Profile: Marcus Palmer

MARCUS
PALMER • 38 • Sommelier & Wine Manager •
Smith & Wollensky • Boston,
MA

How could such a
terrific concept have borne such a sketchily conceived
monicker? The story goes that the night before Alan Stillman
launched his now-famous steakhouse chain, it still lacked a
name. Alan and staff literally leafed through the Manhattan
white pages to come up with the fictitious partnership of
Charlie Smith and Ralph Wollensky that has achieved glory.
Today from coast to coast, Smith & Wollensky means great
Steak & Wine. The national chain of several respected
gold links universally contrasts a one-page menu with a
leather-bound wine list. And since before 2OO3, except for a
few Champagnes and Ports, those lists are 1OO% Yankee-Doodle
American. The new Boston branch lists over 55O wines and
counting. Native son Marcus Palmer is nurturing that list –
expanding it, ‘having fun’ with it – while reaching
extraordinary sales numbers. The 4OO-seat Boston S&W
enjoys the highest average per capita wine sales among the
18 S&W group restaurants. We chatted on a quiet day
after a sunlit tour of S&W’s four dining rooms in The
Castle at Arlington Street and Columbus Avenue. The massive
1891 structure, on the National Registry of Historic Places
since 1973, was brilliantly reconstructed by Haverson
Architecture and Design of Greenwich,
Connecticut.

EARLY
YEARS I grew up in
Fitchburg, went to private Catholic schools. At University
of New Hampshire I earned a BS in Political Science and a
Masters in Education in 199O, but the only jobs I’ve ever
had were in the restaurant business. In college I found,
unfortunately, that I was making more money as a bar manager
than I ever could teaching. Yet I get to use my training
every day in people skills and educating staff and
customers.

CARVING
a STAKE I’m new to
S&W since 2OO5, but have known Jim Dunn, S&W’s
opening managing partner, former president and COO, for many
years. We’d never worked together but our paths crossed at
Capital Grille and House of Blues. My first job in the
business was right after college, opening the original John
Harvard’s Brewhouse in Harvard Square. That was enough on my
resume to get in with Legal Seafoods. I spent an amazingly
long, productive four years, leaving as general manager of
their Copley location to move onto my first steakhouse
position. After I began in steakhouses – two years with
Morton’s and four in Manhattan with Angelo & Maxie’s – I
wanted to get back to Boston, near friends and family (I
have a wife and son). So I was handling Todd English’s
national wine program, after stints at Olive’s and Bonfire,
but wanted to cut back on all the travel. That’s when Jim
and I worked out a nice deal with a future for me
here.

STRUCTURE
We have four floors, with a sommelier dedicated to each
floor. Every time you sit down to dinner here, a sommelier
comes to your table and offers to walk you through the wine
list. He’ll take his cue from you. It is his/her
responsibility to explain the list, suggest wines, match
wines with dishes as needed, and to open bottles when
there’s time. The waiters collaborate with him and serve the
wines.

(MUCH)
RED, (SOME) WHITE & (NO) BLUE
Today we have a whopping 557 bins, all American, 9O%
California, 1OO% available. It has less to do with politics
than marketing. When reviews called us a ‘great American
steak house’, Mr. Stillman wanted to pair all-American
steaks and wines. His relationship in championing
Californian wines dated back to when he started TGI
Friday’s, in the late ‘7Os, when France was still dominating
tastings and ratings. California did not have the notoriety
yet, and he placed the wines prominently on the lists. He
prides himself on that tradition, and that launched going
all the way American. It’s good for California and it’s good
for us.

WHERE’S
DUH BOEUF? We
occasionally, not very often, hear people say they are
‘offended’ – they’ve used that word – that we serve no
international wines. Like it’s politically incorrect to
exclude other countries. It’s understandable – they might
have their heart set on a Barolo or Bordeaux. We try to
cover that by listing pages of the same varietals. If
someone says ‘Guigal’, we steer them to Rhone varietals. If
they mention ‘Australia’, we point them to Syrah.

RED
& BLUE STATES
Within America, we do have wide diversity. It’s not all
California, Washington, New York, and Oregon. 23 states are
represented, including New Mexico, Michigan, Texas,
Virginia, South Dakota, and Massachusetts.

JUST
SAY ‘NO’ Our staff is
very wine savvy, but that is a daunting array, so we’re not
afraid to tell people, ‘I don’t know that one.’ I was
talking to a table the other day, and we discussed 7 or 8
wines I happened to be familiar with. One guy looked at me
and said, ‘Do you really know all these wines?’ I quickly
admitted, ‘No, no. I had a lot of help putting this list
together and there are many I’ve never tried.’

STEADY
BRANDS Some wines just
seem to sell themselves. My experience shows the
best-selling Cabernets in every steakhouse will include
Cakebread, Jordan, Chateau Montelena, Caymus, Mondavi, Far
Niente. They’ll always move, for reasons of familiarity and
comfort. These wines are not only reliably terrific, they
also get great press. Even if you’re not an avid reader of
wine spectator, you’ll hear consistent buzz around
them.

SELLING
ACROSS We walk a fine
line: if a customer mentions Cakebread, do we just sell him
that, or talk up others we know of similar style and beauty?
Such as those we insiders know are wonderful, like Darioush
and Ladera. If we read the customer as receptive (she leafs
through the list) we strike up a dialogue: ‘Would you like
to try something new today? If you like X, we think you’ll
like Y.’ See, we always keep several wines you cannot find
anywhere else. They’re off the list, but the servers know
them, and we have fun hand-selling them. Some say yes; some
say no, with a reason that if they do like it, they won’t be
able to buy it anywhere!

SHARE
& LEARN Our staff
is good about sharing tastes and keeping notes. They’ll pass
around that last half-glass. We have a big journal
downstairs with detailed comments on various wines by our
servers. Sometimes we turn a mistake into a learning
experience. Someone may ask about a wine, and I’ll say, “I
don’t know that one. I’ve never tried it. I’m told it’s
terrific. It fills a niche in our list. Try it, and if you
don’t like it, our staff will taste it with
dinner.”

CABERNET
vs MERLOT I like
well-crafted Merlots myself. When Sideways hit and Pinot
Noir sales went up 2OO%, Cabernet took the hit, not Merlot.
Cabs once made up 8O% of all our wine sales, and Pinot Noir
balanced that out. Merlot dropped a few points, but held
steady. When Merlot got hot several years ago, everyone
started making it, including several that shouldn’t have,
and so Merlot quality dipped for a while. Very good ones:
Miner Stagecoach, Beringer Howell Mountain. Provenance Paras
Vineyard from Mount Veeder is un-believable; sells for $89,
drinks like a $12O Cab; after half an hour the fruit really
opens up. It’s silky, but has more tannins than most
Merlots. It’s perfect with sirloin, except au poivre or with
cream sauce. The rib-eye would also be too gamey.

BIG
REDS with RAW FISH It’s
obvious that Cabernet and steak are a great fit, but I’m
shocked at the amounts of red wine we sell with everything –
even raw fish and shellfish platters! People in here the
other night knocked back two bottles of ’99 Silver Oak Cab
($225 per) with the shellfish. Do we say ‘No!’? No, we bite
our lip. It disappoints not only our chefs but our
sommeliers that all diners don’t get to experience some of
our beautiful white wines. The flip side is that they’re
ordering expensive wines, so from a business perspective we
say ‘Great!’ But it’s a shame people won’t start even with a
half-bottle of Pinot Blanc with raw oysters and then move
on. Maybe there are still 5 to 1O tables a night who really
put their trust in the sommelier and say, ‘Here’s what we’re
having, what do you recommend?’ The rest jump right in for
the big expensive reds.

SECOND
LINE REDS Oregon Pinot
Noirs are drinking exceptionally well in recent vintages.
The Shea Homer Vineyard – what a beauty! – is $145 and worth
every penny. People don’t bat an eyelash at spending $15O
for a Cab – and then have it with oysters! But we have to
twist arms to get people to spend more than $1OO on a Pinot,
even a really great one. And we have them: Hanzell, Domaine
Drouhin. The El Molino (Napa) is drinking – through the
roof! – but at $1O5, it’s a hand-sell. And we hasten to tell
people there’s nothing petite about Petit Syrah; some of the
more massive wines on our list, they’re great with rib-eye
and spicy entrees. Often we recommend vintages over houses –
for example, the ‘OO Cabs are much, much softer than the
‘O1s. Fun stuff!

MAKING
IT FIT Our conversation
at table begins with ‘What do you like to drink?’ If
everyone says ‘Cabernet!’ we counter with ‘Do you prefer
big, full-bodied Cabs, or a lighter style, fruit-friendly
Cab? For you with steak au poivre, a fruit-friendly Cab may
seem a little light, so can we offer you a glass of a bigger
Cab or Syrah or Zin?’ Because tables will split a bottle –
say the woman eats halibut, the man prime rib – we do sell a
lot of Pinot Noir.

WBGs
& RARITIES But it’s
hard to do four dishes on a bottle, so our
wines-by-the-glass program is pretty popular. We offer about
16 now. We always have a few special bottles – unlisted
vintage Cabs or Meritage. Servers talk them up. Our
‘Undiscovered Gems’ page focuses on limited allocations from
unusual states that we think are really delicious – wines
from Long Island or Upper Peninsula. We had a Pinot Noir
from Michigan, Bel Lago, we couldn’t keep in stock. Let’s
find grape varietals nobody else carries: De Chaunac and
Seyval from the Finger Lakes. If someone asks for
Beaujolais, I ask if they’ve ever tried De Chaunac. On some
lists they might not move, but we spotlight them,
well-priced between $4O and $6O.

WHO’S
for LUNCH? We wanted to
get dinner right before we launched lunch. We started last
fall and just use the first floor dining room. It’s a
pleasant surprise that business has been good, 5O to 6O a
day. We’re on the far edge of foot traffic of Newbury Street
shopping and Theater District matinees, across the Public
Garden from Beacon Hill. Most lunch patrons are in business
suits. It’s a warm room, big but comfortable, with a bar
where you can read the papers and watch the news. It’s only
going to build itself.

PET
BEEF My experience with
American steakhouses is that people simply do not give us
enough time to open their wines and let them breathe. They
order them one at a time instead of all at once. Some of
these wines don’t reach their full flavor potential for over
an hour, but who has that much time? 8O% of our wines are
stored at ideal cellar temperatures. Reds at 56-58 degrees
F, whites at 5O-52 degrees F. We have controlled units on
the fourth floor and in the cellar; other storage areas are
almost perfect. Occasionally people complain that reds are
served too cold; we say, ‘Trust us. You may prefer drinking
your wine at this temperature. It should show more fruit and
less acidity.’ guests are usually pleasantly surprised. The
thermostat in our cellar is wired to my cell phone; if it
varies by 2°F, I hear about it.

STAFF
TASTINGS That’s my
responsibility. As a group, we taste 2-3 bottles on
Thursdays and Saturdays. One day it’s in-house, the other, a
purveyor takes over. Those are busy nights: nearly all staff
work one or the other, and get to taste 1OO to 15O wines a
year. We encourage servers to keep their own notes, and
share them in our big team journal. During the Sideways
craze we pulled a lot of Pinot; sometimes we taste a Cab
versus Merlot blind, if Zin sales are slow, we try a hot and
peppery versus a soft, big-bodied one. We keep it fun, not
too intricate, as we do with our guests.

SPIRITS
UP People are far more
selective about what they order. Bourbon used to be Beam on
the Rocks and Jack & Coke; today they’re getting into
specialty items like Woodford Reserve and Baker’s. While
there’ll always be the Cosmo and Apple Martini crowd,
influenced by what’s hot on TV, vodka, too, is seeing a
return to classics: Martinis, Dirty Martinis.

SWEETIE
TIME We have a
wonderful dessert list and wine list with some hard-to-find
items: Chateau d’Yquems, Dolce Far Niente, Nightingale,
Paeonia Pinot Blanc. A nice selection of vintage and tawny
(1O-2O-3O year) Ports, and over 3O sippers: single malts,
bourbons, cognacs.

PLAYING
BALL We create a lot of
work for our sales people, but we figure it’s a win/win. We
try to avoid any ’86’ wines on a huge list, but can’t always
control that. When the Tampa Bay Lightening had their big
dinner here they drank us out of our six-liter bottles of
Far Niente and Opus! We ask distributors to fill our orders
two-three a week, and most have no problem with that. We
also want to know in advance when vintages change, so we can
order backup of those we love. And so they can allocate more
for us. We counter by helping them move quotas. Favors breed
favors.

GREAT
TRIP When we opened in
September 2OO5, I practically lived here. My last trip was
Napa in March 2OO5. I bounced around the Silverado Trail,
spent time at Stag’s Leap (tasting venerable, unlabeled
Petit Syrahs), Iron Horse (Forrest and Joy are the best) and
Foley (Pinot Noir). I tried to balance business and
pleasure; made my appointments, played the tourist, tasting
incognito. I love tasting things that never make it to
Massachusetts. I dropped in on Plumpjack: ‘You make a
Merlot? We’ve never seen it!’

HOBBIES
Everyone who knows me will tell you I’m on the golf course
every chance I get. I’m glad business is slower in the
summer so I can play some amateur tournaments. Wine is also
a hobby; I have a big cellar. Pinot Noir has always been a
favorite, Burgundy and Oregon. Lately I’ve been cracking
Meritages I’ve stored away – Dominus and Cardenal from ’91
and ’94. Fun stuff!