Christopher Sawyer is a nationally-known sommelier and a proprietor of the Vine and Barrel wine shop in Petaluma. This past April, Sawyer paired wines with film for the Sonoma Valley Film Festival as the world’s only film festival sommelier and has served wine to everyone from the Gorbachevs to the Gettys.

DH: A lot of people have misapprehensions about what a sommelier really is. I saw a guy once refer to a chauffer as a sommelier because he didn’t know the difference. What is a sommelier?

CS: A sommelier is a professional wine steward. Or a person whose job it is to make sure and ensure that you have the greatest wine served with the food that you are ordering.

DH: Let’s say that my total budget for wine this week is $5.

CS: That is going to be a little sticky. But by the glass, we can do that. We can help you out, my friend.

DH: Is your job to make me have the greatest wine experience I can have or is it about creating a total experience with food?

CS: It is a total gastronomical experience. I like to call it a gustatory orgasm. But whatever you want to call it, there are different terms. It is the total experience of the food, the wine and the ambiance that creates the experience.

DH: You have paired wine with food, films and other things. Have you paired wine with furniture?

CS: Not really, but I have never said that it can’t be done.

DH: What would you pair with a pool, say, during a nice 72 degree day in the Springs?

CS: That is a no brainer – a pinot grigio. It is all about the pool. You can convert that to hot tub material as well.

DH: Let’s say I am about to board a plane – I don’t like to fly and I need a glass of wine that is going to bring me down and allow me to get where I am going?

CS: What time of day is it?

DH: It is a mid-morning commuter flight to Los Angeles.

CS: You need some bubbly – you need to get a little giddy. You need to make it through the flight and get off and have a smile on your face.

DH: Let’s say that I have done something ridiculous and now my beautiful, new wife is angry with me. What kind of wine is comparable to ye old flowers?

CS: I would say Thunder Bird first but I don’t serve that.

DH.: Not for me – for her.

CS.: Once again, it depends on the situation. For some it would be a white zinfandel but again I do not serve white zinfandel. So, I would do a rosé. If you find a good rosé, it is just like a baker’s dozen of roses delivered to the doorstep. If you can please her and meet her needs with a nice thirst-quenching, refreshing drink, which cleans the senses out really fast is a good call. Especially in spring and summer.

DH: What kind of wine says “Okay, so who was the dude?”

CS: The “revealer” kind of wine is almost always a reserve style. If it’s during the day it can be a sauvignon blanc, a little higher end sauvignon blanc. At night it would need to be something a little bit gritty but defiantly spicy. We are talking an old vine zinfandel from Sonoma valley.

DH: What kind of wine would I be?

CS: You would be one of those crazy blends. Just a character that can fit into any situation. The old, great immigrant farmers used to make the great blends that were un-charmingly called red burgundy, even though there was not even an ounce of pinot noir in them. But they were kind of like everything you would want to put in there for spices. I think that you have a lot of spicy techniques that you put into your writing and your drinking ability.

DH: Do you hate it when people ask what your favorite wine is?

CS: When people ask me what my favorite wine is I have to find out what the situation would be. It is not always a memorable wine because I hope to have many more memories with wine, so to write it off as one specific event that blows my mind with wine is kind of lame, as I hope to have many new experiences with wine.