“They’ve got nothing but wines I don’t like,” groused Alan Alda good-naturedly.

The 82-year-old actor, who will be honored with the Screen Actors Guild’s life-achievement award this Sunday, prefers Italian vintages, but we were in a French bistro. Right before our interview, Alda had been temporarily evicted from his co-working space (the elevators were out), so the first few minutes of our conversation were swept up in a flurry of quick hellos and brisk walking. In rapid succession, I watched Alda fend off a few fans, introduce me to an excited canine friend of his named Einstein, and unsuccessfully lobby for a booth. It was too early for lunch and too late for breakfast, so I was dubiously eyeing the coffee menu when Alda announced that he would be having some wine. But he’d mislaid his glasses in the chaos.

So that was how I ended up reading a wine list to Alan Alda, shortly after noon on a Wednesday—stumbling through circumflex-ridden phrases like “côtes du rhône,” as he winced at either my pronunciation or the mere idea of Médoc. It had been only a few minutes, but I had somehow been folded into Alda’s companionable aura, a role that requires keeping up with both his intellect and his energy, but offers a rich, generous intimacy, too. At one point, he asked if my glasses might work for him, then tried on my Warby Parkers. They didn’t do the trick, which he thought was very funny.

Finally, I got to something he liked the sound of: a Saint-Émilion Bordeaux, which cost more per glass than I typically spend on a bottle. This may be why I decided to have a glass with him. “I’m not a wine talker; I’m a wine drinker,” Alda said, when I asked what he liked about the Bordeaux. It’s the nonsensical tasting notes that get him: “I have never tasted chestnuts in my life!”

In writing, Alda’s words come off a little blunter than they sound. My transcript of our interview makes his words sound sharp. In person, the actor doesn’t complain—he kvetches. He draws the listener into a state of silliness, where complaining about wine is a joyful thing to do. Blunt, good-humored candor is a charm many of Alda’s characters share—most notably Hawkeye in M*A*S*H, the long-running role for which he won five Emmys. Since then, Alda’s been onstage and in film—he was nominated for an Oscar for his role in The Aviator—but the core of his work is still TV. He’s had arcs on The West Wing, ER, and 30 Rock, and he just finished up another on The Good Fight; for 14 seasons, he hosted Scientific American Frontiers on PBS.

Like Hawkeye, Alda kept up a patter of running commentary throughout our interview, amused by everything happening around him (and waiting for me to laugh along). Unlike Hawkeye, though, Alda doesn’t complain about the really bad stuff—the precarious political state of the world, though it frequently occupies his thoughts, or his Parkinson’s diagnosis, which he went public about last year. The degenerative neurological disorder especially affects movement. When we spoke, tremors occasionally took over his hands, especially when he was trying to keep them still—at one point, he had to hold his phone to his head with both of his hands to stop one from shaking.

Alda was diagnosed several years prior, but kept it private until last year—partly, he told me, so he could continue to work as an actor. “There is a stigma attached to it,” he said. “To this day, people think that if you get a diagnosis of Parkinson’s that your life is over”—despite the work of advocates like Michael J. Fox, who told the public that he had the disease in 1998. Alda eventually opted to open up in order to show others that catching Parkinson’s early and beginning treatment can slow the progression of the disease. “It’s a serious thing, but you have to know that it’s possible to work on it,” Alda said. “You can still have a good life for a long time.”