Ep. 2121 Kelli White | Book Club with Richard Hough

You know, it's interesting. I wasn't inspired to write this book. I was asked to write it. Academie du Vin reached out to me. I had contributed chapters to some of their anthology books, on California, on Burgundy, on Champagne, And they thought that that I would have the right approach to create for them and enter the wine book to complement their their portfolio of excellent wine books. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast book club. Each month, we select the great wine book to share. We chat to the author and get your opinions. Stay tuned as we read Between the Vines with the Italian wine podcast. Hello, and welcome to book club with the Italian Wine Podcast. This month, our guest is Kelly White. Kelly is the director of education for the wine center at Meadowood in Napa Valley and author of Napa Valley, then and now. Her latest book, Wine Confident, There is No Wrong Way to Enjoy Wine, is published in The UK on the October 1 and in The US on the November 7. Hi, Kelly. How are you? I'm wonderful. How are you? Good. Thank you. Good. And how's things in Napa Valley this morning? Busy. Busy. It's, red wine harvest is just getting underway for a lot of wineries around here, so traffic is terrible. But there's a lot of excitement in here. Great. And what about the weather? Oh, it's been beautiful. It's been an odd year, kinda wet, cold winter. We've had an early heat this summer, and then it cooled way down. So some more heat coming, which is typical for this time of year, but just sort of odd, but interesting. It'll be fun to see how that manifests in the wine scene. Before we talk about wine confident, your your latest book, I'd like to explore a bit about your background and your earlier career in wine. Could you tell us what first got you into wine? I understand you had a formative experience in France. Can you tell us something about that? My first sip, you know, in the strictest sense was was actually probably when I went to France for the first time as a as a 19 year old. I wasn't a drinker. I didn't enjoy it. You know, it was interesting. It was it was more of a, I would say, a kind of a travel experience than a wine experience necessarily. But I, you just kinda changed majors abruptly in college, to the point where I wasn't, you know, academically entrenched, in either sort of world at the moment. This summer, I was 20 for newly 21. So I needed some sort of summer job, but it didn't really make sense to continue to work in the neurogenetics lab that I had just left. And I wasn't yet, you know, kind of established in the art history world, which was what I was changing to pursue. And so it's a little bit driftless and happened to walk by a wine store in Beacon Hill, Boston. I would help wanted sign in the window, and it it just seemed, you know, like the ideal college job, you know, nights, weekends, set up for part time, you know, kind of a low commitment scenario. And I I I walked in, and I very honestly said, you know, I don't drink, and I don't know anything about wine. Excellent. You're on vacation. Exactly. So, and and they were very kind to take me on, and it was a small boutique relatively, you know, mostly a high end given the given the neighborhood. And there was a lot of emphasis on on wine education and tasting, and so I went from zero. I didn't have the sort of Boone's Farm, strawberries, sunset Yeah. You know, kind of, like, early, crescendo that many people have. It just sort of came in cold, in in the capacity in a professional capacity, which I think is kind of unusual. And and quite a transition, I guess, in in terms of your educational career from from science to to the arts. But then also that wine shop, they must have recognized something in you that notwithstanding your lack of experience and lack of knowledge, there must have been, like, an underlying passion and I think also intelligence, I suppose. Well, that's very kind of you. I think I'm sure what they saw was just a 21 year old golden retriever who was She played me. Willing to fetch the newspaper without any complaints. But it was, you know, it was it it none and listen. You know? The first few sips, even though that job was was wonderful, and like I said, there was lots I was included in tastings. You know, I, we hosted tastings for the community as well. I still didn't get it. It took a really long time for me to kinda get it. Yeah. And by get it, I mean, I academically got it. I understood the intellectual appeal before I understood the aesthetic appeal. And part of that the reason for that was that I just I couldn't afford the good stuff, you know, for a long time, and I was kinda aiming at what I thought were the right things to drink, which was namely, you know, as I mentioned in the introduction to the book, kind of Bordeaux and Scotch. I wanted to take it seriously, and I wanted to do it right. But I had no money. Yeah. So the Bordeaux and Scotch I could afford to taste was not compelling or at least, you know, what I had was able to find in Boston in the early two thousands. And so I just didn't understand it, but I was drawn to, you know, the the history. I was drawn to the to the cultural aspects, to the language, to the to lifestyle of the wine industry. But it would really take, you know, kinda to the end of the summer of my farewell toast to the wine industry when I was sort of accidentally exposed to a white Rhone wine that was very cuddly and very, you know, kind of welcoming in a way that young, inexpensive Bordeaux wasn't that ice that a flip switched and, I'm sorry, a switch flipped. And I finally understood. And I went back to school and, you know, sincerely pursued life and art for a while. I after college, I worked at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. But I kept one foot in the wine industry because it was so flexible. It was a relatively high pay for not having a professional degree in that field. And then eventually, you know, my professional compass moved and pointed, you know, away from our away from science and towards wine. And the nice thing about that was it sounds completely corny and fabricated to say, but it's true that in wine, I found this wonderful intersection of my two academic interests, which was science and art. And, and I and I that's still, I would say, those are still two big pillars of what keeps me interested in wine to this day. Yeah. Absolutely. I've been speaking a lot this week or recording some podcasts with, professor Atelio Schenza, and he's one of these kinda polymath kind of figures who's he knows everything about science, but also the arts and literature. And the breadth of his knowledge is just incredible, but I think for him as well, both different worlds all come together and whine, and I think that's what he finds so so fascinating about this as well. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the magic about wine. Right? There's, first of all, just a very wonder of the taste of it, that it can taste like so many things that it doesn't contain. You know, it's it's long history. It's ties to agriculture. It's reflection of the growing season. All of this stuff is very magical in isolation. But the the intellectual depths are there, and there's so many different angles in, that it's just it's a it's a it's a lifelong study. And I think there's a lot of different ways in for for different people, and this is something that I try to emphasize in the educational programming, that I put together, you know, at the wine center where I am now, and then hopefully in some of my writing and communication in just that it's a really big subject that touches on a lot of other things. You don't need to be obsessed with wine to sort of to really engage with the material. You can be, you know, a history buff or, a scientist. You can be, you know, be interested in agriculture. You can be interested in international trade. You can be interested in tax law, and there's something there's a way to discuss wine, in a way that draw that person