Photograph by Peter Newcomb
Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Patricia Wamhoff says it was the fruit of the vine that brought her to St. Louis. Wamhoff cut her teeth in the restaurant business while still in college and almost immediately became intoxicated with wine. Eventually her interest took her to Northern California, where she met her husband at, where else, a wine tasting. He had a job in St. Louis, so she moved.
Once settled, Wamhoff became one of the few women to attain the second-level sommelier program and is studying to become a master sommelier, a distinction fewer than a dozen women in the United States have achieved.
With her extensive knowledge, Wamhoff worked for a small boutique and St. Louis-based wine distributor. Now, with an infant daughter at home, “I spend most of my time educating the community about wine and tutoring sommelier students,” she says.
Linda Reis-McGovern became involved with wine in her mid-20s after attending a KETC (PBS, Channel 9) food and wine event. She soon attained the first level of the sommelier program and accepted a position with a local wine distributor, as well as at the restaurant Nantucket Cove. In 1997, Reis-McGovern opened Once Upon A Vine, a restaurant that specialized in providing perfectly matched foods and wines. After selling the business five years later, Reis-McGovern became manager of the famed Brown Derby Wine Cellar. Today, she buys about two-thirds of the wine for the St. Louis store, saying “I really understand the metro area market, and my personal choices are always sought after.”
At Big Sky Café in Webster Groves, Joyce DeNeal helps navigate employees and diners to greater wine enjoyment. DeNeal passed the first level of sommelier training and adds to her knowledge with annual wine trips. She has a small cellar in her home and is looking forward to increasing her collection. She thinks Argentinean wines will start making a bigger impact and is adding Shadow Canyon Cellars of York Mountain to her personal collection, before the wine goes “through the roof.”
One of the newest and splashiest wine cellars around is located in the newly remodeled Portabella Restaurant in Clayton, owned by Thom Zoog and Angela Del Pietro Zoog. “The visual cellar adds great excitement to the restaurant,” says Del Pietro Zoog, who oversees the cellar. “The large glass window in the restaurant floor always takes people back a bit, until they realize it’s not a hole.”
She is also planning on more wine tastings and future wine dinners in the cellar. Her extensive wine knowledge is shared with the servers as well as diners, who, she says, are inquisitive and want to enjoy wine and food affinities. “Wine seminars, presentations and tastings are all part of the server’s job, so they are always at the top of their game.”
Martha Uhlhorn, a wine collector, has amassed a very large and well-stocked wine cellar that began with the discovery of a 1985 Cabernet during a trip to Napa Valley. Uhlhorn, who owns La Bonne Bouchée wholesale bakery on Olive, built her first wine cellar in 1994 to store the 300 bottles she had accumulated to that point. She recently moved to her new dream home, equipped with a custom cellar with room for 2,500 bottles. Uhlhorn is always looking for great wine. Favorite local sources include Parker’s Table in Clayton and Veritas in Chesterfield.
Despite a busy schedule, Uhlhorn still goes to California every spring and fall for tasting and collecting. She always tries to visit Corison, Matanzas Creek and Robert Sinskey in Northern California, as well as Zaca Mesa Winery in Los Olivos, which has wonderful everyday Chardonnays and Syrahs. Uhlhorn tries to collect sleeper wines “such as the Cabernets from Napa ’93 and ’96, which are finally ready to drink.”
