Memorable Wine Experiences and Stories

, it's the Ti TTk that you dropped on the sidewalk that you're afraid someone might mistake for drugs and then be disappointed Ally worward. and welcome to the world of wine. So an knowogy. It can be spelled with an O before the E or not. We're not in Britain. We're not going to pretend we are. so we're dropping the O. That's how you spell it in. the country that I'm in. But either way, it comes from the Greek for wine and an anologist Fully something you can major in and become degreed in is schooled in the science of wines or the study of the nature or qualities or varieties of wine. So we are serving up two glasses of it this episode with a world renowned seemelier and winemaker. And then next week, we're gonna to talk to a pair of married winemakers and anologists who cover more of the behind the scenes of what it's like to run a winery So consider this first one kind of a how to on enjoying and understanding and appreciating wine and reading labels and faking your way through a wine list or not And at a chill, we're not chill with your wines. So this allolog just is someone I've been eyeing for so long and their schedule is bonkers, but it was so worth the wait att the very start of their career as a Samilier or a wine steward, they were named Best Young Samelier. They began working with the chef Thomas Keller, becoming his head Samillier. We'll talk about why that's a huge deal They founded their own muton noir wines, meaning black sheep Later rebranded to Maesason Noir. We'll talk about that too. And they're an author of the book, ninety nine Bottles, a black Sheepf's Guide to life changing wines. So we will get to that way of life in just a moment, but first, just a quick thank you to patrons at patreon dot com slash allologies who support the show for as little as a dollar a month and submit questions for the oologists. Thank you to everyone spreading the word about our kid friendly spin offff called smallologies S M O L O G I ES, which are shorter and classroom friendly G rated versions of all of these episodes We won't be having one for this one obviously, but thanks to everyone supporting our merch from alloges merch. com and tagging allogGes Merch ologies merch on Instagram so we can repost you. and thanks as always to folks who leave reviews for allologies, which help us so much. I read them all. I was so touched to see your responses to last week's Oops all Secrets W the Wall confessional episode. Thanks for listening. so glad we just got to hang out while we've finished this episode Also thanks to SO says, who wrote a review saying Listening to allogies is like reading a small, incredibly well written book on your favorite topic printed on paper that feels good on your fingers. ust the right font. doing it while you scrub the tub clean or lie on the floor because you are too tired to clean the tub All while your friend passes you notes. Seeo, seeo on wine grapes for y. hereere you go. Also, thank you to sponsors of the show who make it possible to donate to a cause iologist choosing each week Okay, onto the episode, we logged onto a video interview and they had a glass of wine in hand and a very cool down to earth aura with infectious curiosity and a lot of knowledge about their work. And I'd like to share a quote of theirs to just get you into the vibe. They say, wine is not a beverage reserved for the elite. but can and should be enjoyed by everyone. So let's get into anology we'll chat about red versus rose versus orange versus white wines, food pairings, wine glasses, how to open a bottle without a corkscrew, How your favorite wine got its name, Judging a wine by its label, wine snobbery, aeration, decanting to chill or not to chill and what those legs are with author, winemaker, Sameler and anologist, Andre Houston Mack . He I'm glad you're here.. I'm excited to be here. Hold on, I gotta pour up. I just got off a plane. No, so we got alone. I sorry. you know, I'm not rude. I would offer you some but I have a watered down Diet Dctor Pepper, which is suck. There go Comaratively. Drink them if you got them What are you drinking a little bit of a Chenam Blanca tank sample from one of the vendors we work with. You work with seeven, thirteen. How many vineyards do you work with? We work with like quite a few on an average year maybe sixteen, seventeen, which just depends. We got our choice to pick between both of them, but yeah, we make quite a bit of wine So you're a ssalm and a winemaker You know, I mean I got into wine, so I was some way and then that next transition for me was really wanting to continue to learn about wine outside of the full walls of the restaurant And I felt like if I could make my own wine, I could continue to learn, but also I could be an entrepreneur And so yeah, I started this company back in two thousand seven And this is Miss Loir Missan know our wine, We've been through some name changes. The alcohol business is pretty litigious And if your wine brand even remotely sounds like another wine brand by accident, you could expect multig genererationally wealthy vineyards to lawyer up His name is now secure and Andre isn't a stranger to the cutthroat world of business and rich people. He worked in the financial sector for a while fielding calls about stock prices. Cubicle life was not for him I think the moment that was just lost for me is when J more like I'd love to interaction with people physically. like you know being able to talk to them, read body language walk up to a group of strangers and that part right there was the part that kind of made me think Iy's time to go Like maybe I want to do something else. And then when the gigantic bank he worked for merged with another door opened or an escape hatch padded with a little extra money. So they didn't need department anymore so we could reapply or we could take severance and leave. And that felt like the right opportunity for me. Maybe this is totally off course, but were you drawn to some of the storytelling with each wine? I feel like every wine has like a personality and a history and who loves it and where it's going. L was that constant learning part of it for you Yeah, I mean, well It's the whole idea of u You know, it's history, biology, chemistry. And then the new part was telling the stories about what made these wines great. The local people made the local wines to go with the local food. And so hence, you hear me say lots of times, you know, if it grows together, it goes together. Oh, I love that. It was such a fascinating time Like learning something new, being able to dive into it Giving it your everything, everyvery waking moment And then being able to go to work, go to a restaurant and apply those things that you learned. You mentioned personalities For so many years as a salman and like an expert, do you ever see like different personalities gravitating toward different wines, can you clock someone where you're like this is going to be like a bodied red or this person's definitely a rose.ly. See I'm must still clear that because that a little profiling there? Yes. Okay. And what I would say is main is because we knew them that there were definitely types No, that's what's great about wine.'s like u Wine was about the moment. You know, this is what I told people. I said, yourour relationship with wine is not about monogamy where it shouldn't be. mine isn't. Mine is about exploring and tasting everything. and then not define A soulmate It's just toine different wines that you like for different occasions You know, it's like, o, so I'm going to this restaurant. I like to have this with this. Oh, you know, when we're going to an Italian steakouse, you know, I want Brunello. R? It's Italian steak one. You know, I'm going to choose a different one than I would choose if I was going to the beach. And we were having oysters, right. That to me is the fun part about wine. It's like dressing up, it's like an accessory that you bring, right? You go to the beach, you wear certain attire. you bring certain things You might drink certain things to eat on the beach. So all of those things to me, what's always just fascinating because it was like, it's how you tell a story I can tell you more about a situation. less about the people coming in and like looking at their shoes, their watch, their clothes. Whather they had a dress shirt on with a with a fleece on top, right? with dress pants on, right? But more I like to look at like, oh We're going to this place. So this is what we should brank I like this for a backyard barbecue Depending on who's there. you know what? let's bring a larger format You know, maybe not as expensive just, you know Bigger bottles show more festivity in that way. and it's about sharing. So I don't know. I just like the idea of the social aspect of wine too, right? It is the conduit It's a j that brings us all together. Yeah. Why don't you be You know, like twenty percent it's in the background.' that's the mood, the theme any moreore than that, you know, then it becomes a wine tast, or a wine dinner or I' somewhat obnoxious. I'm not against any of those things. I've been in those rooms. I' like to be in those rooms But I think, you know, most of the time when you're talking about wine and outings, you wine' is there just up the mood. You know, you've been a sam at French laundry Thomas Keller's restaurant, which I've never even been. I've known like three people who have gone. It's such a destination, like a bucket list restaurant So chehef Thomas Keller is behind New York's per se, and Northern California is the French Lundry, which is a confusing name for a food establishment. But the building outside of NapA was a closed cleaning business in Y olden times. But both the French laundry and per se have been awarded three Michelin stars and various James Beard awwards Thomas Keller is like a Meryl Streep level of honors in the restaurant business. A meal, for example, will set you back at minimum hundred dollars a person. And getting a table has been described by restaurant goers. I looked on Reddit as Taylor Swift erass tour levels of difficulty. That is verbatim. justust refreshing a web page. cross in your fingers on the first of the month for the following month prromptly ten AM, you can try for a spot at the French laaundry, but diners recommend that you alert your credit card company that an unusually large purchase may be coming through If you're like hell no, never Gas is seven dollars a gallon You can check out Thomas Keller's cookbooks from the library for free and his roasted chicken recipe is like the gold standard for poultry. But yes, imagine, just imagine Be the person who knows and recommends wine to diners there. A my intestines buckle? just imagining the stress training like to become a Semilet like at that high a level U it's really intense Yeah I think a lot of people you stay there long enough, but people say a common thing you heard, It's like they made me into the person that I am. And a lot of those experiences they're young people. Wh I was young You know, M It's interesting to say that, but like, Sw whatat your values what you should value or not or or just a mentality. But this is a place that offers you discipline. It was intense. you know, up until that point, I had always associated hard work with like your back having to hurt Uuh. You know what I mean? It was like backbreaking work Now it's that too, but like, also what you realize is that it's like the mental load was heavy. That part was intense where hyper alert, like just making sure that everything went well. Like you're supposed to be on an alert So the guest experience is seamless, but It wasn int I mean, for like New York, I mean, they hired a famous retired ballerina that teaches how to walk with grace through the dining room. Wow Wow. We're like, you know, passing feathers and doing the mignette. and training And so, you know, it was a lot of that like, a lot of information understanding things, but we didn't to know why Why does that work well here Why does the farmer do it that way And Hindsein, it, it's funny because you say it was like one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had. But then it's also like Yeah, there's a little I wouldn't say trauma in that way. It's just kind of like basic training When you go through something, there' some training, things that are that are hard And they're supposed to be, right? They're supposed to be uncomfortable because the standard is so high You know, they used have the saying there. It's like, work to impress the person that you work side by side with because There's nobody in the world that's in it like you are. And any guest that walks through the front door will be blown away if you can blow your per away. And it was kind of that thing, not a competition in that sense but more of a Bond to say that that we're going to push each other each day to be the best and push our way to perfection, which is somethingomething that is unachievable I mean, that's the Ivy Leags, you know, you don't get much higher in America, especially. But when it comes to global wines too. You worked in NAapA as well. You've got a lot of wineries that you work with and you're a ventor a lot of places in Oregon Can you explain a little bit and I know this is like a huge question, but imagine that you have never tasted wine or you're kind of person that like opens up a wine list and like starts sweating. Can you explain a little bit of what to look for in California versus French, maybe versus Spanish wines? What's some broad strokes if you would know nothing. Yeah I guess kind of the easiest way to do it is just to break it. Like in the wine world, we talk about newew world versus oldld world Old worldorld is, you know, Western Europe So you look at Western Europe, the traditional wine growing regions and Spain, UK would be including in that. And then you look at what New worldorld is. So New worldorld is North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand. Okay. Old World leads with not fruit, but more with like what they call Tiar, more of the taste of the land. So it's more you know, earthy kind of flavors and those kind of things that you taste first and then there's fruit. And New worldor leads with fruit. So generally, if you put your nose in the glass It's going be fruit. So thin about New worldorld, New worldorld is a lot warmer. The warmer the grape grown region is, the hotter it gets. hotter it gets, the riper it gets, more sugars can be translated into alcohol.. So there's that kind of pendulum like the higher sugar levels will give you more alcohol. So you have ripe grapes and then you introduce yeast, yeast, eat the sugar, kind of have that pacman, and then they poop alcohol, right? So you see that little trail. And so you have more more sugar means you have more potential for alcohol. More potential alcohol means more weight and body on the palate.' how it's transcribe, like to how you feelill it And So O wines tend to be lower in alcohol, more acidic to have acid. So acid is an amplifier, right? You accentuate acidity on the sides of your tongue. So if Your side of your tongue starts to tingle, you start to salivate. That means the wine is high in acid. So what you have in old War wines is they leadave with acid. New world onines leadave with fruit and ripeness, which some people perceive as sweetness, but not sweet. Okay. So when you divide it that way That's how you know, you can say, okay, if I'm looking at wines from California or from South America, Chile, Argentina Those top wines are going to tend to be more fruity and more ripe and more alcohol Ober wines, France, Germany, Italy, those wines are from cooler climates, which don't have as much sun. So they have lower potential alcohol, so lower alcohol, more acidity. and then they tend to have a little bit more nuances in the flavor. So you're thinkinking about mushroom, you're thinking about like mineral, gravel, like all those things you hear people say, those tend to lead in oldld War wines versus in New War wines. Even though you find them in both, But that's a generality that find that really kind of helps people break down It's just a vast world of wine. And if you need just a quick primer about how wine got into your body and how long it took, you can think at least eight thousand years, according to UPen biomolecular archaeologist doctor Patrick McGvern, who has been called the Indiana Jones of ancient alcohol. The whole process is sort of magical. is what he told National Geographic in twenty eleven, saying, you could even call fermentation the first biotechnology. And sadly, doctor McGovern, I just looked him up. He passed away last August at the age of eighty not before securing like hero status among fellow fermentation scholars who, according to his New York Times obituary, referred to themselves as drinkologists I'm sorry. As an alllologist, a drinkologist sucks shit. and I'm sure they wouldn't mind me rebranding them to paleoanologists. Just change your business cards forget drinkology ever happened But if you're hungry and you want to break bread with your wines of antiquity, we have a gastroegyptology episode on making sourdough bread using ancient yeast from Egyptian tombs. We also have a zymology episode about brewing beer. But if you want to start with alcohol drinking allologies, you may want to listen to our melatology episode about bees since the first hooch that was ever cultivated may have been mead like fermented honey water. And is it actually honey wine? Because sometimes it's called honey wine? N No grapes. So honeywine is a misnomer. Wine by definition is fermented grape juice. and most wines are made from this species called Vituspinifera. And wine making grapes are small, thick skinned and really tart. They look like dusty blueberries compared to a big, thinner skinned table grape that you would eat. But both are typically from the same species, which can have up to ten thousand different cultivars. Also, you can't just plant a wine grape seed and then become a vintter in a few years. Th things are sliced, they're frankenvined onto hardier rootstock. So they got to just keep like sowing limbs on essentially, because the rootstock that they use is more bug resistant. And this is just like the secret truth behind apple trees from our palmology episodes And also We got a lot of episodes. If you're curious about cider, we have a whole ciderlology episode. but Cider is not wine. so heurard on him And then you can go in and break into your nuances of You know, French red wines are different because of the different regions. so Bordeaux or kind of more, you know brooding more power in that sense, you know, more gravel, more like oak barrel aging. And then you look at something like further south in Burgundy, like Pino no Noir it's a little bit more elegant. Pino noir is a thin skin grape. It evolves in the glass. so Lots of different styles even just in one country. but generally speaking, the overall rule is that newer wines tend to be a little bit more on the fruit spectrum and more alcohol, whereas European wines tend to be a less alcohol, more nuanced and acidity. So to recap. So when it comes to like types of wines, generally speaking, and this was news to me, I don't know. Old worldorld wines are named for the region that the grapes were grown in Burgundy or Chianti or Chabis, which is actually a Chardonnay great An. famously champagne, which legally must be grown in the region of Champagne, France. And this is even written in the Treaty of Versailles and also just Champagne, Illinois. We're not talking about you. Although there is a place named Champagne in Switzerland and they got away with calling their wine champagne. They're like people won't know, but the EU gave them wrisk slap and they conceded that it was tricky of them and that they'd phase it out. Even though their sales when they did that dropped by seventy five percent. And you know people working at those companies were sweating, but what can you do? France win. So old world wines, you can look for them by region. And different regions tend to produce grapes and wines with different characteristics. Now new world wines, like from America, Chile, Argentina, Australia, they tend to be named by the grape variety, like Pinot Noir, Cabernu Savignon, which is very popular red wine Merlaow, Savon Blanc Chardonnay and again, these tend to be more fruit forward with higher sugar in the grape and then higher alcohol content. Generally speaking There are variations. I love you. donon't email me. What's with the swirling in the glass looking for legs? Is that sugar content It's alcohol content, but what's interesting is it's less of that. So swirling the glass here like you see me doing, this is more about aeration. Oh So the wine has been in the bottle F mayaybe eighteen months or something like that. So you want to pour the wine in the glass And this helps with Heling the wine open up Right? So the glass serves as a min dec canter that you can drink from And so you pour the wine in and you swirl and you see me doing this, A lot of times it's more of a nervous tick, right than anything else. But this is like you know, so it's just aeration, letting air get into the wine Oxygen is the enemy to wine, right? Wine is a living breathing thing. And as soon as the cork is pulled or the top is open, air starts to attack the wine and starts to break down the wine and start to soften the wine, but to a certain point, the wine will deteriorate and become vinegar depending on how long it's left out. And so vinegar, you can note the vine even in the word. whichich I never clockched before, means wine turned sour. And that's because it involves a double fermentation. Like in wine, yeast gobbles up the sugars and spits out alcohol. But the second fermentation happens when bacteria gobble up the alcohol and make acetic acid. And oxygenation in general can enhance or it can damage a wine depending on the wine and the amount of exposure to oxygen. So oxidation can happen in the wine making process and we'll talk about that more next week. It can also happen in the bottle. It can happen once the bottle is open and certainly after a bottle's been opened enjoyed and rec corked if you didn't finish it. So some people close up a half empty or half full bottle depending on how you look at it a vacuum pump Sometimes with mixed results, And there are even gadgets to replace the oxygen in the bottle with an inert gas like Argon to keep it fresher. But let's go back to what happens when you uncork or unscrew a bottle and pour it into a decanter, which is like a serving pitcher for wine, or just straight into your glass. and then you swirl around, feeling very fancy. And so what you see too, what you can see now here is you see people call the legs, and you start to see how it looks like tears are forming. Right. But what it is it's alcohol. It's alcohols, it's evaporation So what you have is the alcohol being evaporated. So the overflow is the alcohol coming up, pushing being evaporated. and on either side of that it is the tears that fall down. Oh my. What that really tells you. people are like, look at those legs. Generally what you're looking for is how fast or slow they fall versus if they are any or not. or if they look good. You know what I mean So the legs that you're seeing dripping down the inside of the class are actually arms of alcohol reaching up, if you will. And when it comes to how much alcohol is in the wine You can swirl it around, you can think about it, you can deliberate mentally, but you can also just look at the label ABV or alcohol by volume. There's just numbers, which it feels less like being a cool witch looking at tinctures, but some people like math. So that's the whole idea. and what that tells you to slowly fall the more alcohol. Got it. It's one of those things too where you can just pick up the bottle and look at it the back Right? You know what I mean? But it's just one of the things in mind that I find to be You know, trivial, but like fun I think I have a fun time with a lot of those kind of things just in the business too. You know, the small snippets of what they know about wine And they can be fun moments to really kind of educate and let people understand like, oh, this is the reason why it's that way. And You know, some of his folklore, some of it is Here's a real kind of truth behind it. I feel like I see red wine decanted to breathe more than I see white. What's up with that Yep, so that's true. This is a great segue. You're good. You're going like this. Thank you. So We just right now we were talking about evaporation and we're talking about alcohol and we're talking about how oxygen starts to eat away at wine and make it deteriorates. Soften it up, right? And it's the tannin. So what you have is in red wine, so let's back up a little bit. You have white wine, you have red wine. The color actually comes from the skin but not to juice inside. Okay. And so what you do is it's you soak most red wine grapes to extract the color, you soak the juice on the skins, right. So you just crush it and it's called like a you do cold soak and you're extracting color. And while you're extracting color from the skins, you're also extracting tannin So tannin is like the compound that sucks the moisture out of your mouth. So people who enjoy black tea understands that. you know, that dryness that you get in the inside of your mouth from tea, that's the same thing. And that's a preservative in wine And those can be bitter, you know, they're rough And when you dec can of red wine There's a couple reasons why you dec can a wine, but normally what you're talking about is you're decing a red wine to let it breathe And so let it breathe, but also you're helping break down the wine slowly. So it could be a young wine, a youthful wine that needs a little time in a canter to kind of just soften the edges, if you will makes the wine a little bit more palatable, less tannic. And so what you're doing is you're lowering the oxygen to come in. and generally youre doing on a a wide surface So you know, a dec cananter that has a wide surface And so yeah, a decanter is something from which decant't. something you pour from. It's a pictcher but with expensive grape juice. You can picture one of those science chem lab flasks, the Erlenmeyer is a flask that you would see in clip art to mean like science And it has a flat wide bottom and a skinny rim. Rumor has it Even one of the world's most esteemed wine critics, the late John Michael Broadbent, enjoyed an Erlenmeyer flask as a decanter. But heads up If you're like, we got some of those at work, don't Do not smuggle one out of the lab You do not know what it's been used for and dawn dish soap may work on oily birds, but it's not enough to save you if you got a weird flask with some crazy stuff in it. So get a new one or just go to Home goodoods and find a wine decanter on sale So something like this. You see how that has a broad Yeah. You want more surface to air ratio so the wine can be exposed and be softened Another reason why you dec can't red wine is generally because it's an old wine. You would dec it in a smaller decer, more narrow. And what you're doing here is you're removing the sediment As a wine ages, some of the pigment of the color and particles start to fall out of the wine and it produces this fine kind of sediment on the bottom of the bottle It's not that it will hurt you. justust kind of interrupted the experience of drinking wine, right? because it can get grainy or gritty. For me, I like I can't drink orange juice with pulp in it You know what I mean?ike I don't know if this swallowed you know, those kind of things's weird. So basically you're decaning the wine just to remove the particles and the sediment from the bottle into a drinking vessel that you can pour. when the wine throws sedimon is what they call it. Norm onlyally when they have that The wine is old So at this point Air is definitely detrimental to this wine you have a shorter period of time that it can be exposed to oxygen and you want to be able to drink the wine in that window, depending on how old, sometimes it could be forty five minutes So for younger wine, you'd pour from the bottle into that decanter or pitcher that has a nice wide base so it has some air contact. and then some of the alcohol and those edges get aerated away. Now for an older wine, you'd use a more narrow decanter. So it didn't have as much air contact but it would help you pour off The sediment stays at the bottom Okay, so decanting is just for red wines, right? And then you see some people decant white wine You know I say And generally when you see people decaning white wine, it could be to help break down the wine Maybe there's a little bit of skin contact, but generally you see some white wines being decaned for temperature control. So maybe the wine came straight out of the you know, your refrigerator or your EuroCv or whatever and you want to pour that bottle into a Jan or get more surface air ratio cool the line down and get it to the right temperature Just a side note, a Euro cave is one of those huge, nice wine fridges. I don't have one And temperature wise storage wise, obviously Red wines sererves Lower than room temperature, but white wines tend to be cooler. Is there a reason for that? I'm sure there is possibly be any logic. Well, I mean, that has really been a you, somewhat of an epidemic in this country, I would say is that a lot of the red wines are being served too hot and the white wines too cold. So in a white wine when it's served too cold There's no nuance. It's like a numbing effect You know I remember going when I was in college when I discovered that if you put tequila You would put like the shitty tequila in the freezer and you put it in the freezer and it would never freeze Right? So how you know if your roommate was drinking in the filling with water, you'd put it in the freezer and the bottle would crack, right? So we had we've seen that happen a couple of times. but so it takes the bite off. So when you drink the kel that's been in the freezer It numbbs it, so you don't taste anything. It just goes down, which is very dangerous. might ask. Right. But you don't want to make it too easy for m. Oh. Yeah. and then you have it and you're like, okay, but there's no nuance. You don't get pepper and all the things that you taste in tequila or any spirit or any wine So it numbs it. So the fact that you might have paid hundred dollars for that you know, to have that great white birg in the experience. But if it's served too cold, then you don't even get to pick upp on the different nuances that actually tell that story of that wine and set it apart And the reason why you paay that amount of money for it And as the temperature hits closer to the sixty degree Fahrenheit mark, we can taste more of the wine. And for more on that, we have a whole gustatology episode that goes into way greater detail on how aroma influences the taste of things and yeah, how your whole taste receptor system functions. just a heads up, drinking an iced beverage with your meal means that your food less flavorful And I am an een This is news to me. So do not over chill your white wines. forty three degrees works well for a sparkling white wine, but on the other end of the white wines, like a Chardonnay, some experts say is best around fifty degrees Fahrenheit or ten Celsius, but your refrigerator is probably set to around thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit. So let us sit on the counter a few minutes let it de chill. a white wine shouldh not be icy, Andrei says And so with redwine, what you have is When red wine is served too warm. and so we had this notion when we said room temperature Well, that was room temperature really meaning cellar temperature. mayaybe forty fifty years ago So not to get anybody upset here. you can call it what you want, but the Earth is a lot war in place than it used to be And so anyone who gets missed at that is like, A you kidding me? Don't worry. It's a science proodcast. Yeah ye. Okay Okay. I'm just checking I just checking I aint trying to mess nobody's audience up. know Oh that should not be controversial, dude. It should not be. It's a fact So while the ideal wine cellar is fifty five degrees or twelve, thirteen degrees Celsius Temperatures of cellars, yes They're rising. I fact check this. So that being said, room temperature is a lot different than it used to be Red wine should be served somewhere around sixty six. I would say sixty five to sixty six under seventy for sure is how I like to drink them. And it's funny because a lot of people are like wow, it's really c heavit chilling. It's like, no, that's how're supposed drink it. When a red wine or anyone is too hot especially red wine, it is accituates the alcohol. So all you get is this burning effect of the wine teast seem like it has way much too much alcohol. So it empifies the alcohol And that doesn't allow for a great wine drinking experience Well, you know, that reminds me that thing that's gonna to hit your nose is going to be what is kind of emanating off and when it comes to glasses, when it comes to like the glass you're drinking of has a wider base and a more narrow Nose to it. Yes. I always think of a, did you ever watch, oh my Godd, Olivia Pope, What was that show? Oh yeah, yeah Why can't I remember it right now? Oh shit. We did a whole thing Sandal, scandal, scan. San,an.an, Yes. Yes It's handled Olivia Pope had like a goldfish bowl on a stem and also reed wine She always had like the best white cashmere coats and And I'm like, the fact that she could keep that stuff clean, I was like, good on her. I couldn't. But you know, I think about those big globe glasses and red wine and these neuror glasses I'm sure you've seen the meme of like a heavy stemware that if you are at a restaurant and you get a glass of wine and like heavy stemware, you know it's gonna be garbage. Like if the glass is not absolutely like a fabberger egg level of fragility, it's going to be a shitty glass of wine. Where does the stemware come in and the experience of what you're drinking it in You know, that was really funny because, u, That was definitely kind of the mentality that I took When I opened a little wine bar here in my neighborhood back in twenty twenty And I remember I think I was talking to my mother and I was like, no, no, no, you want to set the tone right at the beginning. So they might look at the wine by the glass page But I just want people to know when they touch the glass They'll understand why we don't serve nine dollars glasses of wine. R? You dont it's like, Oh, no, it is on, right? th even though the glass might cost more than the bottle of wine you just bought, but that's okay because it's a tool. A wine glass is a tool Right? Yeah. So you want like to have the most seamless transition from the wine in the glass to your palte. And so what you want is a very thin rim glass that comes to the mouth These are some of my favorite hair And he's drinking a Cenon Blanc and the glass he's holding, it's very fetching. It's this angular stemmed one. It's elegant, it's modern Think of like a tall triangle on a stick with a very thin stem held so that the wine doesn't warm in your hand, which is nearly one hundred degrees Fahrenheit And sure there were really nice glasses like this for I checked like sixteen dollars on sale at CB two, where a higher quality one can cost around fifty bucks just for one There are so many wine glasses. Some pists stick to very specific bowl shapes, like wide round ones, but say a champagne flute Those are tall and narrow to prevent the bubbles from phizzing off too quickly Old champagne glasses were wider. That's because they had a hollow stem which were a real bitch to clean, which is why people don't use them anymore. But like in the sixties, seventies, whatever, they'd have this hollow stem where the bubbles would keep going up, but they had a wider open face. Anyway, there's physics behind each glass, which is fun to deconstruct like evolutionary traits, like what's the why? There's almost always a why And then you have a wide base. So you have a wide base, so you have more surface to air ratio And then you have a more narial top And that's almost kind of like cone or that narrowing really helps direct the wine on the palletate but as far as aroma It's helpeding really direct it into your nose. You know, you want to inhale through your nose and then you want to exhale through your mouth Right? So you want to open up your old factory sens. So inhaleing that your nose flowing out through your mouth, notot like this. You know, sometimes I say that people are like, That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about Utakes like a good whiff You know And then you can constantly smell, you know, eighty percent of taste is actually You know, I learned that through eating Busseless sprouts growing up as a kid That was the magic trick to Hug hole And glasses can get really expensive. and to me, they matter until they don't So Hey, I got this great bottle of wine. If I don't have anything else to drink it out of, it'll be a plastic cup or the bottle Ultimately what the experience, ultimately is enjoying the wine And that's contradictory in some ways because people will say, oh, well, if you drink it out of a shitty cup,'s night, but ultimately the wine is supposed to deliver the pleasure, the tools and the things that you have around you are supposed to make those things easier to enjoy. And that's kind of how I always always looked at glassweare. Even though like I'm a glassware fanatic. like I have a whole try here, but like I don't br my own glassware to the restaurant. I'm not kind of go. Do some people do that? Do they open up like a briefcase like in pulpation and like special glass It's handcuffed to the wrist. Yeah, they do And in certain occasions, I understand it. you know, so in New York City, if you ever want to watch some Lays in the wild Yeah Yeah go to this place S it was Jonton And generally speaking, they're generally to people at the table that's not All Asian, right? And there's huge tables with glazy susons. The food is amazing. And then basically it's where we go and like we meet and hang out order this amazing food and everybody brings wine. So there'll be boxes of wine and then some people will bring their own glass ware. And I feel like that is the okay occasion to do that? Right, That's a tool of the trade. and that's among peers and you want to have the best experience with it. But speaking of tools of the trade, I'm so curious. I can't even imagine how many bottles you've uncorked. What do you use to open them? Do you use a simple wine key? Are you one of those things where you know the ones that look like hairy armpits they go Or are you like an electic Fonic wine opener, like what's the gold standard? Okay. we work backwards Electronic, absolutely nine. Okay. There was a thing called the rabbit. But actually I think that term got taken over by another industry. when I say rabbit, I'm like they're confused. There's some confusion here. That's a different electronic. No, you can't open a bottle wine with that onely Different episode. Diffnt one. And I will say, use the corkscrew that fits you best. I know friends who use electric ones because their hands need some extra help. That's fine, of course. This is just some pretty inside baseball for salms. And yes, the rabbit corkscrew It looks kind of like if a garlic press had a curly proboscis And the corkscrew that looks like a head on top two arms that have hairy armpits, that's called a wing cork screw where you screw the curly worm into the cork and then you jazzerize the arms or the wings down to leverage out the cork What does Andre think about those? So the jazzer size ones those Absolutely not. Those are the ones that you always get in the Airbnb, and you're like, fuck And and then you're breaking one off, you know what I mean? Yeah call the jazzer size up.. And you're like shit What's happening? thenen then the Aso, which I love. and I have some stuff over there. Hold on a second This got her So Andre is looking around his desk right now for a wine key that's like two pieces nestled together. a short handle with this two pronged fork. It looks kind of like a miniature roast carving fork with a corks screw between those two tines Welcome back Nice, we got here. Okay All right, so here this is called the Jin. So this is a special key, right? You see it here, right? Oh nice. All right. And so what's interesting about this one is that it's two wine tools in one And so what you might have seen before something that looks like this Oh yeah, it's like a two pronged ye. Yeah it's like wolverine. Yeah, you definitely could kill someone ye with that. And so this was called a butler's corks screw and they would take it and you wedge it between the side of the cork and the bottle. and then you turn and turn and eventually you pull it out So you see these all the time. Inexpensive kindind of looks old school. Yeah. And my notion would be to snc it in like rattlesnake fangs and that is not correct. You do not stab the cork, right? You do not stab the cork. Okay. You did not do that. And what makes this device different called the Durand is that it's the second piece. You screw it down in the cork and then you turn it all together So when you use this, This keeps the core intact So you see a lot of these fancy restaurants that have, you know, a really killer wine selection Be that literal two pronged approach is helpful for long and old quirks, which you know likely you're not going find it at a TJI Friday, happy hour. 'cause time and place for everything, folks. But the most common wine opener course And then generally speaking, what people use is what's called a waiter's corkscrew. thingsings that you've seen so many times before. You know this one is called the pool tab. You know, you've seen these, you might see some people in restaurants. and then you might have seen something like this And Andre pulls out what looks like a lovely little simplified Swiss Amy knife with a corks screw nestled between these two out folding levers This right here is Craig Hill and Andrey Mac. Oh, I don't know that. This Yeah. This is the best Mkey He yeah. So I designed this with my friends down in and Greenpoint and we designed But we have thought as one of the best wine keys. So it's likely the wine key, but it looks like half appliers on one side. So yeah, so it has that this ratchet system. I've never seen one of these. This is amazing. Just the small details in it that make it the best wine cing Oh, it's beautiful. Let's say that you are on a beach. you're camping. Someone has brought a bottle of wine, No one brought a corkscrew. What do you do in a pinch Okay, so Generally speaking I've seen somewhere that people take their shoe off and they put the wine, the base of the wine in the shoe and then they kind of hammer it up against a tree or a hard place. I thing when in doubt push it in pushing it. Push it real good. So I've been in a hotel where I was trying to get into a bott of wine, I just took the back end of my toothbrush and pushed it in Nice. rightight get a stick. Yeah get a stick and just push it in. You know, I've seen some people where They will mayaybe drill a screw in and then try to pull it from that or you know, all kinds of different stuff. But ultimately, I think ast I feel like you're not. enjoying, you know, an old bottle of wine. You know what I mean? It's like rememember earlier we talked about having a wine that kind of fits the activity? Yeah, yeah So if it's not a screw cap and it has a cork in it. Generally, I would say, just push it in. That cork is not really going to do anything to the wine. And you go ahead and you start to enjoy the wine. As one of the world's finest salms, how do you feel about crerewcaps? I love them. Screwcas to me are just all about getting the party started. It tells you what the wine is meant for. You know, a lot of those are like, you know, they're meant to be aed two to five years. Maybe that some of them can go longer, but generally speaking Scoo capps are just a sign of like this wine is accessible and like u Let's get with it. Awesome. Let's get the party going. Let's not slam this against a tree in our shoe. If you've forgotten. Yes, let's not do that. Okay, I have great questions from listeners who submitted A approximately one million, but we'll ask you just a couple All right, next week, we're gonna to dive into more about caps versus corks and the whole backstory of how you make wine and how it goes from the vine onto a shelf into your glass. But first, let's donate to a cause of his choosing. And this week, it's Food Bank for New York City, which is New York City's largest hunger relief organization. They also serve New Yorkers with snap assistance, personal finance support connections to health, support and more to build self sufficiency and create a lasting stability. So that again was Food Bank, New York, and thank you to Andre for the heads up on them and the sponsors of the show who make these donations every week possible. Okay, so to submit questions for the olologists ahead of time, you can join via patreon. com slash oologies as little as a dollar an episode and help support the show. And you can also see what olologies were' cooking up. But let's stick our nose into the mail bag. Let's savor your questions. They had some great ones and I feel like you are the person to answer them. Okay.a mish the fish, Cameron Nan. Emily Staffer, Ellen Dernal, Evan Davis, Orin Stanforth, Mary Devau, eating dog ha for a living. all want to know. Mish the Fish asks, are wine food pairings bullshit? Cameron, why do some wines taste terrible with food, but great alone? Vice versa. Okay. So are they bullshit? I would say no, wine is there to make the food taste better. That's what I've always looked at it That's why you order the food first and then the wine. Oh. But to me, it's all about resetting your palate back to zero, right? So you're having the wine. So for each bite tastes just like the first bite Right? So ye, you know, we talk about palate fatigue. I guess the best way to do it is so you're eating a steak And the first bite is tremendous Th third bite, fourth bite, fifth bite. And now you slone down and you're like And now you put it in your mouth it doesn't pop with the same flavor. It's not the same. And so you're like But you finished it anyway And so what's interesting is what you realize is that if you look at a crude example, showing a piece of gum. chew piece of gum, thirty minutes St to lose flavor You, M the ten minutes the jaw iss hurting, but it's lost all favorite. Maybe you put it on the side of your plate And somehow miraculously, fifteen to twenty minutes later, that piece of gum ends up back in your mouth There's nothing wrong with that. But he's like, Yeahah, chewing already chewed gum That you chewed is okay. That's fine. That someone else's chewe, maybe, maybe not, right? But depends on how much you like them. Yeah yeally But when you start to chew that gum, as beginning, has more flavor than it did when you took it out meaneaning that you experienceced paliic fatigue and that you the flavor was starting to dawn because it was fatigue. And then you put it back in. and other stays had the same strength of flavor but it does have some flavor in it. And so that's when you talk talk about eating. So introducing wine that helps pout your palate wash clean, It really helps set up the next bite. And so how do you do that? You do that by comparing like flavors. You match like with like. So if you have a rich sauce pasta or a rich cream sauce, you want to use, you can do two different ways You can compare like with like. So you can go with a rich, creamy chardnay. So those two things balance yourself out and you stay at this high level of creaminess. Or you can do something that has a little bit more acid and a little bit more linear, right? So maybe an Austran Resling Right? That's angular sharp, that has tons of acid That acid's going to cut through the richness and the creaminess of that. And so there's a different style that's a contrasting So you're contrasting to both of them are to neutralize the palte When you take another bite, it's the same The the same intensity the same flavor So yes, sips of wine serve like putting your gum on the plate, taking a little break from one flavor to experience anew for the next bite Also, if the gum thing, if that's freaking you out, you can listen to our discusustology episode revulsion. And if you have contamination anxiety, you may enjoy our OCD episode for some strategies from one of the world's experts on that. Now that might be a lot to think about when people are like, well, shit, I just want to have a burger and a glass of cab. Well you can do that too. And what's awesome about it is that it's an experience muchuch like enjoying art. L you get to choose the art and like you get to explore looking at a painting and what it means. And I think, you know, food and wine pairing is an art and pairing it together is a right for him So I think sometimes it's hard for other people that are new to it to kind of understand it. And it's interesting because when I first got into business, I was so confused by it. I was like The way those people talk about it, food and wine pairing, it's like the skies parted and chherus came out and played trumpets. You know what I mean? And so that has never happened to me. so This is the way that I had always explained it to the staff. We had a whole episode on Cheese with Kira from O Y your Funk, who's also, I think she's New York based She was great. We talked all about chees and touched on wine pairings, but there's a lot, a lot of cheeses and a lot of wines Okay, another type of wine we haven't talked about yet, but Carlos Barichal, Greg Wallk, Kat Angelles, and Kara Young, and Yasmine Eu wanted to know about biodynamic Carlos asks what are biodynamic wine? Are they how wine was made one hundred years ago? I have two friends who are very, very into wine. One will not touch biodynamic wine. The other, it's her favorite thing on Eth. And it's just so interesting. They're both kind of wine snobs Totally different ways. So I take their advice either way, but yeah, what's up with biodynamics So when people talk about, was it the way that wine was made back in the day? someome of it, right? So the whole idea is like, when you talk about biodynamics, it is more about like letting the vineyard speak for itself, even if it stutters R So so you get where I'm going, right? So it's about lower intervention, regenerative farming a really kind of hands off approach to making wine So that's natural yeast. And sometimes when you use natural yeast to inoculate mean there's just the ambient needies, sometometimes they get stuck. you know,'s lots of different things, but that is how wine was made Back in the day. Whereas traditional way is We're going to help sure that it sings every single time the same way. Meaning that you lose some of the nuance to have consistency Oh got it. And that's what the traditional winemakers play with and that kind of margin of How much do you get it to be perfect every time the exact same way, no matter what vintage and where to be hands off at. So the wine has those nuances and those things that You love and why. Biodynamics is just you know, it's a more holistic approach in that way, right? There's lots of faults with both things. like in traditional, we'll use chemicals to farm because we want that consistency where in binamics, they don't use any kind of chemicals in that way. It's all about taking care of the vineyard replenishing nutrients and fertilizing the soil in a way that you can really amplify what the vineyard is trying to say Two different methods. I think bodynamic is, you know, where people are like, oh, it's kind of funky. It' kind of weird. Like I think that's the first thing that people notice that's off putting. But you know, I always say it's like beer. When you first had your first sip of beer, nobody's like, that was great. That was amazing. No. Yeah, you come through the back door typically when you start drinking coffee or you know, or alcohol and then you start Okay Just a side note I went to Spain with my husband's family recently and natural wine, not as popular there as it is in say, California. One server said that they call the kind of funky, scrumpy aroma of natural wines. monkey's ass All right, if you'd like to hear also more about scrump, You can see our cyterology episode. I myself enjoy notes of monkey's ass But Gigi knows wanted to know if you like drinking it, natural wine. And Timmy H said, Is natural wine really that girl or is it just a trend Natural wine is wine on the spectrum. On a spectrum from amazing to it. And there's different levels, but like but when I say that You know, obviously and all fun with that. But like in that sense is You know, natural wine, we talk about's living breathing thing. And that's what we said, even if it stutters.s the natural part of it is how it's supposed to come out You know, so like this is thing it's like a drink Natural wine But I don't drink The bad natural wines So you see what I'm saying? That's the difference. I think people don't understand. there's shitty wine withinaditional. There's great wine and there's mediocre wine And natural wine. there's shitty wine, there's mediocre, and there's great. But both categories, I try to stay away from the shitty wines. So is Natural wine that girl? I'm sure that you can find some girls and they're for you, you know? And some people, yeah, of course, people buy organic stuff because they think is better for them, but some people buy it because it's more of a way of life, It the a way that it makes them feel. And so I think in both those things, natural wine is just kind of new So you thought maybe there was just red and white wines, right? No, there's more there's so much more orange wine I always wonder this is made from White grapes keeps the skins in contact with the grape juice for a little longer than white wine. Red wine comes from red grapes that has a long period of skin contact White wine again is from white grapes that have short skin contact and roose is from red grapes that have short skin contact. Also, I just want to take a moment It's I want to acknowledge white zimfandel. This is made from red grapes. Usually they would be turned into a Zimfandel red, but the skins have really short contact with the juice. And so white imfandel is actually technically a rose It was made by accident at the NapA Ster Home Winery in the nineteen seventies. It's a sweet rosese with fruity notes, notot super expensive. It was all the rage for decades after its nineteen seventy five introduction. However, Certain persons that I know have been shaped from enjoying a crisp glass of whites in because they've been told it's Pase And I need those people who are listening, some of whom are named Fancy Nancy Ward to know that their beloved white Zin is a Rose and Rose is, again, all the rage Please enjoy what you enjoy coolest thing a person can do is like what they like and not care about trends at the moment. So if your name is my mom The whitees in They didn't have the term orange wine back in like zero four. Yeah. in order for it to become a movement, it took people. And now I feel like it's settling into like, you know, it's not a trend. So it's clearly here to stay You know, so everybody's settle in and I think it's great. So yes, it could be that girl, depending on I don't know. Depending on the one. Is she wearing shoes? I don't know. But how' she ching Yeah yeah totally. Yeah know. feel around her. There you go I love funky wine. I actually love it. But I like kombucha. so you know, it's so funny because you know, the American paltte was all about sweet And then slowly it changed with Kombucha, sour beer which I feel like both of those are kind of the gateway into something like natural wine in that way I find it fascinating to look at and talk about. and obviously, I'd like to enjoy wine. Yeah. Whether it's traditional or biodynamic or natural. if it's good, I want to drink it I like a little scrump. I think it's tasty. Two more questions if that's okay from listeners.ep. You mentioned a shitty bottle of wine, good bott of wine, Dwon Chandler, Hester Dingle, Erla Gramilkin, Je Pompeo, Rye of the Tiger, Lyinia the Farmer, Carol Young, and MagZaronei. All these people want to know in Dawson Chandler's words, what makes the bottle of wine good in the eyes of wine enthusiasts, Hester asks what makes a good wine? and do the price points actually increase with quality? especially if let's say you're on a date and you're like, do I want to order the second most expensive wine? Do I want it about where does the price point come in? Price point, like I like to say in mind you, you're supposed to get what you pay for Okay. Soary like. So what does that mean Yeah. So generally speaking, you pay for what you get for like meaning that Sometimes like everybody thinks it's marketing It's part of that, but part of it not, right? If it costs a million dollars an acre, to buy that land then that's going to be You know, another thirty five thousand dollars to planet Then you got to figure that for three years You get fruit but you can't use it for anything So it's not until that fourth leaf that you actually So you already had it for four years. And then it's just the quality of the grraace. So Gally with something like that You're going to get better quality. And what does that mean? Better quality means more nuanced, better fruit from how it's being grown So if you wantan to know, okay, this bottle of wine is twenty bucks and this bottle of wine is one hundred bucks. What's going to be the difference is land cost, right? How much it costs Dot spend time in Hberus Are they new? Oakbarough's new, tw twove hundred dollars. Wha, Right They stay two years in there It's beenent two years in there The shortcut that this bottle, the ten dollars bottle might do is wooden stes inside of a stainless steel Some of them might teap it with salt dust Right, even know that was Yes. Wow. Okay. So there's lots of different things that give the flavor of it, but generally speaking, the quality of a high quality wine is that they're not going to use sal dust. they're going to use real barrels. And they're going to use reil barls each year They're using the finest scrapes They're doing lots of stuff, regenerative farming and great things in the vineyard. The site that they chose from is a lot better site just maybe based on them drilling down and taking samples about what grows best there So there's lots of different things that count towards that. Now ordering a wine in a restaurant, I think is not second expensive is There's no cheat code in that way. right? Like if' you're working at a place with a waiter or someay, Generally, you can say I'm picking I'm choosing between these two. What do you think? Got it. Or if you want to sound real sophisticated, you're like Hey which one of these two do you think will go better with the food we orderered? Because remember, a contrast or a compliment will make your food taste even better and reduce that palate fatigue in a good meal Or you can say, I generally like these types of wines. What do you have on this list that taste similar to what you know, what I like to drink The key for pricing is always don't say it out loud, J just point So you can say you can say, hey, you know, whatever you think that would go great with this mill and then you find a bottle on there. And he's like, And I wouldd like to stay around here. OkayK. Oh, that's smart. And then point to the price Right Yeah like you can generally ref the some way here, let the someoneere here do his job O her or them? Yeah And then you're like, send them on their way. That's such a good move The idea that we love that, it allows us to do the job. It allows us some way to bring you something that they could be excited about. And when they're excited about it then that's, you know, that it goes a long way and it's infectious. And then when they come back to table, they might tell you a story about where it came from. Its a way to engage They're not there to talk down to you. Yeah. go do your job. Yeah. Y job isn't to stand over to make me feel bad or something. No. And I think the anxiety comes from some people the first part is price. I think after that, if it's not good. So you eliminate the first one easy by saying, yeah, we'd like to you know, do something like this And you know, I think back to some of my favorite meals and L it bestest yeah, we had an amazing sm with a pairing Animal. I don't know if you ever went to Animal. Helen was the song there. Yeah it went to Animal. Yeah. I loved it. Yeah yeah. Remember Helen was amazing This is Helen Johanison, who is a celebrated Sameler who has opened up a series of shops in LA called Helen's Wine. She's great. That dinner I had years ago and I still remember how lovely she was and how great her stories and the wine pairings were. thirirteen years ago. Also part of it was just lovely company. It was a dinner with Jarret when we first met. And I met his best pal, this chef in LA, named Miles, who ended up officiating our wedding Best My friend, I don't know if you know, do you know who Miles Thompson is? He's a chef out here in LA. He opened Baby Bistro. I know babyistro So Andy is a sal there. They are mostly all natural wines And it really adds so much to the meal, especially if you're excited about it. I feel like Ss geek out about it a little bit and they'll tell you like you know, this has a minerality to it. This was grown up oceion, you know, and you're like, story time with it, and I appreciate it more No, but that's the whole idea. It's like letting them do their job. You know, they travel travel is part of their job where they go to these regions and Learn from the winemakers and see it and smell the air. taste the dirt And then they get to come back to baby Bistro You know me. so good. That's why I just tell people like Let them recommend something for you. You know, that turns the tables, right? It takes the pressure off you there's less anxety And they're excited because is their job. Asamway is a tour guy. Yeah. They're more kids to a tour guide. Totally. You know, it's funny, my friend who loves biodynamic wine. She asked for little samples to try a couple She like, can I try this one in this one? Does I wonder if that pisses salmss off or not? D Someone used h does I'm just like just get it. just get one. You know, it's like a thirteen dollar, fourteen dollar glass. just get it if you don't like get a different one. It It just depends on where it's at. I was mess with I was messing with your friend, sorry. No I get embarrassed. I'm like Well, well, if the restaurant is busy, they're p right. And they're busy theirre p. They are super pissed. I'm going to call her out. No if it's not so if it's If it's not that busy, yeah, I'm sure they would go the extra mile do that, but yeah. And I'm like, this isn' a gelato counter. But you did mention obviously like some Lers are there to be a tour guide. But if you do not have someone like you nearby, last listener question, which I love, and I think this is you're the perfect person for this question.. Matthew Kelly, Stephanie Tout Berman, Red Sooak O in Sanforth J Se asked Matthew said, I'm a sucker for the art on contemporary wine labels. Stephanie says, I find myself buying the wine with the cutest labels. Red Toak two wine labels actually help wine generate better sales. And you have designed a lot of wines under your label and they're fucking great. Thank you. And they're very modern. They're very monochromatic. It's usually black and white with these bold letters and this very like fresh modern, almost like curated art on the labels, and they're so striking Thank you. No, they're amazing. And I read that part of that came out of the fact that a designer was gonna to charge you tens of thousands of dollars. you're like, no, dude as a result. You've got amazing, really, really like signature labels Graphically, they're bold and stark with big block letters. They look like a Sharpie on paper. When it comes to labels, I imagine that's got to be what a lot of people are picking off of. And how does a winemaker decide other than, you know cost. Well, it becomes art. I think, you know it's an extension of their art. They're like, what do they want it to look like? And there's the thing is everything is marketing. If I decided not to put a label on it Meting I decided to put it in a brown baper bag. It's marketing. Yeah. Anything that you do to it is marketing, even if you wanted to be anti marketing ight So I always look at it is' like it's, you know, it's really up to the the artists. like what do they want to put on, you know, some people are drawn to music and maybe, you know, it's a painting off a album cover from an artist that they like yearsars ago, I think If that's how you buy wine, then that's how you buy wine but also no or leave room or space S sometimes it's not built on the label. And so my artork that I put on there is to do the opposite M. Like my whole thing is is that I dumbed down the labels My labels were inspired when I was a child And we'd go shopping We would do wigga shopping once a month. And so I hated it. Then you would go down every single hle, every single hle while your mom pulled out a coupon booky everything.. And someim you might have to get a second card. You turned on these as and every time you turned down the it would be like a mosaic sea of colors. Then you drown this one and turn the corner and it was stark white And this was called the generic Isle. I don't know if you're how. I remember this. and you'd be in the generic Isisle. It was all black and white. God, I missed that. Or sometimes it was yellow and white. And that was so stark. I wish we had that Google the words generic IL Or if you're Canadian, like our lead editor Mercedes, check out the no name brand in the grocery train No frills. It's literally art and blessedly a bargain So that's that was the idea for the labels. Soom the back bar, like the mosaica colors and then you come to this stark col label just is black and white and And, you know, to me it's just all stripped down. It's kind of like, you know, I was tell somebody like my brand is kind of like Mike Tyson. When it came to the ring, it was just like no bullshit. It came to the ring, no shirt on, no robe, right? It just had his shorts on, had his shoes on, no socks, right? You know what just k justust ready. ood on business. like no frills. Yeahight It's like it's like's no need there's no need for all that. You know, the fight would be over before like longer than it would, you know, would take be taken off the road would last longer than the fight. You know what I? Yeah. And so that's how I look at it where it's just stripped down where it's like, let's just let the wine speak for themselves U And for the labels, I wanted the labels to be that. you know, they're just black and white. and they're not named after me, right? Because and some people have that, you know, where maybe they're thinking more legacy and it's like they're saying Mac of States or maybe I would just you know, had a tad bit of narcissm and I'd to say, Andre Mac Cellars, right? Yeah But when I think about both those names and to somebody who's new to Iine What does it mean whoo the fuck is Andrey Mac Yeah, yeah. evenven though They have their phone in their pocket. There still has to be the will to want to know who it is to look it up And so that was it for me. I wanted things that resonated with people or meant something to them or that would z down a train I thought we have a wine called Love Drp I'm sure right now, you're like, well what does that mean But you know what both those words mean and then you're trying to figure out this thing and they get to interpret, you know, have a moment of how they interpret it. I have a one called OPP, other people's pin off we just like to have fun. We like to have so much fun with it in a way that like It fits the whole idea of my life in a lot of ways is that can't judge a book by its cover. And I say to people all the time, It without the label just like drink the wine. If I had to spend more money on the labels than the wine, then I wouldd have to charge more for the wine. That's the whole thing. It's the packaging is the packaging, but ultimately it's about what's inside the bottle. And you're right. And the bottle and the label are Tols to market. Yeah And my last question best glass of wine you've ever had. I know that you've had a lot of them, but what is one like that ratatooes you? r to choose me U, eighty five Reyas shut enough to pop And when I taste that wine I've only tasted it twice after the initial experience I had When I chastes that wine It was a day that Per caught on fire on his first day of service No And I just remember it was surreal, like a movie, people are being bustled like to the restaurant. The whole building's getting evacuated You know, the firemen coming in rushing into the dining room, hitting the wall with an ax, realizing that's where the fire was. flames burst out. Just u. justust a different experience Wow. What an imprint in your brain. Yeah. It was cool. I mean, not that there was a fire, but like, you know, it wasn't like a sad memory. It was just like just a really amazing kind of time to be alive. like in this timeline of, you know, this is the opening of the most anticipated restaurant opening in New York City history. Yeah. Even the restaurant scene was new. and then you know, something as big as that happens. And then you remember this most amazing wine. know And I always think that wines are also a placeholder of time. What makes those wines great a lot of times is the ambiance, the people that were around drinking them So much so that I wrote a book called ninety nine Bottles. And ninety nine Bottles tell my wine life story through ninety nine bottles. Right And the bottles that I've tasted and the stories behind them I think it starts off with O English eight hundred, which is M that's. Was it taped to your hands at all? Did anyone d tpe your? Yeah, so that came later. My assistant told me that. I was like, you guys are fools. I' never heard of shit like that. So it's hilarious. ye, and then it just kind of moves through different chapters of my life different wines that I had inew was a French laundry section is the per section And it just kind of goes through that whole thing of being able to tell stories through bottles of wine or things that meant to you. And when you drink those wines or think about those wines You also think about those stories. You can read the whole story in Andre's book, ninety nine Bottles, A Black Sheep's Guide to Life Changing wines, where he explains that this wine is made with one hundred percent grenache grapes. And I was curious what the tasting notes are for from what I found People describe this saying it has a musty nose, but a smooth and soft texture with hints of cherry and spicy mint, but with a silky finish One wine forum member weighed in with their take I'm going to read it through a monacle The delightfully ripe nose, arguably at its apogee showing a griotine like cherry liqueur note to complent the fresh pepper that fann out on the palte, until the pepper notes emerged with air. M of us mistook this for a chambel or a vignner Now, if you simply must taste this, but you are not a samaler at a restaurant currently engulfed in flames You can get yourself a bottle of this exact vintage for three thousand six hundred and fifty three dollars via winsearcher dot com Or you could buy groceries for the next six months So it was a really kind of fun way to look at it. Amazing. So yeah, I would say eighty five, You'll see some of my most favorite ones in there, but I think the eighty five one was pretty fun and remarkable. First time me tasting shout's enough to pop that old O of the greats We were serving it to a guest. who had bought it in and there was a lunch table who had stayed over And so when they started evacuating the building, they were like, we're done, but you guys should enjoy it. And then hell broke loo. So it's the changeover and that, you know, as you have the new servers coming in, the old servers leaving for the shift. And so we're drinking the chateareus eating our staff meal and then the alarm starts to come on. It was great. It was great. Yeahah. so quite a memory. And this is so funny. It's like Some people are going be like, what he even talk about how good the wine tastes? Well, that goes without saying, right? L the icing on the cake was the fire and everything around it. The wine was superb, you know, it was like nothing I ever had. And so it was just This a beautiful thing, was like drinking O Burggety Amazing. what a story. It's funny. I'm going out to dinner with my friend who loves natural wine and order samples That should be fun. But yeah, I'm gonna tip her off. I won't tell her it was you. But I'm excited to have a glass of wine with her. That's gonna be funny This is amazing. Thank you so much for being here. No, thank you anytime Ask winemakers winy confused but well meaning questions because look how much more I know now. And you So thank you so much to Andre Houuston Mac for taking the time to hang out and chat wine. Please head to his website at Andrehmac. com to find out more about him and his wines. You can also join his nearly one million followers on Instagram to find out what he's up to day to day and week to week. He's so lovely and informed Thank you again, Andre. We're going to link those sites in the show notes and also link Food Bank, New York City. and we have tons more links on our website at allyworn. com slash allologies slash annologogy. Again, smallologies are shorter, kid friendly and classroom safe episodes. Just search smallologies on your podcast app and you can subscribe there. You can support alllogies by joining our Patreon at patreon dot com slash Olologies for as a little as a buck a month. You can also outfit yourself with Ologies Merch via alllogies merch dot com dot We got hats, we got toades, we got swimsuits, even. Thank you to Erin Talbert, who Amin sZlologies Podcasts Facebook group. Avevele Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwire does the website smmoothly timing our interviews is scheduling producer, Noell Dilworth, keeping a quirk on all the chaos is managing director, Susan Hale. poring over our transcripts or editors, Jake Chafe and lead editor and chief Canadian Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn added the notes of Bee music. and if you stick around to the very end, you know I may tell you a secret. And this week You know what I advise in these crazy times? Take the risk Live the life. Cut the bangs Texture crush We're all going to die. Today, I did in fact cut banks I outsource them to the wonderful Rory at Perch salon in Eagle Rock in LA. She's the best. But hot tip for those who are unsure about bangs and hair texture to words air dry babes, get those bangs wet. use a styling gel, okay? Shape them into swoops or what have you with a comb, clip them with those no bend little hair clips. Let that shit dry for like an hour go out in the sun or whatever, use a diffuser. When they're dry. They're going to look crispy and you're going to freak out. You just ruffle them up and know they're not crunchy or flaky. and you can run a straightening iron over them if you need to. This is a game changer. Okay, go do something, if not bangs that gives you butterflies. You're never going know until you do it. So do something, small, big Rp a packag germ zoology Meteorology