Equipped with a keyboard and wine list, Bosun Rick James is taking the clichéd image of the drunken sailor and turning it on its ear.
James, a member of the SIU since 1991, is a state-certified wine specialist and a wine consultant. He writes a column for the popular weekly newspaper The Baltimore Guide, which began publishing 76 years ago and currently enjoys an estimated circulation of 45,000.
When he’s not sailing, James works as the beverage manager at a pair of restaurants in Baltimore’s Little Italy (Luigi Petti Italian Restaurant, and Soprano’s Italian Ristorante).
“You try to separate the two lives,” notes the 36-year-old Seafarer, who first sailed during the Persian Gulf War following his graduation from the old trainee program at the Paul Hall Center in Piney Point, Md. “Writing the column has been a lot of fun since I started last May, and the restaurant is enjoyable, too. We have wine-tasting events, and I also consult for other restaurants in the area.”
He is equally enthusiastic about shipboard life—so much so that he encouraged his brother, David, to join the union four years ago. David currently sails as an AB.
“It’s a good life,” states Rick James. “I’ve been sailing for 11 years and I’ll say one thing: It’s never boring. You hear complaints that people have about their jobs, but the great thing about sailing is, you can always go to another ship.
“I’ve met a lot of good people and I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” he continues. “Plus, the travel is great. The thought of being a professional tourist’ is appealing.”
Before joining the SIU, James was a bartender and unemployed ironworker. In the late 1990s, he wound up working part-time at a restaurant whose manager largely was unfamiliar with wines. “They gave me the green light to redo the wine list, and it was a trial by fire,” James recalls. “I had worked at other restaurants and already was good, not great, in terms of knowing my way around wines. Each place you worked at, you had to know what was selling.”
James made the most of the chance, completing numerous classes and seminars along the way, and now enjoys balancing his time at sea and ashore. Similarly, he and the weekly paper have proven a good fit. “I was reading a wine column in another newspaper and thought I could do better, so I found [a publication] that didn’t have a wine column,” he notes. “I went to them with two columns and they said, Sure, we’ll run your articles.’ I set up an email account, and all of a sudden 45 people sent questions.” (A common one: What wine goes good with crabs?)
The Seafarer adds that people read his column “because they’re trying to find a (suggestion for) good bottle of wine and keep it under $20 per bottle. You can go anywhere and find a $65 bottle and know it’s going to be good.”
James’ email address is infovine@yahoo.com.
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