Meet Denman Moody
Oh, you want me just to tell you a little about my history. I grew up in Houston. I grew up in River Oaks, but I can't afford to move back. Went to River Oaks Elementary, Lanier and Lamar before I went to Austin college for two years since my mother was on the board. She wanted me to get some study habits… which I didn't. I went on to University of Texas, graduating ‘65 and graduated from law school there in ‘68. I practiced law in Austin for a while after years as a Texas Supreme Court briefing attorney. I went to work for Lloyd Bentsen. I traveled with him in 1970, on his campaign for the US Senate, and was his first executive assistant in Washington. Came back in ’72 to work with Texas Commerce Bank and the trust department. I was able to use the legal background because I help people wealthy people do estate planning. Lloyd Bentsen probably got me interested in wine because he was one of the few connoisseurs in Houston. We didn't drink a lot of wine together. Lloyd didn't drink very much, but when he did, it would be a very good glass of wine.
A friend of mine named Lenore Josie was already into wine big time. So if I had a mentor, that would be my mentor. We got to we already knew each other since junior high. He was at St. John's I was at Lanier and he was a year ahead of me. He was already wealthy at age 30, and buying wine from London from auctions and everything else. So he got me really interested in.
In 1977, I became president of the Houston chapter of the International Wine and Food society. At that time, some people were starting to drink wine in this country, but not many. If you went to a restaurant, people would have a scotch and water, a martini or a beer, they'd eat their meal and leave. America was not a wine drinking nation at all. You had to be in a big city that had some good ones for sale. Otherwise, you probably never be presented the opportunity to have a Château Lafite Rothschild. In Houston, you could get just about any wine in the world.
The true connoisseurs in that day were taking two magazines Decanter from London and La Revue du vin de France from Paris. I decided one day to have a Château Lafite Rothschild tasting, just for the heck of it. The tasting went all the way back to 1899. It was fantastic. I sent it into La Revue du vin de France, just number one of two wine magazines in the world at the time. There were almost no wine writers in the United States at that time. Even Robert Parker didn't start his newsletter until 1978, which later became The Wine Advocate.
About three months later, I got my copy of La Revue du vin and open it up and it said Lafite tasting in Texas from our US correspondent, Denman Moody. And I thought that's pretty cool. I think I'll keep doing this. So 400 wine articles later published nationally and internationally. Here I am.
It’s an avocation. You don't really make money doing that, unless you own the Wine Spectator or you're a full time writer for somebody.
The perks are just almost unimaginable. One perfect example. Something I couldn't do any more and probably 99.999% of the people in the world couldn't do this anymore. In 1987, for my 45th birthday, we went to Bordeaux with six couples. Robert Mondavi sent a letter to Baron Philippe de Rothschild and asked him if he would have a lunch in for me at Château Mouton Rothschild, which he did.
Corinne Mentzelopoulos from Château Margaux had been in Houston earlier for a big tasting of Château Margaux wines. They didn't have any 1928 so I supplied the tasting with a magnum of 1928 Château Margaux, which today would be worth probably about $40,000 or more and at the time was probably worth $2,000. She said, if you ever come to Bordeaux, let me know. So I had my 45th birthday dinner at Château Margaux and we had lunch with the mayor of Bordeaux and a big wine tasting. And another luncheon with Bruno Prats, the owner of Château Cos d'Estournel winery. It would be almost impossible to set something like that up today, because they don't serve dinner at Château Margaux or Mouton. It's all a private deal. They do it only occasionally.
I'm in the twilight years of my wine writing but still continuing. We were in Paso Robles in May with my daughter and her husband. Cynthia Lohr, the daughter of J. Lohr, who's 84, drove from San Francisco to have a private luncheon with us at their vineyard and they're not even open. It’s just one of the incredible perks of being a wine writer. So, I might not ever quit writing about wine.
