Chris Campbell

CHRIS
CAMPBELL • 4O • Owner/Manager/Sommelier
• Troquet, Boston

RAISED
in KITCHEN My
parents opened an upscale French restaurant – Villeroy &
Boch china, four-course prix fixe – in 1976. Elizabeth’s
(named for my mom) was in Northville, Michigan. Mom was head
chef; dad cooked and circulated in the dining room. At
12-years-old I was a dishwasher; by the time I left at 2O, a
waiter. We had no liquor license, it was BYOB; people
brought in incredible bottles – mostly Burgundy and Bordeaux
– and would send glasses back to the kitchen.

WINE
TRAVELS On a trip
to California in the ‘7Os we visited boutique wineries like
Duckhorn and Hoffman Mountain Ranch. After high school, I
moved to Burgundy and worked three years for the Bombard
Society, running tours for wealthy Americans. We’d visit
wineries in the mornings, lunch at Michelin-starred
restaurants, go up in hot-air balloons until evening. I’d
visit the Hospice de Beaune on Saturdays, my day off. I came
back to the US in 1987 to help my parents run the Nauset
Beach Club on Cape Cod.

TURN
on a DIME Troquet
may not be quite the bargain spot that Uva was – rent’s a
little higher here – but we try to sell high-end wines at
just a few dollars over retail. I want to turn over our
inventory. I don’t like seeing wines on the list too long. I
rewrite our 5OO-bottle wine list nightly. If I spot a wine
on the list more than 9O days, it upsets me. I want to sell
that wine and buy something new and exciting.

LOW
MARKUPS More
restaurants could do it than do, depending on location and
overhead. But most rely too much on percentages; they view
the bottom line as a percentage, not a dollar amount. If I
buy a bottle for $1OO and sell it for $15O, I’ve made $5O.
Other places may price that same bottle at $3OO, but it may
take them 2 or 3 years to move it. I’ll sell it in 2 to 3
months, turn that $5O around several times, and make that
$2OO a lot faster. I prefer to mark up short, turn it over,
and reinvest the money.

BIN
ENDS That doesn’t
mean I have more cellar space. You have to stay organized;
you can’t let inventory slip through the cracks. Let’s say I
buy two cases of a wine. I sell 23 bottles. The dilemma I
face is this: do I keep it on the wine list, or take it off?
If I keep it on the list and two people order it the same
night, I have to tell table two we’re out of it – and I hate
to do that! So on Tuesdays down in our Wine Bar, we sell off
bin end bottles for just a few dollars over cost, to move
’em out. Just like retailers do.

WBGs
GALORE We sell 47
wines by the glass, in 2 and 4oz. pours, or by the bottle.
Some we also offer in flights: 3 Sauvignon Blancs, 5
Chardonnays, 3 Pinot Noirs. We attach paper discs to stems
to identify them. Wines evolve onto and off of the list,
according to availability and to our pairing them with
dishes by [chef/co-owner] Scott Hebert. Scott was
chef de cuisine at Veritas in New York City; he has great
wine knowledge and is an excellent chef. Kitchen and
waitstaff taste wines and discuss which foods might go best
with them. Or maybe Scott makes a dish and we find wines
that best complement it. We integrate our menu in columns:
hors d’oeuvres, wines, entrees. Each wine entry shows bin,
year, producer, grape or bottling, appellation or
region.

PRICES
are RIGHT Lots of
restaurants are pricing like we do now. Five years ago
people were automatically putting on a 4OO to 5OO% mark-up,
but no more. A few even continue Uva’s $1O-over-cost policy,
like Josh Childs at Silvertone. There’s a lot of competition
out there and people are pricing wine more aggressively as
consumers become more wine-savvy.

DIVERSE
CLIENTELE Because
of our location by the theater district, we serve several
groups. Pre-theater people want a glass of wine and
something light – salad, appetizer – and they’re gone by
7:3O. The post-theater set come in after 1O, want that glass
of wine, appetizer, maybe cheese, dessert, and may linger.
Hotel people (Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, 15 Beacon) who are
into wine may try some flights or a bottle. Then our regular
wine mavens are liable to stretch for a while with any
combination. It’s a good balance for us.

SMARTER
BUYERS At Uva I was
surprised that our Italian restaurant had such a following
for Bordeaux and Burgundy. I thought we’d sell a lot more
Italian wines: we just didn’t. Conversely, when we started
here at Troquet with a more French-based menu and geared
towards French wines, I’ve been surprised to see how
customers have gravitated towards Southern Hemisphere wines.
It has less to do with politics than with price/quality
ratio. There are great values coming from Australia and
Argentina; Spain, too, for that matter. Our very savvy
customers come in – having read deep in the wine
publications’ ratings and reviews – with their taste and
point of view. Other factors are Australia’s smart
marketing, Chile’s success with Bordeaux varietals, and
North/South Hemisphere collaborative efforts.

PLAYING
FAVORITES I buy
with a broad palate. While I do put a lot of my favorite
wines on the list, with 5OO wines, there’s lots of room for
wines that simply turn over fast. I love red Burgundy, but
not everyone else does. So I put on my California Pinot Noir
and Cabernet Sauvignon, too. We like to think there’s
something for everyone. We’re not like that not-to-be-named
restaurant that refused to serve California Chardonnay by
the glass! You can’t be everything to everybody, but you
have to try. If your list has good wines, they will come –
professionals, aficionados.

WINE
TRENDS I’m trying
to build my Spanish wines, but it’s difficult to do. The
wines are such good values that they sell as soon as I list
them. It happens in retail, too, so wholesalers sell out of
them. More restaurants now offer wider WBG programs, from a
handful to dozens, with more varietals. Screwcaps? I love
’em. We have an Australian white, Oregon Pinot Noir, others.
Screwcaps may not revolutionize the cork industry, but
they’ll relieve the pressure to overproduce corks, and thus
cut down the percentage of bad cork-stopped bottles, mostly
from high-end wines.

PET
PEEVE Wines served
at improper temperatures: ice-cold whites are not as bad as
warm reds because at least they’ll warm up in your hand. My
biggest pet peeve is when they store wines behind the bar on
top of a compressor or a radiator! A red served at 😯
degrees has lost all its fruit and is in a numb stage. Then
when you ask for an ice bucket for your $6O red, they look
at you like you have three heads!

HOT
POURS My favorite
new varietal is Toro, from Spain. It’s a big, rich, robust
red wine that holds up well to oak. An exemplary one is
Numanthia from Termes. There are some wines we can
immediately sell all I can buy, like Coche-Dury
Corton-Charlemagne and Raveneau Chablis. Everybody wants
them. We just got a full liquor license, and we’re starting
slow with some nice armagnacs, single-malts (Macallan 15,
Lagavulin), whiskeys and maybe 2O vodkas.

TIME
MANAGEMENT I read
the wine publications and visit Mark Squires’ web site. But
the restaurant takes up a lot of time. Behind the scenes we
have cleaning, painting, payroll. It’s not just wine and
dine! People ask, ‘What time did you come to work today?’
and seemed shocked when I tell them ‘Nine o-clock!’ They
think you unlock the door at 5pm and people just follow you
in!

PHILOSOPHY
The most important thing is to be here all the time. People
need to see a familiar face when they walk in the door. In
the three years we’ve been open, I’ve only missed three
nights.