Roger Mastrude

Review of Cheese Consultant for Kermit L...

Kermit is a great merchant. I've been doing busine...

Kermit is a great merchant. I've been doing business with him since he worked as a wine clerk for somebody else, 40 years ago. I bought a bottle of Cote Rotie from him for $4.95. (It costs $70 now.) I don't agree with all of his tastes, and he's a Yankee merchant who will skin you if he can, but he's brilliant. His secret, as some wine reviewer once said, is that "he trusts his own taste." He has wines that cost, and are I suppose worth, over $200/bottle. But what's appealed to me all these years since I was a starving grad student, is that he finds really good, inexpensive wines, , $10 - $22, in unusual places like Corsica, (which is legendary for adulterated and vile wines.) Go in to the shop and ask the clerk to fill a case with 12 different wines, none more than $22. Give him some idea what you like. Then taste the wines. You'll know what to do. But you won't listen! No one ever does.