A dinner I'd like to have taken part in

Bennett Traub had an unusual dinner earlier this month:

The week started off with a bang on Easter Sunday; not normally a holiday I particularly take note of, or celebrate. Usually I just have a quiet dinner at home, no different from any other evening meal. Yet several weeks earlier, at my wife’s urging, we had arranged to get together for dinner with Al Stewart. While perhaps not a household name today, you may remember the name if you were listening to pop or folk music in the 1970’s. Al had a few pretty sizable hits back then, beginning with “Year of the Cat”, to be followed by “Time Passages” and a few others as well. He still records and performs, and in fact will embark on a tour of England later this month. I had met Al at a dinner with one of my wine groups, the X-pensive Winos. An L.A. resident, Al is not a member of the group, but he had been invited by one of our members who is a former Capitol Records executive. Turns out that Al is quite an oenophile and experienced wine geek. He even titled one of his albums “Down in the Cellar”. While his contemporaries in the music world were smoking, snorting or shooting their brains out, Al was getting high the old-fashioned way, by drinking First Growth Claret, Grand Cru Burgundy, and the best wines he could find from France and elsewhere. Affording the best was certainly no problem in his pop-star heyday, and he has drunk wines most of us can only dream of. Beyond that, however, he’s a really down-to-earth, unassuming guy with a great sense of humor, intelligence, and a genuine enthusiasm for the fine art of eating and drinking.

Anyway, my wife Linda and Al had hit it off at a Winos dinner last December, so we decided to arrange to meet for dinner at a West L.A. restaurant, Josie, to enjoy some good conversation, and even better Burgundies. Al said he’d bring some whites; I was to bring the reds. The results were memorable.

Al Stewart is one of my all-time favourite musicians, and I'm a wine fan . . . from my biased point of view, that would have been a great combination of interests. I note from Al's website (linked above) that he'll be in Toronto for two shows in August. I'm adding that to my calendar . . .