A Nose for Nonconformity

By MARY CURTIUS

Aug. 16, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SAN FRANCISCO — Bruce Cass’ love affair with fine wines began when he was elected “social chairman” of his Stanford fraternity--the guy in charge of parties.

Being a social chairman earned Cass an invitation--along with all the university’s other fraternity social chairmen--to a Northern California winery interested in introducing beer-drinking frat rats to the joys of the vine. Cass became hooked, and his fraternity began serving wine at its once-a-week formal dinners, the ones where members were allowed to bring dates or professors.

That was 30 years ago, when California wines were just beginning to gain attention, and few Americans could distinguish a cabernet from a merlot.

Since then, Cass has built a career around California wine: writing about it, teaching appreciation courses at Stanford and across the nation, and spending much of his time outside the classroom exploring California’s ever-growing stock of boutique wineries. He figures he has taught 10,000 Stanford students alone the fine points of vintages from across California.

Twice he has ventured to wineries in South Africa and Australia to join in the back-breaking labor of the crush, adding technical expertise to the knowledge he has brought to bear in editing, authoring or co-authoring six books on California and North American wine. He recently finished editing the Oxford Companion to the Wines of North America.

This independent lifestyle that earns him roughly $80,000 gross salary a year all came about, Cass said, because he graduated from college--with degrees in natural sciences and psychology--determined to avoid a career of corporate conformity.

Shortly after graduation, Cass said, he landed a job as marketing director for a home wine-making company. The job required cross-country travel to small towns where “you could definitely make better stuff than you could buy.” It was during his three years with the company that Cass began teaching wine appreciation classes.

Back then, he said, many of the students were “survivalists of the left. Self-sufficient, fascinating people who were carding wool, making cheese and beer and interested in making wine.”

Cass struck out on his own in the early ‘70s--offering his own appreciation classes in big cities--Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

“I thought this was my calling in life,” the baritone-voiced Cass recalled. “I mean, as a job, you’re sitting home drinking wines and talking about them.” He offered his first appreciation course at Stanford in 1972.

Cass settled in San Francisco, where today he lives in a small loft in the trendy South of Market neighborhood, home to the city’s fast-growing multimedia industry and a burgeoning arts community.

Teaching and writing remain the backbone of his work, Cass said, but several years ago he launched another effort, this one spurred by the fact that vintners tend to ship critics wine by the case to review.

Over the years, Cass’ loft became crammed with bottles and cases of wines. He quickly ran out of storage.

In desperation, Cass said, he began throwing dinner parties for friends and sending them home with bottles of wine. He bought a 12-foot, 200-year-old pine refectory table for $50 that dominates his living room space. He and friends would gather ‘round the table, eating take-out gourmet food and drinking several bottles of fine wine in an evening.

Finally, a friend called and asked if he would be willing to host a dinner for a 12-member team of out-of-town consultants who were finishing a project at a local firm.

That was a decade ago. Cass now hosts 15 to 20 such dinners a year at his home, for companies that include Levi-Strauss and Pacific Gas & Electric at prices ranging from $50 to $150 a head.

Instead of ordering take-out, Cass cooks and serves a variety of courses with 15 selected fine wines. He serves two or three bottles per course, telling stories about each wine as he serves it.

“These work teams are generally looking for a milieu where they could be more raucous and intimate than at a restaurant,” Cass said. “I throw platters of food on the table that are, at best, adequate. But the wines are spectacular.”

Over the years, Cass acknowledges, his clientele--at both the appreciation courses and his home-cooked dinners--has changed.

The survivalists have generally disappeared, replaced, he said, by a more upscale, mainstream crowd that is far less sure of itself.

Some of the Silicon Valley software engineers who attend his courses, Cass said, he has dubbed the “Tipple Nerds,” people with “a mind attuned to minutiae that does well at wine gamesmanship but who have a complete lack of social skills.” For many of these people, Cass said, “wine conversation is an opening for them in social settings.”

His goal in class, Cass said, “is to get people past their prejudices and get them much more comfortable with their own opinions. Many of these people are just afraid that they’ll make a horrible social gaffe in selecting a particular wine.”

Although he loves his work, Cass said, he discourages others from seeking to emulate him.

“There is always someone who, after taking one of my courses, comes up and says, ‘How do I get in?’ I say, ‘Why turn something you love into a job?’ ” The life of an independent wine educator is difficult, Cass said, in a region of the nation where “there are folks with PhDs pouring wine at wineries for $4 an hour. I would advise someone who was truly interested to create an audience in Georgia or Florida or Texas. Once you had an audience, all the wineries of Northern California would want to know you.”

The best part of the job, Cass said, is the joy of discovering a new winery, say in the Sierra foothills, and spending hours talking to the vintner.

“I need four hours,’ he said. “The first hour I get the standard PR pitch and we’re tasting wine. The second hour, I hear a little bit about the problems the neighbors are having. By the third hour, they get around to talking about the problems they’re having, and by the fourth hour, I’m telling them my problems.”

If he has any regrets, Cass said, it is his decision to remain an independent educator not on any winery’s payroll.

“I have always thought the independence thing a little bit of a personal curse. My life would have been tremendously different if I did not have this chip on my shoulder,” he said. “As an independent, you do not have the resources you would have working for a big company.”

As it is, Cass said, “the things I do are limited by my ability to schlep all the goods into the room and take it all out again.”