Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, authors of The Wall Street Journal wine column, met almost 30 years ago. (Their first bottle together? Andre Cold Duck.) There have been 20 years of marriage, two children, several career stops, fabulous wines and some odd ones (garlic in Miami, birch from Scotland) since then. There have also been two books, the latest “Love by the Glass: Tasting Notes from a Marriage” (Villard, $24.95). Its first chapter? “Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and Mateus.” Fresh off flights from the East Coast, Gaiter and Brecher settled down with the Tribune’s Judy Hevrdejs at Geja’s Cafe, the West Armitage Avenue fondue restaurant, long a favorite with romantic Chicagoans.
On wine for Valentine’s Day
“Red Burgundy is the most, to us, romantic wine in the world. . . . It’s a very sensual wine. You always say it’s like red velvet,” he says, glancing at Gaiter.
“It speaks to all the senses. It smells beautiful. It’s beautiful to look at. It just tastes glorious,” she says.
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On passions beyond the grape
“Each other,” she says.
“Dottie’s face,” he says. “We’re [also] very passionate about journalism. . . . More than wine, it’s what we’ve always had in common. Both of us have always believed that we can change the world with journalism.”
“We never thought we’d be changing the world this way, but we are,” she says. “We get letters from people that say [they] were taught how to buy wine, how to store it, but they were never taught that they should enjoy it. And we taught them that.”
On life’s perfect moments
“People are always looking for a wine’s perfect moment, when the wine is perfect to open. And what we always say is they have it backwards. Look for the moment that’s perfect for the wine. The issue isn’t when the wine is at its peak, but when the moment is at its peak, have the wine,” Brecher says.
“There are other times when the perfect wine is just a wine you got just a couple years ago, you forgot you had and you have a night off together so you can actually bring it out and open it and remember when you got it two years ago at a winery or someplace. . . .The perfect wine is only partly about taste. It’s more about what it conjures.”
On the greatest bottle of wine
“When you ask anybody off the street [to tell you] about the greatest bottle of wine you ever had, nobody is ever going to say to you. `You know, it was the 1959 Beaune because of the structure,'” Brecher says. “Yet every single person will say, `You know, I had this white wine on Crete on my honeymoon. It was the greatest wine I ever had.’ Or, `Oh, yeah, I remember that our first Valentine’s Day together we had such and such,’ or, `We were at a winery and . . . .’ The taste of wine is inextricably bound up with the experience you’re having when you drink it. It’s larger than the liquid.”
On handling disagreements
“When we’re drinking for ourselves, when we’re just enjoying a bottle of wine, I don’t think we’ve ever had any disagreement,” Gaiter says. “When we’re tasting for a column, and I like a wine that John absolutely hates or I’ll hate something that he likes — when that happens we have a sofa bed for him.”
“It’s always the guy,” Brecher says.
On wine and romance
“The whole point is [that] because we drink wine we tend to spend a few extra minutes every single day reconnecting with each other and that certainly helps. It makes a difference,” Brecher says. “It slows down our meals, which means we really talk. And it just allows us a few minutes in our increasingly crazy life to actually talk to each other. . . . God knows, wine is not going to save marriages all over the universe. It certainly is something that helps.”
“When we slow down, we like to stay in that sweet spot. You can nurse a bottle of wine for hours — even when the kids are bouncing off the walls,” Gaiter says. “We thought that by telling our story in `Love by the Glass,’ we could give people a context in which to enjoy wine every day. How we live with it. No one tells you that you have to understand the intricacies of baseball to appreciate a grand slam. . . . But wine? [People think] you have to be an expert, you have to be educated about it to enjoy it. It scares a lot of people. It prevents a lot of happiness.”