Ep. 139 Monty Waldin interviews Joe Bastianich (Bastianich Winery) | Discover Italian Regions: Friuli Venezia-Giulia

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian my podcast. My name is Monte Ward, and my guest today is the one and only Joe Bastianich. Joe, thank you very much for coming in. Alright, Monty. Good. You're a busy guy. I know. Family background. Let's start with that. So my family are Italian immigrants that left the it after the war World War two and came to New York. They came from an agricultural background from an area called Eastria. It's a very particular area because, it's was Italy and then became yugoslavia and now is currently Asia. So the Eastern people, ethnic Italian estrians are a population in the world without a home. And it's a very, very particular culture, but that's kind of what brought my family to food. They came as winemakers and food people to America. So obviously as immigrants do, the first jobs that got were working in restaurants. My dad was a waiter, and my mom worked in a bakery, and then they met. And, as immigrants do, they opened up for their first restaurant in nineteen sixty eight. The year I was born in Queens, New York, which is, is a suburb of the city, not suburbs, one of the boroughs. And, it all started there for me. I was in a restaurant. I grew up in a restaurant and, you know, fell in love with, with food and wine, but in in the most roundabout way, you know, because as as immigrants, we were very modest means and we appreciated everything that life brought us and the journey's been long, but, food and wine have always been a central part of it. It's interesting you talk about the economic side. I mean, people I've spoken to is, one of your big things is that you provide high quality food in your restaurants, but you're not asking the earth in terms of price. You're you're trying to get rid sensible pricing. Yeah. Well, I think that's part of the way that I was brought up. I have a I feel a very big responsibility towards my customers, and I think just even in these days, just selling things for as much money as possible is not always the right thing, and I think that people at the end of the day want value or, you know, want real value for what they eat and drink. And that's kind of been my, my MO since the beginning, and I and I stick with it. I think that value is something that'll never go out style, and, both in wine. I mean, we were kind of revolutionary in the wine world. When I opened my first restaurant in nineteen ninety one, it was called Becca in the theater, just took the Manhattan. We opened up with, all Italian wine list, which was unheard of in New York in the late eighties and nineties. And every bottle fifteen dollars a bottle, cost to the customer. So it was like right off the bat, it was at different times, obviously, where you can sell a bottle of wine in a restaurant for fifteen bucks, but that was how it all began. And then I've always tried to bring the value equation in the wine world trying to get people to drink better and more. So it wasn't just about food for your real passionate musician as well. How does the music fit into your life? The music is such a part of your life. More and more and more and more so it was kind of like a hidden dirty secret and then I became, I started doing TV twelve years ago. I became a lucky enough to be able to have a public. And now I kind of use that privilege to put forth my music. It's a it's a unique privilege. Not many people have it. And, I enjoy I write songs. I write I write music music. I did a, a run-in the theater in Milan called Vino Veritas. Last year, we did a four month run at the Franco Perrenti Theatre in Milan. So when was I was at a musical, a wine music. So it's a wine musical, basically. So, you know, a classical theater, Peter people come in, everyone gets a glass. There's five wines taste did. They start off with little bubbles and they sit down. There's so many days who work the room, but then the show happens on stage simultaneously. And it's never like there's never a reference to the wine. Like, you know, you're there. It's called Vino Veritas. The stories are about my life, my life, and food, my life, and wine, the songs are about my life, but people get to taste my wines. I always say like my wines are very, very personal, and I think when you drink a glass of my wine, it's like getting to know me a little bit. Okay. So in terms of rock influences, oh, we're gonna go there. Yeah. We don't So I'm probably a little bit older than you. So I'm I grew up, with classic album rock of the seventies. I'm fifty. Oh, fuck. We're the same age. I hear all of them because I'm only forty nine. Oh, okay. I grew up with, with classic rock, you know, I grew up, started a bit on the Beatles and then fell into kiss. And then from there, when I really started, and then I heard this guy play guitar named Jimmy Paige, and then the whole world changed for a young eleven year old Joe. Because the power of led zeppelin was all about masculinity and sex and rock and roll, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. And, all I wanted to do was listen to led zeppelin. And then from led zeppelin, I became more of a connoisseur in my I also played guitar, and, my taste expanded in the early eighties got into a little bit of fusion and jazz and and started listening to things like, weather report in Jocopastorius and, in New York at that also, we had a lot of live music. So as kids in New York, we went out and listened to live music three nights a week. You know, even as like thirteen year old kids, we'd take the subway in and go go to the peppermint lounge, go to CBGBs, go to the mud club, you know, in those days, see bands like the clash, see the Smiths, you know, we were also that whole new wave thing is something that I live very much in the eighties. So basically, he's trying me if, you know, if I was your dad, or your mom, sorry, your parents, you were a kid that was out and about, but not getting into trouble. No. No. We were we were just too smart to get into trouble. But how what do you mean by that? So, I mean, we did what what kids did, but we were like, it it was a different time in the in the seventies and in the early eighties. It was even the drugs and the booze and what happened was was moderated by a humility. So it's not like now you go out and you buy a bag of weed and it's like a rocket ship to the movies to smoke like Mexican shake. You know, well, you can smoke a joint and you feel okay, but it wasn't like, blow blow your head off. Yeah. It was all a little bit more simple, moderate, and, kinder. You know what? That may be a factor of age because if I smoke a joint those days, I could get nicely standard. I smoke a joint now after three puffs. I'm like, woah. Yeah. And what's also the part now is so much stronger, wasn't it? What was Queens like as a navy? Is it a rough area? It was a nice area? It was super ethnic. We grew up in a very Italian and Irish name neighborhood, and then we moved to the Jewish neighborhood. And then that's when I realized, like, so we grew up in Astoria, which is super hardcore blue collar working class Italian Irish, but with good values, right? Super good values. It was all about food, and it was about families, and it was about people, and respect our community see. But but it was also a respect for other cultures. Like, one of the main things that we knew or sometimes that it's that I always realized that not many people had was like, I was Italian. The first thing I knew about you is whether you were Jewish or or or Greek or I and that made a difference. You know what I mean? Like, where you come from? And, and then we moved to Bay side queens, which was a more affluent neighborhood after they opened the restaurant, they had a little success. We moved out of an apartment. We bought a house in Bay side queens, and that's where I met people who had pools and who went to yacht clubs and drove Mercedes Benz. I was like, this is like the other half lives. So I realized that, life wasn't all about a one bedroom railroad on steinway Street in Queens. And, you know, you didn't feel underprivileged. It's not like you saw, you know, it's say the other side of life. It's not like you you lacked anything. It seems like you, you know, you were well fed. You had closed. You had your friends. You you you stayed out of trouble. You didn't take the wrong track. No. Yeah. It would trouble was always around, and I think that because of, you know, coming back to Italy because of the family values we had and how food was central and how my grandmother lived with us. You know, there was always that element of home that was as important as everything else. And I saw a lot of kids, especially in the music world, you know, I played in the band. You saw the kids that got into the heavier drugs and took the wrong turn. And I think that certainly having a strong, Italian family value was something that kept me on the straight narrow through those years when anyone could have easily made a mistake. Sure. So you're a pretty good kid, right? I was a good kid. Yeah. I'm trying to make up for that now, but I was maybe even too good. One of the things we see obviously do a lot of TV and, you know, I think what master chef, which is kind of a talent show where contestants compete against each other and individually, you seem to be someone there. Any time you really get annoyed, it's when people it's not because they cooked a bad dish or they got it wrong or whatever, it's when people don't give a hundred percent. It's so clear that you've really feel that people should make the most of their potential. Well, I, you know, as much as you think it's a TV show, it's also, like, rub real four months of my life where I'm in, like, a, an industrial hanger on the outskirts of Milan in a real shit area, drinking bad coffee, and getting up at seven in the morning ending eighteen hours a day with a fat neapolitan and a short guy from bologna. There's a there's a defense chefs and, and and yeah, you know, like, you get to know these contestants. You give them direction. You give them feedback, and they continue to make the same mistake. So they don't put in the effort or they don't listen or they do they think they're gonna outsmart you? And that gets annoying. So it is a bit of a microcosm that world of of master chef in the kitchen, and those interactions as much as you may think they even could be staged. They're not. They're very real because you, it's almost like kind of sensory deprivation. We take these contestants and we pull them out of the world. We take their telephones away. They stay in a hotel next door to the studio. Really? They don't have a phone. Nope. They can use their phones at certain times, but technically they're not supposed to have a phone because they're not supposed to have access to the internet. They're you know, signed legally signed to secrecy. And we keep them in there. And when they're not on camera, they're cooking and taking cooking lessons and living together. And, and that kind of, the deprivation of of their real lives makes them very vulnerable and very, very open to direction and some people use that stimulus to really kind of excel and win. And other people, it doesn't work. So and a lot of the frustration in the shows that the rep the rapport between us and the cooks is real. The report, you mean, the the the camera out of between the presenters, you and your fellow. The actually also the the I mean, we start with a lot, but once we start getting halfway through the season where there's twenty cooks and you know them for two months, the the the relationship between the judges and the contestants is also real. And it becomes, you know, friends, mentors, emotions, and I think that creates a lot of the drama because it's you couldn't fake it, right? That's the thing. So it has to be real. Yeah. So when you have to send someone home, it's it's kind of sad and relieved in some ways. Yeah. Well, no. It's usually sad. And sometimes, you know, someone pisses you off, you throw them out and you're you feel they deserved it, but it's, you know, it's a real thing. Okay. So food and wine pairing, how anal are you about that? Do you just open a bottle of wine and have a bite to eat, or do you really try and match stuff up? No. I think that I have gone through an evolution of that in my life. And I think the whole world is is to to like when I started, it was about pairing wines that, you know, seemed to compliment food and something that would really kind of be really thought about a dish and the wine that would go with it. And then it's kind of like it's kind of like music for me. You go through different phases and different taste in life. So then it was like contrasting flavors, then I really kind of stopped eating at restaurants, you know, like, I'm I've eaten everything in my life already. I'm done. Like, I'm all about like a plate of spaghetti. You know what I mean? Or a pizza or I'm like about eating products. So contrast compliment what makes you smile what are you in the mood for? You know, obviously tomato sauces need certain kinds of red wines and different kind of white wines go well in those situations. I drink white wine every day as an aperitivo as a beverage. I drink red wine mostly at the table. I never drink sweet wine and I like champagne whenever anyone was willing to open a really good bottle. Cool. Okay. Let's talk about your creative side. How has that changed over time? Either with food or with wine like when you create your wines, you got a couple of wineries. Yeah. So so creativity, is something that I think that grows on you in life. I've been fortunate enough to have different outputs to do it, whether it is in wine or in food or creating restaurants. You know, I think that at first, the first years of my professional life, a lot of my creativity went into trying to recreate the food experience. And that's a very powerful thing, like when you can create an environment and how people interact with food and drink and you can affect it or change it or do things that change the world and wine and I've done that. That's big. Is that about the ambulance or is it about the the atmosphere or is it about it's about like physical physical things like when we open Babo and they nineteen ninety eight. I had this idea. We were buying wine in large formats because the wine market was upside down. The distributors had all these three liters, great wines. They didn't know what to do with them. I was buying closeouts of giant bottles, like, how am I gonna sell this stuff? So we basically started the idea of the Cortino, you know, explain. A third or a quartino who's in quato quato, a a quarter of a liter, the twenty five c l. Yeah. So it's the concept was all the pomp and circumstance of wine by the bottle in the context of wine by the glass. It's a glapeno port from the bottle at the table in to a small decanter, then you can kind of fill your own glass as much as you feel comfortable. And we were really the first to do that. Yeah. And that is a way that wine is served almost everywhere in America now. Okay. So that's like a real thing, but that was almost you'd sort of see that in as the old time is in Italy, they'd have those kind of beakers almost on the table. They're playing cards or whatever in the barn. My my my my family's from, we come from a great Austria culture. And my great grandfather was a drunk, the town drunk, and they called him Cortic because he would just go to the Austria and have one quarto after the other. And, that was his nickname. Really? True story. Did he live for it to the to the right holder? I think he goes into his nineties. Yeah. Well, yeah, I say drunk. I don't think he was a drunk. He was a guy who probably drank two liters of wine a day. Alright. Kids, go that at home. He probably worked real, you know, he worked into fields and he couldn't metabolize it. Yeah. It's fuel, isn't it? Yeah. They were drinking different kind of wines back then, but two liters seems like a lot. But So that's why I associate with you. You're not someone that has any heirs and graces. You know your origins and you got a lot of expect for that kind of like the old time is basically. The old time are Italian Italians. Yeah. I think there's so much to learn from how they handled life. You know, I wrote a book called restaurant man. I don't have it up. I'll send it to you. I learned so much from my father, you know, guys who are immigrants, you know, guys like my father in even in his own simplicity and he was a guy that the Times left behind a little bit in the older parts of life, but he was a guy who saw hunger in his life, you know, in the war, didn't have enough to eat, came to America, opened a restaurant, made a living, bought a house. Right? And I think that the kind of like the nuts and bolts values that those kind of people have about the value, he quantified his success in America by the kind of food he could put on the table. Right. You know, if he could open a bottle champagne or have good wine or some caviar smokes. He like he for him, that was success. Eating well, having friends to the house, music. He played the accordion. He was actually almost a semi professional accordion player. So singing and eating and drinking, working hard to make a living. Super straightforward, super simple, but really values that can can be driving and determining in someone's life. Yeah. So you you have a lot of those. Thank you. Can I just try to I just try to keep it no bullshit? Like you've been really And everything you get to you quite strong with them? Yeah. I think my kids are good. I think that they they certainly have had a very different experience than I've had and they've grown up in New York City and then and it's certainly in a much more privileged situation. And, you know, it's funny because the winery I started Bastionics in nineteen ninety seven was the year my daughter was born, and there really, as much as I loved wine and making wine was my dream. And this is in freewoody. This one, the winery is in free. You live in Essia, in that. You know, I came here as a kid, toured around in the, in the late eighties, in the, in a in a VW mini van and lived like a hippie for a year and a half. I went from Pantalivia to, to Altoadija making wine, working in restaurants kind of really where I fell in love with the wine thing, like the making of wine, the agriculture. And, you could imagine in nineteen eighty nine, the Italian wine world was a very different place that it is now. But one thing that the Italian do do is bring people into their world and the wine, the Italian wine community brought me into their world, and they kind of influenced me and they taught me and I had great, great teachers, like people like, Luciano Sandrone, you know, just to name a few who were really kind of mentors to me as a young kid. And, and that's when I figured out that I had to do the wine thing. So my first plan didn't work out. I was gonna find an Italian contesta like a like a, you know, the noble to marry. Yeah. To marry. No. Yes. I thought I would just marry you. It's easier. No. It's sort of plan one, but it didn't work. Did you have a crack at any? Yeah. One is one. I can't mention it, but one German. I almost got it. And not far from where you live, but anyway. I'll tell you later off off off off tape. So, so I went back to New York in nineteen ninety one, and I did the only thing that I knew I had to do was open a restaurant. So I opened my restaurant, and that was Becca. And then, that did well, and I opened another restaurant. And then I was able in nineteen ninety six to go back, and I bought nine hectares of vineyards. I had an idea of what one I wanted to make. I went back to kind of near not Eastria because Eastria was then even Yugoslavia. It couldn't go there. But we went outside of Trieste to, Colio Dentalian for Yulini or Chiwi Darlene. I bought eight hectares at first, and I started making, my wine, Vespa Bianco in nineteen ninety eight was the first vintage, so just up to twenty vintages now. And that was my dream. So that brings me back to the thing. Why? I mean, aside from loving wine, I really had to find a way to have my kids be tied into this Italian reality in a real way. Like I was fortunate to have to my family. And they did. They grew up in the winery. They grew up among people who live there and a woman, John, the seven year old woman who runs the winery who taught all my kids Italian and took care of them. Like, she was their grandmother. They worked with farmers, and they had a whole existence of agriculture of living in Italy with in Freilia is also as a place of hardworking, simple people. Yeah. This wasn't a winery with red carpets running out. I was. It was hardly that. So they saw the growth of it and, you know, in time we opened a restaurant, opened a small hotel in B and B, and, it's really part of their home. And although now as teenagers, there were, you know, two of them are in college, they're moving from it a little bit. I think hopefully one day they'll come back to Italy as a place where they have fond memories and maybe come back to even make it a part of their lives. Okay. I mean, when you visit other wineries that ones that you don't own, do you offer an opinion, or do you wait till you're asking, mister Bastianich, what do you think of our red wine? Well, I would I would I would I would never offer an opinion unless I was asked. And usually if you ask me, I'll tell you the truth for good or for bad. And I do feel qualified to do that because I, you know, I think that I've tasted a lot. I know that I've tasted a lot of wine in my life and, I'm fortunate enough to have a really good reference point on wines in general, and I'm not afraid to give an opinion. How do you stand with the whole natural wine thing? So I believe in making wines natural really. And I think I'm certainly non interventionist winemaker as a person. I think our roles in in the winemaking world is to be guardians of of processes that are very natural like photosynthesis or alcoholic fermentation. These are things that happen without any grape intervention by man. And the grape will struggle for life to procreate itself. The the vine, the grape is the fruit of the vine. It's it's it's it's looking for a future. It'll struggle with the other vines the vineyard and give the most of the vigor it can to its grape cluster. The the sugar in those grape clusters when they're mature will be, infested by yeast and the yeast will turn that sugar into alcohol and the rest is is history. Right? So as far as as natural wine is not interfering with wine, and I think that our role as winemakers is also to have the wines to have to speak of the varietal and their terroir, their place of origin. If wine doesn't do that, then it's really doing nothing. So I'm much I'm very much about wines that are expressive of place, of arrival that have a story. I'm living and working in New York in California, Los Angeles, I think in the last maybe ten years, we've seen, extreme wines or orange wines, biodynamic wines, whatever you want to call them, that have become more of a of the tool of marketing and, just something for these sommeliers to talk about to justify their existences. And I think that that's, that's a mistake. Yeah. If you had, so if you had choice. So, right, we're gonna go out for an evening. I'm gonna invite you out for an evening on me. And, I say, right, I'm gonna hook you up with, six sommeliers or six chefs, which, which would you prefer? You can't have three and three neither. Really? Three butchers and three fishermen. Really? Yeah. Why? Because that craftsman didn't even rule products. Yeah. It's also just to think of maturity. I think that, you know, the I always say that tyranny of the Somoyais has to end soon. So, and even though I come from that elk and that's how I was born and raised and and to a large extent not to blow sunshine up my ass, but we did create the the the culture of wine professionals and restaurants thirty years ago. We were the first to do it. We were the first, you know, to do a lot of things in the wine world I think that to a certain extent, it's gone a little bit tipsy turvey or it did. Now it's maybe coming back a little bit more grounded, but basically it's basically more about the smellier than it is about the wine. They become bigger than a wine. Exactly. It's the big egos. Big egos about justifying their travels their existence is, you know, bringing just to have having to having to blow people away on every turn on how smart and intelligent and insightful and keen their palettes are rather than being what they really should be, which would be someone who is assisting someone to help to find the wine that they're gonna like and make their dining experience more pleasurable. If you're a fantastic singer and you're that smart write a book and if I want, I'll fucking buy and read it. If not, keep your mouth shut and help me when you're in the restaurant. Okay. So are there any food or wine matches that you really up your nose that you really don't like things things that don't work or you very much kind of listen if you like it. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm a bobby nut. I believe in in there there are absolutes. There are good wines and there are bad wines. Like the whole concept of the best wine is the wine you like is bullshit. You know, there's good wines and there's bad wines. I believe that if you on the pairing of good wines with good food, hold the freedom on that, you know, whatever. I mean, certain things are gonna work better than others, but there's, I think that people should be able to, to do that as they like. Although there are certain absolutes that I feel, at least in the Italian world that that really stand true and work, you know, like Nabiolo Pemontez wines, Barbara with, with a burzato with mushrooms, with those kind of flavors, those earthy woodsy flavor resort tuscan wines, you know, like sangiovese in its best form as Brunoo or, you know, and I'll be like, with grilled meats in that char and the red meat, those are things that really, really work. Did you go to a tuscan? I. Yeah. That was, that came fifteen years ago, five years after the original one. And Mauricio Castelli was, had bought a plot of land for his son and your family. And he's like, yeah, these fucking dudes from these rich noble people from the Bennett who are gonna come here and break my balls. You should buy this land before they do because if I'm gonna have to kill them. So I did. And, we bought, like, a hundred hectares. We planted, ten off the bat. Now we're up to, like, thirty hectares, and we're in, put put, located, a bit of Marlena Morlena a bit of IGT. And the Morolino is the local name for the Sanjuveza. Great. Yep. And, so mostly Sanjuveza. But, you know, with all the clones down there that they use in making the Morolino. So Morolino's a geographic designation, where San Giovanni is in eleven other variety that can be used in more Alino. So do you take I mean, these wines that you make in Italy, whether they're in Fueley, obviously, in or in Tuscany? I mean, do you do you sell all of those in your via your outlets, or do you do you sell to a store? I've obviously been selling our restaurants in Italy, but also all throughout the world. I mean, we try to, I mean, obviously having a throughput of your own restaurants is great and it's a good marketing tool for wines, but we also like, you know, have markets all over the world. Yeah. And how it tastes changing in terms of wine in terms of obviously, Oak seems to be out. Well, if you just if you just look at the microcosm of of of Barolo and barbaresco, what's happened in the last ten years, I think that's a good leading indicator of what's happening in the global wine world. You know, those wines when done right, speak of the place, are pure, are powerful, are variety driven, have this great sensibility with the local food, the people who make them smell of them. You know what I mean? It all kind of makes sense. I think people want more and more of that. And it's funny because we're here today to talk about millennial wine consumers and understanding what these kids who are twenty to thirty year olds are gonna drink and from our perception and from what studies that we we're learning by by web marketing is, they're informed. They're not a friend to spend. They want quality and they want authenticity. And they want narrative as well. They want a story behind it, don't they? Well, they have the narrative, you know, on their on their in their digital existence, everything is either a video or a narrative. So I think they kind of that they even pre pre suppose that because anything you sell them has to either have the visual behind it or the storytelling behind it. But they are they're certainly focused on quality. They're consuming less but better and they want to know where their products come from and they're not willing to spend a little bit more. So the signs are all good. I think it's up to us, producers, or us older folks to really modernize how we wanna communicate about wine and how we want to affront this next horizon of wine consumers, which are millennials. So final question, you know, you're a brilliant communicator, very successful self made businessman who's got his feet on the ground. Do you have any political ambitions? I don't mean that in a pejorative zone. Just mean would you would, you know, you are a leader? Yeah. No. I find it. I've thought about that. I've quite frankly, if I if I didn't do the whole TV thing, politics might have been something that I that I would have enjoyed doing. Your banker very briefly, weren't you? That was a banker for a while. Fun. It was did you see wolf of Wall Street? It was like the eight nineteen ninety, ninety, in eighty nine, ninety, ninety one. It was like the excesses of New York and Wall Street. It was a great moment in New York, but it was a crazy moment. Were you a bit of a cheap, then presumably for all the bankers that made a million that day. They were sloshing crude champagne down there next, and you were probably going back to your family home and just chilling out. No. I had an apartment on the thirty eighth floor in battery Park City overlooking the statue of Liberty. So you were canning it as well. I had a Jewish girl named girlfriend named Robine Shalone. And, I would go out for every day. I'd go out for dinner, like, every night, and, it was great. It was like, a real, real hay day in New York. Good memories, good times. She's always, in your memory. She was. Shoot. I didn't forget a very nice girl. How do you stand Shay? I, exercise every day. I do have a lot of athletes. I do. I've done Ironman. My run marathons and try to. The only thing that keeps me on the straight and narrow is having to get up and hit that gym for a couple hours every morning. It's gonna ask you what about about the politics that I kinda cut you off. Sure. Any political ambitions? But not not in Italy because it's not my country. And it's just just so fucked here anyway. But the US is hard for me because I'm living mostly in Italy. So it's kinda I'd have to be there. So, but I wouldn't mind and I think that there is, especially what's with what's happening now in the United States. There's always more and more of a need for I think people intelligent people who really wanna do something good to moderate people. Just people who, yeah, who have a good sense ability because it's, you know, the the whole ambition of ego and power is just boring and it's kind of gross. And, I think there'll always be a space for people who wanna do right by others in politics. So I, I don't know. I'd love to do it, but who knows? Maybe not in this lifetime. Fair enough. Jo vastyanich. Wanna thank you for coming in. Really good to talk to you. Thank you very much. So it was a little bit nerve wracking talking to someone that you see on telly a lot. Alright. That was a great interview. You're good. Thanks. My I told you about my kid. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. He's nine. Yeah. He's good lad. Yeah. Yeah. Hope his name. He's called Arthur. Arthur. Yeah. So, do you speak Italian? Yeah. He does. Yeah. Do you speak English as well? Yeah. He does. Which his first language? He said mix actually, because he goes to school in, in the little local school in Montecina, which is a, like, full of good kids, and most of most of the parents of Bruno. So, you know, the other guy, like, who are the other, Brits are over there. There's, socklings around there. Doesn't he live there? Yeah, he he's a bit further north, actually. A little bit more towards kids to come to Tuscany to grow up in England. There's a couple of others. There's a lot of ex there's a lot of you guys up there. Yeah. I mean, it well, the Montoden's got about also the kind of Tuscan lifestyle. That's my dream. That was always my dream. It's Montochino. Really came close a couple of times. You know, my partners have financial lawyer so she could help. She does she valued some wineries recently. You gotta be really careful. Yeah. Because when they value the winery, what happened last time is they actually valued the stock on its retail value. So the price of the winery was x million more than it should have been. So you gotta be be careful. But it's, I'll tell you what the one thing that we lack in Montecino focus. No, it's, bathroom. Yeah. Okay. But the one thing we lack actually in the town is we don't have a high end restaurant. We do not have a higher restaurant. It was one in the hotels. Something they order. No. Yeah. But it's it's not like really high end. I mean, it's it's very good. It's typical. What's the goal? Well, we have over the kushina povita. We just have the which they, you know, you have the the kind of bread soup and all that sort of stuff, but we don't really have anybody doing. So I had real moments in my epic trip there when I was a a lad. I can just remember. When you put moments, let's just stick to the food and wine, not not all the girlfriends that you're not even girlfriends. Just I just remember sitting on the walls and watching the sunset and you know, like those times when you're young and you spend a year alone away from all your friends and you just been of time to think. And then Motoccino was a big part of my collective memory of kind of my, holden caulfield coming to coming to fruition as a person. It was a bit of a backwater then. People, I mean, it's a very young, superstar in the wine firm of Montecino. It only has a hundred year history in the evening history. It's only like twenty five years old, thirty years old. It's not like burgundy with the cistercians, you know, a thousand years ago. So it's a very young, it's almost like a parvenu, region. I think a lot of people there still finding their way a little bit. Yeah. The wines are a little bit all over the place. Yeah. They they need to I think that they expanded it too much. I think there's a lot of brunello that's not brunello in my opinion. Yeah. It was the ninety seven boom where the, basically, the legal registry could register and if you had a, like, EU wife like a Coration wife, whatever you get extra money because it was a woman getting involved in farming. So there were some, maybe, some tightly dodgy motivations for people getting jacked on the bandwagon. And there's certain people who have not not helped it either through the certain firms, I mean, nameless that have not helped the Montocino flaws. It's cleaned up a lot, though. Has it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot better. It's a great place because when the wines, like, I'm a big fan or, you know, the the when those wines are even sideras, when those wines are good and pure, San Juvis, it can be so powerful. So amazing. It really is kind of burgundy esque in a lot of ways when it's when it's really, it's unforgiving, it's acid, it's a beast, and to do it right, takes a lot of finesse, and when it's great, it can really be great. Yeah. You should come down. You should you should buy someone. I think I missed a boat on that one. No, maybe. Never know. I appreciate it. You're you're you're super star. Thanks for your time again. Thank you for having me. Yeah. It's been great. Thank you. Follow Italian White Podcast on Facebook and Instagram.