January 18, 2024 • 51 mins
There's a world of wine to enjoy and many choices. As the executive wine editor for Food & Wine and the wine & spirits editor for Travel + Leisure, Ray Isle has access to many wines to recommend for his column “What to Drink Next.” In his book, "The World in a Wineglass: The Insider's Guide to Artisanal, Sustainable, Extraordinary Wines to Drink Now," (Scribner 2023) Isle spotlights independent producers around the word who are making environmentally friendly wines that won’t break the bank.
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 FOURCY Radio. It's employees are
affiliates. We make no recommendations orendorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or onour web. No liability, explicit or
implied shall be extended to W FOURCYRadio or its employees are affiliates. Any
questions or comments should be directed tothose show hosts. Thank you for choosing
(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to theConnected Table Live, where your hosts Melanie
(00:45):
Young and David ransomme you are insatiablycurious culinary couple. Each week we bring
you the dynamic people who were frontand center and behind the scenes in wine,
foods, spirits and hospitality around theworld. We love traveling the world,
and we love traveling and visiting andmeeting people who make wine and make
(01:07):
the food we eat. And we'rereally excited today because our guest is the
same mind speak. We are reallyhonored to have him. In fact,
what we're going to talk about iswhat in the world are you drinking right
now? And where in the worldwill you travel? To Taste Wines.
Our guest today is Ray Isle,who has a really amazing book out.
It's called The World in a WineGlass, The Insider's Guide to Artisanal,
(01:33):
Sustainable, Extraordinary Wine to Drink Now. And this is like a six hundred
and something page tum right, David, Absolutely, Melanie, it's really fabulous.
So we've known Ray for years andmany of you know Ray as well.
He is the longtime executive wine editorfor Food and Wine Magazine and the
Wine and Spirits editor for Travel andLeisure. He has a world of wine
(01:55):
and his fingertips to recommend for hisarticles and his monthly Food and Wine collar
What to Drink Next. And ofcourse you may also have seen Ray because
he's a frequent guest on NBC Todayand Weekend Today, and he's appeared on
many shows, both audio and broadcasttelevision to talk about wine. And he's
(02:15):
a frequent speaker at top events likethe Food and Wine Classic. He gets
around and he has a lot tosay on this topic. And this is
a really fabulous book, so we'reexcited to dive deep into it. He's
been busy promoting it. We wereexcited to get our hands on it and
What's neat is a lot of thepeople in the book we've interviewed, and
(02:36):
yet there's many more we have tovisit meet. Right, David have a
hit list for us going forward,doesn't that, Melanie? Yeah, absolutely
a big checklist on our wine bucketlist. So ray, I'll welcome to
the Connected Table. It's great tobe here. Thank you for having me.
Good to talk to you guys,even if I can't see you.
I know, I think the lasttime we saw you was at a fabulous
(02:57):
BEYONDI Sante dinner. We just hadGimpero or Talini on the show. I
think two weeks ago that was.That was where we last saw each other.
It was a pretty great dinner afterit was pretty great. Always nice
to drink good brunella. Yeah.So we always like to start our show
with our guest backstory, which youdo so eloquently in your book as well.
(03:21):
Tell us about you. We knowyou were born and raised in Huston.
What was your childhood like. Didyou have parents who were interested in
wine or what were your other interests? So, I my parents were not
interested in wine at all. Ithink the signal moment, you know,
of excitement involving alcohol in my andmy parents, or at least my existence
(03:43):
as a child. When my beforemy parents was my dad. I remember
was extremely excited when Cooor's was finallyavailable east of the Rockies, which is
in the early seventies sometime. Thatwas about it. That we had wine
on the table at Thanksgiving and wineon the table at Christmas, and that
was all the wine I remember remember. So, But I was I knew
(04:04):
I wanted to be a writer veryearly on. I was a I was
a reader, a constant, voraciousreader. My dad was an English professor,
and so the writing came much muchbefore the wine. I didn't actually
get. I mean, my onlymemory of wine from college even was I
(04:26):
mean, I do remember wine incollege, and that I remember lying on
my back at a party, alongmy back at a party and having someone
squeeze wine into my mouth from overheadfrom a bag that came out of a
box. That's that's it. We'vebeen there, and that's that's funny for
me. It was jusi gallo.But I love the fact that your father
was an English professor. Was yourmother? Did she work or was she
(04:48):
a homemaker? My mother taught icedancing, of all things. That's so
cool in Houston, of all places, in Houton of all places. Yeah,
she'd been in competitive ice skate her. She grew up in New Haven
and and then but when my dadgot a teaching job at Rice, they
moved to Texas. So my entirechildhood was spent in Texas, which,
(05:12):
you know, honestly was a greatplace to grow up as kid. It
was you know, Houston admittedly blazinglyhot in the summers, but a lot
of biking around, a lot ofyou know, outdoor It's an easy life
there on some level, very noturban, very suburban. But I didn't
get interested in wine itself until reallyuntil I was in grad school at Boston
(05:34):
University, and just after my girlfriendat the time had worked at a couple
of high end restaurants spoke in Bostonand in Providence where she was a grad
student, and so she knew somethingabout wine and and I occasionally would go
to the place she was working andthey would pour me, you know,
a glass of wine at the bar, and I was like, Oh,
(05:55):
this stuff's good. And she knewenough to work by occasional bottles of wine,
and I started getting interested in it, and it probably would have stopped
there with just being one of thosepeople who's interested in wine, except that
I the next grad fellowship, Igot on the on the kind of route
towards what I thought I was goingto be, which was a professor like
my father. Next stop, Igot a grand fellowship in a Bay area,
(06:17):
which meant that I was close toNapa and close to Sonoma, close
to Saneca's mountains. And I startedgoing to wine tastings, as you do,
and then I got more and moreinterested, and I was told by
a guy, well, I wasbuying wine from a Canal Wines in Mountain
View, that I that you could, you know, if you worked it
right, you could work bottlings forsmall producers and get paid and wine.
(06:41):
And when you're a grad student andyour budget breaks down to Bay in one
burrito a week or something, gettingpaid and really extensive apple wine was pretty
cool idea. So I worked harvest, and I mean so I worked bottlings
for a couple of times, andthen I actually got even more interested in
and ended up working as a asa intern cellar rat at a winery in
(07:04):
the Santa Cruz Mountains for two harvests, and that was the That was the
final turning point. That was likeI was, you know, it was
kind of sick to death of academia. I was sick to dest fingus departments.
Nobody liked each other. They're allmiserable all the time. And the
wine business was full of people whoseemed to actually have some capacity to enjoy
(07:26):
life, and it was full ofwine. And so I quit the academic
thing and thought I would end upworking in Naparsonoma. But then various things
conspired to where I ended up sellingport for a wine importer in New York,
which was my next stop along theway. Basically, when was that?
(07:48):
How long ago was that? Ray? So I sold? I sold?
I worked for the Simmington family forthousand grams port from ninety to two
thousand. That was my first fulltime job in the wine world. And
I was writing freelance on the side. But honestly, you know about wine,
about anything that I can write aboutas you do as a freelance journalist.
(08:11):
And what the sheer coincidence? JoshGreen at Wine and Spirits saw a
story of mine in the Stanford Alumnimagazine of all places, and and liked
it. It wasn't about wine.It was. It was a total It
was a profile of the novelist,but it said Ray, I Will works
in the wine business in New York. And he got in touch with me
because he was interested in having mewrite for Wine and Spirits. And pretty
(08:35):
quickly that turned into a conversation aboutwhether i'd come work at Wine and Spirits,
and I and he offered me inan editorial job, and and I
started at Wine and Spirits in twothousand and worked there for five years.
It was a it was a greattime to be there. Josh is an
amazing taster. Uh. I learneda tremendous amount, you know, it
(08:58):
was. It was pretty cool,very unlooked for, you know, happ
instance that it all worked out theway it was supposed to, though.
I mean I did have this ideaI would somehow get to wine and the
writing together. I just know howthe hell I was going to do it.
It's essentially the situation. It's interesting. David and Wray two things.
One. I call it sip anddipity. It's a serendipity. It's my
(09:22):
little term, like six degrees ofseparation. And I think I remember when
you were in the poor business,when I was running Emmy Young Communications and
doing all the James Beard and allthe wine stuff I was doing. I
just remember all that, the wholepoor connection. Somehow, You're you know,
you're a lucky guy, right,I'm very I mean, I'm very
in a number of ways. I'mI'm I've been very lucky. Knock on
(09:43):
wood, you know, keep hopecontinues. I hit wine at a good
moment, and I hit writing aboutwine in a good moment, and that
interest in wine in the US wasgrowing and growing, and magazines were still
you know, print print publishing wasstill a well stronger business than it is
now. Food wine has actually donefairly well over the years. But but
(10:07):
the timing was really good, andand I was also very lucky that I
you know that, I I mean, essentially, I wanted to be a
writer. I knew I wanted towrite, but I had no real clue
what the subject was that I wasgoing to write about. And if I
had not gotten that fellowship in theBay Area, if I go into Michigan
(10:28):
or Iowa or or take your pick, you know, University of Texas or
Austin or anything, I wouldn't haveever ended up doing what I'm doing today.
So there's, uh, there's anelement. There's always an element of
chance, and that was a bigelement of chance. And uh yeah,
so I got I got awfully lucky, and I'm very happy about that,
(10:50):
thankful, thankful about that. Iguess the way to put it, you
know, I think that is sipdipity, isn't Melanie. So many people are
struggling to be wine writers now,and you know, you're one of a
small elite group that actually works fulltime for a publication, a real publication,
(11:11):
like it has pages, you know, and paper. It's amazing.
And you you have, you know, you have these great gigs on television
on you know, we see youa lot with Leslie Sobranco, and you
know, it's great. And I'mcurious though, because I think it's neat
that you wanted to be a writer. God knows, it's all I've everyone
to be. But you don't alwaysfind your voice in writing until you're later.
(11:35):
And you also don't always find yourwine palette. How did you find
your wine palette and wine voice?Well, a couple of things. I
mean, my voice as a writersuch as it is, at least the
voice that I think of myself ashaving kind of predates the interest in wine.
I mean, I think that's theway I put senses together and the
(11:58):
voice on the page age. Itcomes partly out of writing fiction for a
long time and and a lot ofa lot of those skills transfer into journalism
in the ways that the sort ofthe new journalists like Tom Wolf and all
utilize them. So in that sense, the my voice, if there,
(12:18):
if there is a voice is isit's kind of my voice, whether I'd
be writing about wine or not.It took me a while to figure out
my palette for sure, in thatI didn't grow up with wine. I
didn't, you know, and youryour opportunities to taste are somewhat limited if
you're not in the business. AndI wasn't in the business for a long
time. And and weirdly, Imean, I think of myself as I'm
(12:41):
I'm a magazine editor, but Ido think of myself as being in the
wine business those years that Wine andSpirits where we were tasting, you know,
we were scoring wines and we weretasting, you know, we taste
forty McLaren vale charaz in the morningand then forty Barossa charaz in the afternoon,
and then forty even Valley Charaz inthe morning and forty Western Australia Saraz
(13:03):
in the afternoon. And then thenext week it'd be forty baujelat Crew Boujelet
in the morning and forty Crew Bogeletin the afternoon. And if you do
that for five years straight, youI mean, that was really like my
graduate education in wine itself. Ilearned both my own palate and also just
a tremendous amount about wine by doingthat. And I was I don't these
(13:26):
days, I don't score wines,and I don't actually love the whole idea
of scores, but it was aninvaluable lesson for sure. And I was
the way also the way one inspirits worked then, and I'm I think
it's still the way it works.But you know, we would we would
taste in a panel, and wewould taste with Sambier's from the community,
and so you'd be around a tablewith a lot of people who had really
(13:46):
intense depths and in wine knowledge,you know, as a and and additionally
Josh was there and knew a tonas well, and so you kind of
had this this you know, braintrust of people around the table talking about
the wines, and that was prettygreat too. So so by the time
(14:07):
I got out of who out ofWine and Spirits. I left Wine and
Spirits to go to Food and Winein two thousand and five, and by
that time I knew, at leastyou know, the world of wine extremely
well, and I knew to somedegree what I was interested in are passionate
about, because it's like your tasteschange over time, for sure. I
mean, everybody stays change over time, you know, or else all roads
(14:30):
lead to Burgundy, which is theother jokes. But you know, but
at least some of the interests Ihad are started then and sustained until now.
You know, David and Ray.It's interesting that you talk about tasting
with some ways, because you canstudy all you want get certifications, and
I took the time well, caringif my mother did a certified specialist in
(14:52):
wine through the Society and Wine Educators, which was textbook and geographically and terminology
beneficial. But the end of theday, when you're tasting with professionals like
son Lias, like wine importers likewe did when we did our Tour de
France, even more than journalists.That is like the best education possible.
(15:13):
It's it's a tremendous education. Andit's the other thing you realize, which
is really important, I think iseven if you're scoring wines, if you've
got a panel like that, isthat you get a lot of people who
know a ton about wine who don'tall agree, and so you you start
to realize that there isn't a youknow, a fixed uh assessment of wines
(15:33):
in that there's one right way toyou know, to like something and you're
not like something. If you've gotpeople who have tremendous experience, but some
of them like a wine and somedislike it and feel it's not even representative
of what it's meant to be,you know, it's it's pretty funny,
it's pretty and too you know.That is very true, Melanie. I
(15:54):
remember doing an article one time whereI put eight so Lias and a couple
of them were masters something in aroom together and blind tasted them on wines
from Chardonnay, from California and Burgundyand took and they all took notes,
and we all batted ideas back andforth. And then when I did the
big reveal, the amount of interpretationthat they had in their comments or for
(16:18):
the various wines was really off thecharts. I actually learned so much that
day. So you're right, Ray, getting a bunch of highly educated people
on wine in a room and battingback and forth ideas is really one of
the best ways to learn about it. So which leads us to your book,
The World of World and a WineGlass, which is an insider I
(16:41):
love the word. You's the Insider'sGuide to artisanal, sustainable, extraordinity winds
you drink. Now, there's acouple of premises about this book that interested
us. How you know, thereare a million wine books out there,
right, so our first there wereseveral things we liked about this particular book,
which you'll dive into. But whatwas when you decided to write this
(17:03):
book? And I think it's yourfirst wine book, right, it is
my first book? Yeah, yeah, congratulations. I mean it's a that's
a it's an opus. How whatwas your unique selling proposition, as I
call it, to make this bookdifferent from all other books? Well,
in a sense, you know,I I wanted to write about a couple
of things. I wanted to writeabout the the growth and the and the
(17:27):
presence across around the entire world ofwine, of of of people working in
ways that are ecologically you know,conscientious rather than destructive. You know,
I wanted to talk about sustainability andorganics and regenerative farming and biodynamics and all
of that, and I but Ialso specifically wanted to talk about what I
(17:49):
see is kind of the big dividein wine, which is between you know,
wines that are perfectly pleasant but arebasically in you know, beverage products.
They're they're they're mass produced in theirtend to be tweaked to fit a
flavor profile. And there's you know, made in the millions of cases,
and then wines that are really expressivekind of personal vision and a and a
(18:10):
sense of place. And I thinkthe selling proposition was that I didn't see
another book out there that was wasabout the same thing. And I also,
I mean, in terms of talkingto the publisher about it, I
anecdotally just a lot of younger wineconsumers. And it also just because of
Food and Wine being not really awine magazine, just people who are interested
in wine broadly in a gastronomic contexthave I think a lot of I think
(18:37):
there's a shift towards being interested inwhere things come from and how they were
made and whether that is something youwant to put into your body. And
it you know, it happened withfood quite a while ago, you see,
you know, people are very concernedabout how things are grown. You
know, is your tomato or youryour chicken organic? Is it, you
know, pump full of antibiotics andpesticide or not. And wine trends like
(19:03):
that tend to trail food trends byquite a bit. So it seemed like
it was now it seemed like agood moment to do that in the context
of wines. I did originally hadthought that it wasn't going to be so
much of a guide but more ofa manifesto or statement, and my agent
cleverly taught me down from that andsuggested that perhaps it would it would be
(19:26):
you know, more useful to peoplethat actually talked about some wineries and and
who's working that way and so on, and then it and then as soon
as I got sort of planning itout, and this is before we even
sold the proposal, I realized thatif I was going to try and talk
about everyone out there who was workingthis way or even a small percentage of
everyone working this way that it wasgoing to be a pretty big book,
(19:49):
and so I kind of plotted itout and wrote really what was a sixty
page proposal for it, and severalI thought it was a good idea,
and I went with Scribner because theyseemed great, you know, and they
have proof to be great. Sothat was that was that was very fortunate.
But you know, I didn't wantto do another yet another sort of
(20:12):
intro to wine book because there's somany of them, and some of them
are so good that it didn't seemlike an odd way to start. And
I didn't want to do a diveinto a specific region because that's not really
how I work. I'm a generalist. And I thought that this was,
you know, kind of a linebook that hadn't been done, that fit
where we are right now, withyou know, issues about global warming and
(20:33):
just how you know, how we'retreating the earth and how that manifested wine.
And then I also wanted to concentrateon wines that were largely under one
hundred bucks because I wanted people,I wanted to be a book for people
who actually can go out of byline, you know, and take it
home and drink it as opposed tothat, you know, much as I
am happy to drink demand romany CONTII don't buy it. I can't buy
(20:56):
it. It's three thousand bucks abottle, and that seems sort of silly
to write about. Well, welove the fact that you focus one hundred
dollars bottles of wine and under becausethat really, honestly is where most people
buy their wine. Actually they buyit under thirty dollars apart. So yeah,
so to focus on wines that peoplecan afford rather than the unicorn wines
(21:17):
is a great, great way toreally write a book, I think.
And speaking of Manifesto at seven hundredpages, it kind of is one,
isn't it right? I guess that'sthe point we call it a tomb.
But another interesting aspect about this bookbesides that you do place a very good
explanation on these different terminologies which manypeople don't understand. And often they in
(21:41):
marketing misuses, you know, terminologyor they'll say clean wine, or so
they'll say something so off the chart. So just explaining what really matters and
what doesn't is important. But youyou make it, you underscore the fact
one you don't score wines. It'snot about rating. It's about and who
personally visited or met with or hada connection with every producer, mainly independent
(22:06):
producers and family owned versus big corporations, which is kind of our manifesto here
at the Connected Table when we pickpeople to interview. Yeah, I think
there's I mean, I think there'sa big difference between you know, a
wine that's made by someone who hastheir feet on the land in a sense,
and a wine that's really the productof a corporate you know, marketing
(22:29):
committee or what have you. That'snot to say that there aren't really good
or delicious, you know, winesthat are produced by wineries that are owned
by large colomberates, or that therearen't incredibly talented wine makers working for some
of those wineries. But what Ireally, I really am more invested in
something that comes from a personal connectionto the land, you know, And
(22:53):
I think that that in terms ofscoring, you know, there's no question
that scores are a great way tosort out the market for consumers, especially
the wine market, which is justa you know, a decision paralysis made
real. You know, you walkinto a store in the two hundred shard
and as like, how don't evenknow what to do? Scores are a
(23:15):
great way to solve that. ButI'm much more interested in the in the
kind of who, how, andwhere aspect. I mean, if you
if you can get someone's story andget a sense of why they made the
wine they did and where it comesfrom, that meets it so much more
interesting than that it's ninety three pointsand tastes like blueberries and dams and plumbs
(23:36):
or whatever the hell you know itmight taste like. People can decide for
themselves what it tastes like. Butand I think that goes back to me
starting out as a as a writerrather than a wine critic. I'm interested
in the people as much as Iam in the wine itself. You know,
it's so true, you know,I wish we could teach every single
winery producer, Marketer, et cetera. When it's time to introduce someone,
(24:00):
particularly a journalist or someone buying wine, start with the story, the place,
the people, the land. Don'tyou know, dive into you know,
malolecta, fermentation and aging and allthe dan tell the story. How
many times have we been on apress trip where somebody just like launches into
the viticulture part without getting the backstory, like who is everybody here? And
(24:23):
it's so important to get that storybecause it's all about people. Yeah,
it's absolutely true. And so oftenyou've visited wineries you're like, we want
to show you the tanks and you'relike, well, you know, you
know what they're like. They're likeevery other seamless feel bank in the planet,
you know, And I appreciate peoplebeing proud about their winery, but
(24:45):
from a writing point of view,there really one seamless feel tank is pretty
much like the next that that remindsme of a visit we did to Brutes.
So when we were doing one ofthose you know, crazy press trips
and we go into a winery andthere's this giant like race car in the
middle of the lobby and the personleading the tour was, you know,
a winemaker. So he's like goingon and on about the tanks and viticulture.
(25:08):
And one of the journals said,we were standing around an F one
car, yeah, and we're like, could someone talk about the elephant in
the room? Who owns this?That's why is this here? You know,
that's actually els an elephant in theroom. Condo Bosco, which is
a wonderful Why it didn't happen tobe in the book, but frenchick Korda,
there is a very large, lifelikerhino suspended from the ceiling and the
(25:33):
winery. That's the work of art, but it is one of the things
you walk in and you know,there's a bunch of tanks and they're talking
to you about tanks, and youreally are like, why on earth this
air a rhino up there? Exactly? Yeah, it's really really funny.
So we were excited to see alot of the people that we have visited
and interviewed in h the book andmany more, and some that were kind
(25:56):
of interesting to us because they reallyare out there in terms of maybe accessibility.
One of them is Paolo and Nuemia, Demico and Lazio, which,
let's just face it is one ofthe most beautiful places on earth, calcularly
beautiful. It's it's and it's kindof hidden in a way because it's it's
Umbria, so people don't it isnot a part of the Ilia people get
(26:19):
to or they sat corner of Umbriais not a part that people get to
as much. But man, thatis beautiful and they form, you know,
organically and brilliantly. I think theirwines aren't that well known in the
US, but they're they're they're lovelyplace well. And speaking of elephant in
the room, their garden is basicallya amazing sculpture garden in museum in its
(26:41):
own right. Yeah, it certainlyis. Uh for anyone listening. You
can visit the Paolo Nuemia. It'sout there from Rome. It's it's worth
the journey just because it is oneof the most spectacular and we were surprised
to see in the book because it'sit's a hidden gem and the wines are
not as is available. On theflip side, Feyouda Montoni, which is
one of where most favorite wineries andstories in Sicily, is in the book.
(27:04):
And that's a love story, ahistorical story, and and just a
special piece of Sicily. M M. It absolutely is. I mean,
and I think you know, Feudo'semblematic of the kind of wineries I'm talking
about, and that it's a it'sa it's a vineyard and a winery.
(27:25):
But they also grow grains, theygrow lentls, they grow they make olive
oil, they make honey, Theythe the whole project is is that kind
of polycultural farm, which was theway farming was done in the past,
kind of everywhere and is the oppositeof you know, the industrial farming that
(27:45):
is, you know, thousands ofacres of wheat. And I love their
wines and I love their sensibility aswell. I think, you know,
one thing I talk about in thein the book is that grape growing for
wine have the kind of advantage interms of people being able to work organically
or bidynamically, and that it's it'sdifferent from trying to grow staples for people
(28:11):
to survive on. It's different thantrying to grow six thousand acres of weed
or or working with thousands of acresof rice paddies. You you know,
you you're making a product that is, whether wine people realize it or not,
it is not necessary for life.You won't die without wine. But
but that gives I think wine,you know, wine growers a little more
(28:33):
freedom to kind of push the boundariesin terms of how they're working agriculturally,
which which is what I tried toget at in the book. To some
degree. Well, climate change,as we know, I mean, there
are there are a couple of factorsaffecting the wine industry right now. Climate
change is one, changing palette isanother. The Silicon Valley Wine reports about
(28:55):
to come out, and that'll probablyreport more. But the and then we
were in a peanut to know Delavinicia, which you know is like the number
one selling pinot grigio in Italy.So what's their problem? You know,
they sell millions and millions of bottles, Well, they you know, they
want Their problem is they want tobe considered more premium. So premiumization became
a big topic. So everybody's lamentingsomething. As you traveled and over the
(29:22):
time you've spent working in the industryand covering it, what do you think
are some significant developments that you obviouslythe sustainability one is a big one,
but what else are you noticing?Well, I think there's I mean,
there's some things I've noticed, whichis, you know, if you look
at the whole time I've been inthe business, there's been this massive proliferation
of what wines are available in theUS market, at least, you know,
(29:47):
if you look just at Italy.You know, in the mid nineties
when I started drinking wine, therewas Kianti and Barolo and you know,
maybe a little bit of narrot applefrom Sicily and you know, uh FRESCOTTI
you know. But today, youknow, you walk into the store,
there's lines from val Asta, There'slines from Brutes, so there's lines from
(30:07):
you know, from Mount Atta,there's lines from Sardinia. As you know,
the proliferation of of what you canfind and and the proliferation of great
varieties, that's an extraordinary and that'sa that's a wonderful thing because it gets
people with asked amount of of varietyand an awareness of how big the world
of wine is. At the sametime, it makes for a very competitive
market. So it's on the onthe sort of business side of wine,
(30:32):
it's a little more complex than that. I think, you know, other
changes that I've seen over time.I mean, there's no question that wine
in the first place, that they'rethere. You know, the sort of
gender differentiation in the wine business,which used to be primarily male, is
much more, much more evenly split. And that's a great thing. And
I think you're seeing now in thelast few separ eight years something like that.
(30:56):
You're seeing much more you know,growing diverse to and the people who
work on wine and the more diversityyou have and the people who work on
wine, the more diversity you'll haveamong wine drinkers. And that's a really
great thing because that's a you know, wine whine needs people to drink it.
It doesn't. It's it's all verywell and good if it's you know,
the harvest grapes and put them ona bottle as wine, but if
(31:17):
no one drinks it, it doesn'treally matter. I think those are things
that I've been seeing a lot.On the negative side, you know,
you're seeing certainly climate change. Thatwas a I mean, it's certain it's
nothing that I didn't know about,but in terms of researching the book,
it was on literally every winemaker's liftsthat I talked to. There there were
(31:37):
questions about harvest dates moving up,weather patterns shifting, unpredictable weather happening much
more frequently. I think there's Ithink it's full of bitman that I spoke
to from in Germany who said,you know, we used to have three
out of ten harvests were slightly unusual. Now it's like eight out of ten
harvests are unusual, and so youknow, that is a massive change.
(32:05):
I think, you know, there'ssome some sort of worlds of wine that
didn't exist when I first got intowine. Biodynamics wasn't something people talked about.
The late nineties, it really startedappearing, at least in the US
and in the early two thousands.I mean, I sort of my initial
exposure to it was through Nicholas Sholey'sreturned into air tastings and movements, and
(32:29):
that was kind of in the earlytwo thousands, and you know, that's
become something that that's very present,particularly in European wine. Natural wine wasn't
even a topic of conversation, andno one knew what it was, and
there wasn't still no I mean,no one may know what it is now,
but but it definitely it wasn't talkedabout. It's still still defies just
you know, definition, but there'sno there's no arguing that it's a.
(32:53):
It's a It's been a very influentialmovement in wine, even if the numbers
are very small, and you know, now you're seeing I think what the
changes I'm seeing now are like alot of pressure on wine from other products
cannabis for one, and a kindof you know, neo prohibitionist movement that
everybody in wine is talking about whichI think I think is true to some
(33:15):
degree too. I think there's asense that, you know, alcohol is
unhealthy, which if you drink alot of it is uncorsually is unhealthy.
And so there's a there's a movementforward, you know, in a beverage.
It's not alcoholic beverages. I'm seeingmuch more. I've tried a lot
of in a products, non alcoholicproducts, the spirits oriented ones tend to
(33:38):
be much better than the wine ones. Wine is very tough to make,
It's true, very tough to makea really good non alcoholic wine, whereas
there's some absolutely fascinating non alcohol experiences, some very good non acolic beer too.
At Athletic Throughing, for instance,we agree with you on that.
We agree with you on that we'venot tasted a non alcoholic wine that tastes
(34:00):
like wine. And we've done some. We've tried a few samples with friends,
you know, as you know,I have a health background as well
in my hen who's changed your habits? Don't change the wine, Yeah,
yeah, I mean drink less ofit, you know, less and better,
right right exactly, because at theend of the day, it's it's
it's how often you drink and versuswhat you're drinking and and you drink better.
(34:24):
It's really important, Melanie to thatpoint. That was one of the
things we that was really front andcenter at those two conferences we attended last
Those people are drinking less, yes, and the wine world is trying to
figure out what to do about that. But they are drinking better as well,
so the so the amount of moneybeing spent tends to even it all
out. So but they still arebuying less bottles. Yeah, they're trying
(34:46):
to find ways to make lower out. Everybody's trying to find solutions and there
may not be one for that becauseit is what it is. But you
know what, if something you know, kudos to anyone who's doing a good
job with it because there is themarket for it. I mean, there
are people who can't drink because they'repregnant, or their own treatments or unable
(35:06):
to drink, or they're pulling back. So if there is something for them,
great, Just if they can builda better beverage, awesome. Yeah.
And I think there's it's it's funny, there's there's a social aspect to
all the non alcoholic drinks that youknow, it is a bummered VI at
a social event and or it seemsto be a bummer to you know,
be the one who's sitting there withseltzer water kind of feeling less fun.
(35:27):
And is you a glass of somethingthat looks fun and so you're part of
the part of the event but hasno alcohol in it because you don't want
to drink alcohol. That's great.I find it interesting. I've had non
alcoholic contails because that that were incrediblygood. And most restaurants, now,
ambitious restaurants have a non alcoholic sectionon the contail list. And it's because
(35:51):
conto Lean a little more towards cookingin a sense than Whitey, because they're
an as symbolage of ingredients. AndI've had, I mean, I've had
some mo contails are like I woulddrink this every day for the rest of
my life, but I had someyou know, extremely good mixologists to make
it for me, where I'd yetto find a non alcoholic wine that I
(36:13):
was blown away by or loved willput it that way. Yeah, we're
with you on that. There aremore people getting into that non acoholic game.
And and and the technology to dealcoholize wine has actually come a long
way. Well, we'll keep ourwe'll keep our minds and palates open because
it's an evolution that you know,we are still learning about. But you
(36:34):
know, I've always said it's nota trend, it's a movement, which
means it's here to stay, andso we might as well think about that.
You know, there's room for both. I mean, and there is,
you know, like in the winesI'm talking about in the book.
You know they have alcohol, butthey also are you know that what they
don't have is pesticides and specific duesor you know, systemic you know,
(37:00):
fertilizer residues or or you know,anything like that, which I think is
a consideration as well. You canhave a non alcoholic drink made from from
very badly farmed you know products,if you want. It's the question of,
like, I don't know what's worsefor you, you know, the
alcohol or the or the or theyou know, life of state leftovers exactly,
(37:22):
you know the life. You knowa couple of things. I like
the way you summarize in the backof each section. Who are the wineries
that you spotlight? But you alsoprovide like alsos like we know other other
like here producers profiled in this chapter, this is in the North and the
other North Coast producers to look for. So it's very handy as a checklist.
(37:42):
But you know what we noticed wasn'tin the book. I always noticed
that I thought Jeff and Mike wouldkill me when I did this with one
of their books. I think youhave the one to ask the point that
New York State David's family had awhiny there and and and probably for a
number of revisions right now, maybeyou couldn't get there Israel, which has
a wonderful wine industry. Yeah,so I left out you missed the big
(38:07):
one. I left out with thisgrease which I oh, sorry, grise
Mama mi yah. So the dealwas, I mean one, I did
have a limit on how much Icould write by my editor. It was
like, it shall not be longerthan this because the price shall be under
fifty dollars or fifty dollars or under. And they very much, they very
(38:29):
strongly. I mean, book productioncosts plays a role in book pricing,
you know. And it was abig book already, and they felt that
if it was over fifty it wouldit would make people wary of buying it,
and realistically things are discounted, soyou know, Amazon has it for
thirty eight or something like that,and I would find with that because I
wanted to have reach as opposed tobe you know, but like if we'd
(38:52):
added full full color photos to itwould cost a fortune. And I was
fine with doing some some duo tonestuff just to keep to Christ down.
But I had to leave out alot of places. I left out the
rest of the US in the sinceas opposed to the West Coast. I
initially had a section that was goingto include, you know, not just
(39:14):
New York State, the Texas andMichigan and Arizona and Virginia and Idaho,
and I one I had to trimback in two. I felt it kind
of no, I'm not I hadn'tbeen to enough of the I've been to
a number of the different of differentregions in the US that aren't sort of
(39:36):
West Coast wine regions, but Iwas having trouble finding enough places where I'd
actually spoken to the people to justifyan entire chapter. Greece I've never been
to, which I don't know howthat's happened, but I I just you
know, at a certain point waslike, I can't do a chapter with
like two producers from an entire country, so easier to leave it out.
(39:58):
I left out Sherry because even thoughI've been to Sherry and I love Sherry
and I've written about it, theway it's produced is pretty non transparent how
it's grown. And I just Ijust threw up my hands in confusion at
that one. And then I hadto trim out. Actually I wrote too
much and I had to trim pagesout. So there are people that I
would have loved to have had inthere who had to be on the cutting
(40:21):
room floor, which is still abummer, and some of them are in
the also recommended section. I thinkone I don't know if I probably didn't
say it in the book, butthe fact that anyone that's in that also
recommended section is equally good. Ijust didn't happen to get there or hadn't
spoken to him in person. Well, I thought that was a good ethos.
I mean you that that personal connection. I mean the fact that you
(40:44):
hadn't been to Grease makes a lotof sense. I mean, how can
you really write about something if youhaven't been there? You can, but
it's not the same you know,it's not the same, and it's and
it's you know, there's no substitutefor walking in the vineyard if you're going
to write about the lines. Thereare some people in there that I you
know, primarily talk to through Zoommeetings because the pandemic really screwed up my
(41:05):
plans for travel. Yeah, butyou know, what are you going to
do? I would have happily,you know, snap my fingers and gotten
rid of the pandemic had it beenwithin my powers, but it was not.
Strangely, it was not given thatpower when I was born. Well,
there's hope for a volume two then, yeah, I mean, if
(41:27):
if it's I mean, the book, if sales go well, you know,
I hope there will because the volumetwo. What there can't be is
a much bigger volume one because noone will be able to pick the damn
thing up heavy. Well you could, you could have one in each hand
and just use it as a weightliftingse quite heavy. But it's really a
terrific book because you know, thestorytelling is is just so fabulous. So
give us a couple of underrated regionsin your mind that really are worth worth
(41:52):
attention to people. You know,we all know the big regions and the
and the major producing areas, butwhat were some of the smaller, as
we say, underrated regions that youreally find interesting. I think there's some
places. There's places like southern Chilesort of the Atata Valley and Bo Bo
and Malay that are I mean there'sthis wonderful old line material and fascinating work
(42:14):
being done, and windes that don'tactually cost that much, which is you
know, a great comba pletter becauseyou can you can investigate them without breaking
the bank, which I think isreally cool. You know, I think
Georgia, which I which people have. You know, there's there was a
little bit of Georgia buzz, butI I still think Georgia is a fascinating
(42:35):
line regions is one of the mostinteresting places I've ever visited and in my
career. And it's a pity thata lot of a lot of it doesn't
come to the US. A lotof producers are very very small, but
it's absolutely fascinating. There were also, you know, there were some surprises
even in there were some inverse surprises. I guess I'd say where there are
(42:57):
regions that I wouldn't have thought wouldbe so central to the book, but
it turns out like we're thinking ofCounty Classico, which is in no ways
unknown. I mean, it's isknown as a as a wine region can
get, but it's actually one ofthe it's one of the regions in Italy
with the greatest percentage of organic viticulture. There's a tremendous amount of interesting stuff
(43:17):
going on and people, you know, people kind of think, oh,
Canta Plasco and leave it a side, and you know, it's it's like
it it's like it always has been. But some of the part of the
book was was investigating and finding outthat, you know, regions that are
established, some of them have alot going on that you expect, but
(43:38):
new, new and unknown grade oaks. You know, in Spain, to
the west of northwest of Madrid,some of the best grenache that's out there,
I mean, absolutely beautiful lines Jurauh In In uh In, France,
eastern France. I mean, iI think outside of the local grapes,
(43:58):
you know, if you just lookat ardeny and peanut and orange are
I mean, it's a it's anhour drive east of Boone, or an
hour and fifteen minutes, and thereare spectacular lines, and they're not priced
the way Burning You has become priced. So you know this it was it
was a lot of discovery for metoo, which was really fun. Is
(44:19):
there a region that well, obviouslyGreece, a region that you have aside
from Greece. Is there a regionthat you feel you need to dip your
you need to dip into more foryour for everything you're doing. Yeah,
I think, you know, Ihaven't spent enough time in Germany. There's
so much I love reesling, andthere's so much going on in Germany that
(44:43):
I you know, and I justhaven't had an opportunity to spend a lot
of time there. Greece. I'djust like to get to because I've never
been to Greece, which is youknow, comes slightly ridiculous. Uh,
And you know, there are othersI need to get I haven't been back
to Sicily in a long time,and I would like to get there again.
(45:05):
But but there's so much, Imean, there's so much going on
all over the wine world that it'skind of hard to you know. I
think I think Antonio Gloni, whowas very complimentary about the book, you
know, mentioned that that one ofthe that by I didn't do that much
on champagne, and he felt itwas one of the places where there's the
there's so much small production, uh, you know, innovation going on,
(45:30):
innovation not in a technical sense,but in a in a kind of stylistic
and and and change of from largeyou know, scale farming. Since and
he's quite right, and it's like, I need to get back to Champagne.
I need to spend time down theobe and and and visit more of
the hundreds of small producers who arethere doing really cool stuff. And and
(45:52):
so, you know, it's oneof the joys of writing about wine is
that there's this ongoing change all thetime, even if it's just been its
advantage, but you know, evenestablished regions change, and it's a it's
a great pleasure as a writer.But it doesn't mean you're always reaching around
trying to find trying to keep up. And a lot of these producers I'm
(46:16):
on that Champagne there, they're alittle cheat sheet of champagne. And it
is interesting. There's a lot ofthe other champagne producers to look for.
It looks like a lot of terrificgrower champagnes and a lot of them just
don't have the budget to promote andmarket, so a lot of people don't
know about them. Yeah, andthey're small compared to them, they compared
to the big house small amounts ofwine, So they may be in a
(46:37):
few markets in the US, notevery market. And the other hits with
the champagne is that you know,it's it's pricey. And since my cut
off was I mean, most ofthe wines in the book are twenty three
or twenty four to forty bucks,let's say somewhere there forty five. A
lot of champagne is over one hundred, So so I did kind of skew
(46:59):
a little bit away from it.The boy it's good, one, it's
good. I think this book isa terrific resource, not only for the
amazing stories, which I think isgoing to appeal to generationally, to a
younger audience of drinkers, which isso important, but also it's just you
know, if you're going into yourI'm just talking aboutur audience, if you're
(47:21):
going into your retail stop. Butthis is a great list to kind of
like take a picture of a screenshotand say do you have any of these?
And hopefully where you live your retailerhas them, because we're a big
advocate of leaning on the retailers toget discover wines if you have a really
good one, to develop that relationship. And it's also great when you go
out to eat, but obviously whenyou go out to eat, the prices
(47:43):
are a lot higher. So Imean, I've said for years the best
resource you can have in wine isa really good wine store with people in
it who really love wine, andwe'll talk to you about what you like,
you know and which which you know. Realistically, you don't get into
grocery store or whatever, and youmay pay a buck more or whatever per
bottle, but you get so muchinformation out of it. And it's funny.
(48:05):
You know, the list of allthe wines at the end of the
chapter. I hadn't even thought that. My editor was the one who said,
you know, we really should listall the winesh all the wine reads
you write up in a full pageat the end of the chapter, and
that led to the including the thealso recommended and it is literally a list
you can snap a photo of onyour phone. I mean, I didn't
(48:27):
want to do a technical book thattalked about levels of titradable acidity or chalk
depth or whatever. I wanted itto be a book that you could read
stories in and be excited about wine. Buy. Well, we are excited,
so we have one last question beforewe wrapped. Or describe yourself as
a grape wine grape. I thinkabout this. You know, I'm gonna
(48:52):
I'm going to go. I think, weirdly enough, I might, I
might pick zinfandel of all things,because it's it's fairly you know, it's
got, it's fairly outspoken about whatit is. It's uh, it's sometimes
a little rounder than it would liketo be, which characterizes me as well.
(49:13):
And you know, but it's got, it's got, you know,
a kind of spiciness and depth ofappeal that I would like to have.
I think it's also approachable, andI think that, you know, it's
been a huge part of my career. It's it's trying to make wine,
you know, trying to kill allthe pretension around it and make it make
people realize it's fun. And Ithink the thing then is actually a pretty
fun great like the wine that producesare fun. And some of the earliest
(49:37):
bottles I ever got excited about whenI started getting into wine where you know,
Guyser Villain let the springs from Ridge. So yeah, yeah, so
I'll just be as infidel for today. Ray Isles is an infidel that makes
us want to go reach for hisinfidel on our cellar. Ray, we
are so glad you took the timeto join us on our at our table,
(49:59):
to connect a table, because weknow you've been bouncing around doing a
lot of promotion because you're writing.The book is one thing. Promoting it
is a whole nother ballgame to getit to sell. Oh that's the hard
part again. The book is theWorld in a Wine Glass, The Insider's
Guide to Artisanal, sustainable, extrordinaryWines to drink. Now, Ray,
where can our fans find and followyou? You can follow me on Instagram
(50:22):
at Ray Isle r A Y IS l E. I've got a website
Rayisle dot com and I'm very easyto find on Food and Wine dot com,
which is, you know, myhome base. And the book is
out everywhere. I mean it's it'sin independent stores, it's on Amazon,
it's at Barnes and Noble. It'skind of every you know, everywhere books
are sold, as they say,and we hope it sells well because it
(50:45):
is a beautiful work, and wehope to see another book out of you
eventually. Ray, I'll thank youfor joining us on the Connected Table.
Thank you guys so much for havingme. I really enjoyed it, and
we hope all our listeners are goingto go out by this book. Most
importantly, expand your palate, trynew things, and drink better wine that
(51:07):
you can afford, because there's manyunder one hundred dollars, and of course,
as we always like to say,stay 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 FOURCY Radio. It's employees are
affiliates. We make no recommendations orendorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or onour web. No liability, explicit or
implied shall be extended to W FOURCYRadio or its employees are affiliates. Any
questions or comments should be directed tothose show hosts. Thank you for choosing
(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to theConnected Table Live, where your hosts Melanie
(00:45):
Young and David ransomme you are insatiablycurious culinary couple. Each week we bring
you the dynamic people who were frontand center and behind the scenes in wine,
foods, spirits and hospitality around theworld. We love traveling the world,
and we love traveling and visiting andmeeting people who make wine and make
(01:07):
the food we eat. And we'rereally excited today because our guest is the
same mind speak. We are reallyhonored to have him. In fact,
what we're going to talk about iswhat in the world are you drinking right
now? And where in the worldwill you travel? To Taste Wines.
Our guest today is Ray Isle,who has a really amazing book out.
It's called The World in a WineGlass, The Insider's Guide to Artisanal,
(01:33):
Sustainable, Extraordinary Wine to Drink Now. And this is like a six hundred
and something page tum right, David, Absolutely, Melanie, it's really fabulous.
So we've known Ray for years andmany of you know Ray as well.
He is the longtime executive wine editorfor Food and Wine Magazine and the
Wine and Spirits editor for Travel andLeisure. He has a world of wine
(01:55):
and his fingertips to recommend for hisarticles and his monthly Food and Wine collar
What to Drink Next. And ofcourse you may also have seen Ray because
he's a frequent guest on NBC Todayand Weekend Today, and he's appeared on
many shows, both audio and broadcasttelevision to talk about wine. And he's
(02:15):
a frequent speaker at top events likethe Food and Wine Classic. He gets
around and he has a lot tosay on this topic. And this is
a really fabulous book, so we'reexcited to dive deep into it. He's
been busy promoting it. We wereexcited to get our hands on it and
What's neat is a lot of thepeople in the book we've interviewed, and
(02:36):
yet there's many more we have tovisit meet. Right, David have a
hit list for us going forward,doesn't that, Melanie? Yeah, absolutely
a big checklist on our wine bucketlist. So ray, I'll welcome to
the Connected Table. It's great tobe here. Thank you for having me.
Good to talk to you guys,even if I can't see you.
I know, I think the lasttime we saw you was at a fabulous
(02:57):
BEYONDI Sante dinner. We just hadGimpero or Talini on the show. I
think two weeks ago that was.That was where we last saw each other.
It was a pretty great dinner afterit was pretty great. Always nice
to drink good brunella. Yeah.So we always like to start our show
with our guest backstory, which youdo so eloquently in your book as well.
(03:21):
Tell us about you. We knowyou were born and raised in Huston.
What was your childhood like. Didyou have parents who were interested in
wine or what were your other interests? So, I my parents were not
interested in wine at all. Ithink the signal moment, you know,
of excitement involving alcohol in my andmy parents, or at least my existence
(03:43):
as a child. When my beforemy parents was my dad. I remember
was extremely excited when Cooor's was finallyavailable east of the Rockies, which is
in the early seventies sometime. Thatwas about it. That we had wine
on the table at Thanksgiving and wineon the table at Christmas, and that
was all the wine I remember remember. So, But I was I knew
(04:04):
I wanted to be a writer veryearly on. I was a I was
a reader, a constant, voraciousreader. My dad was an English professor,
and so the writing came much muchbefore the wine. I didn't actually
get. I mean, my onlymemory of wine from college even was I
(04:26):
mean, I do remember wine incollege, and that I remember lying on
my back at a party, alongmy back at a party and having someone
squeeze wine into my mouth from overheadfrom a bag that came out of a
box. That's that's it. We'vebeen there, and that's that's funny for
me. It was jusi gallo.But I love the fact that your father
was an English professor. Was yourmother? Did she work or was she
(04:48):
a homemaker? My mother taught icedancing, of all things. That's so
cool in Houston, of all places, in Houton of all places. Yeah,
she'd been in competitive ice skate her. She grew up in New Haven
and and then but when my dadgot a teaching job at Rice, they
moved to Texas. So my entirechildhood was spent in Texas, which,
(05:12):
you know, honestly was a greatplace to grow up as kid. It
was you know, Houston admittedly blazinglyhot in the summers, but a lot
of biking around, a lot ofyou know, outdoor It's an easy life
there on some level, very noturban, very suburban. But I didn't
get interested in wine itself until reallyuntil I was in grad school at Boston
(05:34):
University, and just after my girlfriendat the time had worked at a couple
of high end restaurants spoke in Bostonand in Providence where she was a grad
student, and so she knew somethingabout wine and and I occasionally would go
to the place she was working andthey would pour me, you know,
a glass of wine at the bar, and I was like, Oh,
(05:55):
this stuff's good. And she knewenough to work by occasional bottles of wine,
and I started getting interested in it, and it probably would have stopped
there with just being one of thosepeople who's interested in wine, except that
I the next grad fellowship, Igot on the on the kind of route
towards what I thought I was goingto be, which was a professor like
my father. Next stop, Igot a grand fellowship in a Bay area,
(06:17):
which meant that I was close toNapa and close to Sonoma, close
to Saneca's mountains. And I startedgoing to wine tastings, as you do,
and then I got more and moreinterested, and I was told by
a guy, well, I wasbuying wine from a Canal Wines in Mountain
View, that I that you could, you know, if you worked it
right, you could work bottlings forsmall producers and get paid and wine.
(06:41):
And when you're a grad student andyour budget breaks down to Bay in one
burrito a week or something, gettingpaid and really extensive apple wine was pretty
cool idea. So I worked harvest, and I mean so I worked bottlings
for a couple of times, andthen I actually got even more interested in
and ended up working as a asa intern cellar rat at a winery in
(07:04):
the Santa Cruz Mountains for two harvests, and that was the That was the
final turning point. That was likeI was, you know, it was
kind of sick to death of academia. I was sick to dest fingus departments.
Nobody liked each other. They're allmiserable all the time. And the
wine business was full of people whoseemed to actually have some capacity to enjoy
(07:26):
life, and it was full ofwine. And so I quit the academic
thing and thought I would end upworking in Naparsonoma. But then various things
conspired to where I ended up sellingport for a wine importer in New York,
which was my next stop along theway. Basically, when was that?
(07:48):
How long ago was that? Ray? So I sold? I sold?
I worked for the Simmington family forthousand grams port from ninety to two
thousand. That was my first fulltime job in the wine world. And
I was writing freelance on the side. But honestly, you know about wine,
about anything that I can write aboutas you do as a freelance journalist.
(08:11):
And what the sheer coincidence? JoshGreen at Wine and Spirits saw a
story of mine in the Stanford Alumnimagazine of all places, and and liked
it. It wasn't about wine.It was. It was a total It
was a profile of the novelist,but it said Ray, I Will works
in the wine business in New York. And he got in touch with me
because he was interested in having mewrite for Wine and Spirits. And pretty
(08:35):
quickly that turned into a conversation aboutwhether i'd come work at Wine and Spirits,
and I and he offered me inan editorial job, and and I
started at Wine and Spirits in twothousand and worked there for five years.
It was a it was a greattime to be there. Josh is an
amazing taster. Uh. I learneda tremendous amount, you know, it
(08:58):
was. It was pretty cool,very unlooked for, you know, happ
instance that it all worked out theway it was supposed to, though.
I mean I did have this ideaI would somehow get to wine and the
writing together. I just know howthe hell I was going to do it.
It's essentially the situation. It's interesting. David and Wray two things.
One. I call it sip anddipity. It's a serendipity. It's my
(09:22):
little term, like six degrees ofseparation. And I think I remember when
you were in the poor business,when I was running Emmy Young Communications and
doing all the James Beard and allthe wine stuff I was doing. I
just remember all that, the wholepoor connection. Somehow, You're you know,
you're a lucky guy, right,I'm very I mean, I'm very
in a number of ways. I'mI'm I've been very lucky. Knock on
(09:43):
wood, you know, keep hopecontinues. I hit wine at a good
moment, and I hit writing aboutwine in a good moment, and that
interest in wine in the US wasgrowing and growing, and magazines were still
you know, print print publishing wasstill a well stronger business than it is
now. Food wine has actually donefairly well over the years. But but
(10:07):
the timing was really good, andand I was also very lucky that I
you know that, I I mean, essentially, I wanted to be a
writer. I knew I wanted towrite, but I had no real clue
what the subject was that I wasgoing to write about. And if I
had not gotten that fellowship in theBay Area, if I go into Michigan
(10:28):
or Iowa or or take your pick, you know, University of Texas or
Austin or anything, I wouldn't haveever ended up doing what I'm doing today.
So there's, uh, there's anelement. There's always an element of
chance, and that was a bigelement of chance. And uh yeah,
so I got I got awfully lucky, and I'm very happy about that,
(10:50):
thankful, thankful about that. Iguess the way to put it, you
know, I think that is sipdipity, isn't Melanie. So many people are
struggling to be wine writers now,and you know, you're one of a
small elite group that actually works fulltime for a publication, a real publication,
(11:11):
like it has pages, you know, and paper. It's amazing.
And you you have, you know, you have these great gigs on television
on you know, we see youa lot with Leslie Sobranco, and you
know, it's great. And I'mcurious though, because I think it's neat
that you wanted to be a writer. God knows, it's all I've everyone
to be. But you don't alwaysfind your voice in writing until you're later.
(11:35):
And you also don't always find yourwine palette. How did you find
your wine palette and wine voice?Well, a couple of things. I
mean, my voice as a writersuch as it is, at least the
voice that I think of myself ashaving kind of predates the interest in wine.
I mean, I think that's theway I put senses together and the
(11:58):
voice on the page age. Itcomes partly out of writing fiction for a
long time and and a lot ofa lot of those skills transfer into journalism
in the ways that the sort ofthe new journalists like Tom Wolf and all
utilize them. So in that sense, the my voice, if there,
(12:18):
if there is a voice is isit's kind of my voice, whether I'd
be writing about wine or not.It took me a while to figure out
my palette for sure, in thatI didn't grow up with wine. I
didn't, you know, and youryour opportunities to taste are somewhat limited if
you're not in the business. AndI wasn't in the business for a long
time. And and weirdly, Imean, I think of myself as I'm
(12:41):
I'm a magazine editor, but Ido think of myself as being in the
wine business those years that Wine andSpirits where we were tasting, you know,
we were scoring wines and we weretasting, you know, we taste
forty McLaren vale charaz in the morningand then forty Barossa charaz in the afternoon,
and then forty even Valley Charaz inthe morning and forty Western Australia Saraz
(13:03):
in the afternoon. And then thenext week it'd be forty baujelat Crew Boujelet
in the morning and forty Crew Bogeletin the afternoon. And if you do
that for five years straight, youI mean, that was really like my
graduate education in wine itself. Ilearned both my own palate and also just
a tremendous amount about wine by doingthat. And I was I don't these
(13:26):
days, I don't score wines,and I don't actually love the whole idea
of scores, but it was aninvaluable lesson for sure. And I was
the way also the way one inspirits worked then, and I'm I think
it's still the way it works.But you know, we would we would
taste in a panel, and wewould taste with Sambier's from the community,
and so you'd be around a tablewith a lot of people who had really
(13:46):
intense depths and in wine knowledge,you know, as a and and additionally
Josh was there and knew a tonas well, and so you kind of
had this this you know, braintrust of people around the table talking about
the wines, and that was prettygreat too. So so by the time
(14:07):
I got out of who out ofWine and Spirits. I left Wine and
Spirits to go to Food and Winein two thousand and five, and by
that time I knew, at leastyou know, the world of wine extremely
well, and I knew to somedegree what I was interested in are passionate
about, because it's like your tasteschange over time, for sure. I
mean, everybody stays change over time, you know, or else all roads
(14:30):
lead to Burgundy, which is theother jokes. But you know, but
at least some of the interests Ihad are started then and sustained until now.
You know, David and Ray.It's interesting that you talk about tasting
with some ways, because you canstudy all you want get certifications, and
I took the time well, caringif my mother did a certified specialist in
(14:52):
wine through the Society and Wine Educators, which was textbook and geographically and terminology
beneficial. But the end of theday, when you're tasting with professionals like
son Lias, like wine importers likewe did when we did our Tour de
France, even more than journalists.That is like the best education possible.
(15:13):
It's it's a tremendous education. Andit's the other thing you realize, which
is really important, I think iseven if you're scoring wines, if you've
got a panel like that, isthat you get a lot of people who
know a ton about wine who don'tall agree, and so you you start
to realize that there isn't a youknow, a fixed uh assessment of wines
(15:33):
in that there's one right way toyou know, to like something and you're
not like something. If you've gotpeople who have tremendous experience, but some
of them like a wine and somedislike it and feel it's not even representative
of what it's meant to be,you know, it's it's pretty funny,
it's pretty and too you know.That is very true, Melanie. I
(15:54):
remember doing an article one time whereI put eight so Lias and a couple
of them were masters something in aroom together and blind tasted them on wines
from Chardonnay, from California and Burgundyand took and they all took notes,
and we all batted ideas back andforth. And then when I did the
big reveal, the amount of interpretationthat they had in their comments or for
(16:18):
the various wines was really off thecharts. I actually learned so much that
day. So you're right, Ray, getting a bunch of highly educated people
on wine in a room and battingback and forth ideas is really one of
the best ways to learn about it. So which leads us to your book,
The World of World and a WineGlass, which is an insider I
(16:41):
love the word. You's the Insider'sGuide to artisanal, sustainable, extraordinity winds
you drink. Now, there's acouple of premises about this book that interested
us. How you know, thereare a million wine books out there,
right, so our first there wereseveral things we liked about this particular book,
which you'll dive into. But whatwas when you decided to write this
(17:03):
book? And I think it's yourfirst wine book, right, it is
my first book? Yeah, yeah, congratulations. I mean it's a that's
a it's an opus. How whatwas your unique selling proposition, as I
call it, to make this bookdifferent from all other books? Well,
in a sense, you know,I I wanted to write about a couple
of things. I wanted to writeabout the the growth and the and the
(17:27):
presence across around the entire world ofwine, of of of people working in
ways that are ecologically you know,conscientious rather than destructive. You know,
I wanted to talk about sustainability andorganics and regenerative farming and biodynamics and all
of that, and I but Ialso specifically wanted to talk about what I
(17:49):
see is kind of the big dividein wine, which is between you know,
wines that are perfectly pleasant but arebasically in you know, beverage products.
They're they're they're mass produced in theirtend to be tweaked to fit a
flavor profile. And there's you know, made in the millions of cases,
and then wines that are really expressivekind of personal vision and a and a
(18:10):
sense of place. And I thinkthe selling proposition was that I didn't see
another book out there that was wasabout the same thing. And I also,
I mean, in terms of talkingto the publisher about it, I
anecdotally just a lot of younger wineconsumers. And it also just because of
Food and Wine being not really awine magazine, just people who are interested
in wine broadly in a gastronomic contexthave I think a lot of I think
(18:37):
there's a shift towards being interested inwhere things come from and how they were
made and whether that is something youwant to put into your body. And
it you know, it happened withfood quite a while ago, you see,
you know, people are very concernedabout how things are grown. You
know, is your tomato or youryour chicken organic? Is it, you
know, pump full of antibiotics andpesticide or not. And wine trends like
(19:03):
that tend to trail food trends byquite a bit. So it seemed like
it was now it seemed like agood moment to do that in the context
of wines. I did originally hadthought that it wasn't going to be so
much of a guide but more ofa manifesto or statement, and my agent
cleverly taught me down from that andsuggested that perhaps it would it would be
(19:26):
you know, more useful to peoplethat actually talked about some wineries and and
who's working that way and so on, and then it and then as soon
as I got sort of planning itout, and this is before we even
sold the proposal, I realized thatif I was going to try and talk
about everyone out there who was workingthis way or even a small percentage of
everyone working this way that it wasgoing to be a pretty big book,
(19:49):
and so I kind of plotted itout and wrote really what was a sixty
page proposal for it, and severalI thought it was a good idea,
and I went with Scribner because theyseemed great, you know, and they
have proof to be great. Sothat was that was that was very fortunate.
But you know, I didn't wantto do another yet another sort of
(20:12):
intro to wine book because there's somany of them, and some of them
are so good that it didn't seemlike an odd way to start. And
I didn't want to do a diveinto a specific region because that's not really
how I work. I'm a generalist. And I thought that this was,
you know, kind of a linebook that hadn't been done, that fit
where we are right now, withyou know, issues about global warming and
(20:33):
just how you know, how we'retreating the earth and how that manifested wine.
And then I also wanted to concentrateon wines that were largely under one
hundred bucks because I wanted people,I wanted to be a book for people
who actually can go out of byline, you know, and take it
home and drink it as opposed tothat, you know, much as I
am happy to drink demand romany CONTII don't buy it. I can't buy
(20:56):
it. It's three thousand bucks abottle, and that seems sort of silly
to write about. Well, welove the fact that you focus one hundred
dollars bottles of wine and under becausethat really, honestly is where most people
buy their wine. Actually they buyit under thirty dollars apart. So yeah,
so to focus on wines that peoplecan afford rather than the unicorn wines
(21:17):
is a great, great way toreally write a book, I think.
And speaking of Manifesto at seven hundredpages, it kind of is one,
isn't it right? I guess that'sthe point we call it a tomb.
But another interesting aspect about this bookbesides that you do place a very good
explanation on these different terminologies which manypeople don't understand. And often they in
(21:41):
marketing misuses, you know, terminologyor they'll say clean wine, or so
they'll say something so off the chart. So just explaining what really matters and
what doesn't is important. But youyou make it, you underscore the fact
one you don't score wines. It'snot about rating. It's about and who
personally visited or met with or hada connection with every producer, mainly independent
(22:06):
producers and family owned versus big corporations, which is kind of our manifesto here
at the Connected Table when we pickpeople to interview. Yeah, I think
there's I mean, I think there'sa big difference between you know, a
wine that's made by someone who hastheir feet on the land in a sense,
and a wine that's really the productof a corporate you know, marketing
(22:29):
committee or what have you. That'snot to say that there aren't really good
or delicious, you know, winesthat are produced by wineries that are owned
by large colomberates, or that therearen't incredibly talented wine makers working for some
of those wineries. But what Ireally, I really am more invested in
something that comes from a personal connectionto the land, you know, And
(22:53):
I think that that in terms ofscoring, you know, there's no question
that scores are a great way tosort out the market for consumers, especially
the wine market, which is justa you know, a decision paralysis made
real. You know, you walkinto a store in the two hundred shard
and as like, how don't evenknow what to do? Scores are a
(23:15):
great way to solve that. ButI'm much more interested in the in the
kind of who, how, andwhere aspect. I mean, if you
if you can get someone's story andget a sense of why they made the
wine they did and where it comesfrom, that meets it so much more
interesting than that it's ninety three pointsand tastes like blueberries and dams and plumbs
(23:36):
or whatever the hell you know itmight taste like. People can decide for
themselves what it tastes like. Butand I think that goes back to me
starting out as a as a writerrather than a wine critic. I'm interested
in the people as much as Iam in the wine itself. You know,
it's so true, you know,I wish we could teach every single
winery producer, Marketer, et cetera. When it's time to introduce someone,
(24:00):
particularly a journalist or someone buying wine, start with the story, the place,
the people, the land. Don'tyou know, dive into you know,
malolecta, fermentation and aging and allthe dan tell the story. How
many times have we been on apress trip where somebody just like launches into
the viticulture part without getting the backstory, like who is everybody here? And
(24:23):
it's so important to get that storybecause it's all about people. Yeah,
it's absolutely true. And so oftenyou've visited wineries you're like, we want
to show you the tanks and you'relike, well, you know, you
know what they're like. They're likeevery other seamless feel bank in the planet,
you know, And I appreciate peoplebeing proud about their winery, but
(24:45):
from a writing point of view,there really one seamless feel tank is pretty
much like the next that that remindsme of a visit we did to Brutes.
So when we were doing one ofthose you know, crazy press trips
and we go into a winery andthere's this giant like race car in the
middle of the lobby and the personleading the tour was, you know,
a winemaker. So he's like goingon and on about the tanks and viticulture.
(25:08):
And one of the journals said,we were standing around an F one
car, yeah, and we're like, could someone talk about the elephant in
the room? Who owns this?That's why is this here? You know,
that's actually els an elephant in theroom. Condo Bosco, which is
a wonderful Why it didn't happen tobe in the book, but frenchick Korda,
there is a very large, lifelikerhino suspended from the ceiling and the
(25:33):
winery. That's the work of art, but it is one of the things
you walk in and you know,there's a bunch of tanks and they're talking
to you about tanks, and youreally are like, why on earth this
air a rhino up there? Exactly? Yeah, it's really really funny.
So we were excited to see alot of the people that we have visited
and interviewed in h the book andmany more, and some that were kind
(25:56):
of interesting to us because they reallyare out there in terms of maybe accessibility.
One of them is Paolo and Nuemia, Demico and Lazio, which,
let's just face it is one ofthe most beautiful places on earth, calcularly
beautiful. It's it's and it's kindof hidden in a way because it's it's
Umbria, so people don't it isnot a part of the Ilia people get
(26:19):
to or they sat corner of Umbriais not a part that people get to
as much. But man, thatis beautiful and they form, you know,
organically and brilliantly. I think theirwines aren't that well known in the
US, but they're they're they're lovelyplace well. And speaking of elephant in
the room, their garden is basicallya amazing sculpture garden in museum in its
(26:41):
own right. Yeah, it certainlyis. Uh for anyone listening. You
can visit the Paolo Nuemia. It'sout there from Rome. It's it's worth
the journey just because it is oneof the most spectacular and we were surprised
to see in the book because it'sit's a hidden gem and the wines are
not as is available. On theflip side, Feyouda Montoni, which is
one of where most favorite wineries andstories in Sicily, is in the book.
(27:04):
And that's a love story, ahistorical story, and and just a
special piece of Sicily. M M. It absolutely is. I mean,
and I think you know, Feudo'semblematic of the kind of wineries I'm talking
about, and that it's a it'sa it's a vineyard and a winery.
(27:25):
But they also grow grains, theygrow lentls, they grow they make olive
oil, they make honey, Theythe the whole project is is that kind
of polycultural farm, which was theway farming was done in the past,
kind of everywhere and is the oppositeof you know, the industrial farming that
(27:45):
is, you know, thousands ofacres of wheat. And I love their
wines and I love their sensibility aswell. I think, you know,
one thing I talk about in thein the book is that grape growing for
wine have the kind of advantage interms of people being able to work organically
or bidynamically, and that it's it'sdifferent from trying to grow staples for people
(28:11):
to survive on. It's different thantrying to grow six thousand acres of weed
or or working with thousands of acresof rice paddies. You you know,
you you're making a product that is, whether wine people realize it or not,
it is not necessary for life.You won't die without wine. But
but that gives I think wine,you know, wine growers a little more
(28:33):
freedom to kind of push the boundariesin terms of how they're working agriculturally,
which which is what I tried toget at in the book. To some
degree. Well, climate change,as we know, I mean, there
are there are a couple of factorsaffecting the wine industry right now. Climate
change is one, changing palette isanother. The Silicon Valley Wine reports about
(28:55):
to come out, and that'll probablyreport more. But the and then we
were in a peanut to know Delavinicia, which you know is like the number
one selling pinot grigio in Italy.So what's their problem? You know,
they sell millions and millions of bottles, Well, they you know, they
want Their problem is they want tobe considered more premium. So premiumization became
a big topic. So everybody's lamentingsomething. As you traveled and over the
(29:22):
time you've spent working in the industryand covering it, what do you think
are some significant developments that you obviouslythe sustainability one is a big one,
but what else are you noticing?Well, I think there's I mean,
there's some things I've noticed, whichis, you know, if you look
at the whole time I've been inthe business, there's been this massive proliferation
of what wines are available in theUS market, at least, you know,
(29:47):
if you look just at Italy.You know, in the mid nineties
when I started drinking wine, therewas Kianti and Barolo and you know,
maybe a little bit of narrot applefrom Sicily and you know, uh FRESCOTTI
you know. But today, youknow, you walk into the store,
there's lines from val Asta, There'slines from Brutes, so there's lines from
(30:07):
you know, from Mount Atta,there's lines from Sardinia. As you know,
the proliferation of of what you canfind and and the proliferation of great
varieties, that's an extraordinary and that'sa that's a wonderful thing because it gets
people with asked amount of of varietyand an awareness of how big the world
of wine is. At the sametime, it makes for a very competitive
market. So it's on the onthe sort of business side of wine,
(30:32):
it's a little more complex than that. I think, you know, other
changes that I've seen over time.I mean, there's no question that wine
in the first place, that they'rethere. You know, the sort of
gender differentiation in the wine business,which used to be primarily male, is
much more, much more evenly split. And that's a great thing. And
I think you're seeing now in thelast few separ eight years something like that.
(30:56):
You're seeing much more you know,growing diverse to and the people who
work on wine and the more diversityyou have and the people who work on
wine, the more diversity you'll haveamong wine drinkers. And that's a really
great thing because that's a you know, wine whine needs people to drink it.
It doesn't. It's it's all verywell and good if it's you know,
the harvest grapes and put them ona bottle as wine, but if
(31:17):
no one drinks it, it doesn'treally matter. I think those are things
that I've been seeing a lot.On the negative side, you know,
you're seeing certainly climate change. Thatwas a I mean, it's certain it's
nothing that I didn't know about,but in terms of researching the book,
it was on literally every winemaker's liftsthat I talked to. There there were
(31:37):
questions about harvest dates moving up,weather patterns shifting, unpredictable weather happening much
more frequently. I think there's Ithink it's full of bitman that I spoke
to from in Germany who said,you know, we used to have three
out of ten harvests were slightly unusual. Now it's like eight out of ten
harvests are unusual, and so youknow, that is a massive change.
(32:05):
I think, you know, there'ssome some sort of worlds of wine that
didn't exist when I first got intowine. Biodynamics wasn't something people talked about.
The late nineties, it really startedappearing, at least in the US
and in the early two thousands.I mean, I sort of my initial
exposure to it was through Nicholas Sholey'sreturned into air tastings and movements, and
(32:29):
that was kind of in the earlytwo thousands, and you know, that's
become something that that's very present,particularly in European wine. Natural wine wasn't
even a topic of conversation, andno one knew what it was, and
there wasn't still no I mean,no one may know what it is now,
but but it definitely it wasn't talkedabout. It's still still defies just
you know, definition, but there'sno there's no arguing that it's a.
(32:53):
It's a It's been a very influentialmovement in wine, even if the numbers
are very small, and you know, now you're seeing I think what the
changes I'm seeing now are like alot of pressure on wine from other products
cannabis for one, and a kindof you know, neo prohibitionist movement that
everybody in wine is talking about whichI think I think is true to some
(33:15):
degree too. I think there's asense that, you know, alcohol is
unhealthy, which if you drink alot of it is uncorsually is unhealthy.
And so there's a there's a movementforward, you know, in a beverage.
It's not alcoholic beverages. I'm seeingmuch more. I've tried a lot
of in a products, non alcoholicproducts, the spirits oriented ones tend to
(33:38):
be much better than the wine ones. Wine is very tough to make,
It's true, very tough to makea really good non alcoholic wine, whereas
there's some absolutely fascinating non alcohol experiences, some very good non acolic beer too.
At Athletic Throughing, for instance,we agree with you on that.
We agree with you on that we'venot tasted a non alcoholic wine that tastes
(34:00):
like wine. And we've done some. We've tried a few samples with friends,
you know, as you know,I have a health background as well
in my hen who's changed your habits? Don't change the wine, Yeah,
yeah, I mean drink less ofit, you know, less and better,
right right exactly, because at theend of the day, it's it's
it's how often you drink and versuswhat you're drinking and and you drink better.
(34:24):
It's really important, Melanie to thatpoint. That was one of the
things we that was really front andcenter at those two conferences we attended last
Those people are drinking less, yes, and the wine world is trying to
figure out what to do about that. But they are drinking better as well,
so the so the amount of moneybeing spent tends to even it all
out. So but they still arebuying less bottles. Yeah, they're trying
(34:46):
to find ways to make lower out. Everybody's trying to find solutions and there
may not be one for that becauseit is what it is. But you
know what, if something you know, kudos to anyone who's doing a good
job with it because there is themarket for it. I mean, there
are people who can't drink because they'repregnant, or their own treatments or unable
(35:06):
to drink, or they're pulling back. So if there is something for them,
great, Just if they can builda better beverage, awesome. Yeah.
And I think there's it's it's funny, there's there's a social aspect to
all the non alcoholic drinks that youknow, it is a bummered VI at
a social event and or it seemsto be a bummer to you know,
be the one who's sitting there withseltzer water kind of feeling less fun.
(35:27):
And is you a glass of somethingthat looks fun and so you're part of
the part of the event but hasno alcohol in it because you don't want
to drink alcohol. That's great.I find it interesting. I've had non
alcoholic contails because that that were incrediblygood. And most restaurants, now,
ambitious restaurants have a non alcoholic sectionon the contail list. And it's because
(35:51):
conto Lean a little more towards cookingin a sense than Whitey, because they're
an as symbolage of ingredients. AndI've had, I mean, I've had
some mo contails are like I woulddrink this every day for the rest of
my life, but I had someyou know, extremely good mixologists to make
it for me, where I'd yetto find a non alcoholic wine that I
(36:13):
was blown away by or loved willput it that way. Yeah, we're
with you on that. There aremore people getting into that non acoholic game.
And and and the technology to dealcoholize wine has actually come a long
way. Well, we'll keep ourwe'll keep our minds and palates open because
it's an evolution that you know,we are still learning about. But you
(36:34):
know, I've always said it's nota trend, it's a movement, which
means it's here to stay, andso we might as well think about that.
You know, there's room for both. I mean, and there is,
you know, like in the winesI'm talking about in the book.
You know they have alcohol, butthey also are you know that what they
don't have is pesticides and specific duesor you know, systemic you know,
(37:00):
fertilizer residues or or you know,anything like that, which I think is
a consideration as well. You canhave a non alcoholic drink made from from
very badly farmed you know products,if you want. It's the question of,
like, I don't know what's worsefor you, you know, the
alcohol or the or the or theyou know, life of state leftovers exactly,
(37:22):
you know the life. You knowa couple of things. I like
the way you summarize in the backof each section. Who are the wineries
that you spotlight? But you alsoprovide like alsos like we know other other
like here producers profiled in this chapter, this is in the North and the
other North Coast producers to look for. So it's very handy as a checklist.
(37:42):
But you know what we noticed wasn'tin the book. I always noticed
that I thought Jeff and Mike wouldkill me when I did this with one
of their books. I think youhave the one to ask the point that
New York State David's family had awhiny there and and and probably for a
number of revisions right now, maybeyou couldn't get there Israel, which has
a wonderful wine industry. Yeah,so I left out you missed the big
(38:07):
one. I left out with thisgrease which I oh, sorry, grise
Mama mi yah. So the dealwas, I mean one, I did
have a limit on how much Icould write by my editor. It was
like, it shall not be longerthan this because the price shall be under
fifty dollars or fifty dollars or under. And they very much, they very
(38:29):
strongly. I mean, book productioncosts plays a role in book pricing,
you know. And it was abig book already, and they felt that
if it was over fifty it wouldit would make people wary of buying it,
and realistically things are discounted, soyou know, Amazon has it for
thirty eight or something like that,and I would find with that because I
wanted to have reach as opposed tobe you know, but like if we'd
(38:52):
added full full color photos to itwould cost a fortune. And I was
fine with doing some some duo tonestuff just to keep to Christ down.
But I had to leave out alot of places. I left out the
rest of the US in the sinceas opposed to the West Coast. I
initially had a section that was goingto include, you know, not just
(39:14):
New York State, the Texas andMichigan and Arizona and Virginia and Idaho,
and I one I had to trimback in two. I felt it kind
of no, I'm not I hadn'tbeen to enough of the I've been to
a number of the different of differentregions in the US that aren't sort of
(39:36):
West Coast wine regions, but Iwas having trouble finding enough places where I'd
actually spoken to the people to justifyan entire chapter. Greece I've never been
to, which I don't know howthat's happened, but I I just you
know, at a certain point waslike, I can't do a chapter with
like two producers from an entire country, so easier to leave it out.
(39:58):
I left out Sherry because even thoughI've been to Sherry and I love Sherry
and I've written about it, theway it's produced is pretty non transparent how
it's grown. And I just Ijust threw up my hands in confusion at
that one. And then I hadto trim out. Actually I wrote too
much and I had to trim pagesout. So there are people that I
would have loved to have had inthere who had to be on the cutting
(40:21):
room floor, which is still abummer, and some of them are in
the also recommended section. I thinkone I don't know if I probably didn't
say it in the book, butthe fact that anyone that's in that also
recommended section is equally good. Ijust didn't happen to get there or hadn't
spoken to him in person. Well, I thought that was a good ethos.
I mean you that that personal connection. I mean the fact that you
(40:44):
hadn't been to Grease makes a lotof sense. I mean, how can
you really write about something if youhaven't been there? You can, but
it's not the same you know,it's not the same, and it's and
it's you know, there's no substitutefor walking in the vineyard if you're going
to write about the lines. Thereare some people in there that I you
know, primarily talk to through Zoommeetings because the pandemic really screwed up my
(41:05):
plans for travel. Yeah, butyou know, what are you going to
do? I would have happily,you know, snap my fingers and gotten
rid of the pandemic had it beenwithin my powers, but it was not.
Strangely, it was not given thatpower when I was born. Well,
there's hope for a volume two then, yeah, I mean, if
(41:27):
if it's I mean, the book, if sales go well, you know,
I hope there will because the volumetwo. What there can't be is
a much bigger volume one because noone will be able to pick the damn
thing up heavy. Well you could, you could have one in each hand
and just use it as a weightliftingse quite heavy. But it's really a
terrific book because you know, thestorytelling is is just so fabulous. So
give us a couple of underrated regionsin your mind that really are worth worth
(41:52):
attention to people. You know,we all know the big regions and the
and the major producing areas, butwhat were some of the smaller, as
we say, underrated regions that youreally find interesting. I think there's some
places. There's places like southern Chilesort of the Atata Valley and Bo Bo
and Malay that are I mean there'sthis wonderful old line material and fascinating work
(42:14):
being done, and windes that don'tactually cost that much, which is you
know, a great comba pletter becauseyou can you can investigate them without breaking
the bank, which I think isreally cool. You know, I think
Georgia, which I which people have. You know, there's there was a
little bit of Georgia buzz, butI I still think Georgia is a fascinating
(42:35):
line regions is one of the mostinteresting places I've ever visited and in my
career. And it's a pity thata lot of a lot of it doesn't
come to the US. A lotof producers are very very small, but
it's absolutely fascinating. There were also, you know, there were some surprises
even in there were some inverse surprises. I guess I'd say where there are
(42:57):
regions that I wouldn't have thought wouldbe so central to the book, but
it turns out like we're thinking ofCounty Classico, which is in no ways
unknown. I mean, it's isknown as a as a wine region can
get, but it's actually one ofthe it's one of the regions in Italy
with the greatest percentage of organic viticulture. There's a tremendous amount of interesting stuff
(43:17):
going on and people, you know, people kind of think, oh,
Canta Plasco and leave it a side, and you know, it's it's like
it it's like it always has been. But some of the part of the
book was was investigating and finding outthat, you know, regions that are
established, some of them have alot going on that you expect, but
(43:38):
new, new and unknown grade oaks. You know, in Spain, to
the west of northwest of Madrid,some of the best grenache that's out there,
I mean, absolutely beautiful lines Jurauh In In uh In, France,
eastern France. I mean, iI think outside of the local grapes,
(43:58):
you know, if you just lookat ardeny and peanut and orange are
I mean, it's a it's anhour drive east of Boone, or an
hour and fifteen minutes, and thereare spectacular lines, and they're not priced
the way Burning You has become priced. So you know this it was it
was a lot of discovery for metoo, which was really fun. Is
(44:19):
there a region that well, obviouslyGreece, a region that you have aside
from Greece. Is there a regionthat you feel you need to dip your
you need to dip into more foryour for everything you're doing. Yeah,
I think, you know, Ihaven't spent enough time in Germany. There's
so much I love reesling, andthere's so much going on in Germany that
(44:43):
I you know, and I justhaven't had an opportunity to spend a lot
of time there. Greece. I'djust like to get to because I've never
been to Greece, which is youknow, comes slightly ridiculous. Uh,
And you know, there are othersI need to get I haven't been back
to Sicily in a long time,and I would like to get there again.
(45:05):
But but there's so much, Imean, there's so much going on
all over the wine world that it'skind of hard to you know. I
think I think Antonio Gloni, whowas very complimentary about the book, you
know, mentioned that that one ofthe that by I didn't do that much
on champagne, and he felt itwas one of the places where there's the
there's so much small production, uh, you know, innovation going on,
(45:30):
innovation not in a technical sense,but in a in a kind of stylistic
and and and change of from largeyou know, scale farming. Since and
he's quite right, and it's like, I need to get back to Champagne.
I need to spend time down theobe and and and visit more of
the hundreds of small producers who arethere doing really cool stuff. And and
(45:52):
so, you know, it's oneof the joys of writing about wine is
that there's this ongoing change all thetime, even if it's just been its
advantage, but you know, evenestablished regions change, and it's a it's
a great pleasure as a writer.But it doesn't mean you're always reaching around
trying to find trying to keep up. And a lot of these producers I'm
(46:16):
on that Champagne there, they're alittle cheat sheet of champagne. And it
is interesting. There's a lot ofthe other champagne producers to look for.
It looks like a lot of terrificgrower champagnes and a lot of them just
don't have the budget to promote andmarket, so a lot of people don't
know about them. Yeah, andthey're small compared to them, they compared
to the big house small amounts ofwine, So they may be in a
(46:37):
few markets in the US, notevery market. And the other hits with
the champagne is that you know,it's it's pricey. And since my cut
off was I mean, most ofthe wines in the book are twenty three
or twenty four to forty bucks,let's say somewhere there forty five. A
lot of champagne is over one hundred, So so I did kind of skew
(46:59):
a little bit away from it.The boy it's good, one, it's
good. I think this book isa terrific resource, not only for the
amazing stories, which I think isgoing to appeal to generationally, to a
younger audience of drinkers, which isso important, but also it's just you
know, if you're going into yourI'm just talking aboutur audience, if you're
(47:21):
going into your retail stop. Butthis is a great list to kind of
like take a picture of a screenshotand say do you have any of these?
And hopefully where you live your retailerhas them, because we're a big
advocate of leaning on the retailers toget discover wines if you have a really
good one, to develop that relationship. And it's also great when you go
out to eat, but obviously whenyou go out to eat, the prices
(47:43):
are a lot higher. So Imean, I've said for years the best
resource you can have in wine isa really good wine store with people in
it who really love wine, andwe'll talk to you about what you like,
you know and which which you know. Realistically, you don't get into
grocery store or whatever, and youmay pay a buck more or whatever per
bottle, but you get so muchinformation out of it. And it's funny.
(48:05):
You know, the list of allthe wines at the end of the
chapter. I hadn't even thought that. My editor was the one who said,
you know, we really should listall the winesh all the wine reads
you write up in a full pageat the end of the chapter, and
that led to the including the thealso recommended and it is literally a list
you can snap a photo of onyour phone. I mean, I didn't
(48:27):
want to do a technical book thattalked about levels of titradable acidity or chalk
depth or whatever. I wanted itto be a book that you could read
stories in and be excited about wine. Buy. Well, we are excited,
so we have one last question beforewe wrapped. Or describe yourself as
a grape wine grape. I thinkabout this. You know, I'm gonna
(48:52):
I'm going to go. I think, weirdly enough, I might, I
might pick zinfandel of all things,because it's it's fairly you know, it's
got, it's fairly outspoken about whatit is. It's uh, it's sometimes
a little rounder than it would liketo be, which characterizes me as well.
(49:13):
And you know, but it's got, it's got, you know,
a kind of spiciness and depth ofappeal that I would like to have.
I think it's also approachable, andI think that, you know, it's
been a huge part of my career. It's it's trying to make wine,
you know, trying to kill allthe pretension around it and make it make
people realize it's fun. And Ithink the thing then is actually a pretty
fun great like the wine that producesare fun. And some of the earliest
(49:37):
bottles I ever got excited about whenI started getting into wine where you know,
Guyser Villain let the springs from Ridge. So yeah, yeah, so
I'll just be as infidel for today. Ray Isles is an infidel that makes
us want to go reach for hisinfidel on our cellar. Ray, we
are so glad you took the timeto join us on our at our table,
(49:59):
to connect a table, because weknow you've been bouncing around doing a
lot of promotion because you're writing.The book is one thing. Promoting it
is a whole nother ballgame to getit to sell. Oh that's the hard
part again. The book is theWorld in a Wine Glass, The Insider's
Guide to Artisanal, sustainable, extrordinaryWines to drink. Now, Ray,
where can our fans find and followyou? You can follow me on Instagram
(50:22):
at Ray Isle r A Y IS l E. I've got a website
Rayisle dot com and I'm very easyto find on Food and Wine dot com,
which is, you know, myhome base. And the book is
out everywhere. I mean it's it'sin independent stores, it's on Amazon,
it's at Barnes and Noble. It'skind of every you know, everywhere books
are sold, as they say,and we hope it sells well because it
(50:45):
is a beautiful work, and wehope to see another book out of you
eventually. Ray, I'll thank youfor joining us on the Connected Table.
Thank you guys so much for havingme. I really enjoyed it, and
we hope all our listeners are goingto go out by this book. Most
importantly, expand your palate, trynew things, and drink better wine that
(51:07):
you can afford, because there's manyunder one hundred dollars, and of course,
as we always like to say,stay insatiably curious. Thank you,
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.