July 12, 2023 • 49 mins
White wine is a $40 billion dollar market (Fact MR) with many varieties and styles to try from around the world. Journalists Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen, (the "World Wine Guys"), tackle this topic in "White Wine: The Comprehensive Guide to the 50 Essential Varieties & Styles" (W.W. Norton). Whether it's crisp and dry, fruity and floral, or creamy and full-bodied, there is a white wine for you to enjoy and pair with food. "White Wine" follows up Mike and Jeff's award-winning book, "Red Wine."
The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET.
The Connected Table Radio Show is broadcast on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-connected-table-live--1277037/support.
The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET.
The Connected Table Radio Show is broadcast on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-connected-table-live--1277037/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed in thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests, and not thoseof W forcy Radio. It's employees are
affiliates. We make no recommendations orendorsements for radio show, program, services,
or products mentioned on air or onour web. No liability, explicit
or implied shall be extended to Wfourcy Radio or its employees or affiliates.
Any questions or comments should be directedto those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W forcy Radio. Welcome tothe Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
(00:44):
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You'reinsatiably curious culinary couple celebrating our tenth
season with this show. We enjoybringing you the amazing people we meet as
we travel around the world who leadin wine, spirits, hospitality, and
food. We love sharing their storieswith you and connecting, and we hope
(01:06):
that when you listen you're inspired totry, taste, travel and discover because
our motto is eat, drink,explore, inspire, and we want to
do that with you. We arevery excited. We very rarely repeat guests,
but we're starting too because we're inour tenth season, and many of
our guests are amazing and doing verycool things that are new and different or
(01:29):
have new books, and that ishow it goes with our guests. Today,
we're going to set this show upwith one of the dumbest quotes I
found researching how to start this showand our companion blog. It's from the
award winning film actress Betty Davis.Never never trust anyone who ask for white
wine. It means they are phonies. Well, let's face it, she
(01:53):
was a better actress than a wineconsumer, right, don't ask it,
and that we feel that way,but I do celeb right now. I
think she was a really good drinkerthough, yeah she could drink. But
let's face it, we love whitewine and that is going to be the
topic of our show today. Welove all wine, but we're talking white
(02:14):
today. I hope that's pc andin terms of wine. And we're excited
because our repeat guests are some ofour favorite people in the journalism world.
We're talking about the world wine guysMike de Simone and Jeff Jensen, who
actually were on our show in earlytwenty eighteen with their groundbreaking award winning book
Red Wine, and I remember sayingwhen are you going to do white wine?
(02:38):
And he say, oh, yeah, we're going to work on that
one next So we're excited to haveyou guys back. Mike and Jeff,
Welcome to the Connected Table. Thankyou, Melanie, Thank you David.
We are will to be on today, Yes we are. And Melanie,
as as you know, and wespoke a few years ago, when is
the next book coming out? Well, I'm going to tell you. Even
(02:59):
though a book was award winning andit won Germont International Best one Book in
the World for red wine, ourpublisher was still leery about doing a book
about white wine. So m wekind of persisted, we kind of pushed,
and what ended up happening was ourpublisher m. Barnes and Noble,
(03:22):
you know, Sterling epicure U it'isn't doing so well, you know there
as you've seen, you know,all kinds of they've cut back on employees,
they've changed the name of their publishingcompany. Anyway, to make a
long story short, our editor fromthere reached out to us and said,
hey, did you guys ever dowhite wine? And by the way,
(03:45):
I'm with WW Norton now and I'dlove to buy white wine if it's still
available, and he believed in theproject from day one. And you know,
with our previous publisher, we hadto actually fight, you know,
and explain that people do you drinkwhite wine and the people who drink white
wine do skew more towards women?And who buys books women or men?
(04:08):
Women? So you know, wehad all the marketing stuff ready to go,
but still they wouldn't fight. Sowe have a brand new publisher.
We are ecstatic to be with thevenerable ww Norton and we're really excited about
the book was like number one onAmazon a few weeks ago for wine and
food pairing, So we're just ecstaticand we're so happy to be back on
(04:30):
It's great. It's great to talkto both of you again. Well,
we're glad you have such a greatand venerable publisher as well. Your previous
one must have been a Betty Davisfan and a bit of a misogynist because
women do buy most of the winein the country, and white wine is
not just for women, and it'sa crate. We just did a prerecord
(04:50):
about Rose. We went through thiswhole topic about or did women drive the
Rose Revolution? But I always findit crazy when people gender or a fi
as I call it gendrify and gentrifywine because wine should be for all people
who have good taste, right,man and women, all genders, all
(05:10):
backgrounds. So congratulations and congratulations wereIt's monumental debut already. Um, this
is a terrific book. I'm we'reboth grape geeks. I just finally got
my csw yea me, but Igot soulationem Um. Yeah, so geekedom
studying it and this is it's notjust geek and it's very informative. Um,
(05:34):
first of all, before we diveinto it, what have you guys
been doing since we last spoke toyou in twenty eighteen. How has life
changed for you? Um? Wow, it's you know, we've been.
It's been this real life onward andupward trajectory. We're you know, we
still we're traveling a lot. We'vebeen, you know, we've been to
(05:55):
a lot of wine regions all overthe world. I think one of the
ways that life has changed for usis that we really have We've stopped scrambling
so much. And I think thata lot of us in the world of
wine, a lot of people whoare journalists to do what we do and
who do what we do what youdo. There's a point, you know,
when you're kind of like getting yourfooting where you're scrambling a lot and
(06:18):
you're you know, throwing a lotof pasta at the wall, so to
speak, and hoping that it sticks, and you know, things are coming
to us. Now. Our editor, actually the editor that we worked with
on this book, came to usand said, hey, did you guys
ever sell that I'd love to publishit. Um, we have in addition
(06:38):
to the work that I do withwine enthusiasts. This is Mike speaking.
Jeff and I in the last yearhave become the wine editors at rob Report,
and again we've done you know,we were doing some freelance for them,
and they reached out to us andsaid, we're looking to you know,
we would love to bring you onfull time. And even like just
posting about our book on social media, televine vision producers and folks like you
(07:01):
are contacting us and saying, hey, we'd love to talk to you about
your book. So I think thatreally in that time, in the last
five years, we have we've settledinto this position of being known for what
we do. And although life iscrazy and I would really love to you
know, count the number of nightsthat we sleep in our own bed and
(07:26):
have more of those than you knowthat than on the road somewhere, we
really are like relaxing into what wedo. Now. Yeah, you know,
I think that I think that you'renot you know, scrambling or groveling
UM. Is awesome because too manywine writers are still groveling um and getting
paid not worth they're worth. Imade the conscious decision to do similar,
(07:46):
to say no to things. ButI think that you always also push a
lot of great content. I mean, you've got some amazing videos out there
that you do very consistency, andthat's important, right, yeah, exactly,
Yeah, yeah, no, itis important. I mean as much
as uh, you know, asmuch as much as we relax, we
also know, you know, andeven as much as we're you know,
(08:07):
we're we're not um, you know, we're not like like hustling all the
time. You still do need tokeep yourself out there or people will forget
about you tell me about it,uh you know, but we want to
underscore and this is really important toeverybody going. Well, that's like so
awesome people are coming in up.You guys have been in the trenches for
a long time. You're not thenew kid, You're not those new influencers
(08:31):
on the block. You guys aresolid journalists who've been doing this for a
long time like us. So Ireally want to understood it out. Thank
you, that is true, andthank you, you know, thank you
for recognizing that, and thank youfor pointing it out. And obviously,
you know, like you just said, like you say, no, we
have had there have been a lotof opportunities where people have been saying,
(08:52):
like, we want to talk toyou about your book, and we look
at a lot of them and don'tyou know, and don't really view some
of some of what comes our wayas opportunities. But of course when you
know, when you and David askedus if we would be on your show,
you know we will make the timefor the two of you anytime.
Well, thank you, that's true. Well we appreciate that. We appreciate
(09:13):
that we've been doing this for tenyears. I hope it goes to something
we've been doing it for a lottime. You'd be surprised at how many
people say no. Still, yeah, I mean we will say who they
are, but you know a lotof times it's just not a fit,
or people are too busy, andthen you know, you you move on
and then you don't circle back,and that happened sometimes you or they try
to pawn somebody else on this.You know, we have a very strict
(09:33):
criteria who we put on the show, and you can't pawn off some staff
or to us, it's not thesame when we say global leaders and pot
leaders. So you travel a lot, as you said, and you did
a lot of research. Fifty whitevarieties. I'm just dying to ask this
question, how did you pick thesevarieties? Because there's a world of white
(09:54):
grapes out there, you know,that's a that's a great question. There
is a world of white grapes outthere. But you know, we really
looked at some of the grapes thatwe really like ourselves. But also to
make our books serviceable to people whobuy our book in the US or the
UK, or Canada, Australia,you know, any English speaking country,
(10:18):
we wanted to make the wines thatwe or the grapes that we chose so
people could find the wines. Imean, we wanted this book to be
serviceable. We wanted them to beable to leave it on their coffee table
and say, I want to tryan Alborno today and open up to the
you know, the first chapter andsee what Alberinos are available in their markets.
(10:39):
So we were very cognizant of makingthese approachable grapes, but also too,
I mean, you'll see alborino inthere. You know, we happen
to love Spanish grapes. You know, you're going to see over the Daho,
You're going to see you know,garnachal blanc. Are youre going to
see white wine grapes that we lovefrom Spain, but also our travels in
(11:03):
Greece, Asiatico, a catarato inItaly, or you know, subgnon blanc
in either France or New Zealand.So these are grapes that we really like
and we find them very interesting andvery very different depending on the terroir.
(11:24):
You know, as you know,a sabgnon blanc from San se Or in
France tastes nothing like a subannion blancfrom Marlborough. So that's kind of one
of the criteria. We really wantedto present a very broad and deep assortment
to the people who buy our book, and that's what we tried to do.
So that's a great question, thankyou. Well. The subtitle of
(11:46):
the book is the Comprehensive Guide tothe fifty Essential Varieties and Styles you need
to Know, and so that Ithink that that really it's basically the basis
of a white wine drinker's library portfolio. Right, So you're you're saying,
these are the essential grapes. There'sa ton of mount there and we all
know that, but these are theones you need to know and then you
(12:09):
can take your learning on from there. It's also manageable. You can't go
on and on and on. Imean you get limitations on pages, right,
right, That's why that's why theworld gave us the Internet. That
you know, a book likeness,we could, you know, we could
write about fifty different when we sayvarieties and styles for anyone who's listening.
So varieties are a single type ofgrape like chardonnay, like seven, like
(12:31):
seven young blanc, you know,like for dicio. And then when we
talk about the the style, we'retalking about the old world regional blend styles.
So it's a it's a wine thatis made, it could be made
with one grape, it could bemade with other with um a blend,
but it's known by its regional name, so that is, you know,
(12:52):
stuff like sherry or madeira ordaviy um, which are which again are not known
by the variety any names, butknown by the region name. I was
glad to see Marsala in there becauseI think Marsala deserves another looks sicily recently.
Yeah, you know, it reallydoes. And I think one of
(13:13):
the things about you know, Marsalakind of gets a bad rap because of
the Italian American classic chicken Marsala andvil Marsala, which are so there's this
like cooking level of Marsala, andunlike sherry, for example, like we
know that there's something called cooking sherry, which is you know, this like
this thing you could actually like buyin grocery stores and cook with. I
(13:35):
think most people aren't aware that markthat there is this like amazing depth and
breath of styles of Marsala and thataged wine from Marsala can. I mean,
it's sublime. It's it's different then, but in terms of the just
how wonderful it is to taste,It's like, you know, it's like
(13:56):
drinking a really fine saw turn ora really fine tocon. Well, I
think like that you're right in thatrespect. I also think that Marsala will
have its return at some point becausethe grape that it's made from, Grillo,
is arguably Italy's most popular white grape, and it was originally made to
make Marsala, grown to make Marcella, and as people moved away from Marsala,
(14:20):
they started to make grillo as weknow it today and sell it as
a variet of wine. So withthe popularity of grillo as a grape,
people are going to start to wantto know what that grape was used for
traditionally, right, So then Marcella, I think we'll have a return.
Yeah, yes, I think itis. And I think in the same
way just as you know. Becausesweet wines, although the funny thing is
(14:43):
people love sweet wines, but theylove they love sweet, they love like
like dry sweet wines, they lovelike moscato, and they love those like
you know, those funny like sweetred wines. They're really popular. However,
there's a there's been a downturn inthe consumption of port and of tokai
and of sought turn, which iswhy we're seeing for example, with Tokai,
(15:07):
so much dry ferment on the market, and again just as you said,
with the you know, with theGrillo, David, that is really
shining a light. People are like, oh, ferment, I never heard
of that, and then it getsthem to explore the sweet wines of Tokai
as well as the dry ferment thatthey're enjoying. Correct, Yeah, big
(15:28):
fans of ferment. We were justin Sicily a couple of what a month
or so ago, Melie and tastedtasted a lot of grillo, also tasted
a bunch of marsalin. And there'ssome fabulous marsala's being made in Sicily right
now. Not as much as thereused to be, as we all know,
because the industry took a downturn aspeople started focusing there Grillo on making
(15:48):
the grillo they make. Now,however, still some really wonderful marsala being
made, and you know, there'sa little bit of an inching up of
productions as that popularity becomes more andmore. And I think that's representative in
other areas as well. I'm curious, as you researched this book, which
we want to underscore, is notjust it's like not overly giggy. There's
a lot of great historical content forthe varieties food pairings. Love the fact
(16:14):
that you provide recommended wines from bargainsto you know, splurges, which is
really helpful. Were there some AHAsthat you found as you rage? I
mean, how you know you talkabout people used to say, oh white
wine, you're original publisher. Ohno, it's a women thing. What
are you seeing changing in the worldof white wine? You know, I
(16:37):
think what we're seeing is that alot of younger people are drinking they you
know, the younger people drink grapesand older people drink regions. Think about
you know, the people we knowin their sixties seventies, they're going to
drink a Burgundy, They're gonna drinka Bordeaux, They're gonna drink a Napocad,
(16:57):
Whereas younger people will tend to bea little bit more adventurous and they're
going to drink more grapes. Soyou know, they're going to drink of
fianna, They're going to drink ashunning blank, They're going to drink of
Sri Lan now um, and they'regoing to give it a try. So
I think that we're seeing a littlebit more adventure. I mean Gruner Vetliner
when it first came into the market, you know, ten years ago,
(17:18):
so it was kind of considered that, you know, not very exciting line,
kind of plunk, you know,cheap and cheery. But now there's
some amazing Gruner's being made out there, so that makes that a little bit
more exciting, you know. Andthen you have we have our um you
know, different types of blends,Coveys, you know, white roans,
we have our sparkling lines. Wehave our Marsala that we were just talking
(17:44):
about, so you know, wetry to like mix it up. But
I think that we're finding a muchmore adventurous drinker these days, and that's
that makes it exciting for us becauseyou know, we get to write about
fun stuff and not the typical.You know, all right, this is
a lovely Bordeaux and it's seven hundreddollars a bottle. It's from sending me
(18:06):
the on and yeah, that's great. Who doesn't love those wines. But
I think what we're seeing is moreadventure and I think, if I could
sum it up in one word,more curiosity. So while younger consumers are
drinking less consumption is down. Thosewho do are drinking more adventurously because they
want to get out there and exploreand travel with their palates, right exactly.
(18:30):
And I certainly think we I havefortunately, we've been like dining out
a bit lately, and I justand I feel like an explosion in by
the glass lists and in a reallyreally interesting selection by the glass lists,
and that you know, that's away that consumers of any age can explore
(18:51):
something. If you know, it'snot even investment in a bottle, it's
an investment in a single glass.And if if you like it, great,
if it's on a blass list ina restaurant, odds are there's going
to be an appetiser or an entreethat pairs really well with it. And
if you don't like it, well, you know you lost fifteen minutes and
the cost of a glass of wine. So it wasn't that big a deal
(19:12):
anyway, that's true. I mean, you know, I always I'm one
of those annoying people like to tasteeverything before I'm buy it, because that's
just the way I am. Umcurious, you know, we asked about
that these interesting takeaways. Do youfind there's a why that you feel is
(19:36):
um still a great discovery or underratedfor what it is and what people perceive
it to be. UM I think, I mean, I'll just say in
terms of I mean in terms oflike UM, like just underrated in general
or a new discovery. We werein Croatia recently and we enjoyed, you
(19:56):
know, several different versions of postssit is one of the grapes that we
covered in there, and you know, like Croatia is that you know,
this really big hot destination, youknow, vacation destination. At this point,
we're still not seeing a lot ofthe wines in the market. But
for me, I you know,I think I think that that post Ship
(20:17):
is definitely you know, a grapethat will we'll be hearing more more about
in the future. Something else Ithink that we discovered in terms of being
underrated is Verdejo and I think partof that is that Verdejo's, you know,
Verdejos like the number one wine grapein number one white grape in Spain.
Right now. You know, ifyou go into a bar or restaurant
(20:42):
in Spain and ask for a glassof white Um without specifying, you're going
to get a Verdejo. But Verdejohas really been thought of as like cheap
and cheery. There's a lot ofVerdejo under twenty dollars, there's a lot
in the fifteen dollars range in theUS, there's a lot in the three
to five dollars range in Spain.But now there's actually we're seeing a lot
(21:02):
more barrel fermented um. People aredoing you know, single vineyard and really
focusing on their their mineral terroir.And they've also added a new category,
Gran grand venos, the Rueta fromthe Rueda region in Spain, which is
the you know, the home ofVerdeo and where most of it comes from.
And those are all old vine expressionsof Vergaio. So I think that
(21:26):
we're gonna we're gonna start seeing aum like Verdejo go from the being like
this cheap and cheery entry level bythe glass poor to a wine that really
starts to inch up and get morerespect in the wine world. Well,
hey, I've got one too,so let's not forget about the lowly upshawar
blanc. Yeah. I was like, well that's an interesting selection. Let's
(21:52):
let's not forget about that. Wewent to Luxembourg if you actually about a
year ago and we were judging awine competition there and of course a lot
of the local wines were represented,and I just fell in love with oxewa
block from Luxembourg, you know,and it was it's really a super super
wine, very very nice, generouskind of Chardonnay, is kind of southern
(22:18):
own blancash. It's got kind oflike the best of both worlds. And
it's a little hard to find somewine from Luxembourg here in the States.
But in our book, you know, we found five or six bargain wine,
so that means, you know,those are twenty to forty dollars,
and then you know, we havevalue lines which are just you know,
above forty dollars. That there's someamazing oxowar there coming from France, Luxembourg,
(22:45):
and also from Oregon. There's quitea few coming from Oregon, so
really really interesting. So that's that'sthe great that I was a revelation for
me because traveling around Luxembourg, wefound you know, these amazing, amazing
lines affordable prices, especially you knowin the in the country where they're produced,
but just really really loving them andif you really want to try something
(23:07):
fun. Try an oxelwar Blanc fromLuxembourg, try one from France, and
then try one from Oregon local retailerfor an oxber Long when we go back
to her store. Two words Inever thought I'd heard said on our show
would be luxembourgan one. Yeah,we haven't been to Luxembourg. We're kind
(23:27):
of still lingering on the fact thatyou've been to I think you're the first
people we know who've been to Luxeburg. Prince Robert, Wow, exactly.
You know, I'm actually just reading. I just opened up. Jeff and
I are. We're in separate roomsright now, so we don't get feedback,
but I just opened up when Jeffwas talking to the Oxe war Blanc
chapter and remembered how how funny theopening is because we say Oxe war Blanc
(23:51):
and Chardonnay are siblings, but oxewarBlanc is the less famous of the two,
a little like Olivier. To havea Linden Joan Fontaine, Liza Minelli
and Laura Luft, Felicia Rassat andDebbie Allen, it's like, I'm like,
it's just kind of like looking back. I mean, obviously, you
know, it takes a year fromthe time you like write something till the
time it comes out, and I'mlike, well, that's pretty funny look
(24:15):
at that. So it's not asas you one of you pointed out yet
there's a lot of info here,but it's not completely geeky, and we
did try to make it entertaining.Well, it certainly is. I love
that. I love that intro bythe way, that's like a Melanie intro
because sometimes you just have to putin the context that way. Well,
I want to just add another point. We U we're very, very excited.
(24:38):
When we were in Luxembourg, wewere in, you know, one
of the restaurants on the main squarewhere a friend of ours who works at
the Palais de Justice and the JusticePalace there for European law, and she
happens to be the Somalia dining roomdirector and um, the owner of the
restaurant, came up to her andus as we're seeing at the tab Abelen
(25:00):
said, oh, you know thePrime Minister of Luxembourg. His name is
javiert Bettel and he's the prime ministerfor um, you know, for the
whole country of Luxembourg. And I'vejust I'm fascinated with this man because he
is the first openly gay prime ministerin I think in the world, definitely
(25:22):
in Europe. In Europe for sure. And I said to my friend the
Dominique, I said, gosh,I would love to meet this guy.
And she's like, oh, he'snot going to meet you, like you
know, he's he's sitting in thekin outside in the garden and don't even
think about it. So being American, but we're Americans. But being American
(25:44):
and being a little pushy and wedon't speak French. Um, We've said
to the owner of the restaurant,wouldn't it be possible if we could meet,
you know, the prime minister.He said, oh, my god,
come with me. He would loveto meet journalists Wine, journalists from
the United States. So we weresome of the first journalists to ever be
there, and we were scorted overto his table and we stood there and
(26:06):
we spoke in French for about fifteenminutes, you know, just saying,
you know, he was so complimentaryabout, you know, the magazines we
write for. He knows them verywell. He lived, he was you
know, stationed here in the USas an ambassador for a while so he
was just really really nice, sohe knew what we were doing and we
(26:27):
just had a wonderful conversation and hewas so generous and we actually have a
picture. I can send it toyou. There's a picture of us with
him, and he was just sucha nice guy. So when you're saying
that you haven't been to Luxembourg,I just want to let you know,
nobody's been to Luxemburg and you know, and we were the first, you
(26:48):
know, American journalists you know,writing about wine, and he said,
yes, he would speak to us. I would imagine if there's hundreds of
American wine journalists coming through every day, he would get bored. But um,
so yes, Luxembourg is a placeyou have to visit, Melanie and
David. It's a beautiful, beautifulcountry and the people are really really wonderful
(27:10):
and even even the Prime minister.You know, if you don't ask,
you don't get That's who I am. What about many people, that's right?
Amen. Well, you know weall share that American and New York
gene, so we if you don'task, you don't get it. So
when we were when we were doingour research on the book, um to
(27:33):
figure out what to talk about.We decided the other night, let's try
one of the one of the winesthat we usually don't have from from the
list of fifty, and so weactually came up with an alegote oh from
celier Amois in Burgundy. Beautiful wine. But let's talk about Algote a little
bit, because it's it's one.It's the other white grape of Burgundy,
(27:56):
related to Chardonnay as well, partof the Guay family, so um and
makes a very nice wine, butit's not it's a wine that a lot
of people don't know much about.Let's talk about that one that's it.
Well, I mean Algota, youknow, unfortunately has a second you know
child or the redheaded step child,you know, mentality in France, and
(28:17):
it's it's so undeserved um. Andyou know, it is the second white
grape of Burgundy, and they useit mostly to make you know, a
ker or a kir royale um andyou know, adding some chamboard or some
casis, and so they don't reallyvalue it. However, there are a
new crop of younger winemakers who valuethis grape um and are making some really
(28:42):
really stupor aligotees and we were talkingto a younger wine maker. Um and
even though he made himself a fantasticalgotee, one of the funniest things were
when we talked about another winemaker makingchardonnay on this plot of land and it
is a vineyard plot. And thisis I love the French because they're so
(29:04):
um, they can they can givea really backhanded compliment and they're just like,
well, perhaps instead of growing chardonnayon this land, he should grow
alagote And so basically what they're sayingis this vineyard is not appropriate for chardonnay,
but it would make a good alagote. But it is a slur,
you know, at the same timemaking fun of alagotee. And but that
(29:30):
said, this wine maker and manyother young winemakers that we met, make
a beautiful, crisp, clean,you know, it's got a nice amount
of acidity, and you've got somebeautiful, beautiful, you know, flavor
profiles, you know green apple,you know, citrus blossoms, and it's
just really a lovely, lovely windfor an apperatif or if you're sitting on
(29:55):
the back of someone's yacht or youknow, with a dinner, why not
have it with a dinner as well. But what did you think? You
drank it last night, so howdid you feel about it? We loved
it. It was lovely. Wehad some Alogota when we were in Burgundy
m with an importer in January andwe're intrigued and um, you know there's
like one area that's that is dedicatedto Alagota boozer on, which is kind
(30:18):
of like a fun little fact.And you know, it reminded you that
the Laurna love Liza Minelli thing.I mean, you know, it's just
yes, you know, it's lovely. And I don't know about pricing.
I don't know the prices, butI would I would venture. I guess
it's probably a little less expensive thansome of these crazy jornade based Burgundy's I
know absolutely, and in general itis. And actually, if you know,
(30:41):
even if you look in the bookwe've got, there's like a few
there's like what four or five inthe bargain and then maybe seven or eight
in value special occasion. We onlyfound one splurge. And if you look
like what we did, and webroke out because there's so many of them,
we actually broke argune out, notjust into you know, Burgundy or
(31:03):
France, but actually into like individualappellations, and we were like fighting.
We were like not fighting each other, but really like working hard to fit
as like as many of our choicesas possible into especially like the you know,
the splurge and special occasion, becausethere's so many of them. There's
(31:23):
only one splurge m Alagote that wefound that's like readily imported into the US
market. Um, that's over onehundred dollars. There's a lot more bargain
is up to twenty, I believe, so for us to have found I
mean, look, this is awhite wine from Burgundy that's under twenty dollars
and exactly and there's and there's ahandful of them there. And the other
(31:45):
thing is too when you look atthe list of people that we talk about,
there's some really there's amazing producers inhere, like Denny Bachelet or Nane
Lajom Pillau, Maison Salzi, tubouLeger Belair. You know this this is
you know, this is you knowthis is not like you know, uh,
(32:06):
you know Frank and Joe's House ofBurgundy. These are like these are
venerable producers who are turning out reallyhigh quality. Ali Goote. You know,
I want to touch on the factthat you you've got these Winemaker wisdoms
peppered throughout the book and given notto Rob and Dobby for writing the forward.
Uh, that's a lot of workto get those Winemaker wisdom quotes and
(32:29):
there's here or something. I mean, how did you manage to do that
and get them? And they're hardalready hard to get. Perseverance, I
mean, you know, in aword, perseverance. Wait, Jeff,
Jeff says perseverance, as if Iwasn't the one who wrangled those. But
(32:49):
we do, we do. Wedivide, we divide up our work and
you know what I mean, it'slike you you tackle this, I'll tackle
that. And I wrangled in theWinemaker the Winemaker Wisdom, and you know,
it's funny and it's tough and someI mean, there's a language barrier,
obviously, and many times we woundup translating things ourselves, and you
(33:10):
know, and doing that when wehad to. And it's interesting because so
many people said so many interesting thingsbecause we ask them a series of questions
and this way we can pull outsomebody talks about you know their ter wars.
Somebody else talks about food pairings inthe same chapter as somebody you know,
(33:30):
somebody else talks about where else.You know, I make I grow
chardonnay in Burgundy, but I've hadchardonnay from here, here, here,
and here, and it's really Imean, honestly, you guys know,
you go to winemaker dinners. Youhave people on the show all the time
when it when you sometimes winemakers arenot really good at like making small talk,
(33:51):
but when you ask them about theirwine, they open up and it's
it's basically all they can talk about. So although it was a lot of
work, like wrangling them, andyou know, because of course obviously the
you know, it was all doneby email. Um, although we talked
to people, we you know,we needed we needed a written quote that
we could use. Um, theywere all so so generous and so eager
(34:15):
to share their knowledge and the loveof wine. I would I would say
that, you know, the administrativesecretarial portion was a lot harder than the
actual getting people to talk to usabout their wine that you're translating, My
goodness. Yeah, well, youknow, one of the good things is
we do speak. We're fluent inSpanish, and we're pretty darn fluent in
(34:37):
French and Ukrainian apparently because I rememberyou went to Ukraine. You know that
one related but that was it wasfood related because Jose Andres has a it's
called Central Kitchen, and we werea group of us forty chefs that you
(34:57):
know, we everyone. It waskind of people were if they could stay
for two or three days. Westayed for ten days and worked with thirty
eight other chefs to cook ten thousandmeals a day. So we would work
in the kitchen pretty much from likeeight o'clock in the morning till four o'clock
in the afternoon, making ten thousandmeals that we're going to be distributed that
(35:21):
evening at the train station and theborder crossing when people would come across the
border from the Ukraine into Poland.So it was exhausting work. But I'm
going to tell you you know,it was not wine related, but it
was certainly food related because Jose Andresis a big hero of mine, and
he believes he's going to save theworld one plate of food at a time.
(35:45):
And you know, just the faceof the people when they came across
the border when we served them thingslike a gulage or borsch or like these
are comfort foods, you know,for people from the UK rain and when
we served them, you know,a hot cup of borshed or you know,
(36:06):
goulash with noodles, you just sawon their face for a quick second
that even though their life was inshambles, there was hope that it was
going to be okay, you know, because people were here and they cared.
So, you know, we arethe world wine guys. We do
a lot of stuff around wine obviously, but you know, wine and food
(36:27):
go together. So this was justa really natural thing for us. And
thanks for mentioning that, because youknow, on our Facebook page we've asked
people for donations for some of thecharity work that's there. And you know,
I don't know how to say thispolitely, but I wasn't impressed with
the work that the American Red Crossor a lot of these other larger organizations
(36:51):
were doing to help people. Itwas the smaller charities like you know,
jose and Dress and local church charitiesand a little cool synagogue charities. So
yeah, it's thank you for mentioningthat. It was a pivotal point in
our life while we were writing thisbook, and we just said, we
(37:13):
need to take some time off ofwriting this book and we need to go
do something to help these people.And I don't think the book suffered at
all, and I think it madeus grow as understanding this horrible conflict that's
going on right now, you know, over there. So thanks And if
anybody you know could look at ourFacebook page World Wine guys and you have
(37:37):
a few dollars to spare, pleasedon't hesitate to click on the link and
donate some money. So thanks forthat opportunity to Melanie and David. Well,
we admired it. I mean fora couple of reasons. First of
all, it was you who ledus to du a lingo and now we
can't stop. I mean, youknow, we were driving this supporters that
took us to Europe, crazy andall our friends when we're on press trips
(37:57):
like, are you duo lingoing inthe back of the bus, because we're
constantly due a lingering And I thinkDavid's doing you're what are you doing French
and Italian? I'm doing Italian,French and Hawaiian. Yeah, and I'm
doing it a little bit of Germanand then because we're thinking about where to
move in Europe, I wonder whoinspired us to have a Europe I'm looking
at Portugue guys inspired us to havea home in Europe. So just you
(38:22):
have a home in southern Spain.And when it tell us about that decision
to to move Inertia, right,it's just tiny little village. It's like
ye Naha narhas Any Rga, whichis about half an hour from Malaga.
And you know, we've been Jeffand I have been together for twenty six
(38:42):
years and this, yeah, welike, weal, we were not super
serious about buying a house at first. I just I have this habit.
I'm not allowed to anymore. Jeffpushes me very quickly when I look in
real estate office window when we're traveling. But you know, it was I
and this is like, oh what, you know, what would it be
like to live here? And blahblah blah. And we looked at places
(39:05):
and but things always have drawbacks.I mean, for example, I mean
Tuscany is beautiful, but let's saysinking you're three hours from the Rome airport,
and if you've got a second homeand you're and you're light cruising through
and you can get there for aweek between other things. Do you want
to spend three hours in the car. And so when we got to southern
Spain and we found it there andwe were there, I think we probably
got there first two thousand and twoor two thousand and three. But when
(39:28):
we found our house in two thousandand four, it just ticked off all
the boxes. We just looked andsaid, it's we love the architecture.
Where right, we are between theMediterranean where five minute walk to a beautiful
sandy beach, and we're also aten minute walk from a very large national
(39:50):
park, so we can go tothe beach, we can go hiking.
And although Naar has a relatively smalltown, it's twenty thousand people, there's
over one hundred bars and restaurants.So there's also always we cook at home
a lot, but there's also alwayssomewhere to go when we you know,
when we want to go out fora glass of verdeo. You're near Malaga.
(40:12):
We're looking at it now because youpost these great pictures and we're having
envy because, as you know,we sold our house in twenty twenty lived
on the road. We're in Tennesseebecause we have to be here right now
because I now have a house tounload. Um, but we're actively considering
where to go, um to havea base in Europe and um, you
know we're looking for something like youdid that ticks off all those boxes right
(40:37):
right? What are you guys thinkingabout? You thinking about Portugal? That
would be Oh Portuguese is just toohard to speak. And I don't know
about a college every day. Youknow, there's so many issues right now.
I can tell you being in Tennessee, which has become become a bug
ridden rainforest for us, somewhere inour backyard, I want to go where
as minimal bugs. Yeah, yeah, well I could. You know,
(40:59):
the coast of Europe as is verybeautiful without a lot of buds. So
we would love to have you asneighbors in Europe. Buy something in France
or Italy and we can come visiteach other back there you go, right,
we're looking at Yeah, you know, I have to I have to
say that my mom a friend ofmy family's when I was growing up very
little. She was a fabulous photographerand actually owned a restaurant in Paris for
(41:22):
a time. I had a housein almanyeker which is right up the road
from you guys. Exactly, Yesit is. Yeah, that's about It's
about twenty minutes away. So well, I like Spain, you know,
I mean I never got to go. My mom went, My mom and
my dad went a bunch to visitors. She built a beautiful house up on
a hill overlooking the sea, andshe just said it was the most divine
place ever. Well, somebody postedon a site today and I'm reposting it.
(41:44):
You know, the goal is notto be where we are next year,
So first we have this to dealwith and then we're going to move
forward. But we ended you forthat. I mean, you've, okay,
you've inspired us to consider moving orhaving a place very good and doing
dual lingo and we do want totake off and do something charitable and so,
(42:04):
you know, so I want toI want to get back to wine
for a minute. You know.You Okay, talk a lot about wines
of origin in this book, andI'm curious as to whether you've found a
particular white grape that you've found thathas been planted in another part of the
world from its origin that has donebetter there than in its place of origin.
(42:27):
Obviously, Sevignon blanc is the firstone that comes to mind. Um,
and I don't I can't say necessarilythat because again it's all I mean,
it's all a matter of taste,and I can't say necessarily that New
Zealand sevignon blanc, you know,across the board is better than sevignon blanc
(42:47):
from France, you know, beit, you know, be it from
Bordeaux, um or elsewhere. However, it certainly has become a lot more
popular from you know, there's NewZealand. Seven yon blanc is a phenomenon
around the world, and I thinkfor many I mean, as soon as
you say seven yon blanc to toyou know, to someone who's not necessarily
(43:09):
a wine person but a wine drinker, the first thing that comes out of
their mouth is New Zealand. Andyou know, you know, and that's
interesting because there was actually more chardonay planted in New Zealand until the early
two thousands than there was something right, Yeah, you know, New Zealand's
like what I call it the blindmen and Chardonay to the blind men and
the elephants theory. You know,where you touch the trunk and you think
(43:32):
the whole trunk is the whole elephantslike that. There's so many. I
mean, it is such a differentgrape from where wherever it's grown, and
if you don't like it somewhere else, you're gonna like it all the way
across the world. Right. Yeah, you know, we were out we
were actually out with a we wereout with a wine importer last night.
We were talking, you know,we were just kind of talking about,
you know, things in general,and the fact of the matter is in
(43:54):
New Zealand, I mean, Davidmentioned chardonnay. There's some great chardonay up
in the north near Auckland. Andalso, you know, having spent time
in New Zealand, you know,we've discovered that the resling from New Zealand
and the Pinot Blanc and the PinotGreek are all fantastic. But in general,
you know, the people who leadthis conversation, I mean, ultimately
(44:16):
consumers like lead the wine conversation,but importers are the gatekeepers. So if
if American importers, and then youknow globally, you know, importers into
the UK and into Germany, intoScandinavia, if they've got a good thing
going on with seven yon Blanc fromNew Zealand and they're working with producer and
(44:37):
they're selling a lot of bottles ofseven yon Blanc to their accounts. There's
really nothing in it for them tostart bringing in small quantities of Resling or
Pinot Blanc or seven yon blanc.Certainly some small specialty importers do, but
in the big picture, the importersare leading the conversation, and in this
(44:58):
case by stating well, this likethis is all we want to bring in.
Is is so many obloc because weknow itself it's so true. You
know, it was eye opening whenwe travel for three weeks in France with
an importer who was on a buyingFrank can Sella who was on a buying
trip, and it was so differentfrom a press trip in so many ways
(45:19):
because we were there as he wasdeciding what he was going to buy and
what he wasn't and his evaluation ofeverything was so interesting. It's different than
ours. Yeah, yeah, Andwe agree that it's about the gatekeepers.
And you know, we have agreat written admiration for importers a large and
small, for what they do becausethere's a world of wine out there and
(45:40):
at some point they have to makesome hard decisions and fast decisions based on
a lot of factors. It's noteasy, particularly now in the world of
import we have. We've got abouta minute. Leup. Do have a
question we love to ask since we'vebeen talking about white wine. I like
asking this question and it's a it'skind of a fun question. Um,
(46:05):
if you describe your personalities as awhite what would it be. M hmmm,
Well, we would definitely be different. Okay, I would be I
would be a Chardonnay. I wouldbe uh, very you know, generous,
(46:25):
full bodied, um, something thatpairs really well with a bunch of
different kinds of food, and somethingthat's a little fresh and fruity at times.
So that I would be a Chardonnayfor sure. Oh that's Mike.
Wow, Okay, I think allright, I think that. Um,
I'm thinking something a little higher ascidfor you, Mike. I would be
(46:50):
there, you go. I thinkI would be I'd be Peanut Gregio because
I can be uh, I canbe cheap and cheery and every he can
love me. But I also Icould also have a dual personality, and
I could also be pinot gree andhave a more complex side right and have
a level of sophistication exactly. Ilove asking that question. We get the
(47:15):
most amazing responses every It's a greatparty opener, by the way it is.
Listen, Mike and Jeff. It'sbeen great talking with you both again
on the connected table line. Thebook is White Wine, The Comprehensive Guide
to the Fifty Essential Varieties and StylesMike de Simone and Jeff Jensen, with
(47:36):
a forward by Rob mundab Junior.That was nice, very nice, very
nice forward. You know, it'sa great book. We do highly recommend
it. It's a keeper. Whenwe when we packed up our house and
we had to get rid of alot of books, weeping, we kept
red wine was a keeper. Thewhite wine is a keeper too. We
can't wait to pull red wine outof the box a packing box, and
(47:58):
we're looking forward to it's going tobe either pink wine, sparkling wine,
or sweet one. Oh. Ithink you're going to keep it under wraps
for a while, all right,to keep it under wrap. But I'm
still a little shell shot from youknow, releasing this book. You know,
we turned it into the publisher awhile ago and then all of a
sudden, now Um, we're doingtelevision, any radio and appearances and stuff.
(48:22):
So um, it's a lot ofwork. It's we love, we
love and adore this work. Butum, I need to put a little
time between this and the next book. So yeah maybe, yeah, surprises
you never know, Yeah, younever have. Well, we raise a
glass to you. We're looking ata white wine right now that I'm hoping
(48:45):
we're going to have and uh,we hope to see you in person,
either in New York or Spain.Mike and Jeff Okay, sounds great.
Thanks, thank you for having us. You're welcome. And you've been listening
to The Connected Table Live with MelanieYoung and David ra some of your insatiably
curious culinary couple. As we alwayssay when we end our show, stay
(49:06):
insatiably curious. Thank you,
The topics and opinions expressed in thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests, and not thoseof W forcy Radio. It's employees are
affiliates. We make no recommendations orendorsements for radio show, program, services,
or products mentioned on air or onour web. No liability, explicit
or implied shall be extended to Wfourcy Radio or its employees or affiliates.
Any questions or comments should be directedto those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W forcy Radio. Welcome tothe Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
(00:44):
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You'reinsatiably curious culinary couple celebrating our tenth
season with this show. We enjoybringing you the amazing people we meet as
we travel around the world who leadin wine, spirits, hospitality, and
food. We love sharing their storieswith you and connecting, and we hope
(01:06):
that when you listen you're inspired totry, taste, travel and discover because
our motto is eat, drink,explore, inspire, and we want to
do that with you. We arevery excited. We very rarely repeat guests,
but we're starting too because we're inour tenth season, and many of
our guests are amazing and doing verycool things that are new and different or
(01:29):
have new books, and that ishow it goes with our guests. Today,
we're going to set this show upwith one of the dumbest quotes I
found researching how to start this showand our companion blog. It's from the
award winning film actress Betty Davis.Never never trust anyone who ask for white
wine. It means they are phonies. Well, let's face it, she
(01:53):
was a better actress than a wineconsumer, right, don't ask it,
and that we feel that way,but I do celeb right now. I
think she was a really good drinkerthough, yeah she could drink. But
let's face it, we love whitewine and that is going to be the
topic of our show today. Welove all wine, but we're talking white
(02:14):
today. I hope that's pc andin terms of wine. And we're excited
because our repeat guests are some ofour favorite people in the journalism world.
We're talking about the world wine guysMike de Simone and Jeff Jensen, who
actually were on our show in earlytwenty eighteen with their groundbreaking award winning book
Red Wine, and I remember sayingwhen are you going to do white wine?
(02:38):
And he say, oh, yeah, we're going to work on that
one next So we're excited to haveyou guys back. Mike and Jeff,
Welcome to the Connected Table. Thankyou, Melanie, Thank you David.
We are will to be on today, Yes we are. And Melanie,
as as you know, and wespoke a few years ago, when is
the next book coming out? Well, I'm going to tell you. Even
(02:59):
though a book was award winning andit won Germont International Best one Book in
the World for red wine, ourpublisher was still leery about doing a book
about white wine. So m wekind of persisted, we kind of pushed,
and what ended up happening was ourpublisher m. Barnes and Noble,
(03:22):
you know, Sterling epicure U it'isn't doing so well, you know there
as you've seen, you know,all kinds of they've cut back on employees,
they've changed the name of their publishingcompany. Anyway, to make a
long story short, our editor fromthere reached out to us and said,
hey, did you guys ever dowhite wine? And by the way,
(03:45):
I'm with WW Norton now and I'dlove to buy white wine if it's still
available, and he believed in theproject from day one. And you know,
with our previous publisher, we hadto actually fight, you know,
and explain that people do you drinkwhite wine and the people who drink white
wine do skew more towards women?And who buys books women or men?
(04:08):
Women? So you know, wehad all the marketing stuff ready to go,
but still they wouldn't fight. Sowe have a brand new publisher.
We are ecstatic to be with thevenerable ww Norton and we're really excited about
the book was like number one onAmazon a few weeks ago for wine and
food pairing, So we're just ecstaticand we're so happy to be back on
(04:30):
It's great. It's great to talkto both of you again. Well,
we're glad you have such a greatand venerable publisher as well. Your previous
one must have been a Betty Davisfan and a bit of a misogynist because
women do buy most of the winein the country, and white wine is
not just for women, and it'sa crate. We just did a prerecord
(04:50):
about Rose. We went through thiswhole topic about or did women drive the
Rose Revolution? But I always findit crazy when people gender or a fi
as I call it gendrify and gentrifywine because wine should be for all people
who have good taste, right,man and women, all genders, all
(05:10):
backgrounds. So congratulations and congratulations wereIt's monumental debut already. Um, this
is a terrific book. I'm we'reboth grape geeks. I just finally got
my csw yea me, but Igot soulationem Um. Yeah, so geekedom
studying it and this is it's notjust geek and it's very informative. Um,
(05:34):
first of all, before we diveinto it, what have you guys
been doing since we last spoke toyou in twenty eighteen. How has life
changed for you? Um? Wow, it's you know, we've been.
It's been this real life onward andupward trajectory. We're you know, we
still we're traveling a lot. We'vebeen, you know, we've been to
(05:55):
a lot of wine regions all overthe world. I think one of the
ways that life has changed for usis that we really have We've stopped scrambling
so much. And I think thata lot of us in the world of
wine, a lot of people whoare journalists to do what we do and
who do what we do what youdo. There's a point, you know,
when you're kind of like getting yourfooting where you're scrambling a lot and
(06:18):
you're you know, throwing a lotof pasta at the wall, so to
speak, and hoping that it sticks, and you know, things are coming
to us. Now. Our editor, actually the editor that we worked with
on this book, came to usand said, hey, did you guys
ever sell that I'd love to publishit. Um, we have in addition
(06:38):
to the work that I do withwine enthusiasts. This is Mike speaking.
Jeff and I in the last yearhave become the wine editors at rob Report,
and again we've done you know,we were doing some freelance for them,
and they reached out to us andsaid, we're looking to you know,
we would love to bring you onfull time. And even like just
posting about our book on social media, televine vision producers and folks like you
(07:01):
are contacting us and saying, hey, we'd love to talk to you about
your book. So I think thatreally in that time, in the last
five years, we have we've settledinto this position of being known for what
we do. And although life iscrazy and I would really love to you
know, count the number of nightsthat we sleep in our own bed and
(07:26):
have more of those than you knowthat than on the road somewhere, we
really are like relaxing into what wedo. Now. Yeah, you know,
I think that I think that you'renot you know, scrambling or groveling
UM. Is awesome because too manywine writers are still groveling um and getting
paid not worth they're worth. Imade the conscious decision to do similar,
(07:46):
to say no to things. ButI think that you always also push a
lot of great content. I mean, you've got some amazing videos out there
that you do very consistency, andthat's important, right, yeah, exactly,
Yeah, yeah, no, itis important. I mean as much
as uh, you know, asmuch as much as we relax, we
also know, you know, andeven as much as we're you know,
(08:07):
we're we're not um, you know, we're not like like hustling all the
time. You still do need tokeep yourself out there or people will forget
about you tell me about it,uh you know, but we want to
underscore and this is really important toeverybody going. Well, that's like so
awesome people are coming in up.You guys have been in the trenches for
a long time. You're not thenew kid, You're not those new influencers
(08:31):
on the block. You guys aresolid journalists who've been doing this for a
long time like us. So Ireally want to understood it out. Thank
you, that is true, andthank you, you know, thank you
for recognizing that, and thank youfor pointing it out. And obviously,
you know, like you just said, like you say, no, we
have had there have been a lotof opportunities where people have been saying,
(08:52):
like, we want to talk toyou about your book, and we look
at a lot of them and don'tyou know, and don't really view some
of some of what comes our wayas opportunities. But of course when you
know, when you and David askedus if we would be on your show,
you know we will make the timefor the two of you anytime.
Well, thank you, that's true. Well we appreciate that. We appreciate
(09:13):
that we've been doing this for tenyears. I hope it goes to something
we've been doing it for a lottime. You'd be surprised at how many
people say no. Still, yeah, I mean we will say who they
are, but you know a lotof times it's just not a fit,
or people are too busy, andthen you know, you you move on
and then you don't circle back,and that happened sometimes you or they try
to pawn somebody else on this.You know, we have a very strict
(09:33):
criteria who we put on the show, and you can't pawn off some staff
or to us, it's not thesame when we say global leaders and pot
leaders. So you travel a lot, as you said, and you did
a lot of research. Fifty whitevarieties. I'm just dying to ask this
question, how did you pick thesevarieties? Because there's a world of white
(09:54):
grapes out there, you know,that's a that's a great question. There
is a world of white grapes outthere. But you know, we really
looked at some of the grapes thatwe really like ourselves. But also to
make our books serviceable to people whobuy our book in the US or the
UK, or Canada, Australia,you know, any English speaking country,
(10:18):
we wanted to make the wines thatwe or the grapes that we chose so
people could find the wines. Imean, we wanted this book to be
serviceable. We wanted them to beable to leave it on their coffee table
and say, I want to tryan Alborno today and open up to the
you know, the first chapter andsee what Alberinos are available in their markets.
(10:39):
So we were very cognizant of makingthese approachable grapes, but also too,
I mean, you'll see alborino inthere. You know, we happen
to love Spanish grapes. You know, you're going to see over the Daho,
You're going to see you know,garnachal blanc. Are youre going to
see white wine grapes that we lovefrom Spain, but also our travels in
(11:03):
Greece, Asiatico, a catarato inItaly, or you know, subgnon blanc
in either France or New Zealand.So these are grapes that we really like
and we find them very interesting andvery very different depending on the terroir.
(11:24):
You know, as you know,a sabgnon blanc from San se Or in
France tastes nothing like a subannion blancfrom Marlborough. So that's kind of one
of the criteria. We really wantedto present a very broad and deep assortment
to the people who buy our book, and that's what we tried to do.
So that's a great question, thankyou. Well. The subtitle of
(11:46):
the book is the Comprehensive Guide tothe fifty Essential Varieties and Styles you need
to Know, and so that Ithink that that really it's basically the basis
of a white wine drinker's library portfolio. Right, So you're you're saying,
these are the essential grapes. There'sa ton of mount there and we all
know that, but these are theones you need to know and then you
(12:09):
can take your learning on from there. It's also manageable. You can't go
on and on and on. Imean you get limitations on pages, right,
right, That's why that's why theworld gave us the Internet. That
you know, a book likeness,we could, you know, we could
write about fifty different when we sayvarieties and styles for anyone who's listening.
So varieties are a single type ofgrape like chardonnay, like seven, like
(12:31):
seven young blanc, you know,like for dicio. And then when we
talk about the the style, we'retalking about the old world regional blend styles.
So it's a it's a wine thatis made, it could be made
with one grape, it could bemade with other with um a blend,
but it's known by its regional name, so that is, you know,
(12:52):
stuff like sherry or madeira ordaviy um, which are which again are not known
by the variety any names, butknown by the region name. I was
glad to see Marsala in there becauseI think Marsala deserves another looks sicily recently.
Yeah, you know, it reallydoes. And I think one of
(13:13):
the things about you know, Marsalakind of gets a bad rap because of
the Italian American classic chicken Marsala andvil Marsala, which are so there's this
like cooking level of Marsala, andunlike sherry, for example, like we
know that there's something called cooking sherry, which is you know, this like
this thing you could actually like buyin grocery stores and cook with. I
(13:35):
think most people aren't aware that markthat there is this like amazing depth and
breath of styles of Marsala and thataged wine from Marsala can. I mean,
it's sublime. It's it's different then, but in terms of the just
how wonderful it is to taste,It's like, you know, it's like
(13:56):
drinking a really fine saw turn ora really fine tocon. Well, I
think like that you're right in thatrespect. I also think that Marsala will
have its return at some point becausethe grape that it's made from, Grillo,
is arguably Italy's most popular white grape, and it was originally made to
make Marsala, grown to make Marcella, and as people moved away from Marsala,
(14:20):
they started to make grillo as weknow it today and sell it as
a variet of wine. So withthe popularity of grillo as a grape,
people are going to start to wantto know what that grape was used for
traditionally, right, So then Marcella, I think we'll have a return.
Yeah, yes, I think itis. And I think in the same
way just as you know. Becausesweet wines, although the funny thing is
(14:43):
people love sweet wines, but theylove they love sweet, they love like
like dry sweet wines, they lovelike moscato, and they love those like
you know, those funny like sweetred wines. They're really popular. However,
there's a there's been a downturn inthe consumption of port and of tokai
and of sought turn, which iswhy we're seeing for example, with Tokai,
(15:07):
so much dry ferment on the market, and again just as you said,
with the you know, with theGrillo, David, that is really
shining a light. People are like, oh, ferment, I never heard
of that, and then it getsthem to explore the sweet wines of Tokai
as well as the dry ferment thatthey're enjoying. Correct, Yeah, big
(15:28):
fans of ferment. We were justin Sicily a couple of what a month
or so ago, Melie and tastedtasted a lot of grillo, also tasted
a bunch of marsalin. And there'ssome fabulous marsala's being made in Sicily right
now. Not as much as thereused to be, as we all know,
because the industry took a downturn aspeople started focusing there Grillo on making
(15:48):
the grillo they make. Now,however, still some really wonderful marsala being
made, and you know, there'sa little bit of an inching up of
productions as that popularity becomes more andmore. And I think that's representative in
other areas as well. I'm curious, as you researched this book, which
we want to underscore, is notjust it's like not overly giggy. There's
a lot of great historical content forthe varieties food pairings. Love the fact
(16:14):
that you provide recommended wines from bargainsto you know, splurges, which is
really helpful. Were there some AHAsthat you found as you rage? I
mean, how you know you talkabout people used to say, oh white
wine, you're original publisher. Ohno, it's a women thing. What
are you seeing changing in the worldof white wine? You know, I
(16:37):
think what we're seeing is that alot of younger people are drinking they you
know, the younger people drink grapesand older people drink regions. Think about
you know, the people we knowin their sixties seventies, they're going to
drink a Burgundy, They're gonna drinka Bordeaux, They're gonna drink a Napocad,
(16:57):
Whereas younger people will tend to bea little bit more adventurous and they're
going to drink more grapes. Soyou know, they're going to drink of
fianna, They're going to drink ashunning blank, They're going to drink of
Sri Lan now um, and they'regoing to give it a try. So
I think that we're seeing a littlebit more adventure. I mean Gruner Vetliner
when it first came into the market, you know, ten years ago,
(17:18):
so it was kind of considered that, you know, not very exciting line,
kind of plunk, you know,cheap and cheery. But now there's
some amazing Gruner's being made out there, so that makes that a little bit
more exciting, you know. Andthen you have we have our um you
know, different types of blends,Coveys, you know, white roans,
we have our sparkling lines. Wehave our Marsala that we were just talking
(17:44):
about, so you know, wetry to like mix it up. But
I think that we're finding a muchmore adventurous drinker these days, and that's
that makes it exciting for us becauseyou know, we get to write about
fun stuff and not the typical.You know, all right, this is
a lovely Bordeaux and it's seven hundreddollars a bottle. It's from sending me
(18:06):
the on and yeah, that's great. Who doesn't love those wines. But
I think what we're seeing is moreadventure and I think, if I could
sum it up in one word,more curiosity. So while younger consumers are
drinking less consumption is down. Thosewho do are drinking more adventurously because they
want to get out there and exploreand travel with their palates, right exactly.
(18:30):
And I certainly think we I havefortunately, we've been like dining out
a bit lately, and I justand I feel like an explosion in by
the glass lists and in a reallyreally interesting selection by the glass lists,
and that you know, that's away that consumers of any age can explore
(18:51):
something. If you know, it'snot even investment in a bottle, it's
an investment in a single glass.And if if you like it, great,
if it's on a blass list ina restaurant, odds are there's going
to be an appetiser or an entreethat pairs really well with it. And
if you don't like it, well, you know you lost fifteen minutes and
the cost of a glass of wine. So it wasn't that big a deal
(19:12):
anyway, that's true. I mean, you know, I always I'm one
of those annoying people like to tasteeverything before I'm buy it, because that's
just the way I am. Umcurious, you know, we asked about
that these interesting takeaways. Do youfind there's a why that you feel is
(19:36):
um still a great discovery or underratedfor what it is and what people perceive
it to be. UM I think, I mean, I'll just say in
terms of I mean in terms oflike UM, like just underrated in general
or a new discovery. We werein Croatia recently and we enjoyed, you
(19:56):
know, several different versions of postssit is one of the grapes that we
covered in there, and you know, like Croatia is that you know,
this really big hot destination, youknow, vacation destination. At this point,
we're still not seeing a lot ofthe wines in the market. But
for me, I you know,I think I think that that post Ship
(20:17):
is definitely you know, a grapethat will we'll be hearing more more about
in the future. Something else Ithink that we discovered in terms of being
underrated is Verdejo and I think partof that is that Verdejo's, you know,
Verdejos like the number one wine grapein number one white grape in Spain.
Right now. You know, ifyou go into a bar or restaurant
(20:42):
in Spain and ask for a glassof white Um without specifying, you're going
to get a Verdejo. But Verdejohas really been thought of as like cheap
and cheery. There's a lot ofVerdejo under twenty dollars, there's a lot
in the fifteen dollars range in theUS, there's a lot in the three
to five dollars range in Spain.But now there's actually we're seeing a lot
(21:02):
more barrel fermented um. People aredoing you know, single vineyard and really
focusing on their their mineral terroir.And they've also added a new category,
Gran grand venos, the Rueta fromthe Rueda region in Spain, which is
the you know, the home ofVerdeo and where most of it comes from.
And those are all old vine expressionsof Vergaio. So I think that
(21:26):
we're gonna we're gonna start seeing aum like Verdejo go from the being like
this cheap and cheery entry level bythe glass poor to a wine that really
starts to inch up and get morerespect in the wine world. Well,
hey, I've got one too,so let's not forget about the lowly upshawar
blanc. Yeah. I was like, well that's an interesting selection. Let's
(21:52):
let's not forget about that. Wewent to Luxembourg if you actually about a
year ago and we were judging awine competition there and of course a lot
of the local wines were represented,and I just fell in love with oxewa
block from Luxembourg, you know,and it was it's really a super super
wine, very very nice, generouskind of Chardonnay, is kind of southern
(22:18):
own blancash. It's got kind oflike the best of both worlds. And
it's a little hard to find somewine from Luxembourg here in the States.
But in our book, you know, we found five or six bargain wine,
so that means, you know,those are twenty to forty dollars,
and then you know, we havevalue lines which are just you know,
above forty dollars. That there's someamazing oxowar there coming from France, Luxembourg,
(22:45):
and also from Oregon. There's quitea few coming from Oregon, so
really really interesting. So that's that'sthe great that I was a revelation for
me because traveling around Luxembourg, wefound you know, these amazing, amazing
lines affordable prices, especially you knowin the in the country where they're produced,
but just really really loving them andif you really want to try something
(23:07):
fun. Try an oxelwar Blanc fromLuxembourg, try one from France, and
then try one from Oregon local retailerfor an oxber Long when we go back
to her store. Two words Inever thought I'd heard said on our show
would be luxembourgan one. Yeah,we haven't been to Luxembourg. We're kind
(23:27):
of still lingering on the fact thatyou've been to I think you're the first
people we know who've been to Luxeburg. Prince Robert, Wow, exactly.
You know, I'm actually just reading. I just opened up. Jeff and
I are. We're in separate roomsright now, so we don't get feedback,
but I just opened up when Jeffwas talking to the Oxe war Blanc
chapter and remembered how how funny theopening is because we say Oxe war Blanc
(23:51):
and Chardonnay are siblings, but oxewarBlanc is the less famous of the two,
a little like Olivier. To havea Linden Joan Fontaine, Liza Minelli
and Laura Luft, Felicia Rassat andDebbie Allen, it's like, I'm like,
it's just kind of like looking back. I mean, obviously, you
know, it takes a year fromthe time you like write something till the
time it comes out, and I'mlike, well, that's pretty funny look
(24:15):
at that. So it's not asas you one of you pointed out yet
there's a lot of info here,but it's not completely geeky, and we
did try to make it entertaining.Well, it certainly is. I love
that. I love that intro bythe way, that's like a Melanie intro
because sometimes you just have to putin the context that way. Well,
I want to just add another point. We U we're very, very excited.
(24:38):
When we were in Luxembourg, wewere in, you know, one
of the restaurants on the main squarewhere a friend of ours who works at
the Palais de Justice and the JusticePalace there for European law, and she
happens to be the Somalia dining roomdirector and um, the owner of the
restaurant, came up to her andus as we're seeing at the tab Abelen
(25:00):
said, oh, you know thePrime Minister of Luxembourg. His name is
javiert Bettel and he's the prime ministerfor um, you know, for the
whole country of Luxembourg. And I'vejust I'm fascinated with this man because he
is the first openly gay prime ministerin I think in the world, definitely
(25:22):
in Europe. In Europe for sure. And I said to my friend the
Dominique, I said, gosh,I would love to meet this guy.
And she's like, oh, he'snot going to meet you, like you
know, he's he's sitting in thekin outside in the garden and don't even
think about it. So being American, but we're Americans. But being American
(25:44):
and being a little pushy and wedon't speak French. Um, We've said
to the owner of the restaurant,wouldn't it be possible if we could meet,
you know, the prime minister.He said, oh, my god,
come with me. He would loveto meet journalists Wine, journalists from
the United States. So we weresome of the first journalists to ever be
there, and we were scorted overto his table and we stood there and
(26:06):
we spoke in French for about fifteenminutes, you know, just saying,
you know, he was so complimentaryabout, you know, the magazines we
write for. He knows them verywell. He lived, he was you
know, stationed here in the USas an ambassador for a while so he
was just really really nice, sohe knew what we were doing and we
(26:27):
just had a wonderful conversation and hewas so generous and we actually have a
picture. I can send it toyou. There's a picture of us with
him, and he was just sucha nice guy. So when you're saying
that you haven't been to Luxembourg,I just want to let you know,
nobody's been to Luxemburg and you know, and we were the first, you
(26:48):
know, American journalists you know,writing about wine, and he said,
yes, he would speak to us. I would imagine if there's hundreds of
American wine journalists coming through every day, he would get bored. But um,
so yes, Luxembourg is a placeyou have to visit, Melanie and
David. It's a beautiful, beautifulcountry and the people are really really wonderful
(27:10):
and even even the Prime minister.You know, if you don't ask,
you don't get That's who I am. What about many people, that's right?
Amen. Well, you know weall share that American and New York
gene, so we if you don'task, you don't get it. So
when we were when we were doingour research on the book, um to
(27:33):
figure out what to talk about.We decided the other night, let's try
one of the one of the winesthat we usually don't have from from the
list of fifty, and so weactually came up with an alegote oh from
celier Amois in Burgundy. Beautiful wine. But let's talk about Algote a little
bit, because it's it's one.It's the other white grape of Burgundy,
(27:56):
related to Chardonnay as well, partof the Guay family, so um and
makes a very nice wine, butit's not it's a wine that a lot
of people don't know much about.Let's talk about that one that's it.
Well, I mean Algota, youknow, unfortunately has a second you know
child or the redheaded step child,you know, mentality in France, and
(28:17):
it's it's so undeserved um. Andyou know, it is the second white
grape of Burgundy, and they useit mostly to make you know, a
ker or a kir royale um andyou know, adding some chamboard or some
casis, and so they don't reallyvalue it. However, there are a
new crop of younger winemakers who valuethis grape um and are making some really
(28:42):
really stupor aligotees and we were talkingto a younger wine maker. Um and
even though he made himself a fantasticalgotee, one of the funniest things were
when we talked about another winemaker makingchardonnay on this plot of land and it
is a vineyard plot. And thisis I love the French because they're so
(29:04):
um, they can they can givea really backhanded compliment and they're just like,
well, perhaps instead of growing chardonnayon this land, he should grow
alagote And so basically what they're sayingis this vineyard is not appropriate for chardonnay,
but it would make a good alagote. But it is a slur,
you know, at the same timemaking fun of alagotee. And but that
(29:30):
said, this wine maker and manyother young winemakers that we met, make
a beautiful, crisp, clean,you know, it's got a nice amount
of acidity, and you've got somebeautiful, beautiful, you know, flavor
profiles, you know green apple,you know, citrus blossoms, and it's
just really a lovely, lovely windfor an apperatif or if you're sitting on
(29:55):
the back of someone's yacht or youknow, with a dinner, why not
have it with a dinner as well. But what did you think? You
drank it last night, so howdid you feel about it? We loved
it. It was lovely. Wehad some Alogota when we were in Burgundy
m with an importer in January andwe're intrigued and um, you know there's
like one area that's that is dedicatedto Alagota boozer on, which is kind
(30:18):
of like a fun little fact.And you know, it reminded you that
the Laurna love Liza Minelli thing.I mean, you know, it's just
yes, you know, it's lovely. And I don't know about pricing.
I don't know the prices, butI would I would venture. I guess
it's probably a little less expensive thansome of these crazy jornade based Burgundy's I
know absolutely, and in general itis. And actually, if you know,
(30:41):
even if you look in the bookwe've got, there's like a few
there's like what four or five inthe bargain and then maybe seven or eight
in value special occasion. We onlyfound one splurge. And if you look
like what we did, and webroke out because there's so many of them,
we actually broke argune out, notjust into you know, Burgundy or
(31:03):
France, but actually into like individualappellations, and we were like fighting.
We were like not fighting each other, but really like working hard to fit
as like as many of our choicesas possible into especially like the you know,
the splurge and special occasion, becausethere's so many of them. There's
(31:23):
only one splurge m Alagote that wefound that's like readily imported into the US
market. Um, that's over onehundred dollars. There's a lot more bargain
is up to twenty, I believe, so for us to have found I
mean, look, this is awhite wine from Burgundy that's under twenty dollars
and exactly and there's and there's ahandful of them there. And the other
(31:45):
thing is too when you look atthe list of people that we talk about,
there's some really there's amazing producers inhere, like Denny Bachelet or Nane
Lajom Pillau, Maison Salzi, tubouLeger Belair. You know this this is
you know, this is you knowthis is not like you know, uh,
(32:06):
you know Frank and Joe's House ofBurgundy. These are like these are
venerable producers who are turning out reallyhigh quality. Ali Goote. You know,
I want to touch on the factthat you you've got these Winemaker wisdoms
peppered throughout the book and given notto Rob and Dobby for writing the forward.
Uh, that's a lot of workto get those Winemaker wisdom quotes and
(32:29):
there's here or something. I mean, how did you manage to do that
and get them? And they're hardalready hard to get. Perseverance, I
mean, you know, in aword, perseverance. Wait, Jeff,
Jeff says perseverance, as if Iwasn't the one who wrangled those. But
(32:49):
we do, we do. Wedivide, we divide up our work and
you know what I mean, it'slike you you tackle this, I'll tackle
that. And I wrangled in theWinemaker the Winemaker Wisdom, and you know,
it's funny and it's tough and someI mean, there's a language barrier,
obviously, and many times we woundup translating things ourselves, and you
(33:10):
know, and doing that when wehad to. And it's interesting because so
many people said so many interesting thingsbecause we ask them a series of questions
and this way we can pull outsomebody talks about you know their ter wars.
Somebody else talks about food pairings inthe same chapter as somebody you know,
(33:30):
somebody else talks about where else.You know, I make I grow
chardonnay in Burgundy, but I've hadchardonnay from here, here, here,
and here, and it's really Imean, honestly, you guys know,
you go to winemaker dinners. Youhave people on the show all the time
when it when you sometimes winemakers arenot really good at like making small talk,
(33:51):
but when you ask them about theirwine, they open up and it's
it's basically all they can talk about. So although it was a lot of
work, like wrangling them, andyou know, because of course obviously the
you know, it was all doneby email. Um, although we talked
to people, we you know,we needed we needed a written quote that
we could use. Um, theywere all so so generous and so eager
(34:15):
to share their knowledge and the loveof wine. I would I would say
that, you know, the administrativesecretarial portion was a lot harder than the
actual getting people to talk to usabout their wine that you're translating, My
goodness. Yeah, well, youknow, one of the good things is
we do speak. We're fluent inSpanish, and we're pretty darn fluent in
(34:37):
French and Ukrainian apparently because I rememberyou went to Ukraine. You know that
one related but that was it wasfood related because Jose Andres has a it's
called Central Kitchen, and we werea group of us forty chefs that you
(34:57):
know, we everyone. It waskind of people were if they could stay
for two or three days. Westayed for ten days and worked with thirty
eight other chefs to cook ten thousandmeals a day. So we would work
in the kitchen pretty much from likeeight o'clock in the morning till four o'clock
in the afternoon, making ten thousandmeals that we're going to be distributed that
(35:21):
evening at the train station and theborder crossing when people would come across the
border from the Ukraine into Poland.So it was exhausting work. But I'm
going to tell you you know,it was not wine related, but it
was certainly food related because Jose Andresis a big hero of mine, and
he believes he's going to save theworld one plate of food at a time.
(35:45):
And you know, just the faceof the people when they came across
the border when we served them thingslike a gulage or borsch or like these
are comfort foods, you know,for people from the UK rain and when
we served them, you know,a hot cup of borshed or you know,
(36:06):
goulash with noodles, you just sawon their face for a quick second
that even though their life was inshambles, there was hope that it was
going to be okay, you know, because people were here and they cared.
So, you know, we arethe world wine guys. We do
a lot of stuff around wine obviously, but you know, wine and food
(36:27):
go together. So this was justa really natural thing for us. And
thanks for mentioning that, because youknow, on our Facebook page we've asked
people for donations for some of thecharity work that's there. And you know,
I don't know how to say thispolitely, but I wasn't impressed with
the work that the American Red Crossor a lot of these other larger organizations
(36:51):
were doing to help people. Itwas the smaller charities like you know,
jose and Dress and local church charitiesand a little cool synagogue charities. So
yeah, it's thank you for mentioningthat. It was a pivotal point in
our life while we were writing thisbook, and we just said, we
(37:13):
need to take some time off ofwriting this book and we need to go
do something to help these people.And I don't think the book suffered at
all, and I think it madeus grow as understanding this horrible conflict that's
going on right now, you know, over there. So thanks And if
anybody you know could look at ourFacebook page World Wine guys and you have
(37:37):
a few dollars to spare, pleasedon't hesitate to click on the link and
donate some money. So thanks forthat opportunity to Melanie and David. Well,
we admired it. I mean fora couple of reasons. First of
all, it was you who ledus to du a lingo and now we
can't stop. I mean, youknow, we were driving this supporters that
took us to Europe, crazy andall our friends when we're on press trips
(37:57):
like, are you duo lingoing inthe back of the bus, because we're
constantly due a lingering And I thinkDavid's doing you're what are you doing French
and Italian? I'm doing Italian,French and Hawaiian. Yeah, and I'm
doing it a little bit of Germanand then because we're thinking about where to
move in Europe, I wonder whoinspired us to have a Europe I'm looking
at Portugue guys inspired us to havea home in Europe. So just you
(38:22):
have a home in southern Spain.And when it tell us about that decision
to to move Inertia, right,it's just tiny little village. It's like
ye Naha narhas Any Rga, whichis about half an hour from Malaga.
And you know, we've been Jeffand I have been together for twenty six
(38:42):
years and this, yeah, welike, weal, we were not super
serious about buying a house at first. I just I have this habit.
I'm not allowed to anymore. Jeffpushes me very quickly when I look in
real estate office window when we're traveling. But you know, it was I
and this is like, oh what, you know, what would it be
like to live here? And blahblah blah. And we looked at places
(39:05):
and but things always have drawbacks.I mean, for example, I mean
Tuscany is beautiful, but let's saysinking you're three hours from the Rome airport,
and if you've got a second homeand you're and you're light cruising through
and you can get there for aweek between other things. Do you want
to spend three hours in the car. And so when we got to southern
Spain and we found it there andwe were there, I think we probably
got there first two thousand and twoor two thousand and three. But when
(39:28):
we found our house in two thousandand four, it just ticked off all
the boxes. We just looked andsaid, it's we love the architecture.
Where right, we are between theMediterranean where five minute walk to a beautiful
sandy beach, and we're also aten minute walk from a very large national
(39:50):
park, so we can go tothe beach, we can go hiking.
And although Naar has a relatively smalltown, it's twenty thousand people, there's
over one hundred bars and restaurants.So there's also always we cook at home
a lot, but there's also alwayssomewhere to go when we you know,
when we want to go out fora glass of verdeo. You're near Malaga.
(40:12):
We're looking at it now because youpost these great pictures and we're having
envy because, as you know,we sold our house in twenty twenty lived
on the road. We're in Tennesseebecause we have to be here right now
because I now have a house tounload. Um, but we're actively considering
where to go, um to havea base in Europe and um, you
know we're looking for something like youdid that ticks off all those boxes right
(40:37):
right? What are you guys thinkingabout? You thinking about Portugal? That
would be Oh Portuguese is just toohard to speak. And I don't know
about a college every day. Youknow, there's so many issues right now.
I can tell you being in Tennessee, which has become become a bug
ridden rainforest for us, somewhere inour backyard, I want to go where
as minimal bugs. Yeah, yeah, well I could. You know,
(40:59):
the coast of Europe as is verybeautiful without a lot of buds. So
we would love to have you asneighbors in Europe. Buy something in France
or Italy and we can come visiteach other back there you go, right,
we're looking at Yeah, you know, I have to I have to
say that my mom a friend ofmy family's when I was growing up very
little. She was a fabulous photographerand actually owned a restaurant in Paris for
(41:22):
a time. I had a housein almanyeker which is right up the road
from you guys. Exactly, Yesit is. Yeah, that's about It's
about twenty minutes away. So well, I like Spain, you know,
I mean I never got to go. My mom went, My mom and
my dad went a bunch to visitors. She built a beautiful house up on
a hill overlooking the sea, andshe just said it was the most divine
place ever. Well, somebody postedon a site today and I'm reposting it.
(41:44):
You know, the goal is notto be where we are next year,
So first we have this to dealwith and then we're going to move
forward. But we ended you forthat. I mean, you've, okay,
you've inspired us to consider moving orhaving a place very good and doing
dual lingo and we do want totake off and do something charitable and so,
(42:04):
you know, so I want toI want to get back to wine
for a minute. You know.You Okay, talk a lot about wines
of origin in this book, andI'm curious as to whether you've found a
particular white grape that you've found thathas been planted in another part of the
world from its origin that has donebetter there than in its place of origin.
(42:27):
Obviously, Sevignon blanc is the firstone that comes to mind. Um,
and I don't I can't say necessarilythat because again it's all I mean,
it's all a matter of taste,and I can't say necessarily that New
Zealand sevignon blanc, you know,across the board is better than sevignon blanc
(42:47):
from France, you know, beit, you know, be it from
Bordeaux, um or elsewhere. However, it certainly has become a lot more
popular from you know, there's NewZealand. Seven yon blanc is a phenomenon
around the world, and I thinkfor many I mean, as soon as
you say seven yon blanc to toyou know, to someone who's not necessarily
(43:09):
a wine person but a wine drinker, the first thing that comes out of
their mouth is New Zealand. Andyou know, you know, and that's
interesting because there was actually more chardonay planted in New Zealand until the early
two thousands than there was something right, Yeah, you know, New Zealand's
like what I call it the blindmen and Chardonay to the blind men and
the elephants theory. You know,where you touch the trunk and you think
(43:32):
the whole trunk is the whole elephantslike that. There's so many. I
mean, it is such a differentgrape from where wherever it's grown, and
if you don't like it somewhere else, you're gonna like it all the way
across the world. Right. Yeah, you know, we were out we
were actually out with a we wereout with a wine importer last night.
We were talking, you know,we were just kind of talking about,
you know, things in general,and the fact of the matter is in
(43:54):
New Zealand, I mean, Davidmentioned chardonnay. There's some great chardonay up
in the north near Auckland. Andalso, you know, having spent time
in New Zealand, you know,we've discovered that the resling from New Zealand
and the Pinot Blanc and the PinotGreek are all fantastic. But in general,
you know, the people who leadthis conversation, I mean, ultimately
(44:16):
consumers like lead the wine conversation,but importers are the gatekeepers. So if
if American importers, and then youknow globally, you know, importers into
the UK and into Germany, intoScandinavia, if they've got a good thing
going on with seven yon Blanc fromNew Zealand and they're working with producer and
(44:37):
they're selling a lot of bottles ofseven yon Blanc to their accounts. There's
really nothing in it for them tostart bringing in small quantities of Resling or
Pinot Blanc or seven yon blanc.Certainly some small specialty importers do, but
in the big picture, the importersare leading the conversation, and in this
(44:58):
case by stating well, this likethis is all we want to bring in.
Is is so many obloc because weknow itself it's so true. You
know, it was eye opening whenwe travel for three weeks in France with
an importer who was on a buyingFrank can Sella who was on a buying
trip, and it was so differentfrom a press trip in so many ways
(45:19):
because we were there as he wasdeciding what he was going to buy and
what he wasn't and his evaluation ofeverything was so interesting. It's different than
ours. Yeah, yeah, Andwe agree that it's about the gatekeepers.
And you know, we have agreat written admiration for importers a large and
small, for what they do becausethere's a world of wine out there and
(45:40):
at some point they have to makesome hard decisions and fast decisions based on
a lot of factors. It's noteasy, particularly now in the world of
import we have. We've got abouta minute. Leup. Do have a
question we love to ask since we'vebeen talking about white wine. I like
asking this question and it's a it'skind of a fun question. Um,
(46:05):
if you describe your personalities as awhite what would it be. M hmmm,
Well, we would definitely be different. Okay, I would be I
would be a Chardonnay. I wouldbe uh, very you know, generous,
(46:25):
full bodied, um, something thatpairs really well with a bunch of
different kinds of food, and somethingthat's a little fresh and fruity at times.
So that I would be a Chardonnayfor sure. Oh that's Mike.
Wow, Okay, I think allright, I think that. Um,
I'm thinking something a little higher ascidfor you, Mike. I would be
(46:50):
there, you go. I thinkI would be I'd be Peanut Gregio because
I can be uh, I canbe cheap and cheery and every he can
love me. But I also Icould also have a dual personality, and
I could also be pinot gree andhave a more complex side right and have
a level of sophistication exactly. Ilove asking that question. We get the
(47:15):
most amazing responses every It's a greatparty opener, by the way it is.
Listen, Mike and Jeff. It'sbeen great talking with you both again
on the connected table line. Thebook is White Wine, The Comprehensive Guide
to the Fifty Essential Varieties and StylesMike de Simone and Jeff Jensen, with
(47:36):
a forward by Rob mundab Junior.That was nice, very nice, very
nice forward. You know, it'sa great book. We do highly recommend
it. It's a keeper. Whenwe when we packed up our house and
we had to get rid of alot of books, weeping, we kept
red wine was a keeper. Thewhite wine is a keeper too. We
can't wait to pull red wine outof the box a packing box, and
(47:58):
we're looking forward to it's going tobe either pink wine, sparkling wine,
or sweet one. Oh. Ithink you're going to keep it under wraps
for a while, all right,to keep it under wrap. But I'm
still a little shell shot from youknow, releasing this book. You know,
we turned it into the publisher awhile ago and then all of a
sudden, now Um, we're doingtelevision, any radio and appearances and stuff.
(48:22):
So um, it's a lot ofwork. It's we love, we
love and adore this work. Butum, I need to put a little
time between this and the next book. So yeah maybe, yeah, surprises
you never know, Yeah, younever have. Well, we raise a
glass to you. We're looking ata white wine right now that I'm hoping
(48:45):
we're going to have and uh,we hope to see you in person,
either in New York or Spain.Mike and Jeff Okay, sounds great.
Thanks, thank you for having us. You're welcome. And you've been listening
to The Connected Table Live with MelanieYoung and David ra some of your insatiably
curious culinary couple. As we alwayssay when we end our show, stay
(49:06):
insatiably curious. Thank you,
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.