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Chinon,” she suggested. “I have a fresh wheel in the back.”
    “Okay,” I murmured.
    She continued: “And that Burgundy you mentioned would be amazing with a Pavé d’Auge!”
    “How do you know all of this?” I asked as she bent down behind the counter and I noticed a pair of tattooed wings on her back.
    “Oh, I worked at Acker and Sotheby’s,” she replied, lifting up the wheel.
    The rest is a blur of farmstead Cheddars and artisan robiola. I left feeling charmed—and a little bit fleeced.
    The day after Becky’s party (where the pairings were a hugehit), I returned to the cheese counter and asked the cheese whiz, Janet Hoover, if she would be interested in helping me set up a wineshop. “Just a part-time gig, but—” At which point she practically tore off her apron and leapt over the counter.
    I set up a small office on the second floor, in the room where the fish guys used to have the knife-studded and cash-strewn table. With demolition below and the fish market in full swing outside, the environment was chaotic, but Janet was driven. We had never heard someone rattle on more quickly about point-of-sale systems, delivery trucks, and must-have wines. Janet’s to-do list was six pages long and in a constant state of revision, studded with yellow highlights and Post-it note addenda. We were alternately awed and exhausted by her fervor.
    One of Janet’s first triumphs was to introduce us to her beau, Jude Wessex, who was head of auctions for a large wineshop and auction house. Jude was invaluable. He shared spreadsheets that revealed the inner workings of a great retail store. Jude and Janet told us where the money was made (cheap Pinot Grigio), what percentage of our budget should be for Chianti (not much), and how long it would take us to turn over 100 cases of vodka (about a year and a half).
    Jude invited me to my first wine auction, which was held at New York’s Cru restaurant. As Janet and I made our way past the eatery’s Fifth Avenue entrance, we were ushered in as if we were Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Besides Janet and a vaguely familiar, bone-thin Russian model, the room was filled with puffed men with I-know-better-than-you swagger. It was like being at a high rollers’ table in Las Vegas. The food was extravagant—foie gras, caviar-stuffed beggar’s purses—and ignored. The wines were serious andalso, apparently, took a backseat to the action, which consisted of idly thumbing through the glossy catalogue as you glanced at who was at the other tables. Janet had prepped beforehand (perhaps with help from Jude) and had her wish list and ceiling prices ready to go. We bought $5,000 worth (a pittance for the real players) but came home with some rare and desirable wine for the store: The Maiden from Harlan, among the most coveted California Cabernets; Two Hands Lily’s Garden, an Australian wine with a cult following; Vieux Château Certan, a perennial Bordeaux heavy hitter; and Feudi San Gregorio Serpico 2001, a “staggeringly rich” (according to famed critic Robert Parker), almost impossible to source, 98-point-rated southern Italian red.
    Gamesmanship aside, it also became clear that provenance was a critical factor in determining value. Many of the lots belonged to the “cellar of an esteemed collector,” which meant that they could have just as likely been sitting on someone’s kitchen counter for years before they were consigned. Real insiders knew who was an “esteemed collector” and who had been given a Christmas bonus he never drank.
    Through Jude, we also found a Manhattan liquor attorney, Stew Burg, whom we hired to shepherd our license application. Arriving at Burg’s office, I introduced myself to the receptionist through a Plexiglas barrier with a hole in it. A few minutes later, a slightly shambling figure emerged. Burg is retained because of his connections to the New York State Liquor Authority board members. Jude told us that you hire Stew because he has those