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You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books.

The world of wine is more creative than the world of cooking.

Very good cooks who are employed as 'chefs' rarely refer to themselves as 'chefs.' They refer to themselves as 'cooks.'

Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

I think wine is such a big universe that it's kind of like food - it's intimidating to a lot of people, myself included.

Winemakers have to adapt to what they're given by nature: the vines, the fruit, the soil and the weather.

Chefs are at the end of a long chain of individuals who work hard to feed people. Farmers, beekeepers, bakers, scientists, fishermen, grocers, we are all part of that chain, all food people, all dedicated to feeding the world.

I'm actually surprised how technical a lot of commercial wine production is. Things are done very much from an industrial chemistry point of view at certain price points, but that's not the impression you get with wine.

Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist.

Critics have done the wine industry a lot of good overall.