Introductions with Doug, Emily and Jamie

00:00:00: [Music]

00:00:16: Welcome to Just Another Wine Podcast. My name is Doug Reg.

00:00:20: - Jamie Goode. - And I am Emily Harman.

00:00:23: Lovely to meet you all.

00:00:25: Well, it was pretty difficult to come up with a name, Just Another Wine Podcast.

00:00:30: I keep on having to repeat it just to remind myself what we called it.

00:00:33: Jamie, what do you think about that? Is it a good name?

00:00:35: I think it's a good name because actually, you know, when it comes to wine podcasts,

00:00:39: there's quite a few around now and we had some really good ideas, but they're already taken.

00:00:43: So this quest has led us to this slightly ironic title, which I think is quite good.

00:00:50: Yeah, there's a big grain of truth in that title that we are another wine podcast out there.

00:00:58: Well, we're not going to try to be just another wine podcast.

00:01:01: We're going to try to be a bit individual and quirky and funny, hopefully.

00:01:06: Let's introduce each other and ourselves a bit more fully.

00:01:11: So firstly, Jamie, tell us a bit about yourself, how you got into this mad world of wine

00:01:19: and variations in that theme.

00:01:21: Who the hell are you?

00:01:23: I came in from behind from the outside.

00:01:25: So I was at Leich University, so I stayed in the next three years to do a PhD in plant biology.

00:01:32: Then I got a job working as a science editor, which is kind of interesting.

00:01:38: So I spent 15 years immersed in different fields of science,

00:01:44: posting these small meetings for 25 top experts around the world on a particular subject.

00:01:49: And so over these 15 years I've traveled a bit.

00:01:52: I got to deal with some really interesting scientists and I think became fairly scientifically literate in lots of different fields.

00:02:02: But more to the point, I suddenly found I developed a wine habit.

00:02:06: I got into wine and wine kind of grabs you sometimes and it suddenly did for me.

00:02:10: It got to the stage that when the internet came along in the mid to late 90s,

00:02:16: I did what everyone else did, which is start a hobby website, which later became Wine Anorak.

00:02:22: I think I registered the domain name in 1999, but it had been going for a while already.

00:02:26: And that was what we didn't realise how important the internet was and how it was going to change everything up.

00:02:32: And so I got writing about my favourite wines.

00:02:36: I started through work. I remember my first time in vineyard visits in '96.

00:02:40: I went to Australia with work and I went to the Barossa Valley, drove round the coast from Melbourne, hit the Barossa Valley.

00:02:48: And that was really interesting for me. I didn't realise you could spit then.

00:02:52: So it was drunk the whole time.

00:02:56: And then what happened is this website started getting traction.

00:03:00: It was a hobby site, but suddenly it got traction.

00:03:02: And I was discussing wine on bulletin boards, which was really interesting.

00:03:06: So all these different geek bulletin boards. The internet brought all the geeks together.

00:03:12: And people are really keen on wine. I learnt an awful lot just from discussing wine on these bulletin boards.

00:03:16: And then I sort of, well, I'm a writer. I'm editing books. I'm producing these scientific books.

00:03:24: Maybe I should write about wine as well. So I started pitching to editors.

00:03:28: And they said, yeah, I think the wine world has always been quite welcoming to newcomers, especially when you first emerge.

00:03:36: And I got some commissions and then I got a book deal to write a book on wine science. That was in 2004, I think that was.

00:03:44: And then in 2005 I got a newspaper column with a national newspaper.

00:03:48: And I said, this is amazing. This is all being done in my spare time.

00:03:52: And so in 2008, after 15 years of commuting to town and working, I quit the day job.

00:03:59: And since then I've just been doing what I do now, which is to write about wine, to lecture, travelling to different wine regions, tasting lots of wines,

00:04:08: all from the perspective of a wine geek. And I think that's what's kept it fresh, because it's something I really enjoy still.

00:04:15: I enjoy exploring different wines. And so that for me is great fun.

00:04:20: You probably thought of as a wine professional, but do you still have that amateur enthusiasm that you always had?

00:04:27: Do you still make beautiful new discoveries and are as excited about that as you ever were?

00:04:33: Yeah, totally. This is what's fun for me. And I'm in a really lucky position. I know I make a living, doing something I really enjoy,

00:04:42: without having to do too many things that I don't enjoy.

00:04:45: And that's one of the reasons why I try and do what I do, keep things simple.

00:04:50: You know, with wine anarch, which has been going now for a long time, 26 years, 27 years.

00:04:57: It's just me. And I do all the tech stuff. I don't employ people. And it's not because I don't want to employ people.

00:05:04: It's just that if I keep it all simple, then my life is much less complicated.

00:05:08: And I can really concentrate on writing about the sorts of wines I really want to write about, rather than thinking I've got 15 employees.

00:05:14: And the advertisers aren't interested in supporting weird natural wines from Slovenia.

00:05:19: Or it's like a wherver. It's like, if somebody makes a thousand bottles of something, I can talk about it.

00:05:26: I don't need to have something that's relevant to everyone in the world.

00:05:30: And you don't need it signed off by somebody either?

00:05:32: No, exactly. So it's kind of a miterish. I admit it. But then I think there's enough people out there who are like me,

00:05:38: or geeks who want to read this sort of stuff, and are fed up with the mainstream media a bit because it's just too compromised.

00:05:46: And so that's my kind of... And then social media came along and as I jumped onto that, because I think there's another communication tool.

00:05:53: And so I think you have to keep evolving in this business.

00:05:56: And maintain your independence as well, which I think is really important.

00:05:59: And what we're trying to talk about here to a certain extent is having ideas which are unfettered rather than conventional, for the sake of being conventional.

00:06:07: Anyway, Emily, how the hell did you get into one?

00:06:12: I started working in restaurants actually at quite a young age.

00:06:16: So I started waitressing at the age of 15. And by the time I was sort of 17, I was already learning about wine.

00:06:25: I was living in Australia in a place called Mandra, which is a couple of hours north of Margaret River.

00:06:31: So I was actually visiting winery cellar doors at the age of 17 for fun and doing tastings, slightly illegally.

00:06:40: That's fantastic. You had such an advantage and be able to do that.

00:06:45: When I first went, my first winery visit was when I was like 29.

00:06:51: Yeah, I started young. And then by the time I was 18, I was back in the UK.

00:06:56: I was working at a restaurant in Rygate, where I was very close to where I'm from.

00:07:00: Doug's familiar with the restaurant because actually Doug had a big influence on me,

00:07:06: which we traced back later on in life now that we're friends in my early wine career.

00:07:11: Because Le Carre de Perren, the company that Doug has been a very big part of for a long time, did the wine list.

00:07:19: So I was drinking and tasting wines like Elisabetta Foridori at the age of 18 and Girard Saint-Séc from La Piedre and these really interesting wines.

00:07:29: And sometimes the lunch services were quiet. So I read the portfolio, which this man is behind, which is known as the Bible,

00:07:37: because it's kind of epic. All these anecdotes and poems and stories and jokes are different things.

00:07:45: And I just was like, oh, this is and it got like the satanic verses.

00:07:49: So yeah, I got into that. Then it sort of developed into a hobby. I then went to the River Cafe.

00:07:56: That's where I kind of cut my teeth in learning about Italian wine. And then by the time I was 21, I was working at Attica,

00:08:04: the restaurant manager there had said, oh, you know quite a bit about wine. How do you know that?

00:08:09: I said, oh, you know, I buy I spend all my money on wine and I read a lot of books and I'm just really interested.

00:08:16: And she said, well, how about I train you to be a sommelier hadn't even considered that as a career path.

00:08:20: I just thought wine would be a hobby. And then she put me on some WST courses by 2011. So I was 24 by then.

00:08:29: So almost three years at Attica. I worked at Harvest at Tom Shobbrook because he'd come to do a tasting with us at the restaurant.

00:08:36: Really loved his wines, loved him as a person, called him up. He got me a job then after I had Harvest with him in Italy in Chianti.

00:08:43: So I spent three and a half months working there, came back to the UK, went back to the River Cafe as a sommelier,

00:08:49: then Zeta, which is where you and I run into each other when I opened grain store.

00:08:54: I remember that. That was Jasmine Hirsch was in town. Mark Andrew was working for Robison then and invited me along.

00:09:03: There were about five of us and you were working and that was when we first met.

00:09:07: Yeah, which would have been, I don't know, 2014, I think.

00:09:12: And then from later on that year, I left the group and then I set up my own consultancy business,

00:09:19: Fina Looper that I've been running now for coming up to 10 years, where I do wine consultancy work.

00:09:25: So wine education and wine escuration and beverage consultancy now.

00:09:30: And then I've been in Berlin for the last nine years and I have an import business there called Sublime Wine, which is three years old.

00:09:38: That's me.

00:09:39: That's very cool. I always admire the way you've got your taste in wine because your taste is impeccable.

00:09:45: And I think it spans natural to conventional, but it's like, you always seem to manage to spot the really good things.

00:09:51: And I guess that you're, when now hearing about your training and everything, from an early stage, you were exposed to super interesting things

00:09:58: at a time when these things were first kind of coming into the market and becoming better known.

00:10:04: Yeah, and kind of getting that whole, like the kind of growth of natural wine and the boom of natural wine, being around for that as well has been really cool.

00:10:12: Because it's been a while. I was 17 years, and I'm 36. So it's good to get the years in early.

00:10:21: There was a wonderful energy around that period and the people you're talking about, Tom Shabrook and Elizabeth of Hordori, they're inspirational people.

00:10:29: They're lovable. They're amazingly intelligent. They're driven in their own particular way, but they inspire other people as well, which is why, you know, I think a lot of people get into wine as they're inspired by someone, or even a wine, I guess.

00:10:47: Doug, what's your story?

00:10:48: Exactly.

00:10:49: I want to hear your story.

00:10:50: How did you get into wine?

00:10:53: I don't know. I was thinking my first taste of wine was my dad was really interested in sort of classic conventional, at the end of Bordeaux and Rioja, particularly old wine.

00:11:04: And he used to sort of, after he drunk a bottle, he would peel the label off and put it into a scrapbook. And I watched him. I thought, it is like the Bible.

00:11:12: It's something I just, it's like a Freemasonry that I feel I've got no part of, because I was very young, I didn't really care.

00:11:19: And then he'd always give me like the dregs of a bottle, and virtually every bottle you open had sediment in it, so I'd like be draining the dregs in the most literal sense.

00:11:29: And I thought, actually, regs dregs.

00:11:32: Regs dregs, which would be called the Pocos.

00:11:34: I know.

00:11:35: So you renamed the Pocos.

00:11:36: Regs dregs.

00:11:37: That's the after hours version.

00:11:39: It's the name of my autobiography, which I haven't written yet, because I'll probably lose it anyway.

00:11:44: So, and then I don't really think about wine for a long time until my mum and a friend of hers bought a restaurant in South Kensington and said, "Oi, do you want to look after the wine list?"

00:11:57: And I said, "But I know nothing."

00:11:59: What stage were you, what age were you this, when you weren't probably, when you weren't 14 years old at school?

00:12:04: I certainly wasn't at school.

00:12:05: There was post university, so I was probably...

00:12:08: What did you study at university?

00:12:10: A little known place called Oxford.

00:12:12: What do you study?

00:12:14: I studied when pubs closed.

00:12:18: I studied English literature.

00:12:20: Fantastic.

00:12:21: And I think the only thing I've used English literature for is actually to help me describe my feelings about wines.

00:12:30: And I certainly didn't use it very much at the time to help me through a degree.

00:12:34: But I think through reading a lot and sort of subconsciously absorbing what I've read and finding a pure love of language,

00:12:42: which again, as I didn't really use at the time in sort of analytical essays about novels or poems or whatever.

00:12:50: But now I find, weirdly enough, you know, in retrospect that it was really useful to have done a degree.

00:12:57: I never would have said so, half-twice.

00:12:59: So let's go back to the restaurant in...

00:13:01: So post university.

00:13:02: South Kensington.

00:13:03: South Kensington.

00:13:04: Mother opens a restaurant.

00:13:05: Mother opens a restaurant.

00:13:06: What's in a restaurant?

00:13:07: What's it?

00:13:08: What do you call it?

00:13:09: Modern European, I guess.

00:13:10: English influence.

00:13:11: Very, very simple.

00:13:12: Very small restaurant that he covers.

00:13:14: And the chef was doing the wine list before and she won for the Wine List,

00:13:20: the Egan Runny Award for the Best London Wine List.

00:13:23: And then, which is pretty good.

00:13:25: Good accolade, I think.

00:13:27: And then she said, "Now it's yours."

00:13:29: And I felt, you know, I know nothing.

00:13:32: And I didn't have time to study, so I had to literally teach myself how to books.

00:13:36: And I had some mentors, people like Jasper Morris, was like, you know, he was a close friend of the restaurant.

00:13:43: And I think he taught me quite a bit.

00:13:45: I loved his sort of like, you know, it was a youthful enthusiasm, I guess.

00:13:51: And next year, I won the award.

00:13:54: And then the recession hit.

00:13:57: I had to go to another restaurant where I became a sort of more formal sommelier, again, without any training.

00:14:01: So I wasn't really formal at all.

00:14:03: I was the sort of person who'd open an expensive bottle, sit down at the table and say, "Cleed, give me some of this."

00:14:09: And I managed to taste some of the finest wines known to humanity, to coin a phrase.

00:14:14: You know, Bordeaux from the early 80s, Burgundy from the 70s and 60s, and California from the 70s.

00:14:22: I mean, some great, great labels.

00:14:24: And it made me think, do you know what, there's wine and then there's fine wine.

00:14:30: And I appreciated why a chevalval in '82 might be given an obscure number of points,

00:14:36: because it was absolutely beautiful and hedonistic.

00:14:39: And again, it just excited and ignited in a passion for wine.

00:14:43: And I won the same reward there as I did in the other restaurants.

00:14:47: So I thought, well, maybe it's me, or maybe it isn't.

00:14:50: I mean, but I thought that maybe I was good at putting together a wine list of wines that I really loved.

00:14:55: And that's what was being recognized.

00:14:58: And then thereafter, I'd flirted both sides.

00:15:01: You know, I was mainly a manager, a front of house sort of type person.

00:15:05: Until one year, I think, I think it was, can't remember when it was, was it the 90s, I guess.

00:15:13: I literally burnt out.

00:15:15: I was working 80 to 100 hour weeks.

00:15:18: And the thing I loved about work was selling wine to customers on the floor.

00:15:22: But I was a general manager, and I didn't have that luxury of sort of talking at tables.

00:15:27: And so I joined the other side.

00:15:30: And the other side was one of the suppliers to the restaurant where I was working.

00:15:34: And that was, as Emily alluded to earlier, Le Carve de Perrin, a very tiny little company of four people based out in Guildford,

00:15:42: which specialized purely in the wines of the southwest France of Gascogne in the Pyrenees, hence Le Carve de Perrin.

00:15:50: And I didn't really see this as, you know, a job for life.

00:15:54: But I'm still there 28 years later.

00:15:57: Something useful.

00:15:58: And life has changed.

00:16:00: I mean, now, you know, at one point with the restaurants, associated restaurants were opened and people were employed in them.

00:16:08: And the growth of the company and sister companies that we opened in Spain and Italy and Australia,

00:16:14: we were employing 150 people across the world starting from base of four without any investment.

00:16:20: So we grew organically.

00:16:22: And I guess the main, the turning point, other than not going past around the millennium,

00:16:30: the turning point was just before 2008 when we had the idea to open to our,

00:16:36: which was a going to be the first effectively natural wine bar in the UK.

00:16:42: And natural wine was just becoming a phenomenon in Paris and France as where it was born,

00:16:48: I guess, in the movement that we associate nowadays.

00:16:52: And we were taken by natural wine bars in Carvesse in Paris and then we opened to our in 2008.

00:16:58: And it was, I guess, a phenomenon.

00:17:00: You know, no one had treated wine in this sort of relatively unpretentious way before.

00:17:06: No, we were pouring wines that no one had ever seen in this country before.

00:17:13: The wines looked weird, smelled weird, tasted weird, but people were enchanted because I think the public,

00:17:22: particularly, but also the trade, were really wanted something novel.

00:17:26: They wanted to give it a go.

00:17:27: And then, of course, after a while, it becomes the political football.

00:17:32: And we got a lot of kickback from journalists in particular who thought the whole thing was a sort of, I don't know,

00:17:41: like almost like an advertising phenomenon.

00:17:43: It was like, you know, a bandwagon that we had jumped upon, but we hadn't jumped upon it.

00:17:48: We, you know, this is what we love to drink and we just wanted others to like to drink in the same way.

00:17:54: So I guess to go along so short, I mean, we're still there in 2023.

00:18:01: We're a much more professional company.

00:18:03: We ship from 22 countries around the world and we champion natural wines,

00:18:08: but we don't feel we have to call them natural.

00:18:11: We just call them wines.

00:18:12: And, you know, if they're made with low intervention, that's an interesting point, Doug,

00:18:15: because I think that people get their knickers in a twist about natural wines.

00:18:20: They say, "I call you wines. You're calling our wines unnatural."

00:18:23: But the problem is I don't see many people saying they make natural wine.

00:18:28: Yeah, there's a fair.

00:18:30: That's a natural wine fair.

00:18:31: And lots of people go to it and share their wines.

00:18:33: So it's like a club, a group of people who get together and share their wines.

00:18:37: And there seems to be a, you know, if you go into a town and there's a bar,

00:18:40: it's a natural wine bar or something, then you know the sorts of wines you're going to find.

00:18:46: But you pick up the bottle.

00:18:48: No one's put in a bottle, natural wine.

00:18:50: I think the only one that I can think of, they claim to be natural wine,

00:18:53: when Philip Cox from Crimmel Reckes did a natural orange wine

00:18:57: and it put the word natural on the label.

00:19:00: And it's like everyone else is saying, "We usually define what natural wine is."

00:19:03: And it's like, "Oh, guys, but why do we do it? It's all going very well."

00:19:06: This is actually a sector of the wine industry that's strong.

00:19:09: You go to a natural wine fair and you see young people enjoying wine.

00:19:13: So why do you suddenly need to want to regulate it and get it defined?

00:19:17: And it's control.

00:19:19: And I think the other thing is the only people who want definition of natural wine are the big companies.

00:19:23: So they can say, "Well, you've defined natural wine. I've just made this wine."

00:19:26: According to your definition, therefore it's natural wine.

00:19:28: So they can kind of like the big brewers when they buy a craft brewery.

00:19:32: And they say, "Well, we're making craft beer."

00:19:34: And it's like, there's almost like a lot of noise and I think you just have to ignore it.

00:19:39: It's an interesting point though, because what comes to mind when you say that to me is I think the whole idea of...

00:19:45: I mean, it's very much a systemic topic at the moment, right?

00:19:48: Like the freedom for the freedom to like this idea of regulation being something that helps us.

00:19:53: But does it actually help us?

00:19:55: Because actually in many cases, if we start regulating it, isn't that going to inhibit the creative aspect of a lot of these producers?

00:20:01: And some of the... No, obviously the other way around, some of the strong communicators of natural wine

00:20:06: say really horrible things about people like me.

00:20:09: It's like, I'm afraid of them, we shake hands with them and we meet them.

00:20:12: And then later on you see them saying things like that I'm supporting the chemical industry and things, you know?

00:20:19: Because I'm not fully in the camp.

00:20:22: You know, it's this idea that it's like, if I didn't go to church at all, it would be fine.

00:20:28: If I'd go to church two weeks out of four and then the other two weeks go somewhere else.

00:20:31: You're not serious about it.

00:20:32: Then suddenly they're angry at you.

00:20:34: But at least I'm going twice a month, you know?

00:20:37: This is better than nothing, isn't it?

00:20:38: And then, no, it's not. You're either fully in or you're fully out.

00:20:41: And so that becomes a little fractious.

00:20:43: I remember doing a talk with Doug at a wine fair.

00:20:48: And I got there and I saw these leaflets of my name on my picture.

00:20:53: I thought, wow, this is amazing.

00:20:55: Well done. Thanks, Doug. You've put some publicity out for me.

00:20:59: And then we were halfway through the thing.

00:21:00: It was a poison pen letter.

00:21:01: And I picked it up and it was like someone had gone to the trouble.

00:21:03: This is the really fantastic thing of doing a full-colour thing, telling everyone why I was really bad.

00:21:09: Whilst you were presenting.

00:21:11: And I was picking up, I was presenting, oh, guys, look, you know.

00:21:14: And then I really, oh, right.

00:21:17: But it's like they'd also not just gone to the trouble of doing like an A4 sheet.

00:21:21: They'd done an A4 sheet and then guillotine'd it in half.

00:21:24: And it was like, that's a lot of effort to go to.

00:21:27: And I kind of felt flattered, but it was weird as well.

00:21:30: It's like, I mean, seriously, I'm okay.

00:21:32: So maybe I sometimes say that it's not a terrible thing to use cultured yeast.

00:21:38: It might be for some producers an interesting way of, you know,

00:21:42: they might find their terroir signatures clearer because they used a cultured yeast.

00:21:46: I'm not saying always or not saying this is national.

00:21:48: I'm saying we can't discount that possibility.

00:21:50: You know, I've visited some really good producers.

00:21:52: I've seen their sellers like lovely old food rers and everything.

00:21:55: And then they said, well, we did use cultured yeast because when we did wild ferments,

00:22:00: we lost our terroir a bit.

00:22:02: The wine blurred the edges.

00:22:04: So I think we should think about this sometimes.

00:22:06: But then it's heresy for some people.

00:22:08: I can understand that wild yeast is part of wine and the idea of adding cultured yeast,

00:22:13: even if they're yeast that have been selected from nature is unthinkable to them.

00:22:18: That's fine. That's fine.

00:22:19: But I think we have to be careful.

00:22:21: We don't go on a crusade to persecute people who have different ideas.

00:22:25: And maybe that also is a nice segue into like the point we wanted to make

00:22:29: around the format of this podcast.

00:22:31: Yeah.

00:22:32: Right. Like steering away from maybe very dogmatic viewpoint.

00:22:36: We're already illustrating.

00:22:38: No, what I think is being open minded and thoughtful and and and, you know,

00:22:44: I think we all kind of like the same sorts of wines, right?

00:22:48: But we all come from slightly different perspectives.

00:22:51: And that's a richness, I think.

00:22:53: Oh, totally. I mean, I mean, I was going to say one good one than bad thing about wine,

00:22:57: but I didn't need to anymore.

00:22:59: I think what you touch on is really important.

00:23:02: I was thinking, you know, who controls the controllers and everything.

00:23:07: And when there wasn't an attempt, we'll go back to natural wine.

00:23:11: We use an example, even though this is not necessarily the topic we're talking about today,

00:23:15: but we've we've chanced upon it.

00:23:18: And there are associations that have tried to control the definition of natural wine.

00:23:25: And, you know, for the best of all reasons is they don't want people cashing in and

00:23:30: calling their wines natural when they're not.

00:23:33: So they put down, you know, measurements, etc., etc.

00:23:36: And, you know, you should do this, you should do that and you need to be inspected.

00:23:40: Okay, fair enough.

00:23:41: And then we work with a grower who is very much, you know, climbed on board that and

00:23:46: works in all the sort of like low intervention ways.

00:23:49: And then he's saying, like, you know, I have to get I have to pay to get an organic certificate.

00:23:55: Then I have to pay to get a Demeter certificate.

00:23:57: Now I have to get a Van Natura certificate and pay for that.

00:24:01: He said, you know, I just want to make wine, you know, and of course,

00:24:05: he'll make natural wine as natural as anybody.

00:24:07: But the fact that someone is like checking up on you, it's almost like they're spying on you.

00:24:14: This is not the spirit of wine.

00:24:16: And when we started the real wine fair, another little part of our lives,

00:24:21: we deliberately did not put together a manifesto.

00:24:25: Not that I criticize other wine fairs for having manifestos,

00:24:28: but we felt that we should have an understanding that growers work in a particular spirit.

00:24:33: And some may be at the end of the journey of low intervention,

00:24:37: and some may be in the middle and some may be at the beginning.

00:24:40: But as far as we're concerned, they're a family because they come to the fair and they participate in it.

00:24:46: We didn't want anyone, you know, criticizing anyone else and say, well, yeah, a bit like your example.

00:24:52: Yeah, but they use a Pierre de Kouve like a starter.

00:24:55: No, it's not a cove.

00:24:56: A starter used or whatever.

00:24:57: Or, you know, they do cold ferments or they do like, you know, not a tangential filtration

00:25:02: or whatever it might be.

00:25:03: These are relevant points.

00:25:05: We're talking about the wine itself and the farming and the feel and the intention behind it,

00:25:10: which is to give pleasure.

00:25:11: And I think I like to believe that in the real wine fair and in the work that I've come and have done,

00:25:20: we embrace diversity.

00:25:22: Of course, we want the spirit of terroir and the place and the person behind it.

00:25:26: It's all part of a complex equation that makes wine the way it is.

00:25:30: We're not dogmatic, but we've been painted as dogmatic because we're associated with some spurious movement,

00:25:38: which is even a movement called natural wine.

00:25:40: It's a morphous idea and that a lot of people got behind.

00:25:44: And that's what annoys me about wine is that you're either in one camp or you're in another and you can't just be reasonable and rational.

00:25:53: And, you know, and it ends up having arguments with people you've never met before often and they're criticizing you for things that you never said or believe.

00:26:03: So the wine world is like fragile in that respect as every other political entity, you know, because people feel that they have to create a position and get behind it.

00:26:17: And then they'll be renowned for creating the position, regardless of whether they actually believe it or not sometimes.

00:26:22: And so, you know, I'm not afraid to have a few stromashes, as we say in Scotland, you know, a few sort of verbal arguments because I think it can be healthy to get these things out in the open.

00:26:34: But what I don't like is a lot of it is done behind the scenes on social media.

00:26:39: You've read a criticism, you think, where did that come from?

00:26:43: It's quite interesting, though, how the words natural wine, those two words have become so polarizing, right?

00:26:51: Like how it can be almost inflammatory for some people to, like, kick off quite a heated debate.

00:26:57: Natural wine.

00:26:59: But it means vague. I mean, wine, we understand, but natural has got the connotations of something morally positive.

00:27:05: So all wine, which is not natural, is unnatural.

00:27:08: But no, it's conventional, it's classical, you know, it's like a period of poetry, you know, it's like romantic poetry versus classical poetry versus modernistic poetry.

00:27:18: We're just saying natural wine is low intervention, we could call it that.

00:27:21: I don't think anything is a satisfactory term because language is naturally, you know, like vague or weak or has holes in it.

00:27:29: But it's become an emotional term because people don't make natural wines feel resentful that their wines are not being considered as, like, morally positive.

00:27:38: Whereas I don't believe that in one bit because natural wine is like 2% or 1% of the world market.

00:27:45: It's not like that important, but it's important to the people who make it and it's important to the people who drink it and sell it.

00:27:50: So it is a legitimate force and whether you think it's a force for good or a force for evil, that's entirely your perspective.

00:27:59: So part of what we're going to do in this podcast is taste wine.

00:28:04: I was thinking we should crack it open because it's a bit weird to be talking about it here.

00:28:08: We've got one to taste at Doug Bordelung, which is a well described for the benefit of those listening on radio.

00:28:15: It's a very interestingly packaged wine.

00:28:18: So it's got an artistic label, which is a piece of art of two people without definable heads hugging, I think.

00:28:28: That's what I see there.

00:28:29: There's a heart embracing.

00:28:31: And then what you see is you see a level of the ground level and underneath is all these roots.

00:28:37: They're almost like octopus tentacles as well.

00:28:39: But it's a lightweight bottle with a simple screw cap without any detail in the capsule.

00:28:44: So that's kind of basic.

00:28:46: The art label though, don't you think there's something that reminds me of a bit of a churchy vibe with that?

00:28:51: Like an ultra or a church window?

00:28:53: Yes, no good point.

00:28:54: Yes.

00:28:55: A stained glass window, something...

00:28:57: And on the back we have just a dajeska Slovenia, so that's part of Slovenia, isn't it?

00:29:03: Yes.

00:29:04: That includes how a Zeyn-Maharia stereo.

00:29:07: And it's Lasky Riesling from Zorjan.

00:29:12: Yes.

00:29:13: So shall I open it?

00:29:14: Yes.

00:29:15: You can tell us what it is as I open it.

00:29:17: Oh, that's a sound.

00:29:19: The screw cap.

00:29:20: Yes.

00:29:21: I'm screwing.

00:29:22: Well, who said Fraser Slovenian wine?

00:29:26: Someone did early on.

00:29:28: Yes.

00:29:29: For those that get a kick out of hearing the sound of wine being poured.

00:29:34: And this is, as we point in the glass, you see this is a golden hue.

00:29:40: Yes.

00:29:41: Yellow golden colour, I think I'd call that.

00:29:43: Can we say cheers?

00:29:44: Are we cheersing?

00:29:45: Yes, we can do.

00:29:46: Yes.

00:29:47: You can say whatever you like.

00:29:48: It's a podcast.

00:29:49: And quite clear, not cloudy, but not totally clear.

00:29:55: So, tell us about Zorjan.

00:30:00: So, a total disciple of Steiner, but actually Goethe, and before that.

00:30:06: So, pre-biodynamics, if you like.

00:30:10: Systems of farming.

00:30:11: a whole single farm with the sort of animals, you know, as part of the farm.

00:30:16: When it says permanent agriculture, it's like permaculture, is that why that says that on the

00:30:22: back? Yes, yeah, it's using all the animals. And, but for me, it's, this is something to do,

00:30:29: this is like wine and mysticism, he's very much believer in sort of like almost like the mystical

00:30:37: forces and the root systems, those like octopus tentacles that Emily referred to,

00:30:43: they're like, they are the deep root systems you get when you farm organically and biodynamically,

00:30:51: and you get like incredibly complex root systems, which obviously searching for water and nutrients

00:30:58: and the soil and then interconnecting and interconnecting and and passing sort of yeast

00:31:03: and sort of almost like micro bacterial knowledge up the wine and into the wine, eventually we would

00:31:10: hope. What soil is the local sort of volcanic mix of soils? It's quite salty, isn't it?

00:31:19: It's really so like, we're about four. Is this skin fermented? So skin fermented? It has time in the

00:31:24: skins, but the color is deceptive because all their wines are super amber and some of them have like,

00:31:30: like 10 days skin contact and some of them have six months. But normally what they do

00:31:36: is when they crush the grapes, they want as much oxygen into the wine as possible. I mean, so

00:31:42: basically the juice starts brown, really brown, and then sort of naturally clarifies, and they either

00:31:49: use Georgian clay pots, Clevvery or, or occasionally Croatian clay pots or big Slonian barrels and

00:31:59: sort of stabilizes over time. I mean, this is 2016. It was the vintage that we were getting like,

00:32:05: last year or the year before. This is 2016. I couldn't see the vintage on the label, actually.

00:32:10: Don't think any earthly responsibilities. It's very fresh still. For wine that's eight years old,

00:32:18: this is fresh. It's mineral and salty. It's textural. It's not just about fruit. Yeah,

00:32:24: fruit's fine, but there's that other stuff underneath that fruit. But there's also some

00:32:28: quite botanical notes, almost like a little bit of clove on the nose. Very medicinal. Some green tea.

00:32:32: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's got the wonderful bitterness, which I love, because I find that

00:32:38: quite refreshing. The interesting thing is the old labels had, or the new labels, sorry, have in

00:32:44: the back of the bottle. I don't think this one does. It tells you the serving temperature,

00:32:48: which should be over, I think it's over 16 degrees. Which is probably what it is right now, right?

00:32:54: Like this is a little warmer than it. When we started talking, it was probably at

00:33:00: about eight. I reckon now I think it's probably about 14. Yeah, the warmer it gets, the better

00:33:07: it gets. The more it's sort of the palate broadens and more complex layers you begin to sort of,

00:33:12: your tongue begins to taste. The other thing is, on the new labels, they have like a little mobile

00:33:17: phone and then like a circle and a cross. So like, do not have mobile phones. They're the ones I've seen.

00:33:22: Can you get mobile phones away from this? Yes, right. Yes. And it's for two reasons.

00:33:26: Is that about the EMFs? It's two things. It could be about electromagnetic frequencies.

00:33:31: Could be that. But they also say that if you look at your mobile phone, you're not focused on the

00:33:36: wine, which is true, of course. So it's one of two risks and one quite serious thing.

00:33:42: But this guy believes in, you know, organes. So you heard of these things, Jamie?

00:33:49: This guy invented, I think in the camera, when it was in the States, you know, the

00:33:56: Kate Bush song, Cloudbusting. Have you ever heard that? Yes. That's about an organe. The guy invented

00:34:01: this device that could control the weather. A bit like all American Trump Republicans believe.

00:34:08: A device can control the weather. Yes. Yeah. And that's, and basically.

00:34:12: All I can say is, if they work. Yeah, because you create storms, can't you? And make it rain,

00:34:16: basically. Yeah. Well, if that worked, it's incredibly selfish to hold on to the device

00:34:22: like this and not to go to places. But I think it does work. It does work. No,

00:34:25: not to go to drought prone areas and get some rain for them. Okay. This is what,

00:34:31: this is what, this is a little anecdote I'm going to throw into there. So he's talking about the

00:34:35: organe and he only speaks Croatian. So, sorry, Slovenian. So the person who was with was translating,

00:34:43: looking more and more puzzled as Bosardar, Sorotan went on and on and on. And he,

00:34:49: he, the guy who created the organe was supposedly assassinated by the FBI. And then the Cloudbusting

00:34:56: song by Kate Bush, this whole thing is repeating. Because big business has got too much to lose.

00:35:02: Exactly. Exactly. So anyway, how big is an organe? It's like a big pipe. Like it'd be from the

00:35:09: ceiling in your room. So maybe 10 foot tall. And you pointed at the sky, you pointed the clouds.

00:35:16: And the idea is that have you ever seen one, Doug? He has one. He has one. Yeah.

00:35:20: And so what did you ask for? I asked for a sunny summer in 2024 and it never happened.

00:35:28: We all asked for it, Doug. But he was too far away, you know. This is a guy who gets his

00:35:34: active sulfur, sulfur to spray on his vines from Etna, because that's the nearest volcano

00:35:40: to Slovenia. How do you harvest sulfur from an active volcano? No, no, no. Maybe someone sells

00:35:45: it. It's a good business to be in. It's a niche business. Let's say that. So, but what? Okay. So

00:35:52: the organe, so, so usually, so that they didn't, you know, they have a lot of hail storms. They're

00:35:57: high up in the mountains. They're 450 meters. And obviously vines, if they're struck by hail,

00:36:03: you know, it's a disaster for the grapes. So I think he does something with the

00:36:08: organe so that the hail storm passes by. He's the neighbor. He's the neighbor. So,

00:36:13: fucks up. Sorry. Screws up there. Cut harvest. It's okay. We'll leave that in.

00:36:18: Anyway, so next day, the same day, we go and visit a grower called Andreas Chepa, who you both know.

00:36:25: Yes. And we were trying to describe to him,

00:36:30: Bostador's organe and like this like weird conspiracy theory and how it works. He said,

00:36:35: "Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, I know about the organe." He said, "Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?"

00:36:39: We said, "Yes." He said, "I've got one." "How do you set?" He said, "When I go away on holiday and I

00:36:45: can leave it pointing in the sky, I have no idea whether it works." And I just thought that's so

00:36:50: brilliant. That's so sort of like, it's so like in the biodynamics is, is again, it's about like

00:36:56: being there and feeling it and using voodoo science and voodoo, voodoo to do something and just having

00:37:05: faith in it. And it's amazing how often it works, but it may just be like fluke, of course, but

00:37:11: it's fun. It's part of the story of wine. Ultimately, the proof is in the glass. Yeah. And

00:37:16: this is astonishing. First of all, for this variety to be producing a wine that tastes like this after

00:37:24: eight years, but also this is a new way of thinking and drinking, I think. You know, people who are

00:37:29: technically trained on fruity, modern techno wines, would be resistant to these wines because it's

00:37:37: not that they're faulty. It's just they're different. And the emphasis here is not on

00:37:41: bright fruit aromatics. It's on how do you feel the wine in the mouth and what's the texture,

00:37:47: what's the acid line, you know, and it's the sort of wine that dances in your perceptions.

00:37:53: It's like it's not static in your perceptions. And this is what I love about these sorts of

00:37:57: wines. They reward attention. So I take this wine, I look at it, I taste it.

00:38:03: Knowing where it comes from as well helps, I think, because that sort of knowledge can actually

00:38:09: inform your tasting and guide your tasting. But this is just, you know, who would have thought

00:38:15: that a wine would be like this after eight years? Well, and here's the rub of the whole thing. So

00:38:22: wine born in oxygen lives in oxygen. The more air it gets, it doesn't collapse, which is what we

00:38:30: associate with so many wines. It strengthens the wine. And here's another anecdote. I said,

00:38:38: when I show the wines to people in restaurants, they say, well, I can't corrovin it because it's

00:38:43: got a capsule. And I said, you don't need to corrovin it. In fact, you can have it open for

00:38:49: five weeks. And we've done experiments with the Zorian wines and some of Muster and

00:38:54: Chepin, whatever, you leave them open, they get better and better. But, you know, like, they're

00:38:59: so strong, because even if they're pressed straight, there's still phenolics in the juice.

00:39:04: There's phenolics in this to the nth degree. They're not like coarse or clumsy. They're a lovely

00:39:11: sort of granular texture, which they give the wine. And I think the wine is so strong, you know,

00:39:17: this is like, you know, it doesn't taste old. The color, you know, is, if anything, the color's

00:39:24: dropping out. It seems to be brighter, you know, than it ever has been. You know, and I think wines

00:39:33: develop when I read a science book, I remember, and it said, basically, as soon as you open the

00:39:38: wine, it oxidizes. And I think that's like quite a weird thing to say, because it implies that it

00:39:45: the wine caramelizes, it goes, it dies, it's the first stage of death. But this wine, the longer

00:39:51: it's open, the more life it has. It's almost like wisdom, you know, like a... No, this is very

00:39:57: interesting, because obviously my background was in science, and so I became very interested in wine

00:40:01: science. And I understand if wine science isn't complete, because I found that there are some

00:40:05: wines where there is no way to say this is a term we're not supposed to use, mineral. Some wines

00:40:11: where they're oxidatively handled early on, they build up this mineral presence, and then

00:40:20: somehow this mineral presence in the wine is protecting that wine from deterioration.

00:40:25: And it's got this almost resiliency, resilience in the wine. And actually, very interestingly,

00:40:32: more conventional wine, but I opened a bottle about six weeks ago, I opened a bottle of Chateau

00:40:38: Sudero, so Saturn 2017, so quite a young Saturn. And I left it in the fridge with two-thirds of it

00:40:47: drunk, we had drunk it one night, and I forgot about it and left it for six weeks. I went back to it,

00:40:53: fresh as a daisy, you know, not shown any noticeable deterioration. And so some wines,

00:41:01: it's not like it's an oxidized wine, you wouldn't say Saturn is an oxidized wine style, it's not.

00:41:07: It's fresh and fruity and really delicious. But something about those wines that kind of makes

00:41:13: them a little bit bomb-proof, yeah, to oxygen. And I think that this is a sort of wine that,

00:41:19: as you say, you could put the cap back on this and I'm sure it would be really interesting.

00:41:24: How long do you think it would be until mainstream wine education updates itself?

00:41:34: Because I think, I feel like with what you've just described with the interaction with certain

00:41:40: customers, the assumption that's there, because if they've read maybe a book that was written in

00:41:44: the 90s by so-and-so, so-and-so, that's kind of this wine education that's kind of regurgitated

00:41:52: over and over in like a bunch of different books, when do you think that changes and how does that

00:41:56: change? I think it does change. So a couple of years ago I was asked to write a paper on natural

00:42:02: wine for the WSET for their diploma that they were doing. And I got Doug to help me out a bit here.

00:42:08: I think we're looking at the one thing they wanted to know is what's the extent of the natural wine

00:42:14: market, you know, how big is it? Yeah. And Doug's is sort of back of the,

00:42:19: what was the old term they used to use, the back of the cigarette packet.

00:42:24: Yeah.

00:42:24: Wasn't it where they used to, yeah.

00:42:25: There was a term, not like you used smoke or I suppose.

00:42:27: Yeah, exactly. Yes.

00:42:28: Because all that anyone's really smoking anymore.

00:42:30: Back of the back packet.

00:42:33: What the chancellors do, yeah.

00:42:34: Yeah, yeah. I love those old terms. And I came up with an interesting figure, but

00:42:40: see the WSET teaching and diploma, this wine educational, there seems to be an openness

00:42:46: to new things, like last year one of the dissertation topics for the diploma was a

00:42:53: regenerative viticulture. So it's cool, they're kind of keeping up with it, you know,

00:42:57: so it was good for me because I sold quite a lot of books to WSET level four students.

00:43:04: But I think the wine world, it has an openness now that maybe it didn't have in the past.

00:43:12: And I think we're seeing almost like a, you know, everything in the past was kind of defined by

00:43:19: kind of the English fine wine trade, you know, so like when the UK were very Franco-centric.

00:43:25: And I know Emily, you've gained a lot of expertise in Italy.

00:43:28: My Italian expertise is just starting now. I'm taking an interest in Italy and it's an

00:43:33: amazing country for wine. But I was kind of led to believe that France was the main country

00:43:39: with fine wine. And I think that's changing. I think the natural wine movement,

00:43:43: even though it's not a movement, even though it's like an alliance of like-minded people,

00:43:47: I've seen that grow from very little when I was on the bulletin boards back in

00:43:52: say maybe 2000, 2001, that we were just having the first sort of like reactions to natural wine

00:44:00: that was happening. I remember discussing with Frank Cornelisson, who'd been out at an event.

00:44:06: He said, "And where they drunk five litres ahead of natural wine because there's no

00:44:10: sulfite, you have no headache the next day." And these sorts of discussion were happening.

00:44:15: And Joe Dressner was active on the board, you know, as a famous importer,

00:44:19: natural wines into the New York market. And it went from being incredibly niche and tiny

00:44:27: and quite exciting to being something that actually, you know,

00:44:30: got to be mainstream, not in terms of the wines really hitting everywhere, but just

00:44:37: everyone becoming aware of it. And I think one of the big events that I think I remember that

00:44:41: really kicked things off was in 2011 in Burrow Market, which was the first real wine fair.

00:44:46: It was called the Natural Wine Fair. It was called the Natural Wine Fair in those days,

00:44:50: for one off, yes. Yeah. That was really a pivotal moment, I think. I think 2011 was a seminal year

00:44:56: for there was also... Is that where Teowar's opened in 2011 or was that in 2010?

00:45:03: No, we have been Teowar in 2008. So natural wine was a thing. But 2011, I think the Natural Wine Fair,

00:45:11: because there were 120 growers and because there are thousands of people from, you know,

00:45:16: from natural wine lovers to total skeptics and the whole of journalism and people from other

00:45:23: countries were so curious to see what it was all about. There was like... There was an underlying

00:45:29: element of controversy as well, where we had quite a few negative articles, some very positive ones

00:45:36: in newspapers and some seminars that were frothing, you know, with bile, shall we say?

00:45:42: I know, I was at the one where, you know, I was chairing the one where it went a bit pear-shaped.

00:45:47: What happened? Go on, tell us. So an MW, spare of flushes, sitting in the audience and she said,

00:45:59: "I've just tasted like every wine out there and they're all oxidized."

00:46:03: Really? Oh! Last during the seminar.

00:46:06: Yeah, this is the beginning of the seminar.

00:46:10: I was, I can't tell you, because she's still around. And I was being...

00:46:15: Can you tell us after?

00:46:16: Gay people are 10 now, famous. Like 10 being the most famous.

00:46:19: You've all heard of her.

00:46:20: Right, okay.

00:46:22: Yeah, I won't say more. But I was sitting, I was chairing the panel and feeling very ambient and

00:46:30: trying, you know, not to provoke fights or get involved in them and I just sat up, bolt up right

00:46:36: and said, "Sorry, what do you mean? All the wines are oxidized." She said, "Yeah, they are, they're all."

00:46:42: And I said, "I couldn't think of what to say." I said, "Did you mention this to the growers?"

00:46:47: And I said, "Hold on a minute, what are you saying?" I said, "They're not, you know, I've tasted the

00:46:52: wines out there, like I know the wines pretty well." I said, "Do you mean oxidative in style or in

00:46:57: terms of the winemaking?" He said, "No, oxidized." I said, "No, there's a difference." I said,

00:47:01: "You're an MW, you should know. Like, you know, wine is making wine with, you know, oxygen and big

00:47:07: barrels are not topping up and getting secondary aromatics, you know, goodness knows, you can

00:47:12: make it olorosa, that's oxidative. Van Joan is a lot, you know." I felt like, why am I telling

00:47:17: someone who's livelihood, who's written books on wine, what it's all about, me a relative novice.

00:47:25: And there was a sense of animosity in the room on both sides, I think. There were like

00:47:31: very much the aunties and the pros. And in hindsight, I would say like, it isn't such a

00:47:37: Manichean thing. It's like, okay, you don't like the wines, but don't like dismiss them.

00:47:42: Don't just miss the livelihoods of 120 people.

00:47:46: Entitlements, almost, and to think that you own wine because you're expensively educated,

00:47:53: that you sometimes have an inside tract and everyone else here has got to, your perspective

00:47:58: is the true perspective. Or the final word belongs to you. But you're right about it.

00:48:03: Let's fighting talk, really. Yes, it's fighting talk. But it reminded me that wine,

00:48:08: traditional wine is a hierarchy. It's like, you know, the opinions of the, what do you call them,

00:48:16: the chat, not ever going to chat or arty, but you know, the people who write books and are wine

00:48:23: educators and, you know, make expensive wine brands, they are at the peak. And then, you know,

00:48:29: we who like sort of more humble wines are at the bottom. But of course, it's flipped because

00:48:35: if you think about certain wine regions, say Beaujolais, say Jorah, say the Loire,

00:48:39: just for starters, the best wine makers are natural wine makers, I humbly submit. And therefore,

00:48:47: it's odd because when you say, hey, do you drink natural wines? No, I don't drink it because

00:48:54: I've had a bad experience once I said, yeah, but do you drink, I don't know, lapierre or foyerre or

00:49:00: you know, jolly or whoever might be, I don't know. And they said, oh yeah, I drink those wines. I said,

00:49:05: well, the natural, I know this is this is really, this is amuses me to a point because I remember

00:49:10: one notable colleague predicted in 2013, this would be the New Year predictions, this will be the

00:49:16: natural wine fails. It's a flash in the band. And this particular individual has an Instagram feed

00:49:22: and whenever they travel these regions, who are the producers being featured? It's the natural dudes.

00:49:28: It's like, and you almost want to go on there and say, great to see you love natural wine,

00:49:32: but you know, that's that's too. Then you're a bit like the person that made the flyer,

00:49:36: Jamie. No, you should be grateful that people actually realized that, oh, well, maybe these

00:49:42: wines are the most interesting wines from a particular region. And this is one going, this

00:49:47: and maybe a digression is one thing of frustration about Austria. I love going to the single vineyard

00:49:52: summit and everything, but the property is in Austria, you've got some really fine wines that

00:49:56: fit into that single vineyard summit that conventionally made ones. But then the really

00:50:00: exciting things in Austria are being ignored. And they can't even use the name of the region.

00:50:08: But is that not political again? Because it's very nice.

00:50:11: Do people pay into that? No, it's not just about paying in. It's because

00:50:14: there are certain rules to do with this new sort of single vineyard classification where

00:50:22: to even use the appellation name, let alone single vineyard name, you need to fill to your

00:50:27: wines, for instance. Yes, we work with our Austrian producer and Camptel and he used to

00:50:34: call his wine Grünefeld Liener from Strassetal, which is the name of the village.

00:50:41: Region. He had to take, as soon as he stopped filtering, I asked him not to filter the wine,

00:50:46: because it tasted 10 times better unfiltered. He had to take off Strasset, where he came from.

00:50:53: Then it became like landfine, table wine. Then it was Grünefeld Liener unfiltered. He wasn't

00:50:58: allowed to use that. And now it's called handcrafted. No, it's a whole country is like almost like

00:51:06: they're hampering the marketing of that country because of this insistence on some rules from...

00:51:13: Is the argument or filtration that having an unfiltered wine is going to obscure that

00:51:17: teowar? Is that what the argument for that in that world is?

00:51:20: Ultimately, there may be justifications, but ultimately, again, we're seeing a struggle for

00:51:24: control and a way of thinking, a way of doing things that is threatened by these people,

00:51:33: especially the sterians. You go to a character and you see these amazing wines. You see the

00:51:38: sterian tables being mulled because everyone loves them so much. These are some of the best wines

00:51:42: you'll ever taste. But it goes back to that sentence that you said before around who's

00:51:46: controlling the controllers, right? Like what's the forces at work? Well, I think ultimately,

00:51:52: this is a degree of insecurity because you've got an aesthetic system that's there, which is

00:51:58: what we may call fine wine. It's an aesthetic system and you see variations on it. So you might

00:52:05: see the fine wine aesthetic system in a London fine wine match. It might be different if you

00:52:10: travel to Napa or the USA where Americans consider a lot of these very expensive Napa wines to be

00:52:18: in the peer group and as good as and as sought after as top board over instance. They'll pay

00:52:24: hundreds of dollars a bottle for that. So there's a slight variation, but they're still

00:52:28: within the larger overall aesthetic system of fine wine. Then you have something coming in

00:52:33: where you've got what we call natural wine where suddenly it's like a let's begin to learn again.

00:52:43: And some people find that threatening because they think they've learned everything. They know

00:52:47: everything and suddenly we're learning again. It's like, when are we learning to see Teowar as

00:52:51: expressed for instance through skin fermented whites? Everyone says orange wines taste the same.

00:52:57: Well, that's a ridiculous thing to say. Because red wines are skin fermented. They don't taste the

00:53:02: same. Orange wines are skin fermented. Amber wines, what everyone would call them skin fermented whites

00:53:07: don't all taste the same. It's just that we're not experienced at trying to understand the way

00:53:12: that Teowar manifests itself through these different wine starts. So it's like, and I think it's very

00:53:19: exciting from my point of view because we will get to learn again together what it's like to suddenly

00:53:23: say, we'll have a cloudy wine. That's not a bad thing necessarily. It's like we'll have a wine that's

00:53:31: a red wine that's juicy and light and pale yet profound. The weird thing is we've learned through

00:53:38: this sort of like a system that to respect certain things and say, this is right, this is wrong.

00:53:45: Going to the orange thing, which we'll discuss in another podcast, remember the late great might

00:53:52: Weir Singh, the American mate, the most phenomenal Chardonnay's and Pinot Noir's in Canterbury.

00:53:59: Oh, Pyramid Valley. Pyramid Valley, yeah. And we were discussing Mike today. I was

00:54:08: with some very highly regarded New Zealand producers and mentioned some of the, actually,

00:54:14: I was with Nick Mills of Ripon and he was talking about texture in wine and how you

00:54:18: understand Teowar and not from the fruit. You understand it from other things.

00:54:22: And I remember Mike talking about this a lot. And Mike was a profound and it didn't end well

00:54:26: for Mike, sadly, but no, but it was an intellectual thing about wine. Yeah. I mean, he was very into

00:54:32: the idea of phenolics and whether or not he did skin contact in his wine, he would say,

00:54:37: you know, it takes, I take two years, three years to make a wine, but the wine, the vineyard,

00:54:46: the wine is deriving its, you know, Teowar and its nourishment from the vineyard and it's using

00:54:51: it to ripen grapes and like, you know, increase the volume of the juice and so on and so forth.

00:54:57: What do I do? I've pressed the grapes. I just get juice. What happens to the skins and the stems

00:55:02: and everything? That's part of the Teowar. If I lose the phenolics, I lose the Teowar.

00:55:07: So he said, like, therefore, I mean, I love phenolics, you know, I love texture. This is what

00:55:13: makes wine what it is. But it's so odd that people who talk about like clean skin wine or

00:55:21: just like juice, that's sulphur and clarified and clean. It's sort of clean in an antiseptic way

00:55:28: and it presents fruit. It doesn't present anything underneath the fruit. Well, I submit. I mean,

00:55:35: of course, and there are relative cases, but phenolics is never a bad thing. But if you,

00:55:39: I just recently wrote a blog on Reisling and I said, I don't like incredibly clean Reisling. I

00:55:45: understand that's the way most people perceive Reisling to be is like zingy and citrusy. But I

00:55:52: like more texture. And if it means slow pressing or not filtering or even doing a little bit of

00:55:58: co-message on the skins, I don't think it has to be muddied up necessarily. But I do like

00:56:03: something to bite into because that's the way I like my wines. And I was hoping for a little bit

00:56:09: of kickback on this because I was writing it to be slightly controversial. But no, I reached my blog,

00:56:13: so that was okay. That was never going to happen. But I think that certain things,

00:56:18: are we dwelling in self pity city a little bit. We are.

00:56:21: I'm just trying to drum up some business. You know me.

00:56:26: We always, I've read your blog. Yeah. Okay. Well, as I say, this was more of a,

00:56:33: I felt it was a controversial subject because I know people worship Reisling and they really do.

00:56:39: Therefore, the great variety must be within the box. Otherwise, it isn't true to the great variety.

00:56:46: But I don't believe in the great variety. I believe in terroir. I believe in the place.

00:56:50: I believe in the decisions made at the time. And I believe a lot in texture like Mike and like so

00:56:56: many other great growers. And that wines don't always have to taste the same. Our classic example

00:57:03: is Alexander Bar in the Loire. Someone makes Prefumé that basically in the end, it got kicked out

00:57:11: for being not typical. But you could be making the only typical Prefumé and everybody else can

00:57:17: be making a facsimile of it, the style, which has now only been popular for the last 20 or 30 years.

00:57:23: Basically, early harvested, fermented in stainless, clarified, self-ed, cold set or

00:57:32: no malo, blah, blah, blah, everything. And he does the opposite. And he does the opposite

00:57:37: in the way that his grandfather did. Everyone used wooden barrels. Everyone harvested late

00:57:43: because they had polyculture. Everyone wild fermented. Everyone did all the wines used to do

00:57:48: malo probably. They weren't filtered. They weren't fine. They weren't self-ed. They come up with

00:57:52: something like we're drinking with this lasky Reisling. Someone would say, "That is not so vignole,"

00:57:57: to which I would say, "The immunosulgrene herbaceous grassy underripe self-ed wine."

00:58:03: And yeah, I've had again discussions, shall we say, animated discussions with MWs and wine teachers

00:58:13: or whatever you call it, people teach wine courses. And they say, "No, no, so when you're,

00:58:18: it has to be recognizably Catspeena Gooseberry Bush style. Otherwise consumers won't understand it."

00:58:25: I think like this is nothing to do with the wine, is it really? You're making a product

00:58:30: with a specific purpose of selling something which is a brand. Whereas if you love wine and you make

00:58:38: wine, you farm wine, you farm grapes, you want to make the best you possibly can, then you're going

00:58:43: to make an Alexander Bar style. Because this is a very good point, Doug. And I'm hopefully, dear

00:58:48: listeners, you can realise the moment that we have a lot of material that we are just

00:58:54: desperate to talk about. But I think we've come more or less the end of this first introductory

00:59:00: episode of just another wine podcast. We should pick this up though, it'd be interesting

00:59:08: to gain into this. We've got a really exciting list of topics that we're going to explore

00:59:13: over coming episodes. Which include... We have left some room, but some things will be...

00:59:20: I think the next one we're going to talk about is "Your Faults, My Flaws" and we've touched on

00:59:25: this already. That sounds like a self-help sort of thing, doesn't it? Yes, exactly. Doug, tell me,

00:59:30: your troubles. Let me lie down on that. Dear Doug, I have a problem. Is it a problem?

00:59:38: I think we are now exactly one hour, which is perfectly long enough for the first episode.

00:59:47: So it remains for us to each say goodbye and looking forward to connecting again

00:59:52: in episode two very soon. We're looking forward to seeing you next time. You can find us on our

00:59:59: Instagram at just another wine podcast. Thanks for listening. That was natural.

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