Enology Part 1 (HOW TO DRINK WINE) with André Hueston Mack

To chill or not to chill? That is the question. And then a bunch more questions. Thankfully, author, winemaker, sommelier, and Enology expert, André Hueston Mack is on hand to explain Old World vs. New World wines, corks vs. caps, red, rosé, orange, and white wines, stemware, judging a wine by its label, the best glass of wine he’s ever tasted, needless snobbery, aeration, decanting, and what those legs are doing dancing around your glass. Also: how to open a bottle with no corkscrew. Next week: how to make wine. Stay tuned.

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

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, it's the Tic Tac that you dropped on the sidewalk that you're afraid someone might mistake for drugs and then be disappointed. Alleyword, and welcome to the world of wine. So, anology. It can be spelled with an O before the E or not. We're not in Britain. We're not going to pretend we are, so we're dropping the O. That's how you spell it in the country that I'm in. But either way, it comes from the Greek for wine, and an anologist, it's fully something you can major in and become degreed in, is schooled in the science of wines, or the study of the nature or qualities or varieties of wine. So, we are serving up two glasses of it this episode with a world-renowned sommelier and winemaker. And then next week, we're going to talk to a pair of married winemakers and anologists

• 0:44Alie Ward?

  who cover more of the behind the scenes of what it's like to run a winery. So, consider this first one kind of a how-to on enjoying and understanding and appreciating wine, and reading labels, and faking your way through a wine list or not, and how to chill, or not chill, with your wines. So, this ologist is someone I've been eyeing for so long, and their schedule is bonkers, but it was so worth the wait. At the very start of their career as a sommelier or a wine steward, they were named best young sommelier. They began working with the chef Thomas Keller, becoming his head sommelier. We'll talk about why that's a huge deal. They founded their own Mutant Noir Wines, meaning Black Sheep, but later rebranded to Maison Noir.

• 1:28Alie Ward?

  We'll talk about that, too. And they're an author of the book 99 Bottles: A Black Sheep's Guide to Life-Changing Wines. So, we will get to that way of life in just a moment, but first, just a quick thank you to patrons at Patreon.com/ologies who support the show for as little as a dollar a month and submit questions for the ologists. Thank you to everyone spreading the word about our kid-friendly spinoff called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, which are shorter and classroom-friendly, G-rated versions of ologies episodes. We won't be having one for this one, obviously, but thanks to everyone supporting our merch from ologiesmerch.com and tagging ologiesmerch, ologiesmerch on Instagram, so we can repost you. And thanks, as always, to folks Who leave reviews for Ologies, which help us so much. I read them all. I was so

• 2:13Alie Ward?

  touched to see your responses to last week's Oops! All Secrets wall-to-wall confessional episode. Thanks for listening. So glad we just got to hang out while we finish this episode. Also, thanks to Cio Says, who wrote a review saying, "Listening to Ologies is like reading a small, incredibly well-written book on your favorite topic, printed on paper that feels good on your fingers, in just the right font, but doing it while you scrub the tub clean, or lie on the floor because you are too tired to clean the tub, all while your friend passes you notes." Cio, Cio. Hey, I've got crib notes on wine grapes for you. Here you go. Also, thank you to sponsors of the show who make it possible to donate to a cause of the ologists choosing each week. How's your ponytail looking? Maybe

• 2:58Alie Ward?

  like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This episode is sponsored by Seed. Bloating, irregular bowel movement, gas. When your gut is off, it gets your attention. Seed's DS1 is a three-time award-winning probiotic,

• 3:43Alie Ward?

  clinically shown to improve regularity, reduce bloating, and alleviate gas, so you can move and eat more freely. Take better care of your gut with Seed. Get 25% off with code 25OLOGIES at seed.com/ologies. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. We have to say that. Okay, on to the episode. We logged on to a video interview and they had a glass of wine in hand and a very cool, down-to-earth aura with infectious curiosity and a lot of knowledge about their work. And I'd like to share a quote of theirs to just get you into the vibe. They say, "Wine is not a beverage reserved for the elite, but can

• 4:26Alie Ward?

  and should be enjoyed by everyone." So, let's get into anthology. We'll chat about red versus rosé versus orange versus white wines, food pairings, wine glasses, how to open a bottle without a corkscrew, how your favorite wine got its name, judging a wine by its label, wine snobbery, aeration, decanting, to chill or not to chill, and what those legs are with author, winemaker, sommelier, and anthologyist, Andre Houston Mack. Oh, he him.

• 5:13Alie Ward?

  Hi.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 5:16Alie Ward?

  I'm so glad you're here.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Hey. I'm excited to be here. Hold on, I gotta pour up. I just got off the plane.

• 5:23Alie Ward?

  Oh, man.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  You know, so, I'm sorry. You know, I'm not rude. I would offer you some, but...

• 5:28Alie Ward?

  I have a watered-down Diet Dr. Pepper, which sucks.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 5:33Alie Ward?

  Comparatively.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Drink them if you got them.

• 5:37Alie Ward?

  What are you drinking?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  A little bit of a Chenin Blanc tank sample from one of the vineyards we work with.

• 5:43Alie Ward?

  You work with seven, 13? How many vineyards do you work with?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  We work with like quite a few. On an average year, maybe 16, 17, it just depends. We get our choice to pick between both of them, but yeah, we make quite a bit of wine.

• 5:55Alie Ward?

  So, you're a sommelier and a winemaker?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, I got into wine, so it was sommelier, and then that next transition for me was really wanting to continue to learn about wine outside of the four walls of the restaurant. And I felt like if I could make my own wine, I could continue to learn, but also I could be an entrepreneur. And so, yeah, I started this company back in 2007.

• 6:15Alie Ward?

  And this is Mesol Noir.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Miss Onnoir Wine, we've been through some name changes. The alcohol business is pretty litigious.

• 6:21Alie Ward?

  And if your wine brand even remotely sounds like another wine brand by accident, you can expect multi-generationally wealthy vineyards to lawyer up. But his name is now secure. And Andre isn't a stranger to the cutthroat world of business and rich people. He worked in the financial sector for a while, fielding calls about stock prices. But Cubicle life was not for him.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I think the moment that was just lost for me is when, just more like, I'd love to interaction with people physically, like, you know, being able to like, talk to them, read body language, walk up to a group of strangers. And that part right there was the part that kind of made me think, ah, it's time to go. Like, maybe I want to do something else.

• 7:03Alie Ward?

  And then when the gigantic bank he worked for merged with another, a door opened, or an escape hatch padded with a little extra money.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  So they didn't need our department anymore. So we could reapply or we could take severance and leave. And that felt like the right opportunity for me.

• 7:20Alie Ward?

  Maybe this is totally off course, but were you drawn to some of the storytelling with each wine? I feel like every wine has like a personality and a history. And who loves it and where it's going? Like, was that constant learning part of it for you?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, well, it's the whole idea of, you know, it's history, biology, chemistry. And then the new part was telling the stories about what made these wines great. The local people made the local wines to go with the local food. And so hence, you hear me say lots of times, you know, if it grows together, it goes together.

• 7:53Alie Ward?

  Oh, I love that.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  It was just such a fascinating time, like learning something new, being able to dive into it, giving it your everything, every waking moment. And then being able to go to work, go to a restaurant and apply those things that you learned.

• 8:06Alie Ward?

  You mentioned personalities. For so many years as a sommelier, like an expert, do you ever see like different personalities gravitating toward different wines? Can you clock someone where you're like, this is going to be like a thick-bodied red? Or this person's definitely a rosé girly?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  See, I must clear that. Cause that's a little profiling there. Yes. And what I would say is mainly is because we knew them, but there were definitely types. No, that's what's great about wine. It's like, um, wine was about the moment. You know, this is what I tell people. I said, your relationship with wine is not about monogamy, or it shouldn't be. Mine isn't. Mine's about exploring and tasting everything. And then not to find a soulmate is just to define different wines that you like for different occasions. You know, it's like, oh, so I'm going to this restaurant. I like to have this with this. Oh, you know, what we're going to an Italian steakhouse, you know, I want Brunello, right? It's Italian steak wine. You know, I'm going to choose a different wine than I would choose if I was going to the beach and we were having oysters, right?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  That to me is the fun part about wine. It's like dressing up. It's like an accessory that you bring, right? You go to the beach, you wear a certain attire. You bring certain things. You might bring certain things to eat on the beach. So all of those things to me, what's always just fascinating because it was like, it's, it's how you tell a story. I can tell you more about a situation, less about the people coming in and like looking at their shoes, their watch, their clothes, whether they had a dress shirt on with a, with a fleece on top, right? With dress pants on, right? But more I like to look at like, oh, we're going to this place. So this is what we should bring. I like this for backyard barbecue, depending on who's there. Uh, you know what? Let's bring a larger format, you know, maybe not as expensive, just, you know,

• 9:51Speaker 01

  bigger bottles show more festivity in that way. And it's about sharing. So I don't know. I just like the idea of, of the social aspect of wine too, right? It is the conduit, it's the gel that brings us all together.

• 10:02Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Wine should be, you know, like 20%, it's, it's in the background. It sets the mood, the theme. Any more than that, you know, then it becomes a wine tasting or a wine dinner or somewhat obnoxious. I'm not against any of those things. I've been in those rooms. I like to be in those rooms. But I think, you know, most of the time when we're talking about wine and outings, wine is there to set the mood.

• 10:22Alie Ward?

  You know, you've been a somme at French Laundry. Thomas Keller's restaurant, which is, I've never even been, I've, I've known like three people who have gone. It's such a destination, like a bucket list restaurant. So chef Thomas Keller is behind New York's Per Se and Northern California's The French Laundry, which is a confusing name for a food establishment. But the building outside of Napa was a clothes cleaning business and ye olde times. But both The French Laundry and Per Se have been awarded three Michelin stars and various James Beard awards. Thomas Keller is like a Meryl Streep level of honors in the restaurant business.

• 11:04Alie Ward?

  A meal, for example, will set you back at minimum $500 a person. And getting a table has been described by restaurant goers, I looked on Reddit, as Taylor Swift era's tour, levels of difficulty. That is verbatim, just refreshing a webpage, crossing your fingers. On the first of the month for the following month, at promptly 10 a.m., you can try for a spot at The French Laundry. But diners recommend that you alert your credit card company that an unusually large purchase may be coming through. If you're like, hell no, never, gas is $7 a gallon. You can check out Thomas Keller's cookbooks from the library for free and his roasted chicken recipe is like the gold standard for poultry.

• 11:46Alie Ward?

  But yes, imagine, just imagine being the person who knows and recommends wine to diners there. My intestines buckle just imagining the stress. What's the training like to become a sommelier, like at that high a level?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  It's really intense.

• 12:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people, you stay there long enough, what people say, a common thing you hear is like, they made me into the person that I am. And a lot of those experiences, they're young people, I was young, or, you know? It's interesting to say that, but like somewhat your values, what you should value or not, or just a mentality. But this is a place that offers you discipline. It was intense. You know, up until that point, I had always associated hard work with like your back having to hurt. You know what I mean? It was like back breaking work. Now it's that too, but like also what you realize is that it's like the mental load was heavy. That part was intense where hyper alert, like just making sure that everything went well.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Like you're supposed to be on alert. So the guest experience is seamless, but it was intense. I mean, for like New York, I mean, they hired a famous retired ballerina that teaches how to walk with grace through the dining room.

• 13:03Alie Ward?

  Wow. Wow.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Where like, you know, passing feathers and doing the mignonette and training. And so, you know, it was a lot of that, like a lot of information, understanding things, but you need to know why. Why does that work well here? Why does the farmer do it that way? In hindsight, it was, it's funny because you say it was like one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had. But then it's also like, yeah, there's a little, I wouldn't say trauma in that way. It's just kind of like basic training. When you go through something, there's some training, things that are, that are hard. And they're supposed to be, right? They're supposed to be uncomfortable because the standard is so high. You know, they used to have this saying there. It's like work to impress the person that you work side by side with. Because there's nobody in the world that's in it like you are.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And any guest that walks through the front door will be blown away if you can blow your peer away. And it was kind of that thing, not a competition in that sense, but more of a, a bond to say that, that we're going to push each other each day to be the best and push our way to perfection, which is something that is unachievable.

• 14:06Alie Ward?

  I mean, that's the Ivy Leagues, you know, you don't get much higher in America especially. But when it comes to global wines too, you worked in Napa as well. You've got a lot of wineries that you work with and you're a vinter, you know, a lot of places in Oregon. Can you explain a little bit, and I know this is like a huge question, but imagine that you have never tasted wine or you're a kind of person that like opens up a wine list and like starts sweating. Can you explain a little bit of what to look for in California versus French, maybe versus Spanish wines? What's some broad strokes if you know nothing?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  I guess kind of the easiest way to do it is just to break it like in the wine world, we talk about new world versus old world.

• 14:57Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Old world is, you know, Western Europe. So you look at Western Europe, the traditional wine grown regions and Spain, UK would be included in that. And then you look at what new world is. So new world is North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand.

• 15:11Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Old world leads with not fruit, but more with like what they call terroir, more of the taste of the land. So it's more, you know, earthy kind of flavors and those kinds of things that you taste first. And then there's fruit.

• 15:24Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  And new world leads with fruit. So generally, if you put your nose in the glass, it's going to be fruit. So thinking about new world, new world is a lot warmer. The warmer the grape grown region is, the hotter it gets. Hotter it gets, the riper it gets, more sugars can be translated into alcohol. Right? So this is that that kind of pendulum, like the higher sugar levels will give you more alcohol. So you have ripe grapes and then you enter your yeast, yeast eat the sugar, kind of have that Pac-Man. And then they poop out alcohol, right? So you see that little trail? And so you have more, more sugar means you have more potential for alcohol. More potential for alcohol means more weight and body on the palate is how it's transcribed, like how you feel it. So old world wines tend to be lower in alcohol, more acidic, right?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  They have acid. So acid is an amplifier, right? You accentuate acidity on the sides of your tongue. So if your sides of your tongue start to tingle or you start to salivate, that means the wine is high in acid. So what you have in old world wines is they lead with acid. New world wines lead with fruit and ripeness, which some people perceive as sweetness, but not sweet.

• 16:27Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  So when you divide it that way, that's how you know, you can say, okay, if I'm looking at wines from California or from South America, Chile, Argentina, those wines are going to tend to be more fruity and more ripe and more alcohol. Old world wines, France, Germany, Italy, those wines are from cooler climates, which don't have as much sun. So they have lower potential alcohol, so lower alcohol, more acidity. And then they tend to have a little bit more nuances in the flavor. So you're thinking about mushroom, you're thinking about like mineral gravel, like all those things you hear people say, those tend to lead. In old world wines versus in new world wines, even though you find them in both, but that's the generality that I find that really kind of helps people break down just the vast world of wine.

• 17:13Alie Ward?

  And if you need just a quick primer about how wine got into your body and how long it took, you can think at least 8,000 years, according to UPenn biomolecular archaeologist, Dr. Patrick McGovern, who has been called the Indiana Jones of ancient alcohol. The whole process is sort of magical, is what he told National Geographic in 2011, saying, "You could even call fermentation the first biotechnology." And sadly, Dr. McGovern, I just looked him up, he passed away last August at the age of 80, but not before securing like hero status among fellow fermentation scholars, who according to his New York Times obituary, refer to themselves as "drinkologists."

• 17:56Alie Ward?

  I'm sorry, as an ologiologist, a drinkologist sucks shit. And I'm sure they wouldn't mind me rebranding them to paleoanologists. Just change your business cards, forget drinkology ever happened. But if you're hungry and you want to break bread with your wines of antiquity, we have a gastro Egyptology episode on making sourdough bread using ancient yeast from Egyptian tombs. We also have a zymology episode about brewing beer. But if you want to start with alcohol drinkingologies, you may want to listen to our melatology episode about bees, since the first hooch that was ever cultivated may have been mead or like fermented honey water. And is it actually honey wine?

• 18:41Alie Ward?

  Because sometimes it's called honey wine. Nope, no grapes. So honey wine is a misnomer. Wine by definition is fermented grape juice. And most wines are made from this species called Vitus pinifera. And wine making grapes are small, thick skinned and really tart. They look like dusty blueberries compared to a big, thinner skinned table grape that you would eat. But both are typically from the same species, which can have up to 10,000 different cultivars. Also- So you can't just plant a wine grape seed and then become a vinter in a few years. Them things are sliced, they're Franken-vined onto hardier rootstock. So they gotta just keep like sowing limbs on essentially.

• 19:26Alie Ward?

  Because the rootstock that they use is more bug resistant. And this is just like the secret truth behind apple trees from our pomology episodes. And also, we got a lot of episodes. If you're curious about cider, we have a whole ciderology episode. But cider is not wine, so pardon au moins.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  And then you can go in and break into your nuances of, you know, French red wines are different because of the different regions. So Bordeaux are kind of more, you know, brooding, more power in that sense. You know, more gravel, more like oak barrel and aging. And then you look at something like further south in Burgundy, like Pinot Noir, it's a little bit more elegant. Pinot Noir is a thin-skinned grape, it evolves in the glass. So lots of different styles, even just in one country. But generally speaking, the overall rule is that newer wines tend to be a little bit more on the fruit spectrum and more alcohol. Whereas European wines tend to be less alcohol, more nuanced and acidic.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  So to recap.

• 20:22Alie Ward?

  So when it comes to like types of wines, generally speaking, and this was news to me, I didn't know. Old world wines are named for the region that the grapes were grown in. Think Burgundy or Chianti or Chablis, which is actually a Chardonnay grape. And famously Champagne, which legally must be grown in the region of Champagne, France. And this is even written in the Treaty of Versailles. And also just Champagne, Illinois, we're not talking about you. Although there is a place named Champagne in Switzerland and they got away with calling their wine Champagne. They're like, people won't know. But the EU gave them a wrist slap and they conceded that it was tricky of them and that they'd phase it out.

• 21:04Alie Ward?

  Even though their sales when they did that dropped by 75%. And you know, people working at those companies were sweating, but what can you do? France wins. So old world wines, you can look for them by region. And different regions tend to produce grapes and wines with different characteristics. Now, new world Wines like from America, Chile, Argentina, Australia, they tend to be named by the grape variety like Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, which is very popular red wine, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay. And again, these tend to be more fruit forward with higher sugar in the grape and then higher alcohol content. Generally speaking, there are variations. I love you, but don't email me.

• 21:48Alie Ward?

  What's with the swirling in the glass looking for legs? Is that sugar content?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  It's alcohol content. But what's interesting is it's less of that. So swirling the glass here, like you see me doing, this is more about aeration.

• 22:01Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  So the wine has been in the bottle for, you know, maybe 18 months or something like that. So you want to pour the wine in the glass and this helps with helping the wine open up, right? So the glass serves as like a mini decanter that you can drink from. And so you pour the wine in and you swirl and you see me doing this. A lot of times it's more of a nervous tick, right, than anything else. But this is like, you know, so it's just aeration, letting air get into the wine. So oxygen is the enemy to wine, right? Wine is a living, breathing thing. And as soon as the cork is pulled or the top is open, air starts to attack the wine and starts to break down the wine and start to soften the wine. But to a certain point, the wine will deteriorate and become vinegar, depending on how long it's left out.

• 22:43Alie Ward?

  And so vinegar, you can note the vine even in the word, which I never clocked before, means wine turned sour. And that's because it involves a double fermentation. Like in wine, yeast gobbles up the sugars and spits out alcohol. But the second fermentation happens when bacteria gobble up the alcohol and make acidic acid. And oxygenation in general can enhance or it can damage a wine, depending on the wine and the amount of exposure to oxygen. So oxidation can happen in the wine making process and we'll talk about that more next week. It can also happen in the bottle. It can happen once the bottle

• 23:23Alie Ward?

  is open and certainly after a bottle's been opened, enjoyed and re-corked if you didn't finish it. So some people Close up a half empty or half full bottle, depending on how you look at it, with a vacuum pump, sometimes with mixed results. And there are even gadgets to replace the oxygen in the bottle with an inert gas like argon to keep it fresher. But let's go back to what happens when you uncork or unscrew a bottle and pour it into a decanter, which is like a serving pitcher for wine, or just straight into your glass. And then you swirl around feeling very fancy.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  And so what you see too, what you can see now here.

• 24:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Is you see what people call the legs and you start to see how it looks like tears are forming. Right. But what it is, is alcohol, it's alcohol, it's evaporation. So what you have is the alcohol is being evaporated. So the overflow is the alcohol coming up, pushing up, being evaporated. And on either side of that is the tears that fall down. So what that really tells you, people are like, look at those legs. Generally, what you're looking for is how fast or slow they fall versus if they are in here or not, or if they look good.

• 24:41Alie Ward?

  So the legs that you're seeing dripping down the inside of the glass are actually arms of alcohol reaching up, if you will. And when it comes to how much alcohol is in the wine, you can swirl it around. You can think about it. You can deliberate mentally, but you can also just look at the label for ABV or alcohol by volume. There's just numbers, which it feels less like being a cool witch, looking at tinctures. But some people like math.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  So that's the whole idea. And what that tells you, the slower they fall, the more alcohol.

• 25:15Alie Ward?

  Got it.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  It's one of those things too, where you can just pick up the bottle and look at the back. Right. You know what I mean? But it's just one of the things in wine that I find to be, you know, trivial, but like fun. I think I have a fun time with a lot of those kinds of things just in the business too. You know, the small snippets of what they know about wine. And they can be fun moments to really kind of educate and let people understand like, oh, this is the reason why it's that way. And, you know, some of it's folklore, some of it isn't. But here's the real kind of truth behind it.

• 25:41Alie Ward?

  I feel like I see red wine decanted to breathe more than I see white. What's up with that?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's true. This is a great segue. You're good. You're good. I like this.

• 25:51Alie Ward?

  Thank you.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  So we just right now, we were talking about the evaporation and we were talking about alcohol and we're talking about how oxygen starts to eat away at wine and make it deteriorate, soften it up, right? And it's the tannin. So what you have is in red wine, so let's back up a little bit. You have white wine, you have red wine. So the color actually comes from the skin, but not the juice inside.

• 26:13Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  And so what you do is it's you soak, most red wine grapes extract the color, you soak the juice on the skins, right? So you just crush it and it's called like a, you do cold soak and you're extracting color. And while you're extracting color from the skins, you're also extracting tannin. So tannin is like the compound that sucks the moisture out of your mouth. So people who enjoy black tea understands that, you know, that dryness that you get in the inside of your mouth from tea, that's the same thing. And that's a preservative in wine. And those can be bitter, you know, they're rough. And when you decant a red wine, there's a couple of reasons why you decant a wine, but normally what you're talking about is you're decanting a red wine to let it breathe, right? And so let it breathe, but also you're helping break down the wine slowly. So it could be a young

• 26:55Speaker 01

  wine, a youthful wine that needs a little time in a decanter to kind of just soften the edges, if you will. It makes the wine a little bit more palatable, less tannic. And so what you're doing is you're allowing the oxygen to come in. And generally you're doing on a wide surface. So you know a decanter that has a wide surface.

• 27:13Alie Ward?

  And so, yeah, a decanter is something from which you decant, something you pour from. It's a pitcher, but with expensive grape juice. You can picture one of those science chem lab flasks. The Erlenmeyer is a flask that you would see in clip art to mean like science. And it has a flat, wide bottom and a skinny rim. Rumor has it that even one of the world's most esteemed wine critics, the late John Michael Broadbent, enjoyed an Erlenmeyer flask as a decanter. But heads up, if you're like, we got some of those at work, don't, do not smuggle one out of the lab. You do not know what it's been used for and

• 27:58Alie Ward?

  Dawn dish soap may work on oily birds, but it's not enough to save you if you've got a weird flask with some crazy stuff in it. So get a new one or just go to Home Goods and find a wine decanter on sale.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So something like this. You see how it has a broad?

• 28:12Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  You want more surface to air ratio so the wine can be exposed and be softened. Another reason why you decant red wine is generally because it's an old wine. You would decant it in a smaller decanter, more narrow. And what you're doing here is you're removing the sediment. As a wine ages, some of the pigment of the color and particles start to fall out of the wine. And it produces this fine kind of sediment on the bottom of the bottle. It's not that it will hurt you, just kind of interrupts the experience of drinking wine. Right? Because it can get grainy or gritty. For me, like, I can't drink orange juice with pulp in it. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, I don't know if I'm supposed to swallow or chew. You know, those kind of things. It's weird. So basically, you're decanning the wine just to remove the particles and the sediment from the bottle into a drinking vessel that you can pour.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  When the wine throws sediment, that's what they call it. Normally, when they have that, the wine is old. So at this point, air is definitely detrimental to this wine. And it can have a shorter period of time that it can be exposed to oxygen. And you want to be able to drink the wine in that window, depending on how old. Sometimes it could be 45 minutes.

• 29:14Alie Ward?

  So for younger wine, you'd pour from the bottle into that decanter or pitcher that has a nice wide base, so it has some air contact. And then some of the alcohol and those edges get aerated away. Now, for an older wine, you'd use a more narrow decanter. So it didn't have as much air contact, but it would help you pour off. The sediment stays at the bottom. But, okay, so decanting is just for red wines, right?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  And then you see some people decant white wine. And generally, when you see people decanning white wine, it could be to help break down the wine. Maybe there's a little bit of skin contact. But generally, you see some white wines being decanted for temperature control. So maybe the wine came straight out of the, you know, your refrigerator or your Eurocave or whatever. And you want to pour that bottle into a decanter, get more surface to air ratio to help cool the wine down and get it to the right temperature.

• 30:06Alie Ward?

  Just a side note, a Eurocave is one of those huge, nice wine fridges. I don't have one. And temperature-wise, storage-wise, obviously.

• 30:16Alie Ward?

  Red wines served lower than room temperature, but white wines tend to be cooler. Is there a reason for that? I'm sure there is. Possibly be any logic.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that has really been a, you know, somewhat of an epidemic in this country. I would say is that a lot of the red wines are being served too hot and the white wine's too cold. So in a white wine, when it's served too cold, there's no nuance. It's like a numbing effect. And I remember going, when I was in college, when I discovered that if you put tequila, you would put like the shitty tequila in the freezer and you put it in the freezer and it would never freeze.

• 30:54Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Right? So how you know if your roommate was drinking it and filling it with water, you'd put it in the freezer? And the bottle would crack, right? So we had, we've seen that happen a couple of times. But so it takes the bite off. So when you drink tequila that's been in the freezer, it numbs it. So you don't taste anything. It just goes down, which is very dangerous, might I add.

• 31:14Alie Ward?

  Right. You don't want to make it too easy for Jose.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Yeah. And then, and then you have it and you're like, okay, but there's no nuance. You don't get the pepper and all the things that you taste in tequila or any spirit or any wine. So it numbs it. So the fact that you might've paid $200 for that, you know, to have that great white Burgundy experience. But if it's served too cold, then you don't even get to pick up on the different nuances that actually tell that story of that wine and set it apart. And the reason why you paid that amount of money for it.

• 31:43Alie Ward?

  And as the temperature hits closer to the 60 degree Fahrenheit mark, we can taste more of the wine. And for more on that, we have a whole gustatology episode that goes into way greater detail on how aroma influences the taste of things. And yeah, how your whole taste receptor system functions. Also, this, just a heads up, drinking an iced beverage with your meal means that your food tastes less flavorful. And I am an ice queen. This is news to me. So do not overchill your white wines. 43 degrees works well for a sparkling white wine. But on the other end of the white wines, like a Chardonnay, some experts say is best around 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 Celsius.

• 32:28Alie Ward?

  But your refrigerator is probably set to around 37 degrees Fahrenheit. So let it sit on the counter a few minutes. Like let it de-chill. A white wine should not be icy, Andre says.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And so with red wine, what you have is when red wine is served to one. And so we had this notion when we said room temperature. Well, that was room temperature, really meaning cellar temperature, maybe 40, 50 years ago. So not to get anybody upset here, you can call it what you want, but the earth is a lot warmer place than it used to be. And so

• 32:57Alie Ward?

  Anyone who gets this at that is like, are you kidding me? Don't worry. It's a science podcast.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm just checking. I'm just checking. I ain't trying to mess nobody's audience up.

• 33:11Alie Ward?

  That should not be controversial, dude.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Should not be.

• 33:15Alie Ward?

  It's a fact.

• 33:18Alie Ward?

  So while the ideal wine cellar is 55 degrees or 12, 13 degrees Celsius, the temperatures of cellars, yes, they're rising. I fact checked this.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  So that being said, room temperature is a lot different than it used to be. Red wine should be served somewhere around 66. I would say 65 to 66, you know, under 70 for sure is how I like to drink them. And it's funny because a lot of people are like, wow, it's really got a chill. And it's like, no, that's how you're supposed to drink it. When a red wine or any wine is too hot, especially red wine, it accentuates the alcohol. So all you get is this burning effect of the wine tasting like it has way much too much alcohol. So it amplifies the alcohol. And that doesn't allow for a great wine drinking experience.

• 34:01Alie Ward?

  Ah, well, you know, that reminds me that the thing that's going to hit your nose is going to be what is kind of emanating off. And when it comes to glasses, when it comes to like the glass you're drinking up has a wider base and a more narrow nose to it. I always think of, uh, did you ever watch, oh my God, Olivia Pope? What was that show?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Um.

• 34:26Alie Ward?

  Why can't I remember it right now?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Oh shit, we did a whole thing. Scandal, scandal, scandal.

• 34:31Alie Ward?

  Scandal, scandal.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  It's handled.

• 34:35Alie Ward?

  Olivia Pope had like a goldfish bowl on a stem and also red wine. She always had like the best white cashmere coats and I'm like, the fact that she could keep that stuff clean. I was like, good on her. I couldn't. But you know, I think about those big globe glasses and red wine and these narrow glasses. I'm sure you've seen the meme of like a heavy stemware that if you are at a restaurant and you get a glass of wine and like heavy stemware, you know, it's going to be garbage. Like if the glass is not absolutely like a Faberge egg level of fragility, it's going to be a shitty glass of wine. But where does the stemware come in and the experience of what you're drinking it in?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  You know, that was really funny because that was definitely kind of the mentality that I took when I opened a little wine bar here in my neighborhood back in 2020. And I remember, I think I was talking to my mother and I was like, no, no, no, you want to set the tone right at the beginning. So they might look at the wine by the glass page, but I just want people to know when they touch the glass, they'll understand why we don't serve $9 glasses of wine, right? You know what I mean? It's like, oh no, it is on, right? Even though, even though the glass might cost more than the bottle of wine you just bought, but that's okay because it's a tool. A wine glass is a tool, right?

• 35:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  So you want like to have the most seamless transition from the wine in the glass to your palate. And so what you want is a very thin rimmed glass that comes to the mouth. These are some of my favorite here.

• 36:00Alie Ward?

  And he's drinking a Chenon Blanc and the glass he's holding, it's very fetching. It's this angular stemmed one. It's elegant. It's modern. Think of like a tall triangle on a stick with a very thin stem held so that the wine doesn't warm in your hand, which is nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And sure, there were really nice glasses like this for, I checked like $16 on sale at CB2, or a higher quality one can cost around 50 bucks just for one. There are so many wine glasses. Some purists stick to very specific bowl shapes, like wide, round ones, but say a champagne flute, those are tall and narrow to prevent. The bubbles from fizzing off too quickly.

• 36:45Alie Ward?

  But old champagne glasses were wider. That's because they had a hollow stem, which were a real bitch to clean, which is why people don't use them anymore. But like in the sixties, seventies, whatever, they'd have this hollow stem where the bubbles would keep going up, but they had a wider, open face. Anyway, there's physics behind each glass, which is fun to deconstruct, like evolutionary traits. Like, what's the why? There's almost always a why.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  And then you have a wide base. So you have a wide base. So you have more surface to air ratio. And then you have a more narrow top, right? And that's almost kind of like cone or that narrowing really helps direct the wine on the palate. But as far as aroma, it's helping really direct it into your nose. You know, you want to inhale through your nose

• 37:30Speaker 01

  and then you want to exhale through your mouth, right? So you want to open up your olfactory senses. So inhale through your nose, blowing out through your mouth, not like this, you know? Sometimes I say that, people are like,

• 37:41Speaker 01

  that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about.

• 37:44Alie Ward?

  Andre takes like a good whiff.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  You know?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  And then you can constantly smell. You know, 80% of taste is actually smell. You know, I learned that through eating Brussels sprouts growing up as a kid. That was the magic trick.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  To plug up the plug hole.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  And glasses can get really expensive. And to me, they matter until they don't. So, hey, I got this great bottle of wine. If I don't have anything else to drink it out of, it'll be a plastic cup or the bottle, right? Ultimately, what the experience ultimately is enjoying the wine. And that's contradictory in some ways because people will say, oh, well, if you drink it out of a shitty cup, it's like, but ultimately, the wine is supposed to deliver the pleasure. The tools and the things that you have around you are supposed to make those things easier to enjoy. And that's kind of how we always looked at glassware. Even though like I'm a glassware fanatic, I like, I have a whole bunch right here. But like, I don't bring my own glassware to the restaurant. I'm not that kind of guy.

• 38:39Alie Ward?

  Do some people do that? Do they open up like a briefcase like in Paul Pfeiffer and it's got like a special mask?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  It's handcuffed to their wrist.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do. And in certain occasions, I understand it. You know, so in New York City, if you ever want to watch Sommeliers in the Wild.

• 38:54Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can go to this place called Woo's Wonton. And generally speaking, they're generally the people, the table that's not all Asian, right? And there's huge tables with lazy Susan. The food is amazing. And then basically, it's where we go and like, we meet and hang out. You order this amazing food and everybody brings wine. So there'll be boxes of wine, and then some people will bring their own glassware. And I feel like that is the okay occasion to do that.

• 39:18Alie Ward?

  Right. That's a tool of the trade. And that's among peers. And you want to have the best experience with it. But speaking of tools of the trade, I'm so curious. I can't even imagine how many bottles you've uncorked. What do you use to open them? Do you use a simple wine key? Are you one of those things where, you know, the, the ones that look like hairy armpits? They go.

• 39:39Alie Ward?

  Or are you like an electronic wine opener? Like, what's the gold standard?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Okay, we'll work backwards. Electronic? Absolutely not.

• 39:47Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  There was a thing called the rabbit, but actually, I think that term got taken over by another industry. When I say rabbit, I'm like, they're confused. There's some confusion here.

• 39:57Alie Ward?

  That's a different electronic.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  No, you can't open a bottle of wine with that one.

• 40:00Alie Ward?

  It's a different episode.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Different one.

• 40:03Alie Ward?

  And I will say, use the corkscrew that fits you best. I know friends who use electric ones because their hands need some extra help. That's fine, of course. This is just some pretty inside baseball for Psalms. And yes, the rabbit corkscrew looks kind of like if a garlic press had a curly proboscis. And the corkscrew that looks like a head on top with two arms that have hairy armpits, that's called a wing corkscrew, where you screw the curly worm into the cork, and then you jazzercise the arms or the wings down to leverage out the cork. What does Andre think about those?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  So the jazzercise ones?

• 40:39Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Those? Absolutely not. Those are the ones that you always get in the Airbnb and you're like, fuck. And then you end up breaking one off, you know what I mean? I call it the jazzercise job. And you're like, shit, what's happening? Then, then also, which I love. And I have some stuff over there. Hold on a second. Hold on.

• 40:58Alie Ward?

  So Andre is looking around his desk right now for a wine key that's like two pieces nestled together, a short handle with this two-pronged fork. It looks kind of like a miniature roast carving fork with a corkscrew between those two tines.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  All right, I'm back.

• 41:14Alie Ward?

  Nice.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  We got here.

• 41:15Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  All right, so here, this is called the Duran. So this is a special key, right? You see it here, right? And

• 41:22Alie Ward?

  Oh, nice.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  All right. And so what's interesting about this one is that it's two wine tools in one. And so what you might have seen before is something that looks like this.

• 41:33Alie Ward?

  Oh, yeah, it's like a two-pronged, yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like Wolverine, right?

• 41:37Alie Ward?

  Yeah, you definitely could kill someone, yeah, with that.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  And so this was called a butler's corkscrew. And they would take it and you wedge it between the side of the cork and the bottle. And then you turn and turn and eventually you pull it out. So you see these all the time, inexpensive, kind of looks old school.

• 41:52Alie Ward?

  Yeah, and my notion would be to sink it in like rattlesnake fangs. And that is not correct. You do not stab the cork, right?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  You do not stab the cork.

• 42:02Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  You do not do that. And what makes this device different, called the Duran, is that it's the second piece. You screw it down in the cork and then you turn it all together. So when you use this, this keeps the cork intact.

• 42:13Alie Ward?

  Smart.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  So you see a lot of these at fancy restaurants that have, you know, a really killer wine selection.

• 42:19Alie Ward?

  Because that literal two-pronged approach is helpful for long and old corks, which, you know, likely you're not going to find at a TJI Friday happy hour. Because time and place for everything, folks. But the most common wine opener, of course.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  And then generally speaking, what people use is what's called a waiter's corkscrew, things that you've seen so many times before. You know, this one is called the pool tab. You know, you've seen these, you might see some people in restaurants. And then you might have seen something like this.

• 42:48Alie Ward?

  And Andre pulls out what looks like a lovely little simplified Swiss Army knife with a corkscrew nestled between these two outfolding levers.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  This right here is Craig Hill and Andre Mack.

• 43:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, I don't know that.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  This is, yeah, this is the best wine key.

• 43:02Alie Ward?

  Hell, yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  So I designed this with my friends down in, um, in Greenpoint. And we designed what we have thought as one of the best wine keys.

• 43:11Alie Ward?

  So it's like the other wine key, but it looks like half a pliers on one side.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so it has that, this ratchet system.

• 43:18Alie Ward?

  Cool. I've never seen one of these. This is amazing.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Just the small details in it that make it the best wine king.

• 43:25Alie Ward?

  Oh, it's beautiful. Let's say that you are on a beach, you're camping, someone has brought a bottle of wine, no one brought a corkscrew. What do you do in a pinch?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Okay, so generally speaking, and I've seen some where the people will take their shoe off and they put the wine, the base of the wine in the shoe, and then they kind of hammer it up against a tree or hard place. My thing, when in doubt, push it in.

• 43:48Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Just pushing it. Push it real good? So I've been in a hotel where I was trying to get into a bottle of wine. I just took the back end of my toothbrush and pushed it in.

• 43:57Alie Ward?

  Nice.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 43:58Alie Ward?

  Get a stick.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, get a stick and just push it in. You know, I've seen some people where they will maybe drill a screw in and then try to pull it from that, or, you know, all kinds of different stuff. But ultimately, I think on the beach, I feel like you're not enjoying, you know, an old bottle of wine. You know what I mean? It's like, like when we, remember earlier, we talked about having a wine that kind of fits the activity?

• 44:19Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  So if it's not a screw cap and it has a cork in it, generally, I would say just push it in. That cork is not really going to do anything to the wine, and you go ahead and you start to enjoy the wine.

• 44:29Alie Ward?

  As one of the world's finest Psalms, how do you feel about screw caps?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  I love them. Screw caps, to me, are just all about getting the party started. It tells you what the wine is meant for. You know, a lot of those are like, you know, they're meant to be aged two to five years. Maybe some of them can go longer, but generally speaking, screw caps are just a sign of like, this wine is accessible and like, um, let's get with it.

• 44:51Alie Ward?

  Awesome.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Let's get the party going.

• 44:53Alie Ward?

  Let's not slam this against a tree in our shoe. If you've forgotten.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yes, let's not do that.

• 45:00Alie Ward?

  Okay, I have great questions from listeners, uh, who submitted approximately 1 million, but we'll ask you just a couple. All right, next week, we're going to dive into more about caps versus corks and the whole backstory of how you make wine and how it goes from the vine onto a shelf into your glass. But first, let's donate to a cause of his choosing. And this week, it's Food Bank for New York City, which is New York City's largest hunger relief organization. They also serve New Yorkers with SNAP assistance, personal finance support, connections to health support, and more to build self-sufficiency and create a lasting stability. So that again was Food Bank New York, and thank you to Andre for the heads up on them and the sponsors of the show who make these donations every week possible.

• 45:46Alie Ward?

  How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform.

• 46:29Alie Ward?

  Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before Ologies existed. After procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one evening. They have templates, they have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients, you can get paid. They have built-in tools for scheduling and invoicing and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website, whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up, or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, dude, Squarespace. So head to Squarespace.com/ologies for a free trial.

• 47:14Alie Ward?

  And when you're ready to launch, use offer code OLOGIES to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it. Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Ugh, trips are full of unexpected discoveries.

• 47:57Alie Ward?

  Maybe you see a sea slug, or you find out that your friend still sleeps with a stuffed animal. But when it comes to your vacation rental, there should not be any surprises. When you book a Verbo vacation rental, if what you expect isn't what you get, Verbo Care has you covered. If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy, we're going on vacay. So book today on the Verbo app. If you know you Verbo, terms apply. See verbo.com/trust for details. Here's some things that I love to wear, okay? I like wearing all black because it matches. Also, a sleeveless Mongolian cashmere sweater. Those are some things that I find myself reaching for all the time, and they have a

• 48:41Alie Ward?

  permanent place in my wardrobe, and they are Quince. That's exactly what Quince does so well. They make these elevated essentials, they use premium materials and designs that are just timeless. They're made to be worn again and again. They're those quality pieces that are there to stay in your closet. And as the weather gets a little more crisp, Quince, they've got everything you need to round out that wardrobe. They've got warm, responsibly sourced down jackets, cozy cashmere scarves, and because they cut out the middlemen, you get very high-quality stuff for a lot less money. So find the fall pieces that you will reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com.

• 49:23Alie Ward?

  You can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And then when Quince asks where you heard about them, just let them know it was All Ologies with Ali Ward, because she loves them. It's the best way to support the show, too. Okay, so to submit questions for the Ologies ahead of time, you can join via patreon.com/ologies for as little as a dollar an episode and help support the show. And you can also see what Ologies we're cooking up. But let's stick our nose into the mailbag, let's savor your questions. They had some great ones, and I feel like you are the person to answer them. Okay. La la la la. Mish the Fish, Cameron, Neen, Emily. Stoffer, Ellen Durnall, Evan Davis, Orin Stanford, Mary DeVoe,

• 50:07Alie Ward?

  eating dog hair for a living, all want to know, Mish the Fish asks, are wine food pairings bullshit? Cameron, why do some wines taste terrible food but great alone, vice versa?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Okay, so are they bullshit? I would say no, like wine is there to make the food taste better. That's what I have always looked at it. That's why you order the food first and then the wine.

• 50:25Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  But to me, it's all about resetting your palate back to zero. Right? So you're having the wine. So for each bite tastes just like the first bite. Right? So, you know, we talk about palate fatigue. I guess the best way to do it is, is so you're eating a steak and the first bite is tremendous, third bite, fourth bite, fifth bite. And now you're slowing down and you're like, ah, and now you put it in your mouth. It doesn't pop with the same flavor. It's not the same. And so you're like, okay, but you finish it anyway. And so what's interesting is, is what you realize is that if you look at a crude example, chewing a piece of gum, chew a piece of gum, 30 minutes, start to lose flavor. Yeah, maybe 10 minutes, your jaw is hurting, but it's lost all flavor. Maybe you put it on the side of your plate and somehow miraculously 15 or 20 minutes later, that piece of gum ends up back in your mouth.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  There's nothing wrong with that, but you're like, chewing already chewed gum that you chewed is okay.

• 51:16Alie Ward?

  That's fine.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  That someone else has chewed, maybe, maybe not, right? But.

• 51:19Alie Ward?

  Depends on how much you like them.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally, totally, totally. But when you start to chew that gum, at the beginning, it has more flavor than it did when you took it out.

• 51:29Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Meaning that you experienced palate fatigue and that you, the flavor was starting to dawn because it was fatigue. And then you put it back in and not to say it has the same strength of flavor, but it does have some flavor in it. And so that's when you talk, talk about eating. So introducing wine that helps your palate wash clean really helps set up the next bite. And so how do you do that? You do that by comparing like flavors. You match like with like. So if you have a rich sauce with pasta or a rich cream sauce, you want to use, you can do two different ways. So you can compare like with like, so you can go with a rich creamy Chardonnay. So those two things balance themselves out and you stay at this high level of creaminess. Or you can do something that has a little bit more acid and a little bit more linear. Right? So maybe an Austrian riesling, right? That's angular and sharp, that has tons of acid.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  So that acid is going to cut through the richness and the creaminess of that. And so there's a different style, that's a contrasting. So you're contrasting to, both of them are to neutralize the palate. So when you take another bite, it's the same. The same intensity, same flavor.

• 52:29Alie Ward?

  So yes, sips of wine serve like putting your gum on the plate, taking a little break from one flavor to experience anew for the next bite. Also, if the gum thing, if that's freaking you out, you can listen to our disgustology episode about revulsion. And if you have contamination anxiety, you may enjoy our OCD episode for some strategies from one of the world's experts on that.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Now, that might be a lot to think about when people are like, well, shit, I just want to have a burger and a glass of cab. Well, you can do that, too. And what's awesome about it is that it's an experience much like enjoying art. Like you get to choose the art and like you get to explore looking at a painting and what it means. And I think, you know, food and wine pairing is an art and pairing it together is an art form. So I think sometimes it's hard for other people that are new to it to kind of understand it. And it's interesting because when I first got in the business, I was so confused by it. I was like, the way those people talk about it, food and wine pairing, it's like the skies parted and cherubs came out and played trumpets. You know what I mean?

• 53:29Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  That has never happened to me. And so this is the way that I had always explained it to the staff.

• 53:36Alie Ward?

  We had a whole episode on cheese with Kira from Own Your Funk, who's also, I think she's New York based. She was great. We talked all about cheese and touched on wine pairings, but there's a lot, a lot of cheeses and a lot of wines. But, okay, another type of wine we haven't talked about yet, but Carlos Barracal, Greg Wallach, Kat Angelus, and Cara Young and Yasmin Alou wanted to know about biodynamic. Carlos asked, what are biodynamic wine? Are they how wine was made 100 years ago? I have two friends who are very, very into wine. One will not touch biodynamic wine. The other, it's her favorite thing on earth. And it's just so interesting. They're both kind of wine snobs in totally different ways. So I take their advice either way. But yeah, what's up with biodynamic?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  So when people talk about, was it the way that wine was made back in the day? Some of it, right? So the whole idea was like, when you talk about biodynamics, it's more about like letting the vineyard speak for itself, even if it stutters.

• 54:29Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Right. So you get where I'm going, right? So it's about low intervention, regenerative farming, a really kind of hands-off approach to making wine. So that's natural yeast. And sometimes when you use natural yeast to inoculate, meaning just the ambient yeast, sometimes it can get stuck. You know, there's lots of different things, but that is how wine was made back in the day.

• 54:50Alie Ward?

  Whereas.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Traditional way is we're going to help sure that it sings every single time the same way. Meaning that you lose some of the nuance to have consistency.

• 55:01Alie Ward?

  Oh, got it.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  And that's what the traditional winemakers play with and that kind of margin of how much do you get it to be perfect every time, the exact same way, no matter what vintage and where to be hands-off at. So the wine has those nuances and those things that you love in wine. Biodynamics is just, you know, it's a more holistic approach in that way. Right? There's lots of faults with both things. So like in traditional, we'll use chemicals to farm because we want that consistency. Where in biodynamics, they don't use any kind of chemicals in that way. It's all about taking care of the vineyard, replenishing nutrients and fertilizing the soil in the way that you can really amplify what the vineyard is trying to say. Two different methods. I think biodynamic is, you know, where people are like, oh, it's kind of funky.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  It's kind of weird. Like, I think that's the first thing that people notice that's off-putting. But you know, I always say it's like beer. When you first had your first sip of beer, nobody's like, that was great. That was amazing. No.

• 55:55Alie Ward?

  Yeah. You come through the back door typically when you start drinking coffee or, you know, or alcohol. And then you start going, oh, okay. Just a side note, I went to Spain with my husband's family recently and natural wine, not as popular there as it is in, say, California. One server said that they call the kind of funky, scrumpy aroma of natural wines monkey's ass. All right. If you'd like to hear also more about scrump, you can see our ciderology episode. I myself enjoy notes of monkey's ass. But Gigi Knows wanted to know if you like drinking it, natural wine. And Timmy H said, is natural wine really that girl or is it just a trend?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Natural wine is wine on the spectrum.

• 56:41Alie Ward?

  On a spectrum from amazing to.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  And there's different levels, but like, but when I say that, you know, obviously in all fun with that, but like, and that sense is, you know, natural wine, we talk about it's a living, breathing thing. And that's what we said, even if it's like, the natural part of it is how it's supposed to come out. You know, so like, this is the thing, it's like, I drink natural wine, but I don't drink the bad natural wines. So you see what I'm saying? That's the difference. I think people don't understand. There's shitty wine within traditional, there's great wine, and there's mediocre wine. And natural wine, there's shitty wine, there's mediocre, and there's great. But both categories, I try to stay away from the shitty wines. So, is natural wine that girl? I'm sure that you can find some girls, and if they're for you, you know? And some people, yeah, of course, people buy organic stuff

• 57:29Speaker 01

  because they think it's better for them. But some people buy it because it's more of a way of life, it was the way that makes them feel. And so I think in both those things, natural wine is just kind of new.

• 57:38Alie Ward?

  So you thought maybe there's just red and white wines, right? No, there's more, there's so much more. Orange wine, I always wondered this, is made from white grapes, and it keeps the skins in contact with the grape juice for a little longer than white wine. Red wine comes from red grapes that has a long period of skin contact. White wine, again, is from white grapes that have short skin contact. And rosé is from red grapes that have short skin contact. Also, I just wanted to take a moment. It's, I want to acknowledge white Zinfandel. This is made from red grapes. Usually, they would be turned into a Zinfandel red, but the skins have really short contact with the juice. And

• 58:20Alie Ward?

  so white Zinfandel is actually technically a rosé. It was made by accident at the Napa Sutter Home Winery in the 1970s. It's a sweet rosé with fruity notes, not super expensive. It was all the rage for decades after its 1975 introduction. However, certain persons that I know have been shamed from enjoying a crisp chilled glass of white Zin because they've been told it's passe. And I need those people who are listening, some of whom are named Fancy Nancy Ward, to know that their beloved white Zin is a rosé. And rosé is, again, all the rage. Please enjoy what you enjoy. The coolest thing a person can do is like what they like and not care about trends of the moment. So if your name is

• 59:05Alie Ward?

  my mom, have at the white Zin.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  They didn't have the term orange wine back in like oh four.

• 59:10Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  In order for it to become a movement, it took people. And now I feel like it's settling into like, you know, it's not a trend. So it's clearly here to stay. You know, so everybody's settling in and I think that's great. So yes, it could be that girl depending on, I don't know.

• 59:24Alie Ward?

  Depending on the wine.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Is she wearing shoes? I don't know.

• 59:28Alie Ward?

  How's she treating you?

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 59:32Alie Ward?

  How do you feel around her?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 59:36Alie Ward?

  I love funky wine. I actually love it, but I like kombucha, so.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  You know, it's so funny because, you know, the American palate was all about sweet. And then slowly it changed with kombucha, sour beer, which I feel like both of those are kind of the gateway into something like natural wine in that way. I find it fascinating to look at and talk about, and obviously I'd like to enjoy wine.

• 59:56Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Whether it's traditional or biodynamic or natural, if it's good, I want to drink it.

• 1:00:00Alie Ward?

  I like a little scrump. I've, I think it's tasty. Two more questions, if that's okay, from listeners.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  No worries. Yep.

• 1:00:06Alie Ward?

  You mentioned a shitty bottle of wine, good bottle of wine, Dawson Chandler, Hester Dingle, Earl Grimalcan, Jean Pompeo, Rye of the Tiger, Linia the Farmer, Caro Young and Max Zeroni. All these people want to know, in Dawson Chandler's words, what makes a bottle of wine good? In the eyes of wine enthusiasts, Hester asks, what makes a good wine? And do the price points actually increase with quality? Especially if, let's say you're on a date and you're like, do I want to order the second most expensive wine? Do I want to cheap out? Where does the price point come in?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Price point, like I like to say in wine, you're supposed to get what you pay for.

• 1:00:41Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  So then you're like, so what does that mean?

• 1:00:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  So generally speaking, you pay for what you get for, like, meaning that sometimes, like, everybody thinks it's marketing. It's part of that, but part of it not, right? If it costs a million dollars an acre to buy that land, then that's going to be, you know, another $35,000 to plan it. Then you got to figure that for three years, you get fruit, but you can't use it for anything. So it's not until that fourth leaf that you actually, so already had it for four years. And then it's just the quality of the grape. So generally with something like that, you're going to get better quality. And what does that mean? Better quality means more nuanced, better fruit from how it's being grown. So if you want to know, okay, this bottle of wine is 20 bucks and this bottle of wine is 100 bucks. What's going to be the difference is land cost, right? How much it costs because it's been time in oak barrels. Are they new? Oak barrels new, $1,200.

• 1:01:30Alie Ward?

  Whoa.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Right, they stayed two years in there. They stayed two years in there. Their shortcut that this bottle, the $10 bottle, might do is wooden staves inside of a stainless steel. Some of them might teabag it with sawdust, right?

• 1:01:44Alie Ward?

  I didn't even know that was possible.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:47Alie Ward?

  Wow, okay.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  So there's lots of different things that give the flavor of it. But generally speaking, the quality of a high quality wine is that they're not going to use sawdust. They're going to use real barrels and they're going to use real barrels each day, each year. They're using the finest grapes. They're doing lots of stuff, regenerative farming and great things in the vineyard. The site that they chose from is a lot better site, just maybe based on them drilling down and taking samples about what grows best there. So there's lots of different things that count towards that. Now, ordering a wine in a restaurant, I think is not, the second expensive is there's no cheat code in that way. Like if you're working at a place with a waiter or a sommelier, generally you can say, I'm picking, I'm choosing between these two. What do you think?

• 1:02:30Alie Ward?

  Got it.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Or if you want to sound real sophisticated, you're like, hey, what do you, which one of these two you think will go better with the food we order?

• 1:02:36Alie Ward?

  Because remember, a contrast or a compliment will make your food taste even better and reduce that palate fatigue in a good meal.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Or you can say, I generally like these types of wines. What do you have on this list that tastes similar to what, you know, what I like to drink? The key for pricing is always don't say it out loud, just point. So you can say, you're going to say, hey, you know, whatever you think that would go great with this meal. And, and then you find a bottle on there and he's like, and I could like to stay around here.

• 1:03:04Alie Ward?

  Okay, oh, that's smart.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  And then point to the price, right? Yeah, so like you can. Generally, if there's a sommelier, let the sommelier do his job.

• 1:03:12Alie Ward?

  Or her, or them. Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  And then you're like, oh, send them on their way.

• 1:03:17Alie Ward?

  That's such a good move.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  The idea that we love that, it allows us to do the job. It allows the sommelier to bring you something that they could be excited about. And when they're excited about it, then that's, you know, that it goes a long way and it's infectious. And then when they come back to the table, they might tell you a story about where it came from. It's a way to engage. They're not there to talk down to you. Yeah. Like, go do your job.

• 1:03:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Your job isn't to stand over there and make me feel bad.

• 1:03:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Or something. But no, and I think the anxiety comes from some people. The first part is price. I think after that, if it's not good, so you eliminate the first one easy by saying, yeah, we'd like to, you know, do something like this.

• 1:03:54Alie Ward?

  And, you know, I think back to some of my favorite meals and like at Bestia, we had an amazing somme with a pairing. At Animal, I don't know if you ever went to Animal, Helen was the somme there.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went to Animal. Yeah, I loved it. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:06Alie Ward?

  Uh, Helen was amazing. This is Helen Johansson, who was a celebrated sommelier, who has opened up a series of shops in LA called Helen's Wine. She's great. That dinner I had was 13 years ago and I still remember how lovely she was and how great her stories and the wine pairings were. 13 years ago. Also, part of it was just lovely company. It was a dinner with Jarrett when we first met and I met his best pal, this chef in LA named Miles, who ended up officiating our wedding. He's the best. My friend, I don't know if you know, do you know who Miles Thompson is? He's a chef out here in LA. He opened Baby Bistro.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  I know Baby Bistro, yeah.

• 1:04:51Alie Ward?

  So Andy is a somme there. They're mostly all natural wines. And it really adds so much to the meal, especially if you're excited about it. I feel like somms geek out about it a little bit and they'll tell you like,

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:05:04Alie Ward?

  you know, this has a minerality to it. This was grown near the ocean, you know? And you're like, oh, I got story time with it and I appreciate it more.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  No, but that's the whole idea. There's like letting them do their job. You know, they travel, travel is part of their job where they go to these regions and learn from the winemakers and see and smell the air, taste the dirt. And then they get to come back to Baby Bistro.

• 1:05:26Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:05:27Alie Ward?

  It's so good.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  That's why I just tell people like, let them recommend something for you. You know, that turns the tables, right? It takes the pressure off you because there's less anxiety and they're excited because it's their job. A sommelier is a tour guide.

• 1:05:39Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  They're more akin to a tour guide.

• 1:05:41Alie Ward?

  Totally. You know, it's funny, my friend who loves biodynamic wine, she asked for little samples to try a couple. She's like, can I try this one and this one? Does that, I wonder if that pisses Somms off or not.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:05:51Alie Ward?

  Sommeliers hate that. It does. I'm just like, just get it, just get one. You know, it's like a $13, $14 glass. Just get it. If you don't like it, get a different one.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  It just, it just depends on where it's at. I was messing with, I was messing with your friend. Sorry.

• 1:06:06Alie Ward?

  No, I, I get embarrassed. I'm like, just.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Well, if the restaurant is busy, they're pissed.

• 1:06:12Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  If they're busy, they're pissed. They are super pissed.

• 1:06:16Alie Ward?

  I'm gonna call her out.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Now, if it's not, so if it's, if it's not that busy, yeah, I'm sure they would go the extra mile to do that, but yeah.

• 1:06:24Alie Ward?

  And I'm like, this isn't a gelato counter. Um, but you did mention, obviously, like, uh, sommeliers are there to be a tour guide. But if you do not have someone like you nearby, last listener question, which I love, and I think this is a, you're the perfect person for this question. Matthew Cowley, Stephanie Tout Vermin, Red Tok or in Sanford, Jay Shay, asked, Matthew said, "I'm a sucker for the art on contemporary wine labels." Stephanie says, "I find myself buying the wine with the cutest labels." Red Tok to wine labels actually help wine generate better sales. And you have designed a lot of wines under your label and they're fucking great.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:07:03Alie Ward?

  And they're very modern. They're very monochromatic. It's usually black and white with these bold letters and this very like fresh, modern, almost like curated art on the labels. And they're so striking.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:07:17Alie Ward?

  No, they're amazing. And I read that part of that came out of the fact that a designer was going to charge you tens of thousands of dollars. You're like, no, dude. As a result, you've got amazing, really, really like signature labels. Graphically, they're bold and stark with big block letters. They look like a Sharpie on paper. When it comes to labels, I imagine that's got to be what a lot of people are picking off of. And how does a winemaker decide, other than, you know, cost?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Well, it becomes art. I think, you know, it's an extension of their art. Like, what do they want it to look like? And there's a thing is, everything is marketing. If I decided not to put a label on it, it's marketing. If I decided to put it in a round paper bag, it's marketing. Anything that you do to it is marketing, even if you want it to be anti-marketing. Right? So what I always look at it is, is like, it's, you know, it's really up to the artist. Like, what do they want to put on? You know, some people are drawn to music and maybe, you know, it's a painting off an album cover from an artist that they like. But here's the deal. I think if that's how you buy wine, then that's how you buy wine. But also know or leave room or space that sometimes it's not built on the label. And so my artwork that I put on there is to do the opposite. Like, my whole thing is, is that I dumbed

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  down the labels. My labels were inspired when I was a child and we'd go shopping. We would do, we'd go shopping once a month. And so I hated it. And you would go down every single aisle, every single aisle, while your mom pulled out her coupon book and he bought everything. And sometimes you might have to get a second cart. You turn down these aisles and every time you turn down the aisle, it'd be like a mosaic sea of colors. And then you'd drown this one and turn the corner and it was stark white. And this was called the generic aisle. I don't know if you're

• 1:09:00Alie Ward?

  I remember this. And you'd be in the generic aisle. It was all black. And my God, I miss that. Or sometimes it was yellow and white. And that was so stark. I wish we had that. So Google the words generic aisle. Or if you're a Canadian, like our lead editor Mercedes, check out the no name brand in the grocery chain, No Frills. It's literally art and blessedly a bargain.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  So that's, that was the idea for the labels.

• 1:09:28Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's genius.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  So in the back bar, like the mosaic of colors, and then you come to this stark label, which is just black and white. And, you know, to me, it's just all stripped down. It's kind of like, you know, I was telling somebody, like, my brand is kind of like Mike Tyson. When he came to the ring, it was just like no bullshit. He came to the ring, no shirt on, no robe. He just had his shorts on, he had his shoes on, no socks, right?

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Just ready.

• 1:09:54Alie Ward?

  He stood on business.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Like no frills.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like, there's no need, there's no need for all that. You know, the fight would be over before, like longer than it would, you know, would take, me taking off the robe would last longer than the fight. You know? And so that's how I look at it, where it's just stripped down, where it's like, let's just let the wine speak for themselves. And for the labels, I wanted the labels to be that, that, you know, they're just black and white. And they're not named after me, right? Because, and some people have that, you know, where maybe they're thinking more legacy and it's like, they'd say Mac Estates. Or maybe I would just, you know, had a tad bit of narcissism and I had to say Andre Mac Sellers, right?

• 1:10:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  But when I think about both those names and to somebody who's new to wine, what does it mean?

• 1:10:38Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Who the fuck is Andre Mac?

• 1:10:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Even though they have their phone in their pocket, there still has to be the will to want to know who it is to look it up. And so that was it for me. I wanted things that resonated with people or meant something to them or that would lead down a train of thought. We have a wine called Love Drunk. I'm sure right now you're like, well, what does that mean? But you know what both those words mean, and then you're trying to figure out this thing. And they get to interpret, you know, have a moment of how they interpret it. I have a wine called OPP, Other People's Peanut.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  We like to have so much fun with it in a way that like, it fits the whole idea of my life in a lot of ways is that you can't judge a book by its cover. And I say to people all the time, without the label, this is like, drink the wine. If I had to spend more money on the labels than the wine, then I would have to charge more for the wine. That, that's the whole thing. It's the packaging is the packaging, but ultimately it's about what's inside the bottle. And you're right, and, and the bottle and the label are tools to market.

• 1:11:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah. And my last question, uh, best glass of wine you've ever had? I know that you've had a lot of them, but what is one that like, that ratatouille you?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Ratatouille me, um, eighty-five Reyes, shot enough to pop. And when I taste that wine, I've only tasted it twice after the initial experience I had. Uh, when I tasted that wine, it was a day that Per Se caught on fire on its first day of service.

• 1:12:04Alie Ward?

  No.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  And, um, I just remember it was surreal, like a movie. People are being bustled like to the restaurant, the whole building's getting evacuated. You know, the firemen coming in, rushing into the dining room, hitting the wall with an axe, realizing that's where the fire was. Flames burst out. Um, just, um, uh, just a different experience.

• 1:12:23Alie Ward?

  Wow. What an imprint in your brain.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was cool though. I mean, not that there was a fire, but like, you know, it wasn't like a sad memory. It was just like, just a really amazing kind of time to be alive. Like in this timeline of, you know, this was the opening of the most anticipated restaurant opening in New York City history.

• 1:12:39Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Even the restaurant scene was new and then, you know, something as big as that happens. And then you remember this most amazing wine, you know, and I always think that wines are also a placeholder of time. What makes those wines great a lot of times is the ambiance, the people that were around drinking them. So much so that I wrote a book called 99 Bottles and 99 Bottles tell my wine life story through 99 bottles.

• 1:13:01Alie Ward?

  Ah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Right. And the bottles that I've tasted and the stories behind them. I think it starts off with, uh, Old English 800, which is malt liquor. And that's where it starts.

• 1:13:12Alie Ward?

  Was it taped to your hands at all? Did anyone duct tape it to your hands?

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  So that came later. My assistant told me that I was like, you guys are fools. I had never heard of no shit like that. So it's hilarious. Uh, yeah. And then it just kind of moves through different chapters of my life and different wines that I had. And you know, it was a French Laundry section, there's a Per Se section. And, and it just kind of goes through that whole thing of being able to tell stories through bottles of wine or things that meant to you. And when you drink those wines or think about those wines, you also think about those stories.

• 1:13:43Alie Ward?

  You can read the whole story in Andre's book, 99 Bottles, A Black Sheep's Guide to Life-Changing Wines, where he explains that this wine is made with 100% Grenache grapes. And I was curious what the tasting notes are for where, from what I found, people describe this. Saying it has a musty nose, but a smooth and soft texture with hints of cherry and spicy mint, but with a silky finish. One wine for a member weighed in with their take. I'm gonna read it through a monocle. "Delightfully ripe nose, arguably at its apogee showing a griotene-like cherry liqueur note to complement the fresh pepper that fanned out on the palate.

• 1:14:25Alie Ward?

  Until the pepper notes emerged with air, many of us mistook this for a Chambolle or a Volnier." Now, if you simply must taste this, but you are not a sommelier at a restaurant currently engulfed in flames, you can get yourself a bottle of this exact vintage for $3,653 via winesearch.com. Or you could buy groceries for the next six months.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  So it was a really kind of fun way to look at it.

• 1:14:53Alie Ward?

  Amazing.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  So yeah, I would say 85. You'll see some of my most favorite ones in there, but I think the 85 one was pretty fun and remarkable. First time me tasting a Chateau enough to pop that old, one of the greats. We were serving it to a guest who had bought it in and there was a lunch table who had stayed over. And so when they started to evacuate the building, they were like, we're done, but you guys should enjoy it. And then all hell broke loose. So it's a changeover and that, you know, as you have the new service coming in, the old service leaving for the shift. And so we're drinking the Chateauréas, eating our staff meal, and then the alarm starts to come on. It was great. It was great. Yeah. So quite a memory. And this is so funny. It's like, some people are gonna be like, but he didn't talk about how good the wine tastes. Well, that goes without saying, right? Like,

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  like the icing on the cake was the fire and everything around it. The wine was superb. You know, it was like, nothing I ever had. And so it was just, it's a beautiful thing. It was like drinking old Burgundy.

• 1:15:46Alie Ward?

  Amazing. And what a, what a story. It's funny, I'm going out to dinner with my friend who loves natural wine and orders samples.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  That should be fun.

• 1:15:54Alie Ward?

  But yeah, I'm gonna tip her off. I won't tell her it was you. But I'm excited to have a glass of wine with her.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  It's gonna be funny.

• 1:16:03Alie Ward?

  This is amazing. Thank you so much for being here.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  No, thank you. Anytime.

• 1:16:08Alie Ward?

  So ask winemakers whiny, confused, but well-meaning questions because look how much more I know now, and you. So thank you so much to Andre Houston-Mack for taking the time to hang out and chat wine. Please head to his website at andrehmmack.com to find out more about him and his wines. You can also join his nearly 1 million followers on Instagram to find out what he's up to day to day and week to week. He's so lovely and informed. Thank you again, Andre. We're going to link those sites in the show notes and also link Food Bank New York City. And we have tons more links on our website at alleyware.com/ologies/analogy. Again, Smallologies are shorter, kid-friendly, and classroom-safe

• 1:16:51Alie Ward?

  episodes. Just search Smallologies on your podcast app and you can subscribe there. You can support Ologies by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/ologies for as little as a buck a month. You can also outfit yourself with Ologies merch via ologiesmerch.com. We've got hats, we've got totes, we've got swimsuits even. Thank you to Erin Talbert, who admins Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Smoothly timing our interviews is scheduling producer Noelle Dilworth. Keeping a quirk on all the chaos is managing director Susan Hale. Pouring over our transcripts are editors Jake Chaffee. And lead editor and chief Canadian Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn added the notes of the music. And if you stick

• 1:17:32Alie Ward?

  around to the very end, you know I may tell you a secret. And this week, it's that you know I advise in these crazy times, just take the risk, live the life, cut the bangs, text your crush. We're all gonna die. And today, I did in fact cut bangs. Well, I outsourced them to the wonderful Rory at Perch Salon in Eagle Rock in LA. She's the best. But hot tip for those who are unsure about bangs and hair texture, two words, air dry.

• 1:18:03Alie Ward?

  Babes, get those bangs wet. Use a styling gel, okay? Shape them into swoops or what have you with a comb. Clip them with those no bend little hair clips. Let that shit dry for like an hour. Go out in the sun or whatever. Use a diffuser. When they're dry, they're gonna look crispy and you're gonna freak out. You just ruffle them up and know they're not crunchy or flaky. And you can run a straightening iron over them if you need to. This is a game changer. Um, okay, go do something, if not bangs, that gives you butterflies. You're never gonna know until you do it. So do something, small, big, whatever. Okay, bye bye. Pachydermatology, homology, cryptozoology, lithology, anthropology,

• 1:18:46Alie Ward?

  meteorology, geology, geology, geology, geology.

• 1:18:58Speaker 04

  What do you want? To taste your Chardonnay. No. What kind of day is it? It's a White Claw day. Grab a pack, grab your friends. Everything else in life can wait. Your friends shouldn't. Let's go. White Claw. Grab life by the claw. Please drink responsibly. Heart's also with flavors. White Claw's also works Chicago, Illinois.