| CHOW BELLA | t Café Fun Over Fussiness Wrigley Mansion’s new wine director Is changing things up. Meet Jason Caballero. BY GERI KOEPPEL O n August 1, Jason Caballero joined the venerable Wrigley Mansion as its new wine director, a position that oversees Christopher’s, Geordie’s, Jamie’s Wine Bar, and all special events. He’s arrived with plans to change a few things. One of his goals is to shed the fussiness of traditional fine dining, “to make it a little more engaging, a little more vibe, a little more fun,” he says. “I think dining overall is evolving, which is nice. And we’re starting to get on that, which is cool.” So far, Caballero has consolidated the wine lists from the three separate spaces into one, and he’s offering a blind tasting of one red and one white each day to help guests hone their ability to deduce what’s in a glass. “Once you learn how acidity and tannin and this stuff works, it becomes a lot of fun,” he says. Caballero is an advanced sommelier who has passed the third level exam given by the Court of Master Sommeliers. But he eschews the braggadocio common in the wine world in favor of making wine approachable and offering his talents to help guests enjoy their evening, no matter if their budget leans toward the lower end or the top of the menu. Wrigley Mansion Jason Caballero wasn’t always a wine expert; he once wanted to “revolutionize interstellar travel.” “People assume if they have good wine it’s going to be expensive,” Caballero says. But Wrigley Mansion offers wines by the glass for as low as $10 — with most in the mid-teens — and bottles starting at $40. Granted, Wrigley Mansion also stocks rare wines, such as a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti that can set you back $97 an ounce, or $59,000 for the priciest bottle in the cellar. But you can get a world-class wine experience for much less. “Whether it’s $40 or $40,000, you’ll get the same amount of care,” Caballero notes. Another of Caballero’s goals is to raise the level of wine service throughout Arizona. He’s on the board of GuildSomm, a nonprofit for wine education, and works to cultivate a homegrown crop of somme- liers that learn from each other. In 2011, Caballero co-founded an informal wine group that met weekly in members’ kitchens to do blind tastings. Eventually, it became the Society of Arizona Sommeliers, and chef, restaura- teur, and fellow sommelier Mark Tarbell let them use his restaurant. “Mark is a huge reason why any of us are doing really anything,” Caballero says. “He donated money, donated time, donated his space. The Society of Arizona Sommeliers wouldn’t be anywhere if it wasn’t for him.” Tarbell says Caballero is a “young star in the Guild of Master Sommeliers world,” and describes him as international, hard- working, and sincere. Wine service should be humble and thoughtful, Tarbell notes. “I wanted to see if there was any way I could communicate that to the young sommeliers coming up in Arizona,” he says. “[Caballero] really resonated with that.” But Caballero wasn’t always a wine expert. He was three weeks from >> p 27 25 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES SEPT 22ND–SEPT 28TH, 2022