BOARD OF MANAGERS

John Montana 
CO-FOUNDER / CONSULTING MEMBER
             

Hi there! I’m John Montana. Welcome and thanks for your interest in Boston Uncorked! I hope you enjoy your visit to our website and that you will be inspired to join our growing community of wine enthusiasts.
       

I joined the Uncorked team in order to foster and share my appreciation for The Grape. I love to drink it, learn about it, share it with friends and, most importantly, introduce it to new people. I think it’s sad that wine isn’t an everyday part of American culture the way it is in other countries. So many people of our generation view wine as this scary, imposing and pretentious drink, but once you get through all of the faux mystique that surrounds wine, you realize that it is just good stuff! Wine is as easy or as complicated as you want it to be! My goal as part of Boston Uncorked is to convince others of that fact and bring them to our side of the Force.
            

My love affair with wine began a little less than 10 years ago. Throughout my youth I was allergic to wine (which, to an Italian family is tantamount to a sin), so when I reached adulthood, I never really considered wine worth experimenting with. Then came my epiphany. It was 1997 and I was attending a Passover Seder being thrown by some friends of mine. Along with dinner my friends served a kosher Israeli wine.  I hadn't been to a Seder  since my childhood and I didn’t remember the rules so I wasn’t going to just get up, dig a can of Bud out of the fridge and suck it down at the table. For all I knew you had to drink the wine or you would be doomed to suffer some horrible fate. So, I decided to bite the bullet and give the kosher stuff a try. I reminded myself that it’d been years since I’d tried any wine at all and, if memory served, a sip or two didn’t usually cause too bad of an allergic reaction. Well, a bottle and a quarter later and HOLY JUDAISM!, I was cured! No allergic reaction at all!
            

In an effort to make up for lost time, I threw myself into learning about wine and expanding my wine education. A friend bought me a book on wine, which I inhaled. I bought more books and started taking tasting classes around the city. My friends and I started our own little monthly wine group. As I experimented, I found that I was starting to recognize tastes and smells that I enjoyed, as well as those I did not. Over time, I became more and more evangelical in my desire to show others the way of The Grape. I had found salvation and, damn it, I planned to share!
           

And, through Boston Uncorked, that is exactly what I plan to do! So, I hope I’ll see you at our events and I wish you the best of luck in your own investigation of the wonderful world of wine.
                            

Feel free to contact me here if you have any questions.