“That’s probably gonna show up on YouTube tomorrow,” wine importer extraordinaire quipped after throwing out a hilarious obscenity toward the end of a tasting Wednesday night. Well, how about the Internet the day after that, Terry?

After a wonderfully lively, smart and sassy session, Theise opened the floor for Q&A. An attendee raved and rambled about the wonders of the (very) different Donnhoff wines and asked how Theise could explain the varying results from the same basic vineyard – ”in three words,” he quickly added.

“No f-ing idea,” Theise responded almost as quickly. OK, you probably had to be there, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have already consumed some of the wonderful wines that Theies imports from Austria and Germany.

Anyway, after the guffawing subsided, the ever-loquacious Theise took a stab at answering, with his usual mix of Zen poetry-like soliloquys and some uncommon horse sense. It was one of many highlights of a perfectly delightful evening shared with about 100 corkheads at, of all places, Elsie’s bowling alley in Nordeast. Blessedly (I think), we were in a party room and couldn’t hear the pins drop.

Theise is nothing if not a hedonist. He compared authors who use footnotes to inept sexual partners and ended an airplane anecdote with the phrase “return your stewardess to the upright position.” He gushed lovingly about his wines from Austria and Germany, and with good reason.

Some of his best material concerned food. He talked of a wine that goes well with every vegetable, even the one that his wife, iconic Wisconsin chef Odessa Piper, calls “sparklefarts” (Brussels sprouts to you and me). He also had a great take on pairing: Just learn what you can and then “use your instincts, experiment. Don’t obsess over hitting the bull’s eye; just try to hit the target and avoid spraying arrows into the woods.”  

And his wines ranged from really tasty to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The evening started with the best $25 bubbly I’ve ever tasted, a 70-percent0-gruner-veltliner concoction from Schloss Gobelsburg, and ended with an astounding $38 Spatlese from Jakob Schneider. I bought four bottles of each without batting an eye.

Theise will be back in November. Anyone who loves wine and/or a great raconteur should be there.

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