Mark Finch

Mark Finch is our resident Mac Guru... he's the guy responsible for everything from preparing our cookbook to print to managing all the point-of-sale materials here in the store. He can also point you toward a good Belgian beer or French cider....

How old are you? Older than I’ve ever been.

What do you do in the real world? Printing, publishing and public relations. I did public relations and lobbying for the Indiana highway industry for eight years, then owned a printing company for 17 years. I still do some print advertising, publication and Web design, and freelance writing.

How long have you been with The Grapevine Cottage? Since March of 2002, after a brief stint as production manager of a newspaper in Grand Cayman.

When and how did your love of wine begin? My parents often drank Almaden wines with dinner when I was growing up. Each wine had cartoon illustrations of the types of animals whose meat they were supposed to be paired with, so I learned that early on. Later, when I was a high school senior, my friends and I found that we could go into liquor stores and discuss wines for half an hour or so with the clerks and not get carded when we eventually bought some. I ran through a lot of Black Tower and other crockery-bottle Rieslings then, and still have an empty fish-shaped bottle of Antinori white Tuscany wine for fish, vintage 1967. During my first year of college, a friend would occasionally nab wines from his dad’s cellar, which we would consume during the bicycle rides we went on instead of going to class. We squeezed a lot of fine Bordeaux out of wineskins. My first purchase of a case of “real” wine was Sebastiani Barbera, vintage 1976, which I bought from Louise Kahn. I still have the wooden box.

How would you classify your tastes in wine... Old World or New World? I try to appreciate every wine for what it has to offer. I drink both Old World and New World wines, but find that I am buying a lot more European wines than I used to, particularly Rhônes and Riojas. But if I were banished to a tropical island where only one type of wine was available, I would prefer that it be Bordeaux-style blends from California and Washington.

All of us have our favorites...what varietals or regions do you feel are your strongest areas of expertise? Spanish reds and red Rhônes, and what we loosely call “other whites,” which is to say white wines other than Chardonnays, Sauvignon Blancs, Pinot Grigios, or Rieslings.

What is your favorite food and wine pairing? We eat a lot of lamb, which I like to pair with a Rioja, Rhône, or Malbec. A big Zinfandel or a Washington Syrah with smoked brisket or barbecued ribs is mighty good, too.

What is your current favorite bottle? That varies from day to day, but it’s usually a Rioja Reserva aged in American oak. I can stick my nose in the glass and inhale the aroma for minutes before I get around to actually taking a sip. As the saying goes, vanilla is catnip for humans.

What was your most memorable bottle? Two bottles here: One was an older Ridge Lytton Springs being used as a prop that my wife, Katz, rescued from backstage when we were doing lights and sound for a production of Lend Me A Tenor. The scene called for the two tenors to open a bottle of wine then toast each other, so not much had been poured out. That Lytton Springs was amazing, and became one of my favorite wines that night. Equally memorable was a split of a 1963 Meursault that her grandfather gave us — improperly stored upright on the top shelf of kitchen cabinet for 35 or so years, amber-colored with little floaties in it, and stunningly — and unexpectedly — delicious with rich flavors of vanilla and caramel.

Your favorite restaurant? I’ve been a member of the White River Yacht Club since 1997, and that’s where we go most often. My wife and I also really like The Angry Donkey in Michigantown and make the half-hour drive up there every now and then.

Your favorite guilty pleasure? These days, I prefer that my pleasures be of the “not guilty” variety. I’m pretty sure that all my unindicted co-conspirators feel the same way.

Funniest moment working here? It’s hard to say, and I probably shouldn’t anyway. We do laugh a lot though.

Best and worst thing about working here? The best thing is the people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made, on both sides of the counter. The worst thing is wrestling with HTML when I haven’t used those brain cells for a while.