that you lived in DC. They had great food and wine in that town.

Washington was very French oriented, it was designed by a Frenchman, I lived in a neighborhood that had great wine stores and great restaurants, and good wine was really cheap. Robert Parker was around the area then before he started Wine Advocate and was going to the same places. It was so amazing that even in ’73 or ’74 you could buy a Clos Vougeot Grand Cru Burgundy for $5. I don’t even know who produced most of these wines because it was often a négociant but they’d slap the same label on the bottle. It might be a Clos Vougeot or a Gevery-Chambertin or Bonnes Mares. One might be $3 and another might be $9 - there were some good and some bad vintages. From ’67 through ’70, some were awful vintages but the price was right.

It’s interesting that traipsing around Europe for as long as you did, that you came back and actually found an appreciation for California wine, especially at a time when California was still trying to find itself as a wine region.

Well, I think I got into California because I was working in the cable TV trade association. I was had just gotten through graduate school in film production and the industry was in the early stages of cable TV, just starting Home Box Office (HBO) - my job was programming. But HBO started a lobbying effort and they wanted to do wine and cheese tastings for Congressmen so they gave me the job because they knew I liked wine and that I knew something about it. So suddenly I had to go out, like ten different times, and buy four cases of wine each time and the cheese too. I was 23 or 24. I would buy different California wines and that’s what really got me into the region. They didn’t want to serve European wines to United States Congress members so I had to buy American wines and American cheese. I was buying a lot of Oakville and Beaulieu Vineyards [BV] and that’s how I learned those wines.

So this was influential in your decision to start collecting wine at this point?

Yes, I started collecting wine at that point. I’d go into the wine shop and say, “If I buy four cases would you give me a discount on some European wine?” Sure! So that’s how I got into collecting Burgundy.

But you knew what you were buying at this point?

No, not really. I remember the first nice wine I got was Beychevelle, then I got Clos Fourtet, then I remember buying a Margaux and being so excited that I had a Margaux, only to learn that what I bought was a Margaux from the appellation, not a bottle of Château Margaux. So I’m sitting on a bottle of wine for about a year and a half until I realize I didn’t buy Château Margaux, and you learn that way.

Do you remember a moment that went off in your head where you said to yourself, “Wine is really awesome, I want to learn more” or was it kind of a gradual process?

Well, I think almost everybody that’s into wine has an experience with a bottle and it’s in a situation, and it may or may not be with food, but we have a situation where we drink this wine and think it’s perfect. There’s something that comes over our bodies and we think, “I’m at one with what I’m drinking.” It’s almost an out-of-body experience with a bottle of wine and then what happens is that we want to replicate that experience! So we come back and try to experience it again and it’s elusive. So then the questions: ‘why did that happen? Was it the wine? Was it the vintage? Was it the food?’ And we’re kind of caught and we had this experience but had trouble replicating it and then eventually we replicate it at some point again – we have another experience with another wine and we just want to do more of that. And it’s not just purely a sensatory experience about tasting a wine. It comes in context because we’re probably with somebody; one person or three people and we’re all going, “Wow!” So you have this whole dynamic of sharing going on too, this complex experience of wine.

And to jump to the sensory part of it, smell is a very, very deep sense and it can bring back very important stuff, even memories from childhood, and if you smell wine sometimes it will take you back thirty years ago. So when you have that sensory experience with the complex aromas of wine, maybe even subconsciously, you sometimes have an indefinable experience that delivers you back into some kind of pleasure moment. And secondly, taste is a very strong sense. So you can have some kind of experience that is more than, say, just looking at the Grand Canyon. We can be amazed by the view and size of the Grand Canyon but to smell something that takes you into a different time is a so much larger experience. So I think when you do that and try to replicate it and start to go down that road, you just subscribe to it – you just become a believer.

Some people actually don’t get it and, this is weird, but maybe it’s because some people just don’t have a sense of smell that’s developed. I do find that people that like wine actually do have a sense of smell that is developed really well and they taste very well. They have very good olfactory senses and that’s probably why they’re involved in wine. It’s kind of like musicians. The great one’s naturally have an ear that they were born with. There are a lot of people that want to be musicians but lack the natural talent to actually do it well. Same with wine people.

What is it about wine that makes it such a social vehicle?

Well, it is just by its nature. I go up and get an éclair or a cup of coffee, I’m probably not going to split it with you. I go up and get a bottle of wine, I’m not going to drink the whole thing by myself - I’m going to share it with you. I’m not going to have a bottle of my wine and you’re not going to have a bottle of your wine without us sharing what we have.

So you think it’s about quantity?

No, it’s about the bottle immediately. You can see it with beer: you get this beer, and I’ll get this other beer. We may not share a glass of wine but the bottle has a lot to do with sharing and it’s part and parcel of the beast. It forces you into sharing. When a bunch of us go out for barbeque it forces us into sharing too. Should we get some brisket, some pork, some beef? It’s a different experience than going to a traditional restaurant when you go out to a place like this with people, and you get a whole bunch of stuff on butcher paper and then everybody digs in. Right away conversation begins, “How is that?” Do like that? Is this good?”

But wine seems to be different socially than drinking beer together or cocktails.

Yes, a good example, you get a cocktail, I get a cocktail, and we’ll say we like our cocktails and we might even make a few comments about them but it won’t go much further than that. But when you get a bottle of wine you’ve made a joint decision and ultimately you have to ask, was it a good decision or a bad decision because you’ve got this whole bottle you have to get through. Even at a basic level people will start talking. They order a bottle of Pinot Grigio and one of us asks, “Should we have ordered the Chardonnay?” and the conversation begins. And wine people definitely share more about what they’re drinking, especially with other wine people. Wine gives us this sensory experience on a deeper level and can transport us to a different world, so-to-speak. I don’t think I can do that with a beer.

When you first started collecting wine, did you have a specific goal or strategy in mind?

I think not. Most of what I started buying was because of value and if the value was from Argentina, even though I like Bordeaux, I’d buy it if it was really priced right. So early on it was really about value but as you get into value you eventually get suckered into reading reviews about wine and wine scores. Then it moves to, “Wow, I can buy this 95 point wine for $10 or I can buy a 90 point wine for $20.” Even if the $20 wine is the one I like, I’m going to walk away from it and buy the 95 point wine.

So your collection was initially more about value?

Yeah, when you’re young, you don’t have a lot of money and you’re still learning but you don’t mind because you’ve got the whole world at your palate. You don’t mind buying something from the Languedoc or Minervois or some strange region you’ve never heard of. And you find a Côte du Rhône for $4 that Parker rated 90 points, and you explore it and pretty soon you learn what Grenache is. It’s all learning. And almost everybody I know started collecting on value and you work your way up. And then you start learning about vintages – some of it’s good, some bad, but I think you expand your horizon more by starting with value than you would if you just decided to learn everything there is about Bordeaux or a single region, which is the second act.

Do you have any formal education in wine - did you ever want to go down that road?

Well, a lot of it is time and when you’re working hard, you just don’t have the time to do it. The other thing is that I wasn’t in the profession so I really didn’t have a need to become a sommelier, for instance. So with me, I have substituted experience for sitting in a classroom learning about wine. The sad thing to discover in wine is that sommeliers, and even winemakers, have very small worlds. Sommeliers are in the world of consumers/restaurants and more and more restaurants cannot afford to acquire older vintages so the wine list is limited to the last several years of releases. That’s the scope of their world. And winemakers are often the same. They’re basically farmers, out in the country, and know a lot about farming but not so much about wine. So experience can certainly be a substitute for formal education, which at some point will segue this conversation into Wine Salon.

Part 2 will be posted soon. Don’t miss this because there is so much to gain from Brian’s wisdom, experience and depth of knowledge; more about Wine Salon, restaurants, wine critics in Part 2!

David Boyer

Photo: Brian Owens