If the French Laundry is the best restaurant in America, and Thomas Keller the best chef, what does that make the restaurant's sommelier? Here the delightfully down-to-earth Bobby Stuckey talks about all the things you always wanted to ask a sommelier.

1. What is the first wine you remember tasting?
A German Riesling. I was a busser at a restaurant in Arizona and I am pretty sure I wasn't supposed to be drinking it.

2. What was your 'Great Awakening' when it came to wine?
I was in high school and I came home from school and told my mother I was going to write a book on red wine and since I had read that you needed to age red wines we should start buying them now. She suggested that I concentrate on passing my English class.

3. How much should you tip the sommelier?
It depends. If you have an exceptional experience, a unique experience, then tip accordingly.

4. Do you ever smell the cork?
Yes. But don't ever decide a wine is bad simply because of the way a cork looks or smells.

5. What wine goes with artichokes?
A Grüner Veltliner. I don't think God made artichokes to go with wine, but this wine may be as close as you can get.

6. When should you send a wine back at a restaurant?
When you don't like it.

7. What food do you like with Champagne?
Caviar is the easy answer. But I think French fries and potato chips are fine, too. And everything in-between.

8. Do you really use a tastevin?
I keep change for the parking meter in mine. I prefer to drink out of a wine glass.

9. You just moved here after five years as Wine Director at the Little Nell in Aspen. What is the biggest difference between the two areas, in terms of what people drink?
Aspen is a huge Bordeaux town; here people are fanatics about Burgundy.

10. What are the best things a guest can say to you?
First, "This is what I like." Second, "This is the amount of money I am comfortable on spending tonight." And third, "This is what I want to get out of the experience."