Clayton Bahr
Last Call for a Good Friend
The golden hour was drawing in through the slim rectangular frames of the upstairs windows of Uptown OKC’s Ponyboy. That gentle evening, we were swirling glasses of a 1958 French red wine that looked more like sherry with its age, a tobacco tint. The bottle had already been opened when I arrived and the wine professional who brought it said it was dying quickly. Oxidation can be a bitch with things this old. Upon the first sniff and taste, there was a strong whiff of the green tops of strawberries and it subsequently became more herbaceous, like a garden of thyme and basil and some bitterness.
We were tasting with Clayton Bahr, who was hosting his own living wake at Tower Theater. He was terminal with advanced lung cancer and wanted one last send out with his good friends, of which there had to be two hundred, possibly more. I’m better at typing than counting. These are the hardest words to type.
The first time I met Clayton was to talk to him for the 2017 holiday issue of this magazine. It was not about his career as a sommelier and hospitality professional, but a story about the Turkey Tango, an event he shepherded to pull in our city’s culinary talent to cook and ensure that people without housing had a tasty and comforting meal on Thanksgiving.
Back then, as we sat at the table, he immediately got the whiff that I was in the service industry and we squinted at each other and he asked, “Do I know you? Well, we do now.” And that was the beginning of both friendship and mentorship.
Clayton was born in Germany, but as an Air Force brat, he ended up in northwest Oklahoma City. When it was time to leave the nest, he went to OU to study finance. He dropped out to work in restaurants and then went back with the goal of attaining a philosophy PhD. In between the combination of learning hospitality and finding out what the underwater basket weaving department teaches you about life, he zoned in on wine. It’s a fascinating pleasure that combines history, geology, culture, and culinary experience, but also tastes good and gets you drunk.
After rigorous tasting and studying, he became a medallion status sommelier and moved from just serving wine to being a representative. That’s where he touched my life and those of many other service people. He came in before shifts to taste us on bottles we normally would’ve never picked up at the store. Clayton educated us about the region and the elevation and the grapes and the fermentation and the hundred other things that go into why things taste a certain way and how to taste them.
He would provide mezcal and tell you exactly why the elevation of the agave or the particular distillation created the flavor. Clayton was also very active in the OKC United States Bartenders Guild, which is a non-profit that provides support and education to service industry workers. Any good bartender in town who has made you a solid Oaxaca Old Fashioned has probably been taught by Wine Doctor Bahr.
As we toasted on that gentle evening full of revelry, Clayton’s emotions were of nothing but joy. A few days before, I gave him a beautiful end-of-season Colorado peach that another friend, waking at 5 a.m., had smuggled back. Clayton understood how, in other cultures, a gift of fruit is an honor. The batch was the best I’d ever eaten.
As an old wine can deteriorate rapidly from the bottle or a peach shrivels to the pit quickly, death can reach you before you know it. Clayton Bahr enjoyed life while he could and we should revel in his moment.
