As I have stated before I was a buyer in the men’s wear business.  I started off in furnishings which would be shirts, ties, hosiery, belts and other accessories.  Later on I started buying in other categories as well.  One of the lines that I started carrying for my former company was from the Robert Talbott Company.  A very fine purveyor of hand made ties and quality shirts.  The company has two flagship stores one on Fifth Avenue on the upper East side of Manhattan, which I have been to.  The other and I believe the original is in Carmel-by-the-Sea, which I made a point of visiting on our first trip there.  I guess you can say that it was a busman’s holiday.

The company began with Mrs. Talbott sewing fanciful bow ties in a spare bedroom of their house and Mr. Talbott then selling them to merchants, and the rest is history.  They now make ties, shirts, belts, jewelry; pocket squares, outerwear and have even licensed a clothing line as well.  I always looked forward to my Christmas card each year written and addressed personally by Mrs. Talbott, as she sent them to all of the buyers across the country.  I had the good fortune to meet her during our tour of the factory and watched as they made ties and in another area they were making shirts.  I had never watched garments being made up front and personal.

Rob Talbott, the son started a winery in the Carmel Valley and that was another inducement for us to go to Carmel, as if we really needed a reason.  After the tour of the factory we went and had lunch at a local bistro and enjoyed some free range chicken and a bottle of the Talbott Chardonnay Diamond T Estate 2000, which up to that point was only the second bottle from the winery that I had tried.  The first bottle that we ever had was the Talbott Chardonnay Sleepy Hollow Vineyard (Monterey) 1994.