Editor's Note:  I first met Chris Lingua back in May of 2021 in Phoenix, AZ. I had absolutely zero ideas what all-natural wine was. And yet, by the end of our private tasting with Chris, I knew I was a fan of his for life.

Chris' ability to create and tell stories about wine is first-class. However, the best part about him is his low-ego attitude to what is arguably one of the world's snobbiest industries. I've had the pleasure of dining at some of the world's best establishments, but drinking wine with Chris may top them all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the entire conversation here.

Since I was a little kid, I've always loved pointing out things that I think will make people happy. I was cooking, worked in restaurants, worked in corporate distribution and there were always those same common denominators. I just loved showing people things that I think would make them happier.

Chris' Origin Story

Cornelius McGrath
Who the hell is Chris Lingua? And how does he think about the world?

Chris Lingua

Oh boy. If I have to go to my most elemental self, I am someone who is very sensitive in the sense of my surroundings and how my presence affects other people and how I can enhance other people's experiences around me. Since I was a little kid, I've always loved pointing out things that I think will make people happy. I was cooking and worked in restaurants for a long time and worked in corporate distribution, and there were always those same common denominators. I just loved showing people things that I think would make them happier.

They were always things that I was passionate about. I could never really fake it. And ultimately, that was great for me in the corporate world, but that's also what pushed me out of it because I didn't believe in everything I was selling, and I wanted to do that. And then that's how we landed on these low intervention wines, and thus the whole back half of my life is what it seems.

So tell me, as a kid, how would you make people happy before you could drink?

It was always situational, but it was almost always around food for the most part. There were times when I was little. I was born on the West Coast in California, but I lived in Miami in Florida for about five, six years. When I was a kid, one of the earliest times I can trace back was a little bit of pain and pleasure. I was swinging on this gate with my neighbours in Florida, and they have these trees that have roots that come up out of the ground. The gate had caught one of those roots, and it hit me in the face, and it almost cut the corner of my eyelid. I wasn't so bothered by that, but the neighbour's mother was really upset and hoping that I was okay.

And she just asked if she could make me anything. And she said she was going to make grilled cheeses for her kids. And I asked her very politely if she had any Feta cheese. I had discovered Feta cheese the week before randomly. I think my mom had put it in a dinner or something. And just that experience of having something change my perspective or just enhance even a salad or a sandwich for me as a kid. I wanted to share that with other people. And so not only did I ask her for it, but I went and got some from my house and used it on my sandwich, which in hindsight, isn't a delicious-sounding sandwich. But it really was the first moment I remember saying like, "Hey, have you heard of this? Let me show you. I think you might like it." That carried me through life.

So tell me about the food environment you grew up in. You obviously mentioned your mom throwing a  bit of Feta on a meal. Are you from a family of foodies and people who really know their stuff?

The most important thing that happened when I was growing up was that my mom hated cooking the same thing. So by default, I was just automatically trying new things every night, whether I liked them or not. At the time, I would like most kids get stuck on one thing or like, "oh, I wanna make this again, or let's have this again tonight." She always forced me out of that by what she wanted to make. And so that was something that I resisted at first, but then came to love and kind of made me who I am as far as how I approached food and beverage from a living perspective and for pleasure. When I took up cooking when I got started getting serious about it, like after high school, my dad also kind of really got into it. It became a hobby of his, so he's a great cook. But it wasn't something that we did early, and it was mostly mom's influence at the time.

Wow. And so tell me, when you tell me the moment when you knew you wanted to get serious. Was it a specific meal or conversation?

Well, there were several moments that then reinforced each other, and it built on top. And I remember my dinner for my 21st birthday. I remember an experience that was the first time I ever had anything, in my opinion, that was a complete meal. Meaning starts off with a certain beverage that's meant to be started off with. It's meant to start your experience. Then transition into something that goes with each course. And then a finishing, not necessarily a nightcap, but just something that goes with dessert and something that you sip on at the end. And I had never had a full bookend meal like that. And it was revelatory. When I was getting out of high school is when Emeril Lagasse was taking off on the Food Network.

And so I really gravitated towards, I think first, the passion that he expressed in what he did. And I'd never seen that. Dining out as a teenager, you're usually going to just some rink-a-dink Italian joint, which is great and very nostalgic to this day. But you never have any interaction with a chef. Yeah. So it was really kind of a behind the scenes "is this what all of them are like?" kind of moment. And it was really the start of what I think is eating and drinking today. So we're talking about like 1999, 2000, 2001 when that kind of TV chef exploded or started, and then gave way to what we see today: top Chef and all these other things. There was none of that before. It was just Julia Childs.

And maybe if you were in Europe, you had someone on a local station. But it was few and far between. I didn't know any male figures that were chefs because you always thought of either your mom cooking or, like I said, a Julia Child's figure where it was something that mothers did. It was their love language. And so seeing someone who was not only a professional at it and had restaurants and was successful but show it as something that could be their love language too. I attached to that early on. For the first kind of quarter of my interest in food and beverage, it was always around cooking, and it was at the time I just wanted to open a gastropub, and I wanted to just do really great food simply. That's never changed, but that was the first of things that made me think, "this is gonna be my path."

And so, where'd you go from there? 

Before I decided it was going to be my path, I grew up in a family of many medical professionals, and my father was an ophthalmologist. So I figured, "well, I'll be an optometrist then", and I'll do that half of the business, and you do the other half to do this surgery side. And maybe we could do that. And he was like, "well, you know, give it a crack. I hate for you to feel pressure to do it, but you know, if, if you truly wanna do it, go for it."

And so I applied to only one school, and it was kind of a thing where I was like, "if I don't get in, then that's my sign. And if I do, then that's a sign as well." So I applied to Berkeley optometry school. And it just was one of those years. I got a call from them and a letter saying, "Hey, you're a great applicant, but we had a boost in applicants this year kind of raise the bar a little. A quarter higher than it normally is. And these are schools that we recommend you apply to." And yeah, and I stuck to my guns. I treated that as a sign that it just wasn't meant to be. And so, instead of reapplying, I moved out to Arizona and figured, "Hey, this is a place that's got a burgeoning dining scene, but it's not as saturated as the southern Los Angeles market. So why don't I go there?" It's still within an arms reach of home, but I think that's where I would like to grow with a city rather than kind of enter a saturated market.

The whole expectation was for everybody to start at the bottom. So you learn that if you wanted to go that route and be a chef-owner, you were either at the top or the bottom. There is really no inbetween.

On Chris' Move to Arizona

Was there much thought into Arizona? Were there other cities like your list of schools you were thinking of?

It was really the closest large market that, like I said, was still half days drive from home. And to be honest, I really actually do not enjoy the heat at all. So on paper, it actually made no sense. So it was really just an instinctual thing. And at the time I was kind of just learning to listen to my instincts. And it was one of those times where it was just, I couldn't explain it. It was just, it was truly a calling to just come out here because otherwise if you asked me now, I'd be like, "why'd you not go to the Pacific Northwest where you love the weather? Why would you go to the dry, hot desert?" So, yeah, it was truly one of those moments where it was almost not up to me anymore.

So you arrive in Arizona. What was the first gig you had? Were you immediately in the kitchen?

When I arrived, I decided the easiest way to kind of get integrated was to just pick up an associate's degree from one of the culinary schools. So I was like, "you'll meet some of the instructors they'll have connections. You can get a place to live, you can get a lead on a gig pretty quickly." So that's what happened. I had a professor reach out to a local chef who I still know today and got a job interview within the first couple weeks I moved here. They actually were a restaurant group that was gonna open three or four concepts simultaneously within the next year.

Now, this is 2008 kind of pre-market crash. They were gonna do this aggressive rollout and they were like, "well, we'll definitely hire you for one of these kitchens, but in the meantime, we'll have you at our flagship restaurant. Just bus tables, drop off waters, like a server's assistant."

At the same time, I was going to school. And so I was cooking during the day and then doing that at night. And rather quickly, someone was out and called in sick to the kitchen one night. And I got onto the dessert station. After that, I did so well that they just kind of kept plugging me in. And then before I knew it, I was actually working in the kitchen there and not working in the front of the house anymore. I still know all the people from that job today. And they have restaurants of their own now. That was the first kind of contact I made with that group and everything branched out from there.

What do you think they noticed about you?

There are those moments where I realized that there is a certain path I have to walk down and I can kind of just feel it in my bones. I don't know if they felt the same thing. If they noticed it through talking to me during the interview because it was a very short interview. But I was basically at the time just like,
"whatever it takes. It doesn't matter to me. You could put me on the roof, sweeping out the gutters. It doesn't matter. I just want to start here have this be my entry point." It was pretty relentless, but they didn't have to make me prove how relentless I was. It was more, "OK. Yeah, you're in, we'll just stick you somewhere and then eventually you'll find your way and that's exactly how it happened."

And so how long did you spend in restaurants?

Well, once I moved here I was in them for four and a half years. From the beginning of 2009 till about the middle of 2013. And within those four and a half years, it was a flurry of positions. Just trying to get the most experience I could possibly get. From cooking to managing to bartending. Any job to just kind of round my skill set out, I would take it. And so I did. And you kind of had the string jobs like that...