Few know the wiles of wine so well as Sam Wai. Raised in Tokyo and Hong Kong, he began to study what his family had simply taken for granted after he came to Moorhead as a college freshman. “Even then, I began trying serious wines – Beaujolais, Italian reds, Port, like we’d always had at home,” he says. “They were modest wines, but not Boone’s Farm.”
Today the former American Crystal treasurer, retired after 37 years of service, continues what may be his first love: Sharing a lifetime of expertise in fine wines with his neighbors in Fargo-Moorhead. Even his post-retirement email address reflects that avocation: WineTeacherWai@gmail.com.
Sam stepped off a plane in 1972 to study at Moorhead State College. Neither he nor anyone he knew had been in Fargo-Moorhead, though several family friends spoke well enough of Minnesota. He’d discovered the 5,000-student campus on a whim back in Hong Kong, where a fellow student tossed him its catalog, shelved in the “affordable” corner of a college information library.
“I read the first few pages and spotted a paragraph about the community’s symphony orchestra,” he recalls. “That did it. One of my great desires was to go to a school where I could hear a symphony. I seized on that.That’s why I came here.
“Classical music is an acquired taste,” he continues. “I fell in love with it when I was 12, listening to the BBC.” He still has the first two albums he purchased on his own, Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and Beethoven’s Third Symphony.
But Sam was not the typical teen even then. His father moved in international circles, importing Philco electronics from the U.S. and Italian home appliances. CK and May Wai exposed their two sons – Sam and brother Stan, now in Minneapolis – to fine dining and the best that civilization had to offer. As a high schooler, Sam and his friends were passionate about bridge and chess. Sherry and Port wines were always in the family kitchen.
He met his wife of 40 years, Coralie Storey of Roseau, only a few weeks after arrival. She and her friends were playing touch football outside their dorm at MSC, and they invited him to join them. The evening ended with laughter and popcorn in the dorm lounge. “To this day, I don’t do anything with football,” he says, smiling, “and I don’t like popcorn.”
The two dated while they completed their degrees — he in finance and philosophy, and she in English – and were married in 1976. When they celebrated their 40th anniversary with friends last June, they toasted their memories with ten bottles of wine of a matching vintage.
“I’d aspired to go to graduate school and became a teacher of philosophy,” Sam says. “Instead, we got married and I found my first job.”
He spent two years as controller at Monarch Photo in Fargo. Then American Crystal recruited him to head its new financial planning department. He went on to become its treasurer, traveling coast to coast selling Crystal’s credit in world of agribusiness finance.
By the time he retired at the end of 2015, Sam was regularly spending 40 to 50 nights per year in hotels in major cities all over America. His lifetime airline miles, he says, were well past the million mark.
“It was a very good run,” he reflects. “I got to live here in Moorhead all along, yet do all the Wall Street stuff. Now that it’s behind me, though, I do not miss it. I’m not even all that curious anymore.”
Sam and Coralie bought their first – and only – home south of the campus a year after graduation. With it came a basement. That’s all it took to set Sam off on a lifelong pursuit. He began putting wine away as soon as he had that cellar, and hasn’t stopped in the four decades since. Today his extensive collection is housed in the cool, even environment downstairs, though an addition with a full basement some years ago greatly increased the square footage. (“I think Coralie would claim the space upstairs was an afterthought,” he admits.)
To Sam and the legion of wine lovers who’ve come to know him, what’s in those bottles is only part of their attraction. “It’s not just something enjoyable you taste,” he explains. “Every wine has a story. It exists in its own historical, cultural and environmental background. Wine is stories of war and famine, art and grace and civilization. All of that greatly depends the enjoyment.”
He’s an evangelist for that gospel. More than 30 years ago, he taught his first wine classes for Moorhead Community Education. Because its sites were dry, he capped off each class with an invitation to his home to sample the storied vintages they’d talked about. He moved from there to the F-M Communiversity, well off the dry Concordia campus. When that program was retired two years ago, he says, the historical society became “our new mother.” An accomplished amateur chef, he and his family have prepared gourmet meals complemented by the wines whose stories he weaves into the evening. The next, “An Evening in Tuscany” is coming up at the Hjemkomst Center Sept. 14.
Coralie and Sam have traveled in Europe every summer since their wedding except for the days when son Sebastian and daughter Nicole were very young. Now they’re empty-nesters. Sebastian, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University, will complete his doctorate at Purdue this winter. In the meantime, he is a visiting assistant professor at Indiana University. Simone graduated from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Business in marketing; she and her friend Joe Burgum have initiated the Red River Farmers Market downtown along with other innovative community ventures.
Both helped their father with his classes when they were at home. He’s fallen in with other local experts in teaching the rich history and cultural climates surrounding the wines he loves, including Ron Ellingson, Randy Lewis and Roy Hammerling.
Music is still a big part of Sam’s life. He served two 12-year terms on the board of the F-M Symphony Orchestra. He’s also been a director of Minnesota Public Radio and the Plains Art Museum. He and Coralie volunteer at the Rourke Museum, where one of their wine dinners was recently the grand prize in a raffle to support the new neon art outside. Sam is helping plan the upcoming St. Andrew’s Society Scottish dinner event. The cosmopolitan couple are also members of the Sons of Norway and helpers at the Hjemkomst’s German Culture Day Sept. 17 as well as its Celtic festival.
Over the years, the Wais’ wine reserves have grown into a personal treasure. While many of the rarer vintages – some of which Sam has not yet uncorked – have appreciated in value, he dismisses the dollars and cents. “I’m not investing,” he asserts. “It’s fun to know that something has increased, but that’s not important to me because I’m not going to sell it. As a friend always says, ‘Once they go down to my cellar, it’s free.’
“It would be a shame if someday you couldn’t even afford to drink your own wine.”
