Wine Not? by Leslie A. Westbrook
M
y professional wine career began, unexpectedly and unintentionally, in the mid-late 1980s in New York City. I was working at Vanity Fair magazine, where my title was “research associate”—a fancy name for fact-checker. My main duty was to go through articles before they were published in search of errors, misquotes (compared to transcripts or tapes), misspelled names, inaccurate historical references (super fun) and, in certain cases, potential liability/legal issues, which would be referred up a few floors to the legal department at 350 Madison Ave. From Armani (who had “a smile like a triangle”) to Anne Rice with an “e” at the end (whoops, missed that one!), every week brought a different challenge. Then I was assigned the wine column.
36 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA SPRING 2019
