Everybody has her favorite grocer and liquor store. Lucky for me, both of mine are in the same place!
When I first moved to Baton Rouge, a friend who’s lived here for several years asked me where I was doing my grocery shopping. She knows how much I love to cook, so she recommended Calandro’s, a locally owned grocery just down the street from my house. “You’ll love it,” she said. “And, that store has the wine lady.”
Eileen Bonemery, apparently known around town as “the wine lady,” has worked at Calandro’s on and off for about four years, but she’s been learning about wine and food for, as she says, “as long as I can remember.”
She grew up in Istanbul, the daughter of a Turkish mom and American dad, and came to the States for college in Massachusetts, where her dad’s family lived. She wanted to go to the Culinary Institute in New York, and was accepted, but her mother wanted more for her daughter than to work long, hard hours in a kitchen. Instead, Eileen got a degree in industrial engineering.
She lived and worked as a caterer in California until 1999—never as an engineer—and then made her way to Baton Rouge, so her son could be close to his father. She was looking for a low-stress, low-pressure job that would allow her to focus most of her energy on parenting. She worked for a while as a caterer for an antiques business, but when they had to cut back on expenses, she asked her friend Charlie Calandro if he had anything she could do. She first worked at the store on Perkins Road, and one of her first responsibilities was to cook for the Taste of Baton Rouge, an annual food and wine showcase featuring cuisine from area restaurants and vendors. Over the course of three days, with the help of only a dishwasher, she made appetizer-portioned food for 2,000 people. Calandro was apparently impressed; he and Eileen have been collaborating on food and wine ever since.
Eileen says that her responsibilities at the store include “anything and everything.” The business is a team effort: she and Calandro taste every new wine that comes into the store, usually on Friday afternoons, and then decide whether to stock it or not. Their decision has a lot to do with whether they like it, whether customers will buy it, and whether they have a need for another wine in its category.
Sometimes distributors will drop off samples; sometimes Eileen will set aside a new bottle for them to try. The staff tastings take place in the climate-controlled wine room at the back of the grocery store. Shelves of dusty bottles line the walls of this cool, concrete-floored room. A richly covered cloth covers the table in the middle of the room, surrounded by heavy, wooden chairs. In the center, a silver ice bucket marks the table as the tasting spot, and big oak barrels tower in the background. The wines are divided by region—California wines occupy most of the space with a small selection of French wines at the front of the room. Eileen doesn’t have a collection herself, except for two bottles of Italian wine bottled the year her son was born. She plans to give them to him one day.
The front of the store, where the wine is sold, is also divided by the winery’s locale. Boxes of bottles staggered at different heights display colorful tags that draw customers’ eyes to certain wines. A fluorescent orange one reads, “New! Featured in Advocate! Non-oaked Chardonnay.” Another one comments on the 2003 Fleur petite sirah: “Yummy! My fav grape. Eileen.”
One customer, new to the area, asks where to find the French wines. “Well, you’re standing right in front of some of them, and then the others are over here,” Eileen tells the silver-haired gentleman and his high-heeled companion, gesturing towards the bottles at the end of an aisle. He says he’s from New Orleans and has had a hard time finding the selection he’s accustomed to; a friend recommended Calandro’s. She asks how long he intends to be here and assures him, “Anything you want, we’ll write it down and order it for you.”
With wide bottle-green eyes behind oval glasses, and short, brown curls framing her face, Eileen leans forward slightly when talking to customers, demonstrating her intent willingness to help. She moves quickly between the rows of bottles, deftly maneuvering her way to the bottle she’s looking for. She asks a few standard questions to help her make a good selection, but there are no hard-and-fast rules. Anyway, “all rules are meant to be broken,” she says. Customers usually know if they want red or white, and they usually have a price range in mind. A few details about the herbs and flavors they’ll be eating helps guide Eileen to the right selection.
The best way for a novice to learn about wine, according to Eileen, is to “read, read, read.” She recommends Saveur magazine for both its food and wine content and says she also sometimes reads The Wine Enthusiast. She warns against trusting one source completely, though, as every wine connoisseur has her own particular taste. Ultimately, every wine drinker has to decide what he likes, according to Eileen.
She started forming her own taste as a child in Turkey, and then sharpened it during her tenure in California. There, she had a group of friends who shared her interest, and they would get together to test different food and wine combinations. She also traveled a lot to wineries, especially in the Santa Barbara region, tasting for fun.
She values different characteristics in different grapes: in a pinot noir, for example, she likes big fruit. She has learned the combination of traits—sight, smell, and taste—that make a particular wine good or bad through years of reading and tasting. Sotheby’s Encyclopedia of Wine, The Wine-Lover’s Cookbook, and other resources stay tucked behind the store’s glass counter, and she consults them as she works to meet a customer’s need. If a customer has his heart set on a sweet rosé with barbecue chicken, though, Eileen won’t talk him out of it. “Ultimately, it’s your own taste that matters,” she says.
Apparently, the thirty-five or so years or so that Eileen has been honing her taste for wine has rubbed off on at least one person. When her son was about nine, Eileen overheard him telling a customer at Calandro’s about the “earthiness” of a particular Cabernet. The woman leaned down and said, “Son, how do you know so much about wine?” Since then, Eileen is the only one in the family who’s allowed to talk to customers about the wine, at least until he’s legally allowed to drink, she says, laughing.
Another customer asks for a rosé to go with seafood his wife is cooking: “some sort of pasta with shrimp.” She recommends one from California. “Isn’t it a nice color?” she asks. He nods. “We just got this one in. It’s dry, not sweet,” she says, picking up another bottle. “And I love this one.” He chooses from her selections, and they chat some more about the pale pink wines.
The customer requesting the French wine returns to ask about pinot grigio for his companion. Eileen quickly picks out several bottles. Upon inspection, he adds them all to his collection. The couple moves on, their buggy loaded down with a dozen bottles or so, and he thanks Eileen profusely. “We look forward to seeing you again very soon.”
He turns to his companion, and says softly, “This is definitely the best so far. We’ll come back.”
For my dinner of catfish with lemon-butter sauce, Eileen recommends either a buttery Chardonnay to complement the sauce or a Viognier, a French wine perfect for fish. The Viognier is out of my price range, so she picks up three bottles of chardonnay, and displays them for me to look at. “At this point, it’s up to the customer to decide,” she explains. Some people will go with the label they like; others will compare prices. I choose the Mark West, which I’ve not tried before.
When I get home, Eileen proves her mettle: the smooth, buttery flavor of the wine is a perfect match for the subtle flavors in the fish and citrus butter. What she lacks in formal training, Eileen clearly makes up for in studied practice.
Calandro’s also holds monthly themed tasting events at Avoyelles on the River on Third St. Last month’s theme was Santa Barbara; in November, they’ll be tasting wines fit for a Thanksgiving feast. Maybe one of these months David and I will go to a tasting, and I’ll tell you about what I learn. Until then, look for recommendations about what wine to serve with the meals I’m cooking; they will all come from Eileen!
