Welcome to The Knowledge Project.
I'm your host, Shane Parrish, curator behind Farnam Street, which is an online intellectual hub of interestingness covering topics like human misjudgment, decision -making, strategy, and philosophy.
But today we're going to be talking about wine, one of my favorite subjects.
The Knowledge Project allows me to interview amazing people from around the world to deconstruct why they're good at what they do.
It's more conversation than prescription.
On this episode I have Veronique Rivé, one of the most respected sommeliers in the world.
She's been working in restaurants since she was 16.
She's entirely self -taught and has an amazing passion for wine.
After placing twice in the top 12 in 2007 and 2010, she became the first woman to make the podium by taking second place at the world's best sommelier competition in Tokyo in March 2013.
She's the owner of Suaf and Hall, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite wine bars.
We explore the fascinating world of wine, how to taste, including an on -air tasting, tips and tricks for serving wine, and so much more.
I'll apologize in advance for the audio.
We had a goof with the recorder.
This is definitely worth listening to.
With that said, I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Welcome. Thanks for coming on.
I've never interviewed a sommelier before, and you're one of the world's best, so this is incredibly exciting for me.
Tell me how you got started with your love of wine.
How many hours do we have?
You know what? I never had a real...it's not as if I woke up one day and I decided I wanted to become a sommelier.
It's really something that happened through, you know, different jobs, experiences, trips, people I met.
I actually started working in the restaurant industry at about 16 years old as a student job, and my studies have been completely non -wine related.
I did a BA in modern literature and languages, studying languages, and then an MBA in international trade, but all that time I was working in restaurants.
I ended up going to France for a year of study, turned into a seven -year stay, and looking for a job there, I found a job with a winemaker, and I thought, oh, this sounds cool, you know?
And I had been in restaurants for a while.
I basically fell in love with the restaurant industry with the service industry, the restaurant industry as a whole, and with wine and food, but every time I say that I'm like, who wouldn't, right?
So it's really just all these, you know, a combination of jobs I held, of people I met, and all of a sudden I kind of realized, okay, this could actually become a real job.
I wasn't very glorious in my family when, you know, I wanted to be a waitress.
Today it's well -seen, they're kind of happy about it, right?
So there's no illumination, it just kind of happened.
Okay. And what was it like living in France for seven years in terms of culture between here and there and the differences, and is that what really started your passion?
No, it really fed it in a way, I guess.
I always thought I was a citizen of the world.
My mom's German, my father's French -Canadian, we've always traveled a lot as kids.
It's something my parents instilled in all of us, my brothers are still great travelers, and I thought I had no particular attachment to Canada.
And, you know, it takes that.
You have to live elsewhere to realize how good you have it at home, right?
And it did, that time I spent, so there was always this opening onto the world and European culture in particular, so it's not as if it was something new, it felt kind of natural, and in Quebec there is this strong, you know, these strong links, cultural links to France, so it wasn't like, you know,
a big shock or anything.
But I really, really appreciated the food and wine culture and being in Alsace, since where I was for seven years, one of the best places to eat a drink, it was, I really felt in my element, I just loved being around the winemakers, you know, when I was working at this winery, I was constantly, you
know, had my nose into the winemakers lab, asking everybody questions down in the cellar, you know, just really, really curious.
Of the winery, yeah.
It's up to the winery, so you were going to the actual vineyards, and spending time there with the winemakers.
Exactly, yeah. What would be the, when did you start your process of becoming a sommelier in France, or did you do that when you came back?
That's a good question, again, there's such a kind of a seamless flow to everything I did, that there's no, there's no real defining moment.
I think it all kind of falls together, but when I after those seven years in France, when I when I came back to Canada, I was seriously, the obvious choice was a restaurant job, because again, there's, it's a, the good thing about it is that there's always work when you work in the restaurant industry,
right? So it was an easy thing to fall back onto, but I was starting to think, okay, maybe I could, you know, become a wine buyer for the LCBO.
I didn't know how things worked back then, it's not as simple as that, but so I started thinking of wine as more of a possible career choice, and when I came back, I was working in restaurants in France, I came back here, I went directly to restaurants, it was kind of my comfort zone, and just kept
evolving in restaurants.
I think that that's it's an industry I really liked, and that I felt comfortable in, and I felt good in, so.
And it's the first time, I didn't even know what a Simeonie competition was.
I didn't give myself the title of Simeonie, and I am, I mean even though I took every class I could during my whole life, I followed every class I could on wine, but at the base I'm self -taught.
Okay. Again, as I said, curiosity is something that really defines me, and so I would read everything, just like when I was at the winemaker in France, I was always asking questions about everything.
I would read everything, I could get my hands on, and and so when I came back from France, I was in 94, went back to the restaurant industry, got a job also at the LCBO, started working, quickly became a product consultant, and I saw Anad go by for Simeonie competition, and I thought, huh, I had just
been back six months, and in the country, and I thought, what better way to find out who's who, who's doing what, you know, what's going on, I had been away for so long, and I had heard great things about the restaurant and the Simeonie scene in Quebec, but was disconnected from it all.
And so I signed up for that competition, I thought, you know, if I'm gonna go, I might as well do it, right?
There was 60 people doing the semi -finals, and six finalists, and I was expecting to watch the final, you know, but I was called one of the finalists.
Yeah, so two questions, I mean, what is involved in the path to becoming an official Simeonie?
And then what is a song, what happens at a Simeonie competition?
Okay, no, it's two big questions, so is how the path has evolved, I mean, there's still in France, in Europe in general, they've had, I mean, it's a known trait, and they've had Simeonie schools, there's a Simeonie program in every hotel restaurant school throughout Europe, so it's something it was actually
difficult when I first went to France, and thought, oh, I'll find a job as a student.
Those aren't student jobs, people train to become servers, to occupy every position in the restaurant industry.
But it's much more recent that we have officials Simeonie training in schools in North America.
We see it now more and more, I think we've had it again in Quebec for a certain time because of our links with France, because of many ways we have more resemblances with, but so it's slowly starting, I'd say in the last 10 or 20 years we've seen more official programs for training Simeonies in North
America, but there's also a lot still to be, well, I was gonna say, like every other train, no, I hope there's not a lot of surgeons that learn, you know, that are sometimes, but in this industry I think there's probably still a lot, and more so in North America, because we're not as, you know, it's
not as all compartmented into, you know, a strict academic program.
And when you go to a competition you have all these varying backgrounds competing for what's involved in the competition.
That's, we could talk hours about just that, but I love talking about it because for so many people, so many competitions are strictly tasting contests, right?
The number of times, and I hate that, that I'm in public events and I have people walk up to me and stick a glass under my nose and say, what's that?
And I always say, I'm not a circus animal, you know, it's not, so I guess it's what people remember the most, because it's the most impressive.
People are always very impressed by somebody who, you know, does a blind tasting and says, okay, this is a piano muffin burgundy from such village from that year.
I remember watching Psalm and they were trying to do that.
Have you seen that movie?
Yeah, and they're trying to do that, right?
And it just blew my mind that, like, you were even capable of doing something like that.
So, so I think that's why people remember that, because there is something impressive about it.
But what's really important to things, it's, it's, there's, it's not just the guessing game, there's really, really serious knowledge needed to back up a tasting like that.
Oh, of course. The, first of all, in the tasting, as such, it's not, you're not going to get that many points from guessing what it is.
It's kind of fun, we all love to do it.
Right. And it's very sherry and flashy.
Exactly, right. But the most talented people in this business also learn humility very quickly.
And we're the first to recognize that, you know, no, it's, it's not easy.
No, we don't guess it right every time people going around bragging that I always get blind tasting, they're usually not very knowledgeable.
So, so the guessing what it is part is fun, but it's not the finality, I'd say the, the analytical tasting.
It's analyzing the level of acidity of sugar, of alcohol, of tannins, being able to qualify the tannins, are they ripe, unripe?
Does it come from a hot year, from a moderate year, from a cool year?
What kind of soil type might it come from?
Has it seen oak or stainless steel or clay amp for us?
If it's been in oak, was it new oak?
So these are all things that take years and years of tasting, training, and basically blind tasting is deductive reasoning.
Okay. So you just gather a whole bunch of, yeah.
And the tasting so that's how complex a tasting can be.
And the tasting is still just one part of the competition.
I'd say competitions are always threefold.
There's the tasting, there's obviously service, because we are service people, even though the world, the word summa ghee has become very, very trendy, you know, like the chefs, there's all this kind of like, you know, almost rockstar status.
You would be one of those people, right?
I hate that kind of the, the summa ghee are servers, first and foremost.
So somebody who calls themselves a summa ghee and has never worked in the restaurant business in their life, is not really a summa ghee.
A summa ghee is a server.
It's a wine specialized server.
I always tell when I'm training young people that are starting, I say, if you find serving the slightest bit degrading, change business right away, right?
This is not, you should thrive on serving people.
That's the basic, basic thing to start.
So service is part of the competition.
It can be anything from how do you serve a no bottle of Bordeaux?
How do you open a double magnum of champagne and serve it to how do you deal with difficult guests?
Right. So it's a lot of tact and diplomacy.
Wine and matching is a huge part of our work, right?
So being familiar with not only French cuisine, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Mexican, you know, knowing the great cuisines of this world and being able to, to do wine and beverages matches, because it's not only wines.
Somebody should be familiar with every, every beverage alcohol, spirits, liqueurs, ears, sakes, as much in terms of blind tasting as production, elaboration, different styles and pairing.
And then the biggest part, the third part, other than tasting and service is theory.
We're basically supposed to know everything.
And the theory is just so vast and continuously expanding, right?
I mean, we're way past the days where there was France and Italy as wine producers.
China is the sixth or seventh world's largest producer of wine today.
Brazil makes wine, Thailand makes wine.
So knowing everything about grape growing, so geology, you know, climate questions, wine making, which is essentially chemistry, all the grape varieties of the world, all the wine appellations of the world.
So the theory is immensely vast.
Nobody will ever know anything, but they can ask us anything.
Right. It's all fair game.
Sounds like the only job better than mine walking around tasting wine all day.
Speaking of which, they dropped off two glasses here.
Can you walk me through a tasting and what we have?
I don't even know. I sit down in a restaurant, they pull wine.
Am I supposed to swirl?
Am I supposed, how do I actually go through it?
You're supposed to enjoy it.
Okay. That's the most important thing.
And that's what anybody serving you should worry about the most, right?
That's it. We're there to make sure people have a good time.
So enjoying it is the basic thing.
Then you can completely geek out about it.
And we love to do that, right?
And people are more and more into wine.
And I truly believe that pleasure increases with knowledge.
And the more we know about wine, about the people who make it, the region it comes from, it really adds to the pleasure of tasting.
Can you walk me through how you would taste this?
Do a tasting? Yeah.
Okay. So first of all, we're looking at three things, eyes, nose, and palate.
And the visual examination of a wine is something a lot of people overlook, but it's full of clues to what the wine could possibly be.
So we have obviously versus the color.
So we have a slightly salmon pinkish wine.
So it's a rosé wine.
In certain wines, there will be variations of color.
When wines age, their color changes.
Oak aging can impart color to wine.
If it's the same grape from a super cool or a super hot climate, it's not going to have the same...
It'll be a different color.
It'll be a different color.
So very, very slight differences.
Muance is hues in the wine that can tell you a lot about what the wine is or where it comes from.
Of course, you're never going to jump to a conclusion from just one clue.
Right? Again, deductive reasoning.
So we're combining all these clues together to come to a logical conclusion.
The other thing that's obvious about this wine is...
It's bubbly. It's bubbly.
See? I feel like a pro now.
So it's got bubbles.
Bubbles could also be...
It's not necessarily a sparkling wine from the amount of bubbles here.
It's not a lot. It's continuous, but still it's more than if it was wine with just a little bit of CO2 trapped in it because that could also be the case.
Think of Vino Verde.
Certain wines that are bottled very young or can be bottled with a little CO2 in them, sometime voluntarily to give them a bit more of that freshness of that.
Spritz to it. But this looks like it is a fully sparkling wine.
We can look at the...
You know when people swirl their glass around and we talk about legs on a wine, so how the tears that come down.
So when you swirl it around and you see the wine coming down on the inside of the glass, can tell you about viscosity of the wine.
So a combination of sugar, of alcohol, of body.
Usually the thicker the tears, the slower they are to form and to come down, the more full -bodied the wine will be.
It could be an alcohol, it can be in sugar, it can be a combination thereof.
I wish that people did that to aerate the wine.
We swirl it around definitely to aerate it.
But as the wine is coming down, you will watch the tears.
It's something I didn't pay attention to for many years because you need glass in a perfect state.
There shouldn't be any residues.
So it's not the most trustable source of information, but it's something you can look at.
Then of course, so we know it's rosé, we know it's sparkling.
That's all we know for now.
It's a very light hue.
Some rosés tend to be much darker.
So it could be different grape varieties, could be different styles of wine making, etc.
Then we're going to smell it and ideally you want to smell it once before swirling it around.
Okay. First thing you're going to look at is the wine clean.
Looking for false. Are there any faults?
Is the wine corked?
Is it oxidized? Is there something wrong with it?
How do you tell a corked wine?
By smelling a lot of corked wine.
In the wine bar I have, every time we stumble or wherever I am if I'm doing an event and there's lots of people help, if I have a bottle of corked wine, I always keep it and make people smell it.
Okay. Because so many people don't know what a corked wine smells like.
So people confuse cork and oak.
So it's a very distinctive smell and you just need to smell it quite a few times to memorize that smell and then you'll instantly pick it up when it happens.
Okay. Because it can be very, just a corked wine can vary tremendously in the intensity of its faults.
Some wines are so badly corked, you open the bottle and people, you know, 10 feet away will smell it.
They say, oh my god, that's corked.
Others, we're going to be, there's going to be three of us, you know, pouring over the glass.
Like, is this not, it's not perfect for king.
Something, something's wrong.
Right. Something's smell can vary.
It's not always the same.
So sometimes, and see, we have a sparkling wine.
A lot of people, I don't know why, think sparkling wine cannot be corked.
Oh, okay. I don't know why, it's, any wine can be corked.
Pork can be corked, sparkling wine can be corked.
But there's this, every time I have a corked sparkling wine, people so often, oh, I didn't know sparkling wine could be corked.
Yeah, of course. Any wine can, any, anything that's closed with a cork, a natural cork closure, can be corked.
So the wine is clean.
It doesn't have any faults.
It's even, and then we're looking at intensity, the intensity of the aromatics, because some grapes are much more aromatic than others.
I think there's some highly aromatic grape varieties like Givil, Strummino, Muscov, Yonye.
So when you have a very intensely aromatic wine, already you've eliminated a whole bunch of others.
Right. You know, it's going to be, okay.
In sparkling wines, there's usually a limited number of grapes that are used to make sparkling wines worldwide.
Okay. There's, there's probably lots, and there's always somebody somewhere doing something weird with an unheard of grape variety.
But a lot of, of sparkling wines are either made with the champagne grapes.
So Chardonnay Pinot Noir, mostly.
Then you have the wines of, the sparkling wines of Spain, the Cavas, which have their own grape varieties.
Prosecco in Italy. So, so there's these pockets of, of a few sparkling wines, specialty sparkling wines made in certain countries that have their own grapes.
And then there are the ones that are made according to the champagne model, which are made in champagne, but all over the world in Canada and the United States and Germany everywhere.
So at least we're not dealing with 2000 grape varieties.
Usually we're dealing with sparkling wines, right?
Right now we're taking it down somewhere.
So, so something we're going to look at when we're, we're doing a sparkling wine is from the aromas and the taste and the quality of the bubbles, trying to define, is it a wine that's been made in the champagne tradition, or is it something else?
So when we're smelling it, you look at the intensity.
Sparkling wines are usually, unless it's made with a aromatic variety, are usually more discrete.
They're not super big on the nose, right?
They don't jump out of the glass at you.
There's always a certain finesse in sparkling wines.
This smells amazing.
You like it? And you know, the other thing is people are so afraid to say, when you ask them, okay, what are you smelling?
Everybody is so, there's been so much intimidation throughout the years with wine that people feel incompetent.
When you, I always say, if I give you a plate of food, you know, I give you a dish and most people will say if they like it or if they don't.
And if you ask them why, they'll probably be able to say why they like it or they don't.
Give them a glass of wine and ask them their opinion.
They're totally scared.
The vocabulary around it seems so impenetrable.
And yet it's not that different from food, right?
We're dealing with taste, so there's obviously a lot of subjective personal preferences.
But it's, you know, first of just, okay, do you like it or not?
Why do you like it?
Okay, yes, the vocabulary is not there, but like for, you know, not everybody has a chef's vocabulary for food either.
Right? And you develop that as you go.
But you have to start to jump in to say what you think.
It's by expressing your thoughts and tasting with others that can help you kind of, you know, put the right words on what you're thinking.
That you'll get there.
But there's unfortunately been over the years, so many people that have positioned themselves, you know, be it wine makers or wine writers or so -called experts, some of these, right?
I mean, this old image of the arrogant French, so many people have positioned themselves as having the ultimate truth.
And we're gonna, you know, we're going to teach you ignorant consumer what good wine is.
Right. Everybody's equipped to decide if they like wine or not.
Exactly, right? I digress a lot.
No, this is amazing.
I love this. So this is, I know what it is, right?
So it's a Cava. It's not a Cava, but it's from that region in Spain where they make, Cava is a big, big, big industry.
I love Cava. So a lot of really good, affordable sparkling wines are made under that denomination.
And they work with local grape varieties.
Zarello, Macabeo and Dharilada.
Three white grapes.
There's a few others also, but those are the three main grapes used for Cava.
So it's not champagne like it.
They're not, it's not a champagne look alike.
They're using different grapes.
It is made, though, in the traditional method.
We're not supposed to say champagne method anymore, but so in the same way as champagne is made, which is considered the best production method for giving, you know, the better quality sparkling wines.
But Cava is a huge appellation with millions and millions of bottles made.
And this producer is a producer I like a lot called Ravento Ciblan.
And they've been working really hard to try and get the standards for Cava higher because they thought there was too much low quality, you know, a lot of really cheap supermarket wines.
Anybody can just label it Cava.
Well, you have a certain, you know, certain protocol to follow in terms of elaboration.
The grapes are allowed to use.
You have to make it a mitto drenchienen, right, the whole elaboration is all, but still, it wasn't sufficient to ensure the level of quality they wanted for the product.
And there's a lot of really low quality Cava produced.
So the standards of the appellation are not sufficient to distinguish between them.
Exactly. The more ordinary.
And so they actually pulled out these guys, they don't call their wines Cava.
That's why. So it's made in Catalonia, in Pinedes, in the region.
They're actually in the heart of the Cava production region with Cava grapes, but they pulled out of the appellation.
They don't call their wines Cava anymore because they don't want to be associated with a brand that also has a lot of really low quality products.
So that's the long story on these guys, Ramento.
So they now call their wines Conca de Ríudanoia, which is actually a geographical designation.
It's the land where they are, where they grow their grapes and make the wines.
When we finally get to taste.
Go ahead, taste. So on the nose, we're looking for aromatics, we're looking for oak influence, we're looking for minerality.
In the aromatics, what kind?
Is it more fruit? Is it floral?
Is it spicy? Is there a lot of non -fruit aromas?
Or is it just a big fruit bomb?
So is your ability to distinguish those different smells come from smelling them and then smelling wine and just over time again, kind of like the cork one.
Our nose is like a mussel.
It's one of our most, it's an amazing sense we have.
It's the one we use the least.
We're so dependent on our eyes that we completely under use our nose.
We think we all can smell.
We know we can smell.
We think we're good at, oh yeah, I know what coffee smells like.
I know what basil smells like.
But try smelling those things blind, not knowing what it is.
And you'll be surprised at how very common smells, everyday smells people won't recognize once you're blindfolded because we're not used to developing our smell memory.
And that's, anybody can do it.
It's just an exercise.
I've been doing it my whole life and I still do it.
I'm far from being - How do you do that?
You smell everything.
I here in the kitchen - You close your eyes and smell it.
They're always laughing at me because everything, I always go put my nose in everything.
I smell, I train my nose.
I smell, I smell when I'm gardening.
I smell when I'm walking.
I smell when I'm in traffic.
Good smells and bad.
It's just a question of training your nose.
And yes, trying to sometimes I'll do it on purpose, right?
Put out certain herbs, certain vegetables, whatever, when I'm grocery shopping.
But the difficult part is again, with your eyes closed or blindfolded, to be able to remember the smells.
So those kind of instant recognition of aromas, those exercises, are hugely important and they help in developing your memory of smell.
And then we finally get to the tasting after the smell.
And so what do you do when you, and this is going to sound maybe ridiculous, but when you put it in your mouth, do you swirl it around, do you swallow it?
Do you have that gardening noise we make?
Yeah. It's exactly the same thing.
You were talking about how we're swirling it in the glass.
I said smell it a first time before swirling it and then swirl it around because it's basically oxygenating the wine to help release more aromatics.
Okay? Some wines there won't be a much difference between not swirling it and swirling it.
Some wines you'll smell much more once you've swirled it around, right?
Some wines are a little bit shiny.
They need to kind of the aromas needs to be coaxed out.
What we're doing in the mouth is exactly the same.
It's just you're taking a little wine in your mouth and you let some air in and you gargle the air through the wine.
So once again, it's oxygenating it to smell it better because that's another important thing.
We talk about the palate, but in the mouth, we're talking about taste and smell.
When you say a wine taste of strawberries or chocolate or vanilla, it actually smells of those things, right?
There's only four or five or six basic tastes.
Oh, that's interesting.
Sweetness, sourness.
I always thought it was crazy when people are like, it tastes like chocolate.
I'm like, it doesn't taste like chocolate.
Yeah, that's why you don't taste anything when you have a cold, because you can't smell.
So tastes are basically those things, acidities, sugar, bitterness and salt.
Those are the four basics.
You can throw in umami.
We won't go into that because people can look it up.
It's a so that's taste and you can still taste when your nose is blocked.
You can still taste when you have cold, you'll taste sweetness and saltiness and but you won't smell.
And so our palate and our nose are linked through the back of the throat, retronasal passages.
And so that's it. When you have something in your mouth and you say, oh, it tastes of strawberries, it actually smells.
You're smelling it but from inside your mouth.
Exactly. So that's why that putting the air through the wine in your palate helps you taste or smell it better, right?
To the back passages.
Okay, and then you swallow and then are you looking for I mean, I want to I want to geek out on this for a second.
Are you looking for like this wine that we have here?
I feel it on the front of my tongue.
Okay. More so than anywhere else.
But that could be because I just aerated it.
Like what? And that can be personal too.
There's there's this um other kind of slightly ridiculous notion out there that was regulated for for years of a tongue map.
Whereas we taste this sweetness in the front of the tongue acidity on the side bitterness on the back.
That was a mistake from the start.
It's hard to believe that it's been the accumulated sorry, there must be a better word for that for so long.
Because it was an error from the beginning.
I mean, no such thing exists as a tongue map.
We are all very, very individual once again, as tasters, we don't perceive things the same way.
You know that scientists say that there's actually not two people on the planet that will perceive the same food or the same beverage exactly in the same way.
That's fascinating.
Not surprised at all.
But it also makes it difficult to you know, that's why we establish this kind of protocol.
So we have to talk common language to I love acidity.
A wine that's super high in acidity will be just fine for me.
Okay, for somebody who doesn't like acidity, that wine will be way too sour.
So that person will say that super high acidity, and I'll say no, it's just right.
So you have to kind of calibrate ourselves.
And that's also something you learn as you're tasting a lot.
So what would be the acidity in this?
That's in very you know, in our technical jargon, we quantify everything precisely.
So it's medium plus.
Okay. We'll go from high to medium plus to medium to medium minus to low.
Okay, it's delicious.
Glad you like it for a Napa Cav drinker.
That's quite a different style of wine.
But so on the palate, when we talked about the aromas and the tastes, because acidity helps you define, right, the level of acidity in the wine.
We're looking at aromas, tastes, but also structure, you know, kind of the mouse heel, on top of letting the air through and kind of gardening with the wine, you're carrying it through your mouth, right.
And to get a feel of the wine of the weight, how it coats your mouth, right, some wines go down like water, others have almost a creamy feel to them, right.
So there's textural qualities that are different that can also tell you about a grape variety, about a climate, about wine making methods.
So it's all these things combined that help you come to a conclusion that makes sense, an educated guess, exactly.
Based on really elimination, it sounds like, you're walking through what is into that.
And how do you know, it's just from, you know, I always tell people how you become a taster.
Well, you just drink a lot.
So you taste a lot, but that's it, right.
It just comes through years and years of training of tasting and rigorous tasting, not sitting alone in front of the TV and chugging down bottles, right?
There has to be a method almost like a deliberate practice.
Exactly. And the necessity of doing it together.
One foremost, because wine to me is about bringing people together, right.
That's the advice. The most important thing is you have to enjoy it and hopefully you're not enjoying it alone.
It brings people together, that's the right, but for learning about wine also, the exchange is necessary.
There's just so much you can learn from books.
At one point, you have to confront your ideas with somebody else's.
I was talking about calibrating, right.
You know, my high acidity, what is it for you and where do we meet?
What's considered medium acidity and high acidity by the community at large, right.
We kind of have to agree.
So the importance of tasting with others to make sure you're on the right track and you're calibrating.
And what books would you say recommend for not only the beginner, but the person who wants to get into not necessarily becoming a professional fominee, but an educated consumer.
To me there's two Bibles and they're proud pretty much everybody's.
The Wine Atlas from Janis Robinson and Hugh Johnson, which is wonderful because it covers the wine making world.
It's got great maps.
It's got a general presentation of each country, each region.
So it's really a solid, solid basis for wine knowledge.
And again, understanding about the region, about the topography, about all of that helps you better understand the wines.
And it's all linked.
Of course, there are wines today that are completely cut off from where they come from.
There are industrial wines that you can have an Australian wine, a wine from the Languedoc and a wine from Chile that tastes exactly the same.
Those are fabricated wines and there's nothing wrong with them.
I mean, they're not going to kill you.
What do you mean by fabricated wines?
Because you can very much, you can come and you know, you could hire a consultant wine maker today and say, okay, I've got this vineyard, wherever it is, I want my wine to be this color, to taste the chocolate and blackberries and be a little bit sweet and super round and creamy and not aggressive and to
sell it around that price point and he'll make it to order.
Technology allows that both in the vineyards and especially in the winery through the processes.
Both. There's many, many allowed additives and many allowed processes that allow you to manipulate a wine to make it what you want.
There's still this very romantic notion out there, you know, in the consumer world that wine is fermented grape juice and of course the industry just loves that and totally exploits it and you read all these nice back labels that tell you about the vineyard and the vineyard and this colic image of wine.
Whereas a lot of wines out there actually resemble more coca cola, you know, a soft drink or processed cheese in terms of how they're made.
Is that because... So disconnected from nature.
It's very fragmented that there's becoming to be a few large players who are striving for like almost like McDonald's, like consistency.
Yeah, there's a bit of that, you know, and some consumers actually want that also.
They want the reassurance of having the same product year in year out no matter where they go.
They know they're going to drink the same thing.
Most, you know, true wine lovers, foremost, most wine lovers, the the the variance from one year to another, from one region to another, the fact that the same wine grower grows the same grapes on two different plots with different soils and different slopes are different.
That's fascinating to us.
That's what we love.
I always say what really turns me on and in French we say a vant le galle.
A vant le galle means a wine that has character and a wine that tastes like it tastes because it comes from a specific place and it wouldn't taste the same if it came from another place.
That's what really turns wine lovers on.
But again, there are people who drink wine.
They like a glass of wine and they don't really care about the story and they don't, they prefer something.
They grew up on soft drinks and sweet foods and they liked something sweet and softens simple and that's fine, right.
And so there's a lot of the industry that caters to that, you know, to the mass market can make wine as a real consumer product with all the marketing gimmicks and everything that goes with it.
Coming back to the service aspect of being a sommelier, what do you wish more people knew when they came into a restaurant and talked to a sommelier?
Oh, it's very simple.
I mean, the first thing I wish people had was more confidence and less and be less intimidated.
Just, you know, there's so many people out there that are just waiting to talk wine with you, right, and want to share their passion.
And if anybody gives you attitude, if anybody's arrogant, if anybody tries to recommend a wine, be it in a store or in a restaurant without asking you a single question first, steer clear away from them, right.
Which means this is what I like.
Exactly. They'll tell you what they love and without caring about what you like, right.
So, but yeah, just be confident.
Don't be afraid to ask questions.
I would say those in the business that are judgmental, that will look down on you, they're not the good ones anyhow.
You shouldn't care about them.
We couldn't care less if they like you or not, right.
Real professionals and real wine lovers will just be more than happy to take you on at any level you are and try to guide you through, you know, discovery and pleasure.
So that probably leads to suboptimal outcomes, right, hiding or being intimidated by speaking about what you like and your preferences.
What would be other mistakes that people make that are easily correctable or that would offer a better experience from a consuming point of view?
Hmm. There's very simple things, you know, like just service temperature.
We still, you know, drink a lot of wines way too cold and a lot of other wines way too warm.
There's not a red wine that's good about 17, 18 degrees, right, and the whole notion of room temperature.
I don't know, that goes back to the middle ages, but when the houses are heated at 22, 23, there's not one wine that's good at that temperature.
The white wine straight, or rosé, right, summer coming around, rosé season.
So many people drink their rosés ice colds and that just mutes the wine, you know.
The better rosés, a lot of the better rosés are much better, like at 10, 12 degrees.
The fridge is at four or five, right.
So when they warm up, they really, rosés are not usually very aromatic wines or more textural wines, but you kind of kill that texture when you serve it ice cold.
And it really, you know, comes into its own when you let it warm up a little bit.
So yeah, temperature's another...
So do you recommend people touch the bottle?
Like if I ordered a bottle of red at a restaurant when it comes and it's prevented?
Well, they'll let you try it.
And if it's too warm for a red, which still often happens, don't hesitate to ask for an ice bucket and put the red bottle of wine in the ice bucket for five or ten minutes.
If they're idiots, excuse me, it still happens.
They'll look at you as if you're from Mars, okay.
But if it's anybody who knows anything, they'll totally understand.
First of all, they shouldn't serve it to you too warm, but...
Is that an indication about how serious the restaurant you're in takes their wine as well?
Totally. If anybody serves you a red wine that tastes lukewarm, they're really not serious about their wine service.
That's good to know.
And so flipping it around a bit from the consumer perspective, how do I tell the difference between a good or bad sommelier?
I think in the rapport you establish with them, right?
From the start, their ease of approach, their willingness to really try to understand you and what you want.
And you'll see if their main goal is for you to have a good time or if it's for them to shine, right?
Or if they couldn't care less because they have another important table next to you, whatever.
But those things, I think...
It's a regular kind of service aspect.
So you're in the business of wine now.
You operate this amazing restaurant we're in right now.
Wine bar, sorry. Which is gorgeous by the way.
Tell me about what it was like to start a business in wine in an industry that is notorious for a high failure rate.
Yeah. Well, I think like most people who spend a lot of their time working in the industry, we all kind of play with the dream of having your own place one day.
Although I remember for years I said, I will never have a restaurant.
I don't want to be a slave and want to have a life.
But young people in this industry, it is a difficult industry financially.
It's almost impossible to get finance, right?
Because there's such a high failure rate, it's really hard to get finance and other institutions on board.
It is stupid crazy hours for not a lot of pay.
You know, once again, this whole celebrity...
I think it's really great what's happening with chefs and sommeliers because it's bringing light to the profession, making it known, better appreciated.
But the downside effect is that it's giving young people starting in the business a really not necessarily the right image.
I see kids coming out of cooking school and they want to have their TV show and their cooking bulk, and it's like, no, no, you're going to sweat for years behind a nubbin before we even call you a chef, right?
So it's really hard.
And those that really succeed, I think are people that are truly, truly passionate.
Yeah, I work like crazy.
I work crazy hours, but I don't care.
I'm having fun, as long as I'm having fun.
So it doesn't seem like work.
Exactly. So the behind the scenes, though, you're constantly traveling, trying to find new bottles that you can bring to people.
What's involved in the behind the scenes that people wouldn't necessarily think about from a sommelier's point of view?
Well, first of all, from an owner is like, I think one of the reasons why the industry has such a bad rap is because too many people go into the restaurant industry because they're great cooks, you know, we have friends, oh, you really cook, you should open up a restaurant.
You need a manager to open up a restaurant because the profit margins are so, so, so tiny.
If you're not constantly checking your numbers, constantly, constantly, constantly, you can make loads of money and well, revenues and close down because, you know, you're just going bankrupt.
So you need solid management experience, I think is the first thing before you've been having that right.
And then from a sommelier's perspective, yeah, it's just what people see is the service people on the floor serving people.
But then like you said, there's all, you know, building up a wine program.
So ordering the wines, buying wines, managing inventories, I'm going to have a by the glass program, what's going to be your pricing.
So there's, and then, you know, constantly working with the kitchen for wine and food matching.
Right. So you know what's good.
So for us, it's different in Canada.
I know importing wine can be a bit tricky.
You can't just go over and import a case.
Can you what's the process for that?
Well, you have to work in your province of operations.
So this wine bar is in Quebec, so I can only deal with the SEQ.
I cannot deal with the LCBO, even though we're right across the river from Ottawa.
I cannot buy directly from Ontario wine producers, which is ridiculous.
I've always said my ultimate fight, once I'm retired, whenever that happens, I will get on that case and lobby very, very hard to make our wine laws changed across the country.
A lot of people are already working on it, but there's a tremendous amount of work to be done.
I mean, all of our liquor laws are based on, you know, our early 20th century either from the prohibition era.
So it seems to me as a consumer of wine, I'm limited to the LCBO selection and what they've chosen for me.
And then getting anything outside of that becomes difficult.
And then it's almost like books, right?
Like what they're choosing for me is high volume crowd pleasers, not necessarily a variety of flavors or small.
Well, there's one thing consumers should know and people into wine is that we're actually in a pretty great markets in terms of what's on offer, because there's a whole beyond the LCBO and the SAQ in the state monopolies, there's ways to get wine also.
It's not illegal, it's completely goes through.
And in Ontario, they call it consignment, in Quebec, we call it importation privy.
It's basically the same thing.
Most wineries here are represented by an agent who does the importation, who does all the paperwork, but it's sold through the SAQ, right?
But they have an agent.
So there's agencies in every province that represent the different wineries present on our market that work here that they're the ones who will bring me samples or invite me to a tasting or send me information on that product.
They're the ones, you know, making sure it's where they want it to be on the shelves in the stores and so on.
And so those agents also have wines that are not distributed through the monopoly stores.
And frankly, one of the reason why in the region here I wanted to be on the Quebec side and not on the Ontario side was because I wanted to work on the wines with the ones we have on offer in Quebec.
I have nothing to envy from cities like New York or London, I can basically get anything I want in this market through private importation.
And private import is not only for restaurant owners, it's for everybody.
And it's just gonna ask and for years, it was thought it was reserved to restaurants.
And unfortunately, actually, some unscriptless agents did that, they didn't make the prices known to the public so that the restaurateurs could make horrific margins on those wines, right, sell you a $10 bottle of wine for $60.
Because the price was not known from the public.
But now, as consumers are more and more into wine, consumption is increasing, you know, the whole wine scene is just very dynamic right now.
There's more individuals that don't have restaurants that buy wines through these channels, the only can mean it is because it doesn't transit through the stores, it goes directly from the monopoly warehouses to the consumer, it's by the case, they don't open the cases, you have to buy a case of six
or a case at 12. But as I normally say, that's not really a problem, right?
Get yourself some friends.
Exactly. And like you said, wines for ringing people together.
Exactly. You touched on something I want to talk about just briefly.
People associate price and value, is that true in wine?
To what extent? Like everything else, right?
Like everything else, you get what you pay for up to a certain extent.
Just like watches, like clothing, like cars, at one point, you get into the luxury market, right?
There's no single bottle of wine in the world that costs more than about 30 or 40 dollars to produce.
So why are their bottles selling for 1500 a bottle or 2000?
Though you get into that luxury segment where you're starting to pay for rarity, for reputation, for all the marketing that goes around it, right?
There's, you know, supply and demand, you know, and wine just like anything else.
We do pay in our markets, in Canada in general, what we don't get is the dirt cheap wine.
Is the wines you pay like two, three, four euros in a supermarket in France or in the US.
That we don't get. But frankly, not usually the best wines anyhow, right?
And from, you know, 20 to 50 dollars, I think our pricing is, can actually be quite competitive.
Regularly, I see wines that I can buy here for cheaper than what I see them, you know, at the producer in Italy or in France or when we're in that, especially that kind of 30 to 50 dollar range.
And then, yeah, of course, there's wines that are 2000 dollars a bottle or more, but that's, again, we've crossed over to the luxury good department.
It's not wine as food anymore, right?
It's wine as a collector's item.
Have you ever tasted something that changed you?
Changed you as a person and like the world didn't look the same after having it?
I've tasted a lot of things that made me feel really good.
The more you taste, the better you feel, right?
But no, even be, you know, without going into that factor of the effects of alcohol, but there's just wines that, yeah, they just move you.
And that's, I think, what I look for the most in wines.
I used to, and it was all part of the learning process, right?
So many people see me, oh, yeah, you are the one taking the, I feel that I don't know how many notebooks during my life taking notes on every single wine I would taste that would go to a wine fair good.
I was writing, writing, writing, writing.
Now, my tasting technique, sometimes it's that precise.
It has to be when I'm training for competitions or things like that, but for buying purposes or for simply more simple evaluation purposes, I just taste the wine and pay attention to how it makes me feel.
I look for, for, for liveliness in wine, for something that, I often say of a wine, wine, I really, it's just dead.
It's not speaking to me.
It's not, and that's often very manipulated wines.
Again, there's nothing wrong with them.
Technically, they're perfectly sound, but they don't have a soul.
They don't move you.
They don't speak to you.
And a lot of wine, I mean, the consumption would also be with the romance.
I would imagine like the wine maker and the craftsmanship that goes into it.
And when you start thinking about the mechanics of mass -produced wine or wine that is manufactured to taste a certain way, you lose that.
Yeah, exactly. And, and we could go on for hours and hours about the, the, the values are not of blind tasting, right?
Because knowing the story behind changes, yes, it can influence you, right?
Just like, you know, when you're tasting an expensive wine, you might rate it higher because it's expensive and prestigious.
We try really, really hard not to do that.
So blind tasting in those cases is, is good.
But sometimes I've, I've, you know, evaluated certain wines quite poorly, tasting them blind because they were kind of out of context and not in the right place.
And had I known what they were, what the winemaker was trying to do, I would have had a better understanding.
Right? Well, so much of our understanding comes from context.
Exactly. Right? And, and, and again, that that's what I think is great about wine.
It's all those, you know, and, and, and I, I love imperfections.
I always say perfection is boring, right?
When something is, is so almost aseptisized.
Is that a right word?
Something that's so clean that it's soulless, right?
It's, it's too technically perfect.
Right? I think in wine, in people, beauty lies in the false.
I shouldn't, I have to be careful saying that I'm not, I don't, I don't want to, to, I don't want to say that a wine is, is good because it's faulty.
No, a wine should not be faulty, it should be good.
Right? And it should have character.
Exactly. Right? And that's one of the ways that you get character.
Yeah. Yeah. By, by not having this perfectly technical aseptisized line that, you know, all the processes you've used, have basically stripped all the character and the life out of it.
So how do you look at a wine menu when you go into a restaurant, that's not a wine bar, that's not known for their wine, but you want to have a bottle because you're there with your friends?
How do you go about evaluating that from, you know, it's not going to be served chilled.
Yeah. But I, I scroll through the list and right away you see, you know, somebody who's from the, the, the trade knows right away you look at the, you go through it and you look at the producers and is it all only industrial, big, you know, producers or is there some interesting stuff in there?
And nobody knows everything.
I mean, there is, you can be a specialist of a certain region.
There's so many producers, you know, that are a specialist or a, a, a, a Qianqi specialist.
You, you never know everybody that's making wine in that area.
It's just so, I'm, that's fascinating.
That's great, right?
We're never done discovering, and...
So did you try something new or do you go with what you know?
Like, is there any hacks for the consumer going?
I try something, I don't know if I see it's mainly industrial, right?
Right? If I see a few interesting producers, I don't know.
Well then, I'll start talking, oh, first thing, ask the staff there, they know, That's one way for the consumer to make good use of the staff and the restaurant.
Do you ever ask them if the wine is good, or do you ask them different questions?
Different questions.
I mean, asking if the wine is good, I always thought that was a bit weird and almost insulting when consumers go in restaurants.
But that's probably the most popular question you get, right?
I know. But who will honestly tell you, no, it sucks.
Exactly. Oh, that's horrible.
I know I just recommended it.
Yeah. No, but again, if it's all industrial producers, I know it's not really worth talking to anyone because nobody has put any heart into making this wine list, because it's probably been made by the rep of one of those big producers.
And sometimes, still, I shouldn't say that, because sometimes there's staff working in restaurants that, OK, that's the place they found a job.
They don't necessarily agree with the wine list, but that's where they're working.
And so just chat with them and find out quickly, from their attitude, because it could be Bill Jim's in the making, in terms of staff and in terms of wine.
So if I'm at home and I don't have a wine fridge, I think I just want to make sure I understand this.
You would recommend taking a red and putting it in almost like an ice bath for five or 10 minutes.
It's a super simple rule, the 20 -minute rule.
What is the 20 -minute rule?
Take your whites out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving them and put your rins in the fridge 20 minutes before serving them.
In case of doubt, just do that.
That's awesome. It's a very basic thing and it will work for most of the time.
And in the summertime, when it's super hot, it's 30 degrees outside, you always better to have the wines a bit more chill.
Too cold and too warm.
They'll heat up and they'll take a degree per minute once they're in the glass, so they heat up pretty quickly.
But if the wine's too warm, other than putting ice cubes into it, which isn't great, there's not much you can do.
I'm cognizant of your time.
I just want to circle back to the wine atlas again.
Do you recommend going through that and learning about the regions by then going to the LCBO or the liquor store and then getting bottles from that region?
There's nothing I'd like more than reading a book on a certain wine region and sitting with a glass of wine.
When I read about a certain wine or region, it actually makes me want to try it.
Reading in wine is like a match made in heaven.
So you're reading on Burgundy, go grab a bottle of Burgundy and...
Will you grab the same producer in different years and taste them at the same time, like in 2012, 2013?
Yeah, I mean those kind of tastings are super educational, but it's not always easy to do because usually there's one vintage out on the market.
So that's something you can do when you visit producers, right?
So take a book, pick a region, whatever, read on Burgundy, go buy a Burgundy, but then organize the tasting with friends, right?
Again, it's all about coming together and it's going to be fun when you're sitting there with your book and geeking out all alone, but it'll be even more fun when you can...
Okay, let's... Okay, today...
Get a little group together.
People are just making up tasting groups.
Right. And you don't need to have any great knowledge.
You're all going to learn together, right?
But pick a region and ask everybody to bring a wine from that region and okay, that day you're going to be presenting...
That's a great idea.
Okay. Read up on it and give us like a 10, 15 minute...
I love that. ...overrun of what the region is and let's taste these wines together.
How do I become a member at all of these little tasting groups?
You can make your own.
It's easy, just get some friends.
Last question, is there anything that I can do if I do start a wine tasting group that would make a big difference that probably would take a while to figure out that's different about how you approach it in terms of stay away from certain things?
Well, see, if you really want to learn, again, I can't stress enough the importance of having rigor and the methodology and a certain discipline, right?
Because of course, alcohol comes into play at one point, you know?
Learning goes out the window.
Everybody's just too happy to make any sense, right?
Which is also a good outcome.
Yeah, exactly. Spitting is not a bad thing, right?
It's one of the first things we learn how to do, spit wine.
It allows you to taste 50 wines in one city.
I just can't do that.
I have this aversion to it.
You have, what's important to stress is that the learning process, you will get everything exactly the same out of the wine except for the effect of the alcohol, right?
Your appreciation of it, the evaluation of the body, of the structure of the acidity, the tannins, everything, the aromas, the taste, spit it out or swallow it, same thing except for the effects of the alcohol, right?
When you're doing your official tasting with your friends, it doesn't have to be, don't make it, okay, next time you're having a dinner party, just say, okay, we'll start half an hour earlier.
Everybody brings a bottle.
Let's make it a theme, like let's just do Pinot Noir, let's just do Burgundy or let's just do Argentina, whatever.
Everybody brings a wine.
Okay, so we're tasting them, we're learning, we're trying to, and again, get some help.
You'll find some of these, you'll find wine consultants in stores that are super talented and more than happy to share and give you a few pointers on, okay, here's what you should do.
You need a tasting grid, okay, here's a good one.
Something to go buy, but that's super easy to find.
If you do a little bit of research and have it validated by somebody who knows what they're talking about, because like everything else, there's a lot of useless information out there, yeah, so that's it.
Thank you so much. This has been absolutely fascinating.
Thank you. Hey guys, this is Shane again.
Just a few more things before we wrap up.
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