#12 Véronique Rivest: Wine Lessons

Véronique Rivest and I explore the fascinating world of wine, including an on-air tasting, tips and tricks for serving wine that will impress your friends and so much more. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project. I'm your host Shane Parrish, curator behind Farnham Street, which is an online intellectual hub of interestingness covering topics like human misjudgment, decision-making, strategy, and philosophy. But today, we're going to be talking about wine, one of my favorite subjects. The Knowledge Project allows me to interview amazing people from around the world to deconstruct why they're good at what they do. It's more conversation than prescription. On this episode, I have Veronica Rive, one of the most respected sommeliers in the world. She's been working in restaurants since she was 16. She's entirely self-taught and has an amazing passion for wine. After placing twice in the top 12 in 2007 and 2010,

• 0:50Shane Parrish?

  she became the first woman to make the podium by taking second place at the world's best sommelier competition in Tokyo in March 2013. She's the owner of Suave in Hall, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite wine bars. We explore the fascinating world of wine, how to taste, including an on-air tasting, tips and tricks for serving wine, and so much more. I'll apologize in advance for the audio. We had a goof with the recorder. This is definitely worth listening to. With that said, I hope you enjoy the conversation.

• 1:24Shane Parrish?

  Welcome. Thanks for coming on. I've never interviewed a sommelier before, and you're one of the world's best, so this is incredibly exciting for me. Tell me how you got started with your love of wine.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Well, how many hours do we have? It's, you know what, I never had a real... It's not as if I woke up one day and I decided I wanted to become a sommelier. It's really something that happened through, you know, different jobs, experiences, trips, people I met. I actually started working in the restaurant industry at about 16 years old as a student. And my studies have been completely non-wine related. I did a BA in modern literature and languages, was studying languages. Um, and then an MBA in international trade. But all that time I was working in restaurants.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Um, I ended up going to France for a year of study. Uh, turned into a seven-year stay. And looking for a job there, I found a job with a winemaker. And I thought, oh, this sounds cool, you know? And I had been in restaurants for a while. I was, I basically fell in love with the restaurant industry. Uh, with, with the service industry, the restaurant industry as a whole. And with wine and food. But every time I say that, I'm like, who wouldn't, right? So, so it's really just all these, you know, a combination of, of jobs I held, of people I met. And, uh, all of a sudden I kind of realized, okay, this, this could actually become a real job. I wasn't very glorious in my family when, you know, I wanted to be a waitress.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Um, I, today it's well seen, they're kind of happy about, but right? It's not so, so there's no elimination. It just kind of happened.

• 3:11Shane Parrish?

  Okay. And what was it like living in France for seven years in terms of culture between here and there? And the differences? And is that what really started your passion or?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Um, no, it, it, it really fed it in a way, I guess. Um, I always thought I was a citizen of the world. My mom's German, uh, my father's French Canadian. We've always traveled a lot, um, as kids. Uh, it's something my parents instilled in all of us. My brothers are still great travelers. And, um, I, I, I thought I had no particular attachment to Canada that, and it, it, you know, it, it takes that, you have to live elsewhere to realize how good you have it at home, right? Um, and it did, that, that, that time I spent in that, so there was always this opening onto, you know, onto the world and European culture in particular. Um, so it's not as if it was something new. It felt kind of natural.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And, and in Quebec, there is this strong, um, you know, these strong links, cultural links to France. Um, so it wasn't like, you know, a big, um, a big shock or anything. Uh, but I really, really, um, appreciated the, the, the food and wine culture. And being in Alsace, that's where I was for seven years, um. One of the best places to eat and drink. It was, I really felt in my element. I just loved being around the winemakers, you know. When I was working at this winery, I was constantly, you know, had my nose into the winemaker's lab, asking everybody questions down the cellar, ask, you know, just, you know, really, really curious.

• 4:51Shane Parrish?

  Outside of the, yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Of the winery, yeah.

• 4:54Shane Parrish?

  Outside of the winery, so you were going to the actual vineyards.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:58Shane Parrish?

  And spending time there with the winemakers.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 5:02Shane Parrish?

  What would be the, when did you start your process of becoming a sommelier? In France, or did you do that when you came back?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  That's a good question. Again, there's such a kind of a seamless flow to everything I did that there's no, there's no real defining moment. I think it all kind of falls together. But when I came, after those seven years in France, when I came back to Canada, I was seriously, the obvious choice was a restaurant job because, again, there's, it's a, the good thing about it is that there's always work when you work in the restaurant industry, right? So it was an easy thing to fall back onto. But I was starting to think, okay, maybe I could, you know, become a wine buyer for the SAQ or the LCBO. I didn't know how things worked back then, it's not as simple as that.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  But so I started thinking of wine as more of a possible career choice. And when I came back, I was working in restaurants in France. I came back here, I went directly to restaurants, it was kind of my comfort zone, and just kept evolving in restaurants. I think that that's, it's an industry I really liked and that I felt comfortable in and I felt good in, so. And it's the first time, I didn't even know what a sommelier competition was. I didn't give myself the title of sommelier, and I am, I mean, even though I took every class I could.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Um, during my whole life, I followed every class I could on wine, but at the base, I'm self-taught.

• 6:40Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Again, as I said, curiosity is something that really defines me, and so I would read everything, just like when I was at the winemaker in France, I was always asking questions about everything. I would read everything I could get my hands on. And so when I came back from France, that was in ninety-four, um, went back to the restaurant industry, got a job also at the LCBO, started working, quickly became a product consultant. And I saw an ad go by for a sommelier competition, and I thought, huh, I had just been back six months in the country, and I thought, what better way to find out who's who, who's doing what?

• 7:16Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  You know, what's going on? I had been away for so long, and I had heard great things about the restaurant and the sommelier scene in Quebec, but was disconnected from it all. Um, and so I signed up for that competition. I thought, you know, if I'm gonna go, I might as well do it, right? And there was sixty people doing the semifinals and six finalists. Um, and I was expecting to watch the final, you know, but I was called as one of the finalists, yeah.

• 7:43Shane Parrish?

  So two questions. I mean, what is involved in the path to becoming an official sommelier? And then what is, what happens at a sommelier competition?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Okay, oh, there's two big questions. So how the path has evolved? I mean, there's still, um, in France, in Europe in general, they've had, I mean, it's a known trade, um, and they've had sommelier schools. There's a sommelier program in every hotel restaurant school throughout Europe. So it's something, um, it was actually difficult when I first went to France and thought, oh, I'll find a job as a student. Um, those aren't student jobs. People train, uh, to become servers, to, to occupy every position in the restaurant industry. But it's much more recent that we have official sommelier training in schools in North America. We see it now more and more.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I think we've had it again in Quebec for a certain time because of our links with France, because of many ways we have more resemblances with. But, so it's slowly starting. I'd say in the last 10 or 20 years, we've seen more official programs for training sommeliers in North America. But there's also a lot still to be, well, I was gonna say like every other trade, no, I hope there's not a lot of surgeons that learn, you know, that are self-taught.

• 9:07Shane Parrish?

  There's some professions where you don't want that, like pilots, surgeons.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  But in this industry, I think there's probably still a lot, and more so in North America, because we're not as, you know, it's not as all compartmented into, you know, strict academic programs.

• 9:23Shane Parrish?

  And when you go to a competition, you have all these varying backgrounds competing for what's involved in the competition.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  That's, we could talk hours about just that, but I love talking about it because for so many people, so many competitions are strictly tasting contests, right? The number of times, and I hate that, that I'm in public events and I have people walk up to me and stick a glass under my nose and say, "What's that?"

• 9:46Shane Parrish?

  Oh, jeez.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  And I always say, "I'm not a circus animal," you know? It's not, so I guess it's what people remember the most because it's the most impressive. People are always very impressed by somebody who, you know, does a blind tasting and says, "Okay, this is Pinot Noir from Burgundy from such village from that year."

• 10:04Shane Parrish?

  I remember watching Psam, and they were trying to do that. Have you seen the movie Psam?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:08Shane Parrish?

  And they're trying to do that, right? And it just blew my mind that you were even capable of doing something like that.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  So, I think that's why people remember that, because there is something impressive about it. But what's really important, two things, it's, there's, it's not just a guessing game. There's really, really serious knowledge needed to back up a tasting like that.

• 10:30Shane Parrish?

  Of course.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  The...

• 10:33Speaker 01

  First of all, in the tasting as such, it's not, you're not gonna get that many points from guessing what it is. It's kind of fun, we all love to do it.

• 10:42Shane Parrish?

  Right, and it's very showy and flashy.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? Uh, but the, the, the most talented people in this business also learn humility very quickly. And we're the first to, to recognize that, you know. No, it's, it's not easy. No, we don't guess it right every time. People going around bragging, "Oh, I always get blind tasting, uh." They're usually not very knowledgeable. So, so the, the guessing what it is part is fun, but it's not the finality. I'd say the, the ana- analytical tasting. It's analyzing the level of acidity, of sugar, of alcohol, of tannins. Being able to qualify the tannins, are they ripe, unripe? Does it come from a hot year, from a moderate year, from a cool year?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Uh, what kind of soil type might it come from? Has it seen oak or stainless steel or clay amphoras? If it's been in oak, was it new oak or? So, these are all things that take years and years of tasting, training. And, and basically, um, blind tasting is deductive reasoning.

• 11:45Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  So, you, you, you just gather a whole bunch of, yeah. And, and the tasting, so, so that's how complex a tasting can be. And the tasting is still just one part of the competition. I'd say competitions are always threefold. There's the tasting, there's obviously service. Because we are service people, even though the world, the word sommelier has become very, very trendy, you know, a bit like the chefs, there's all this kind of like, you know, almost rock star status.

• 12:10Shane Parrish?

  Celebrity, you would be one of those people, right?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I hate that kind of, um, the, the sommeliers are servers, right? First and foremost. So, somebody who calls themselves a sommelier and has never worked in the restaurant business in their life is not really a sommelier. A sommelier's a server, it's a wine specialized server. I always tell, when I'm training, um, young people that are starting, I say, "If you find serving the slightest bit degrading, change business right away." Right? This is not, you should thrive on, on serving people. That's, that's the basic, basic thing to start. So, service is part of, of the competitions, can be anything from, "How do you serve a no bottle of Bordeaux?" "How do you open a double magnum of champagne and serve it?" To, um, "How do you deal with difficult guests?"

• 12:55Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Um, so it's a lot of tact and diplomacy, um... Wine and food matching, it's a huge part of our work, right? So being familiar with not only French cuisine, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Mexican, you know, knowing the great cuisines of this world and being able to do wine and beverages matches, because it's not only wines. Somebody should be familiar with every, every beverage, alcohol, spirits, liqueurs, beers, sakes, as much in terms of blind tasting as production, elaboration, different styles and pairing. And then the biggest part, the third part, other than tasting and service, is theory. We're basically supposed to know everything and the theory is just so vast and continuously

• 13:37Shane Parrish?

  Expanding.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Expanding, right? I mean, we're way past the days where there was France and Italy is wine producers, China is the sixth or seventh world's largest producer of wine today, you know, Brazil makes wine, Thailand makes wine. So knowing everything about grape growing, so geology, you know, climate questions, wine making, which is essentially chemistry, all the grape varieties of the world, all the wine appellations of the world, so the theory is immensely vast. Nobody will ever know anything, but they can ask us anything. It's all fair game.

• 14:13Shane Parrish?

  Sounds like the only job better than mine, walking around tasting wine all day. Speaking of which, they dropped off two glasses here. Can you walk me through a tasting and what we have?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  A blind tasting?

• 14:25Shane Parrish?

  Yeah. Well, blind for me, you know what it is.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll tell you exactly what this is.

• 14:30Shane Parrish?

  So I don't, I don't even know. I sit down in a restaurant, they pour wine, am I supposed to swirl? Am I supposed, how do I actually go through it?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  You're supposed to enjoy.

• 14:37Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Right? That's the most important thing and that's what anybody serving you should worry about the most, right? That's it. We're there to make sure people have a good time. So enjoying it is, is the basic thing. Then you can completely geek out about it and we love to do that, right? And people are more and more into wine and so, and I truly believe that, that pleasure increases with knowledge and the more we know about wine, about the people who make it, the region it comes from, it really adds to, to the pleasure of tasting.

• 15:10Shane Parrish?

  Can you walk me through how you would taste this?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Do a tasting? Yeah, okay. So first of all, we're, we're looking at three things, eyes, nose and palate. And the visual examination of a wine is something a lot of people overlook, but it's full of clues to what the wine could possibly be. So we have, obviously, first is the color. So we have a slightly salmon pinkish wine. So it's a rosé wine. In certain wines, there'll be variations of color. When wines age, their color changes. Oak aging can impart color to wine. If it's the same grape from a super cool or a super hot climate, it's not gonna have the same...

• 15:52Shane Parrish?

  It'll be a different color.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  It'll be a different color. So very, very slight differences, nuances, hues in the wine that can tell you a lot about what the wine is or where it comes from. Of course, you're never gonna jump to a conclusion from just one clue.

• 16:06Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Again, deductive reasoning. So we're combining all these clues together to come to a logical conclusion. The other thing that's obvious about this wine is...

• 16:16Shane Parrish?

  It's bubbly.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It's bubbly, see?

• 16:19Shane Parrish?

  I feel like a pro now.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  So it's got bubbles. Bubbles could also be, it's not necessarily a sparkling wine, from the amount of bubbles here and they're...

• 16:28Shane Parrish?

  It's not a lot.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Continuous. But still, it's more than if it was wine with just a little bit of CO2 trapped in it. Because that could also be the case.

• 16:36Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Think of Vinovarde, certain wines, wines that are bottled very young or can be bottled with a little CO2 in them, sometime voluntarily to give them a bit more of that freshness of that,

• 16:50Speaker 01

  spritz to it. But this looks like it is a fully sparkling wine.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  We can look at the, you know when people swirl their glass around when we talk about legs?

• 17:00Shane Parrish?

  Yep.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  On a wine, so how the tears that come down. So when you swirl it around and you see the wine coming down on the inside of the glass, can tell you about viscosity of the wine. So a combination of sugar, of alcohol, of body...

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Usually the thicker the tiers, the slower they are to form and to come down, the more full-bodied the wine will be. It could be in alcohol, it could be in sugar, it could be a combination thereof.

• 17:26Shane Parrish?

  I always thought people did that to aerate the wine.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  That we swirl it around, definitely, to aerate it, but as the wine is coming down, um, you will watch the tiers, okay? It's something I didn't pay attention to for many years because you need glass in the perfect state, right? There shouldn't be any residues soaked, there shouldn't be... So it's, it's not the most, um, um, trustable source of information, right? But it's, it's something you can look at. Um, then, of course, so, we know it's rosé, we know it's sparkling, that's about all we know for now, right? Um, it's a very light hue, some rosés tend to be much darker, so it could be different grape varieties, could be different styles of winemaking, that's fair. Then we're gonna smell it, and ideally you wanna smell it once before swirling it around.

• 18:15Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Just to get... First thing you're gonna look at is, is the wine clean? Looking for faults. Are there any faults? Is the wine corked? Is it oxidized? Is there something wrong with it?

• 18:27Shane Parrish?

  How do you tell a corked wine?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Uh-huh, by smelling a lot of corked wine.

• 18:30Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Um, in the wine bar I have, every time we stumble, or wherever I am, if I'm doing an event and there's lots of people help, if I have a bottle of corked wine, I always keep it and make people smell it.

• 18:43Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Because so many people don't know what a corked wine smells like. Some people confuse cork and oak. Uh, so it's a very distinctive smell, and you just need to smell it, you know, a few times to kind of memorize that smell, and then you'll instantly pick it up when it happens. Because it can be very, just, a corked wine can vary tremendously in the, the, the intensity of, of its faults. Some wines are so badly corked, you open the bottle and people, you know, ten feet away will smell it, and they, "Oh my god, that's corked." Um, others, uh, we're gonna be, there's gonna be three of us, you know, pouring over the glass, like, "Is this, it's not, it's not perfectly clean, something, something's wrong."

• 19:21Shane Parrish?

  Something's off, but...

• 19:22Speaker 01

  But it's not, so the, the intensity of the corked smell

• 19:25Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  can vary. It's not always the same. So sometime, and see, we're, we have a sparkling wine. A lot of people, I don't know why, think sparkling wine cannot be corked.

• 19:33Shane Parrish?

  Oh, okay.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I don't know why, it's any wine can be corked. Port can be corked, sparkling wine can be corked, but there's this, every time I have a corked sparkling wine, people so often, "Oh, I didn't know sparkling wine could be corked." Yeah, of course, any wine can, anything that's closed with a cork, a natural cork closure can be corked. So the wine is clean. It doesn't have any faults. And then we're looking at intensity, the intensity of the aromatics, because some grapes are much more aromatic than others. There's some highly aromatic grape varieties like Gervais de Striminor, Muscat, Viognier. So when you have a very intensely aromatic wine, already you've eliminated a whole bunch of others.

• 20:13Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  You know it's gonna be, right? In sparkling wines, there's usually a limited number of grapes that are used to make sparkling wines worldwide. There's probably lots, and there's always somebody somewhere doing something weird with an unheard of grape variety. But a lot of sparkling wines are either made with the Champagne grapes, so Chardonnay, Pinot Noir mostly. Then you have the wines of, the sparkling wines of Spain, the Caves, which have their own grape varieties.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Prosecco in Italy. So there's these pockets of a few sparkling wines, specialty sparkling wines made in certain countries that have their own grapes. And then there are the ones that are made according to the Champagne model, which are made in Champagne, but all over the world, in Canada, in the United States, in Germany, everywhere. So at least we're not dealing with 2000 grape varieties, usually when we're dealing with sparkling wines, right? Right now, we're taking it down somewhere. So something we're gonna look at when we're doing a sparkling wine is from the aromas and the taste and the quality of the bubbles, trying to define, is it a wine that's been made in the Champagne tradition? Or is it something else?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  So when we're smelling it, you look at the intensity. Sparkling wines are usually, unless it's made with an aromatic variety, are usually more discreet. They're not super big on the nose, right? They don't jump out of the glass at you. There's always a certain finesse in sparkling wines.

• 21:44Shane Parrish?

  This smells amazing.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  You like it? And you know, the other thing is, people are so afraid to say, when you ask them, "Okay, what are you smelling?" Everybody is so... There's been so much intimidation throughout the years with wine that people feel incompetent when you... And I always say, if I give you a plate of food, you know, I give you a dish, and most people will say if they like it or if they don't.

• 22:12Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And if you ask them wine, they'll probably be able to say why they like it or they don't. Give them a glass of wine and ask them their opinion? They're totally scared.

• 22:21Shane Parrish?

  The vocabulary around it seems so impenetrable to...

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And yet, it's not that different from food, right? We're dealing with taste, so there's obviously a lot of, you know, subjective, personal preferences. But it's, you know, first off, it's just, "Okay, do you like it or not? Why do you like it?" Okay, yes, the vocabulary's not there, but like for, you know, not everybody has a chef's vocabulary for food either, right? And you develop that as you go, but you have to start to jump in to say what you think. It's by expressing your thoughts and tasting with others that can help you kind of, you know, put the right words on what you're thinking.

• 22:57Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  That you'll get there, but there's unfortunately been, over the years, so many people that have positioned themselves, you know, be it winemakers, or winewriters, or so-called experts, sommeliers, right? I mean, this old image of the arrogant French sommeliers. So many people have positioned themselves as having the ultimate truth, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna teach you, poor ignorant consumer, what good wine is.

• 23:24Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Everybody's equipped to decide if they like the wine or not.

• 23:27Shane Parrish?

  What they like themselves.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? I disgrace a lot.

• 23:32Shane Parrish?

  No, this is amazing. I love this.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  So this is, this is, I know what it is, right? So it's a, it's a cava.

• 23:39Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Well, it's not a cava, but it's from that region in Spain where they make. Cava's a big, big, big industry.

• 23:45Shane Parrish?

  I love cava.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  So a lot of really good, affordable sparkling wines are made under that denomination. And they work with local grape varieties. Zarelo, Macabeo and Tarellada. Three white grapes, there's a few others also, but those are the three main grapes used for cava. So it's not champagne-like. They're not, it's not a champagne look-alike. They're using different grapes. It is made, though, in the traditional method. We're not supposed to say champagne method anymore, but so in the same way as champagne is made, which is considered the best production method for giving, you know, the better quality sparkling wines. But cava is a huge appellation with millions and millions of bottles made.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  And this producer is a producer I like a lot called Raventos y Blanc. And they've been working really hard to try and get the standards for cava.

• 24:40Shane Parrish?

  Higher.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Higher. Because they thought there was too much low quality, you know, a lot of really cheap supermarket wines in the category.

• 24:47Shane Parrish?

  Anybody can just label it cava?

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Well, you have a certain cahier de charge, you know, a certain protocol to follow in terms of elaboration. The grapes are allowed to use, you have to make it méthode tractionnelle, right? The whole elaboration is all, but still it wasn't sufficient to ensure the level of quality they wanted for the product. And there's a lot of really low-quality cava produced. So the standards of the appellation are not sufficient to, you know.

• 25:19Shane Parrish?

  Distinguish between them.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Exactly, the more ordinary. And so they actually pulled out, these guys, they don't call their wines cava, that's why. So it's made in Catalonia, in Finadez, in the region. They're actually in the heart of the cava production region with cava grapes. But they pulled out of the appellation, they don't call their wines cava anymore because they don't want to be associated with a brand that also has a lot of really low-quality products.

• 25:44Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's the long story on these guys, Raventos. So they now call their wines Conca del Rio de Anoia, which is actually a geographical designation. It's the land where they are, where they grow their grapes and make the wines.

• 26:00Shane Parrish?

  When do we finally get to taste?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Ah, go ahead, taste. So on the nose, we're taste well, so on the nose, we're looking for aromatics. We're looking for oak influence. We're looking for minerality. In the aromatics, what kind? Is it more fruit? Is it floral? Is it spicy? Is there a lot of non-fruit aromas? Or is it just a big fruit bomb?

• 26:21Shane Parrish?

  And does your ability to distinguish those different smells come from smelling them and then smelling wine and just over time again, kind of like the corked wine?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Our nose is like a muscle. It's one of our most, it's an amazing sense we have. And yet, it's our most, it's the one we use the least. We're so dependent on our eyes that we completely underuse our nose. We think, we all can smell. We know we can smell. We think we're good at, oh yeah, yeah, I know what coffee smells like. I know what basil smells like. But try smelling those things blind, not knowing what it is. And you'll be surprised at how very common smells, everyday smells, people won't recognize once you're blindfolded. Because we're not used to developing our smell memory. And that's, anybody can do it. It's just an exercise. I've been doing it my whole life and I still do it. I'm far from being-

• 27:15Shane Parrish?

  How do you do that?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  You smell everything. Here in the kitchen, they're always laughing at me because everything, I always go put my nose in everything. I smell, I train my nose. I smell, I smell when I'm gardening. I smell when I'm walking. I smell when I'm in traffic. Good smells and bad, it's just a question of training your nose. And yes, trying to, sometimes I'll do it on purpose, right? Put out, okay, certain herbs, certain vegetables, whatever. When I'm grocery shopping. And, but the difficult part is, again, with your eyes closed or blindfolded, to be able to remember the smells. So those kind of instant recognition of aromas, those exercises are hugely important and they help in developing your memory of smell.

• 28:01Shane Parrish?

  And then we finally get to the tasting after the smell.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:05Shane Parrish?

  And so, what do you do when you, and this is gonna sound maybe ridiculous, but when you put it in your mouth, you swirl it around, you swallow it?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that gargling noise we make?

• 28:15Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  It's exactly the same thing. You were talking about how we're swirling it in the glass. I said smell it a first time before swirling it, and then swirl it around, because it's basically oxygenating the wine to help release more aromatics. Okay, some wines, there won't be much difference between not swirling it and swirling it. Some wines, you'll smell much more, once you've swirled it around, right? Some wines are a little bit shy, and they need to, kind of, the aromas need to be coaxed out. What we're doing in the mouth is exactly the same. It's just you take a little bit of wine in your mouth, and you let some air in, and you gargle the air through the wine. So, once again, it's oxygenating it to smell it better. Because that's another important thing, we talk about the palate, but in the mouth, we're talking about taste and smell.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  When you say a wine tastes of strawberries, or chocolate, or vanilla, it actually smells of those things, right? There's only four, five, or six basic tastes.

• 29:10Shane Parrish?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Sweetness, sourness.

• 29:13Shane Parrish?

  I always thought it was crazy when people are like, "It tastes like chocolate." And I'm like, "It doesn't taste like chocolate."

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why you don't taste anything when you're, you have a cold.

• 29:22Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Because you can't smell. Okay, so tastes are basically those things. Acidity, sugar, bitterness, and, and, and what am I, it's salt. Those are the four basic. You can throw in umami, we won't go into that, because people can look it up, it's a fascinating subject. And fat is also starting to be considered as a taste. But, so, so that's taste, and you can still taste when your nose is blocked. You can still taste when you have a cold. You'll, you'll taste sweetness and saltiness, and, but you won't smell. And so, our palate and our nose are linked through the back of the throat, retro nasal passages. And, so, that's it. When you, you have something in your mouth, and you say, "Oh, it tastes of strawberries", it actually smells of strawberries.

• 30:07Shane Parrish?

  You're smelling it, but from inside your mouth.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So, that's why that putting the air through the wine in your palate helps you taste or smell it better, right? Through the back passages.

• 30:19Shane Parrish?

  Okay, and then you swallow.

• 30:23Shane Parrish?

  And then are you looking for, I mean, I wanna geek out on this for a second. Are you looking for, like this wine that we have here, I feel it on the front of my tongue.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:32Shane Parrish?

  More so than anywhere else, but that could be because I just aerated it.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Okay, and that can be personal too. There's this other kind of slightly ridiculous notion out there that was vehemated for years of a tongue map. Whereas we taste this sweetness on the front of the tongue, acidity on the side, bitterness on the back. That was a mistake from the start. It's hard to believe that it's been vehemated, sorry, there must be a better word for that, for so long. Because it was an error from the beginning. Anyhow, no such thing exists as a tongue map. We are all very, very individual, once again, as tasters. We don't perceive things the same way. You know that scientists say that there's actually not two people on the planet that will perceive the same food or the same beverage exactly in the same way?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  That's fascinating.

• 31:21Shane Parrish?

  That does not surprise me at all.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  But it also makes it difficult, you know? That's why we establish this kind of protocol. So we have to talk common language to. I love acidity. A wine that's super high in acidity will be just fine for me.

• 31:34Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  For somebody who doesn't like acidity, that wine will be way too sour. Right? So that person will say, that's super high acidity? And I'll say, no, it's just right, right? So you have to kind of calibrate yourselves. And that's also something you learn as you're tasting a lot.

• 31:49Shane Parrish?

  And so what would be the acidity in this?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  That's in very, you know, in our technical jargon, we quantify everything precisely. So I'd say it's medium plus acidity. We'll go from high to medium plus to medium to medium minus to low.

• 32:03Shane Parrish?

  Okay. It's delicious, by the way.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Glad you like it for a napacab drinker. That's quite a different style of wine. But so on the palate, when we talked about the aromas and the tastes, because acidity helps you define, right, the level of acidity in the wine. We're looking at aromas, taste, but also structure, you know, kind of the mouth feel. On top of letting the air through and kind of gargling with the wine, you're carrying it through your mouth, right?

• 32:37Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And to get a feel of the wine, of the weight, of how it coats your mouth, right? Some wines go down like water.

• 32:44Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Others have almost a creamy feel to them, right? So there's textural qualities that are different that can also tell you about a grape variety, about a climate, about winemaking methods, right? So it's all these things combined that help you come to a

• 33:03Shane Parrish?

  A guess, an educated guess.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  An educated guess, exactly.

• 33:08Shane Parrish?

  Based on really elimination, it sounds like.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:11Shane Parrish?

  You're walking through what isn't.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  And how do you know? It's just from, you know, I always tell people how you become a taster, well, you just drink a lot. So you taste a lot, but that's it, right? It just comes through years and years of training, of tasting and rigorous tasting, not sitting alone in front of the TV and chugging down bottles, right? There has to be a method.

• 33:30Shane Parrish?

  Almost like a deliberate practice.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:33Shane Parrish?

  To how you're going to make it.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  And the necessity of doing it together. One foremost, because wine to me is about bringing people together, right? That's the, I said, the most important thing is you have to enjoy it. Hopefully you're not enjoying it alone. It brings people together, that's the, right? But for learning about wine also, the exchange is necessary. There's just so much you can learn from books. At one point, you have to confront your ideas with somebody else's. I was talking about calibrating, right? You know, my high acidity, what is it for you and where do we meet? What's considered medium acidity and high acidity by the community at large, right? We kind of have to agree. So the importance of tasting with others to make sure you're on the right track and you're calibrating.

• 34:17Shane Parrish?

  And what books would you say recommend for not only the beginner, but the person who wants to get into, not necessarily becoming a professional sommelier, but an educated consumer?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  To me, there's two bibles and they're pretty much everybody's. The Wine Atlas from Janice Robinson and Hugh Johnson, which is wonderful because it covers the winemaking world. It's got great maps. It's got a general presentation of each country, each region. So it's really a solid, solid basis for wine knowledge, right? And again, understanding about the region, about the topography, about all of that helps you better understand the wines, you know, and it's all linked. Of course, there are wines today that are completely cut off from where they come from. There are industrial wines that you can have an Australian wine, a wine from the Long Dock, and a wine from Chile that tastes exactly the same. Those are fabricated wines.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And there's nothing wrong with them. I mean, they're not, they're not gonna kill you.

• 35:17Shane Parrish?

  What do you mean by fabricated wine?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Because you can very much, you can come and, you know, you could hire a consultant winemaker today and say, okay, I've got this vineyard, wherever it is, I want my wine to be this color, to taste of chocolate and blackberries, and be a little bit sweet, and super round and creamy and not aggressive, and to sell it around that price point. And he'll make it to order. Technology allows that, both in the vineyards and especially in the winery.

• 35:47Shane Parrish?

  Through the processes?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Through the processes, both. There's many, many allowed additives and many allowed processes that allow you to manipulate a wine to make it what you want. There's still this very romantic notion out there, you know, in the consumer world, that wine is fermented grape juice. And of course, the industry just loves that and totally exploits it. And you read all these nice back labels that tell you about the vineyard and the vigneron and this melancholic image of wine, whereas a lot of wines out there actually resemble more Coca-Cola, you know, a soft drink or processed cheese in terms of how they're made.

• 36:33Shane Parrish?

  Is that because?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  So disconnected from nature.

• 36:36Shane Parrish?

  It's very fragmented, but there's becoming to be a few large players who are striving for like, almost like McDonald's consistency?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a bit of that, you know, and some consumers actually want that also. They want the reassurance of having the same product, year in, year out, no matter where they go, they know they're gonna drink the same thing. Most, you know, true wine lovers, for most wine lovers, the variance from one year to another, from one region to another, the fact that the same wine grower grows the same grapes on two different plots with different soils and different slopes are different.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  That's fascinating to us. That's what we love. I always say what really turns me on, in French, we say "avoir de la gueule". "Avoir de la gueule" means to... Yeah, a wine that has character. And a wine that tastes like it tastes because it comes from a specific place. And it wouldn't taste the same if it came from another place. That's what really turns wine lovers on. But, again, there are people who drink wine, they like a glass of wine, and they don't really care about the story, and they don't... They prefer something, they grew up on soft drinks and sweet foods, and they like something sweet and soft and simple, and that's fine. Right? They're... And so, there's a lot of the industry that caters to that, you know, to the mass market.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Make wine as a real consumer product. With all the marketing gimmicks and everything that goes with it.

• 38:08Shane Parrish?

  Coming back to the service aspect of being a sommelier, what do you wish more people knew when they came into a restaurant and talked to a sommelier?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very simple. I mean, the first thing I wish people had was more confidence. And less... and be less intimidated. Just, you know, there's so many people out there that are just waiting to talk wine with you, right? And want to share their passion. And if anybody gives you attitude, if anybody's arrogant, if anybody tries to recommend a wine, be it in a store or in a restaurant, without asking you a single question first, steer clear away from them.

• 38:51Shane Parrish?

  It just means, "This is what I like."

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. They'll sell you what they love, and without caring about what you like, right? So, but yeah, just be confident. Don't be afraid to ask questions. I always say, those in the business that are judgmental, that will look down on you, they're not the good ones anyhow. You shouldn't care about them. We couldn't care less if they like you or not. Right? The real professionals and real wine lovers will just be more than happy to take you on at any level you are and try to guide you through, you know, discovery and pleasure.

• 39:23Shane Parrish?

  So that probably leads to suboptimal outcomes, right? Hiding or being intimidated by speaking about what you like and your preferences. What would be other mistakes that people make that are easily correctable or that would offer a better experience from a consuming point of view?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  There's very simple things, you know, like just service temperature. We still, you know, drink a lot of wines way too cold and a lot of other wines way too warm. There's not a red wine that's good above seventeen, eighteen degrees, right? And the whole notion of room temperature.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  I don't know, that goes back to the Middle Ages, but when houses are heated at twenty-two, twenty-three, there's not one wine that's good at that temperature. The white wine straight, or rosé, right? Summer coming around, rosé season, so many people drink their rosés ice cold. And that just mutes the wine. The bitter rosés, a lot of the bitter rosés are much better, like at ten, twelve degrees. The fridge is at four or five, right? So when they warm up, they really, rosés are not usually very aromatic wines, they're more textural wines. But you kind of kill that texture when you serve it ice cold. And it really, you know, comes into its own when you let it warm up a little bit. So, yeah, temperature's another...

• 40:43Shane Parrish?

  So do you recommend people touch the bottle? Like if I ordered a bottle of red at a restaurant, when it comes and it's presented?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll let you try it, and if it's too warm for a red, which still often happens, don't hesitate to ask for an ice bucket and put the red bottle of wine in the ice bucket for five or ten minutes. If they're idiots, excuse me, it still happens, they'll look at you as if you're from Mars, okay? But if it's anybody who knows anything, they'll totally understand. First of all, they shouldn't serve it to you too warm, but...

• 41:14Shane Parrish?

  Is that an indication about how serious the restaurant you're in takes their wine as well?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. If anybody serves you a red wine that tastes lukewarm, they're really not serious about their wine service.

• 41:25Shane Parrish?

  That's good to know. And so flipping it around a bit from the consumer perspective, how do I tell the difference between a good or bad Sauvignon Blanc?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I think in the rapport you established with them, right? From the start, their ease of approach, their willingness to really try to understand you and what you want. And you'll see if their main goal is for you to have a good time, or if it's for them to shine, right? Or if they couldn't care less because they have another important table next to you, whatever. But those things, I think.

• 41:59Shane Parrish?

  It's a regular kind of service, I'd say.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:03Shane Parrish?

  So you're in the business of wine now. You operate this amazing restaurant we're in right now.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Wine bar.

• 42:10Shane Parrish?

  Wine bar, sorry. Which is gorgeous, by the way. Tell me about what it was like to start a business in wine in an industry that is notorious for a high failure rate.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think like most people who spend a lot of their time working in the industry, we all kind of play with the dream of having your own place one day. Although I remember for years I said, "I will never have a restaurant. I don't want to be a slave. I want to have a life." But, you know, people in this industry, it is a difficult industry financially. It's almost impossible to get finance, right? Because there's such a high failure rate, it's really hard to get banks and other institutions on board. It is stupid crazy hours for not a lot of pay. You know, once again, this whole celebrity, I think it's really great what's happening with chefs in so many areas because it's bringing, it's, you know, bringing light

• 43:06Speaker 01

  to the profession, making it known, better appreciated. But the downside effect is that it's giving young people starting in the business a really, not necessarily the right image, you know? I see kids coming out of cooking school and they want to be, you know, have their TV show.

• 43:23Shane Parrish?

  Celebrity chefs.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  And their cooking book. And it's like, no, no, you're going to sweat for years behind an oven before we even call you a chef, right? So it's really hard, and those that really succeed, I think are people that are truly, truly passionate. Yeah, I work like crazy, I work crazy hours, but I don't care, I'm having fun, as long as I'm having fun.

• 43:44Shane Parrish?

  So it doesn't seem like work.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 43:47Shane Parrish?

  But what is, so the behind the scenes, though, you're constantly traveling, trying to find new bottles that you can bring to people. What's involved in the behind the scenes that people wouldn't necessarily think about from a sommelier's point of view?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, yeah, from an owner is like, I think one of the reasons why the industry has such a bad rap is because too many people go into the restaurant industry because they're great cooks, you know, they have friends, "Oh, you're really a good cook, you should open up a restaurant." You need a manager to open up a restaurant, because the profit margins are so, so, so tiny. If you're not constantly, you know, checking your numbers, constantly, constantly, constantly, you can make loads of money and, well, revenues and and close down because, you know, you're just going bankrupt. So, so you need solid management experience, I think is, is the first thing, before even having a, right?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And then, from a sommelier's perspective, yeah, it's just what people see is the service people on the floor, serving people, but then, like you said, there's all, you know, building up a wine program. So, ordering the wines, buying wines, managing inventories, are you gonna have a by-the-glass program, what's gonna be your pricing? So, so there's, and, and then, you know, constantly working with the kitchen for wine and food matching.

• 45:08Shane Parrish?

  Right, so you know what's good. So for us, it's different. In Canada, I know importing wine can be a bit tricky. You can't just go over and import a case, can you? What's the process for that?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Well, you have to work in, in your province of operation, so, this wine bar is in Quebec, so I can only deal with the SAQ. I cannot deal with the LCBO, even though we're right across the river from Ottawa. I cannot buy directly from Ontario wine producers, which is ridiculous. I, I've always said, my, my, my, my ultimate fight, once I'm retired, whenever that happens. I will get on that case, the lobby very, very hard to make our wine laws change across the country. A lot of people are already working on it, but there's a tremendous amount of work to be done. I mean, all of our liquor laws are based on, you know, our early 20th century, either from the prohibition era, right?

• 45:58Shane Parrish?

  So it seems to me, as a consumer of wine, I'm limited to the LCBO selection and what they've chosen for me, and then getting anything outside of that becomes difficult. And then it's almost like books, right? Like what they're choosing for me is high-volume, crowd-pleasers, not necessarily a variety of flavors or small.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Well, there's one thing consumers should know, and people into wine, is that we're actually in a pretty great market in terms of what's on offer. Because there's a whole, beyond the LCBO and the SAQ and the state monopolies, there's ways to get wine also. It's not illegal, it's completely, it goes through. In Ontario, they call it consignment. In Quebec, we call it importation privée. It's basically the same thing. Most wineries here are represented by an agent who does the importation, who does all the paperwork, but it's sold through the SAQ, right? But they have an agent, so there's agencies in every province that represent the different wineries present on our market that work

• 47:02Speaker 01

  here, that they're the ones who will bring me samples, or invite me to a tasting, or send me information on that product. They're the ones, you know, making sure it's where they want it to be, on the shelves, in the stores, and so on. And so those agents also have wines that are not distributed through the monopoly stores, okay? And frankly, one of the reasons why, in the region here, I wanted to be on the Quebec side and not on the Ontario side, was because I wanted to work on the wines, with the wines we have on offer in Quebec. I have nothing to envy from cities like New York or London. I can basically get anything I want in this market through private importation. And private import is not only for restaurant owners, it's for everybody, and it's...

• 47:45Shane Parrish?

  I was just gonna ask, as a consumer, can I use that?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And for years, it was thought it was reserved to restaurants, and unfortunately, actually, some unscripted agents did that. They didn't make the prices known to the public so that the restaurateurs could make horrific margins on those wines, right? Sell you a $10 bottle of wine for $60. Because the price was not known from the public. But now, as consumers are more and more into wine, consumption is increasing, just, you know, the whole wine scene is, is, is, is just very dynamic right now. There's more individuals that don't have restaurants that buy wines through these channels. The only inconvenience is because it doesn't transit through the stores. It goes directly from the monopoly warehouses to the consumer.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  It's, it's by the case. They don't open the cases. So you have to buy a case of six or a case of twelve. But as I normally say, that's not really a problem, right? Just get yourself some friends.

• 48:41Shane Parrish?

  Exactly. And you, like you said, wines were bringing people together. You, you touched on something I, I want to talk about just briefly. People associate price and value. Is that true in wine? To what extent?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  It's like everything else, right? Like, like everything else. You get what you paid for, up to a certain extent. Just like watches, like clothing, like cars. At one point, you get into the luxury market, right? There's no single bottle of wine in the world that costs more than about thirty or forty dollars to produce.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  So why are there bottles selling for fifteen hundred a bottle or two thousand? Though, you know, you get into that luxury segment where you're starting to pay for rarity, for reputation, for all the marketing that goes around it, right? There's, there's, you know, loi de l'offre et de la demande, supply and demand, you know, in wines, just like in anything else. We do pay in, in our markets, in, in Canada in general. What we don't get is the dirt cheap wine, is the wines you pay like two, three, four euros in a supermarket in France.

• 49:48Shane Parrish?

  Right, or two buck chuck in the US.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Exactly, that we don't get. But frankly, not usually the best wines anyhow, right? And from, you know, twenty to fifty dollars, I think our pricing is, can actually be quite competitive. Regularly, I see wines that I can buy here for cheaper than what I see them, you know, at the producer in Italy or in France.

• 50:11Shane Parrish?

  Oh, wow.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  When, when we're in that, especially that kind of thirty to fifty dollar range. And then, yeah, of course, there's wines that are two thousand dollars a bottle or more, but, but that's, that's, again, that, we've, we've crossed over to the luxury good department. It's not wine as food anymore, right? It's, it's, it's wine as a collector's item.

• 50:31Shane Parrish?

  Have you ever tasted something that changed you? Changed you as a person and like the world didn't look the same after having it?

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I've tasted a lot of things that made me feel really good.

• 50:42Shane Parrish?

  The more you taste, the better you feel, right?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  But no, even be, you know, without going into that factor of the effects of alcohol. But there's just wines that, yeah, they just move you. And that's, I think, what I look for the most in wines. I used to, and it was all part of the learning process, right? So many people see me, "Oh yeah, you were the one taking the..." I filled up, I don't know how many notebooks during my life, taking notes on every single wine I would taste. I would go to a wine fair, I was writing, writing, writing, writing. Now, my tasting techniques, sometimes it's that precise. It has to be when I'm training for competitions or things like that. But for buying purposes or for simply more simple evaluation purposes,

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I just taste the wine and pay attention to how it makes me feel. I look for liveliness in wine, for something that I often say about wine, when wines are really... This wine is just dead. It's not speaking to me, it's not, and that's often very manipulated wines.

• 51:50Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Again, there's nothing wrong with them. Technically, they're perfectly sound, but they don't have a soul. They don't move you, they don't speak to you.

• 51:58Shane Parrish?

  And a lot of wine, I mean, the consumption would also be a bit the romance, I would imagine. Like the wine maker and the craftsmanship that goes into it. And when you start thinking about the mechanics of mass-produced wine, or wine that is manufactured to taste a certain way, you lose that.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And we could go on for hours and hours about the values or not of blind tasting, right? Because knowing the story behind changes, yes, it can influence you, right? Just like, you know, when you're tasting an expensive wine, you might rate it higher because it's expensive and prestigious. We try really, really hard not to do that. So blind tasting in those cases is good. But sometimes I've... You know, evaluated certain wines quite poorly, tasting them blind. Because they were kind of out of context and not in the right place.

• 52:51Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  And had I known what they were, what the winemaker was trying to do, I would have had a better understanding, right?

• 52:57Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 52:58Shane Parrish?

  Well, so much of our understanding comes from context.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? And, and, and again, that, that's what I think, um, is great about wine. It's all those, you know, and, and, and I, I love imperfections. I always say perfection is boring, right? When something is, is so, is almost ascepticized, is that a right word? Um, something that's so clean that it's soulless, right?

• 53:21Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  It's, it's too technically perfect, right? Um, I think in wine, in, in people, uh, uh, beauty lies in the faults. I shouldn't, I have to be careful saying that. I, I'm not, I don't, I don't want to, to.

• 53:36Shane Parrish?

  Well, it's just imperfections that I care.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  I don't want to say that a wine is, is, is good because it's faulty. No. A wine should not be faulty, it should be good, right?

• 53:44Shane Parrish?

  But it should have character.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Exactly, right?

• 53:46Shane Parrish?

  And that's one of the ways that you get character.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. By, by not having this perfectly technical ascepticized wine that, you know, all the processes you've used is, have basically stripped all the character and the life out of it.

• 53:59Shane Parrish?

  So how do you look at a, a wine menu when you go into a restaurant that's not a wine bar? That's not known for their wine, but you want to have a bottle look as you're there with your friends?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:08Shane Parrish?

  How do you go the evaluating that from, you know, it's not going to be served chilled, you know it?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  But I, I scroll through the list and right away you see, you know, somebody who's from the, the, the, the trade knows right away. You look at the, you go through it and you look at the producers. And is it all only industrial, big, you know, uh, producers? Or is there some interesting stuff in there? And, and nobody knows everything. I mean, there's, you, you can be a specialist of a certain region. There's so many producers, you know, even if you're a Burgundy specialist or a, a, a Chianti specialist. You never know everybody that's making wine in that area. It's just so, that's fascinating, that's great, right? We're never done discovering and...

• 54:51Shane Parrish?

  So did you try something new or do you go with what you know? Like, is there any hacks for the consumer going in?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Well, I will try something I don't know if I see it's mainly industrial, right?

• 55:01Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  If I see a few interesting producers, ah, well then I'll, I'll start talking. Oh, first thing, ask the staff there, they know, right? That's one way to, for the consumer to make good use of the staff in a restaurant.

• 55:12Shane Parrish?

  Do you ever ask them if the wine is good or do you ask them different questions?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Different questions. I mean, asking if the wine is good, I always thought that was a bit weird and almost insulting when consumers go in restaurants, so hot, you know, is your steak good?

• 55:24Shane Parrish?

  But that's probably the most popular question you get, right?

• 55:26Speaker 01

  I know, I know, but who will honestly tell you, no, it sucks.

• 55:29Shane Parrish?

  Exactly. Oh, that's horrible. I know I just recommended it, but...

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  No, but again, you know, if, if it's all industrial producers, I know it's not really worth talking to anyone because nobody has put any heart into making this wine list. Uh, because it's probably been made by the rep of one of those, you know, big producers or, um, so, and, and sometimes still, I shouldn't say that because sometimes there, there's staff working in restaurants that, okay, that, that's the place they found a job. Uh, they don't necessarily agree with the wine list, but you know, that's where they're working and, and so just chat with them and, and find out, you know, find out quickly from their attitude, from if, if they're, because it could be little gems in the making, you know, and, and in terms of staff and in terms of wine, so.

• 56:22Shane Parrish?

  So if...

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Always scouting.

• 56:24Shane Parrish?

  If I'm at home and I don't have a wine fridge, I think, I just want to make sure I understand this, you would recommend taking a red and putting it in almost like an ice bath for five or 10 minutes and then serving it?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  There's a super simple rule, the 20 minute rule.

• 56:37Shane Parrish?

  What is the 20 minute rule?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Take your whites out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving them and put your reds in the fridge 20 minutes before serving them. In case of doubt, just do that.

• 56:45Shane Parrish?

  That's an awesome...

• 56:46Speaker 01

  It's a very basic thing and it will work for most, right? And in the summertime, when it's super hot, it's 30 degrees outside, you're always bitter to have the wines a bit more chilled, too cold than too warm.

• 56:57Shane Parrish?

  Because they'll heat up as you're...

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Exactly, they'll heat up and they'll take a degree per minute once they're in the glass, right? So they heat up pretty quickly. If the wine's too warm, you know, other than putting... Ice cubes into it, which isn't great. There's not much you can do.

• 57:10Shane Parrish?

  I'm cognizant of your time. I just want to circle back to the Wine Atlas again.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:14Shane Parrish?

  Do you recommend going through that and learning about the regions by then going to the LCBO or the liquor store and then getting bottles from that region?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's nothing I like more than reading a book on a certain wine region and sitting with a glass of a wine. When I read about a certain wine or region, it actually makes me want to try it.

• 57:31Shane Parrish?

  Reading and wine, it's like a match made in heaven.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  So you're reading on Burgundy, go grab a bottle of Burgundy and, and right?

• 57:37Shane Parrish?

  And will you grab the same producer in different years and taste them at the same time, like in 2012, 2013?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, those, those kind of tastings are super educational, right? But it's not always easy to do because usually there's one vintage out on the market. So that's something you can do when you visit producers, right? But so take a book, pick a region, whatever, read on Burgundy, uh, go buy a Burgundy, but then organize a tasting with friends, right? Again, it's all about coming together and it's, it's, it's going to be fun when you're sitting there with your book and, and geeking out all alone and, but it'll be even more fun when you can, okay. Let's, okay, today, get a little group together. People are just making up tasting groups.

• 58:15Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  And you don't need to have any great knowledge. You're all gonna learn together, right? But, um, you know, pick a region and ask everybody to pick, bring a wine from that region. And okay, that day you're gonna be presented.

• 58:29Shane Parrish?

  That's a great idea.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Read up on it and give us like a 10, 15 minute.

• 58:33Shane Parrish?

  I love that.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Uh, overrun of what the region is and let's taste these wines together.

• 58:38Shane Parrish?

  How do I become a member at all of these little tasting groups?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  It's easy. Just get some friends.

• 58:44Shane Parrish?

  Last question. Is there anything that I can do, uh, if I do start a wine tasting group that would make a big difference that probably would take a while to figure out? That's different about how you approach it in terms of stay away from certain things?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, see, if you really want to learn, again, I can't stress enough the importance of, of having rigor and the methodology and, and a certain discipline, right? Because of course, uh, alcohol comes into play at one point, you know?

• 59:10Shane Parrish?

  Learning goes out the window.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Everybody's just too happy to make any sense, right?

• 59:15Shane Parrish?

  Which is also a good outcome.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Spitting is not a bad thing, right? It's one of the first things we learn how to do, spit wine. It allows you to taste 50 wines and wine sitting in your-

• 59:27Shane Parrish?

  I just can't do that. I have this aversion to it.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  You have, what's important to stress is that the learning process, you will get everything exactly the same out of the wine, except for the effect of the alcohol, right? Your appreciation of it, the evaluation of the body, of the structure of the acidity, the tannins, everything, the aromas, the taste. Spit it out or swallow it, same thing, except for the effects of the alcohol, right? So, when you're doing your official tasting with your friends, it doesn't have to be, "Don't make it..." Okay, next time you're having a dinner party, just say, "Okay, we'll start half an hour earlier. Everybody brings a bottle. Let's make it a theme, like let's just do Pinot Noir, let's just do Burgundy, let's just do Argentino, whatever. Everybody brings a wine and, okay, so we're tasting them, we're learning, we're trying to..."

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  And again, get some help from, you'll find somebody, you'll find wine consultants in stores that are super talented and more than happy to share and give you a few pointers on, "Okay, here's what you should do. You need a tasting grid. Okay, here's a good one."

• 1:00:29Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Something to go by. But that's super easy to find. If you do a little bit of research and have it validated by somebody who knows what they're talking about, because like everything else, there's a lot of useless information out there, yeah. So, and that's it.

• 1:00:43Shane Parrish?

  Well, thank you so much. This has been absolutely fascinating.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:00:52Shane Parrish?

  Hey, guys. This is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. You can find show notes at farnamstreetblog.com/podcast. That's F-A-R-N-A-M-S-T-R-E-E-T-B-L-O-G.com/podcast. You can also find information there on how to get a transcript. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to farnamstreetblog.com/newsletter. This is all the good stuff I've found on the web that week that I've read and shared with close friends, books I'm reading, and so much more. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening.

• 1:01:37Shane Parrish?

  You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. You're welcome. Thank you for listening.