Dan Scesnewicz used to drink only beer. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood on the south side, “I thought wine was foreign, too esoteric, snobby,” he says. “I had no exposure to wine other than Mogen David.” Then, in his early 20s, he got a job bartending at the East Bank Club.
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Over the next ten years Scesnewicz worked at Como Inn, Stefani’s, Trattoria Gianni, and Cyrano’s Bistro. (He also briefly managed Zanies, “just for the experience.”) These days he’s a wine consultant and salesperson for Julienne Importing Company by day, selling to establishments like Bin 36, NoMi, Le Colonial, Geja’s, and Rushmore; by night he’s wine steward at Pangea, the eclectic restaurant on Irving Park Road just east of Damen. And this week he’ll oversee the beverages at Pangea’s second-ever wine dinner.
Pangea, which opened last November, is the brainchild of 1997 New Trier grad David Schoen and restaurant vet Rich McLaughlin, who met when McLaughlin ran the Levy Organization’s food concession at Arlington Racetrack, where Schoen tended bar. Once a talented teenage tennis player who attended the same academy as Pete Sampras, Monica Seles, Anna Kournikova, and Andre Agassi, Schoen hit on Pangea–the name for the theoretical landmass believed to have split apart in prehistoric times to form the continents–as a fitting moniker for a place where people of diverse ages and backgrounds could dine and drink.
He plans to take the initial stage of his sommelier’s test in the fall, a rigorous three-tiered affair that involves blind tastings in which he’ll be judged by his peers. His preparation? “I’ve had 12 years of tasting on the job and off the job.”
