Ep. 325 Rebecca Lawrence

How have you fi how are you finding things, Rebecca? You're right. I mean, is life been okay? Yeah. It's been weird. My husband actually had to go back to the UK. The day before lockdown happened here. And so he's he was stuck in the UK for eleven weeks. So that's been interesting. Wow. But we finally we finally got in the back a couple of weeks ago, and we've been self isolating. And so yesterday was my first day back in the office. Oh my word. Exating times. It is in nice and do it. At least, I mean, you know, at least he had somebody to stay, I guess. Yeah. That actually, in fact, we had put our house on the market two months before, but fortunately, not had an offer. So we quickly took it off the market and, Yeah. So, so who I mean, in terms of your, like, animals, are we you were obviously in charge of the animals whilst your husband was away? It was indeed. Yeah. They they were very much convinced that the wrong human was left in verona. Oh, dear. Well, that's not really that's not really great for long, is it, really? When you're busting Yes. Put it on the table, everybody. Well, it wasn't the right food. It wasn't at the right time. I never had the house. Yeah. When you unpack it, do they do the biscuits or do they eat wet food? Ah, biscuits. Yeah. Okay. So they can't complain about sort of temperature or anything like that. Exactly. Although, I'm sure they would. I have I have to admit that our our most problematic cat is the one called Monty. So Yeah. I'm I'm just saying. Yeah. You just you just got a massive round of applause from Sylvana there. I I think this was all staged, actually. Don't know how you could be communicating behind my back, but I have to put Tim. I have to both of you for keeping storm, just leaving me in the middle. Sivan is gonna go off on a riff in a minute, I think. Yeah. The Zendcast is gonna Zendcast is gonna collapse under the waist of nasty comments. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, she's pretty accurate most. Time, most of the time when I get a bollocking, she's absolutely right. Okay. So should we, is are we allowed to start, do you think, or not? Yeah. I think we can go. We're recording. So Okay. I think we've got great outtakes with, us discussing, how like my cat you are. Alright. Okay. Well, we can we don't I'll just tick that one at the the bottom. There were eight questions. I'll just make that number nine for old Jacobs. It's just, you know, it's it's a whole man. It's just been blown out of the water. There's two childish Brits. Hi Jack. Years of plan. You you get everything British takeover. Right. Here we go. Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast of Me Montu, all in my guest today. Is doctor Rebecca Lawrence, who is an Italian wine ambassador, and highly qualified. We won't go into all our qualifications, but we are gonna talk today about the jumbo shrimp guide to Italian wine Rebecca, what is the jumbo shrimp guide to Italian wine? Hi, Montey. Thank you for having me on the podcast. So the jumbo shrimp guide to Italian wine is a kind of compact introduction to the world of Italian wine. Myself and the other authors, along with Stevie Kim, our director, really wanted to take the complex world of Italian wine and put it into a kind of bite sized chunk that would really help people understand it, make it more accessible for people at all levels. So, first question is, how do you do that without sort of dumbing everything down too much? With great difficulty. And we were expressly told that, those of us in the authors who are particularly geeky needed to reign it in a little bit. No no talk about specific soil types or micro climates, that that'll come in the next book. This one, we just really wanted to make it more interesting and exciting for people. So we've got added some fun in illustrations, and we've tried to make it into these small chunks. So a little bit about great varieties, but more just about how they taste, where you can enjoy them, broad overviews of the region, and also some kind of fun facts and fun figures from Italian wine we really didn't want to make this something that was dry and too complex. So, obviously, with multiple people, multiple authors adding, their thoughts and words to this particular project, how easy was it to, to get that streamlined it had its moments as it's quite an interesting group of authors because I'm actually the only English native speaker. So we have Leika. Leika is our Filipino. Yacopo is our Italian. And he'd like me to say ligurian, not Italian, and then we have Lan who is from China. And we really it was really interesting to work with such a diverse crowd because we're all coming to it from from different cultural perspectives. But also from different writing styles. Lan is a primarily a business, MBA style. I'm much more kind of flowery and literary. Yakapo is very poetic and Italian, and and like has quite clear and direct. So I think for me, the biggest challenge was, as the person, like I said, the native speaker who was bringing all to together all of these voices, was trying to make it sound like one voice whilst not losing the character of the other authors in in the way the way I did that. So, yeah, it was it was a long process, but I I think we really achieved it, and I think that the different voices still come across in the book whilst making it an easy read overall. Now listen, I know that you really love your education role. You love educating people. Why is that? Where does that where does that desire, and drive come from? Well, I I actually come from a a line of educationalists. My one of my greatest role models was actually my father, growing up. He still is, but he's he's now not educating. But he was really powerfully into education when I was growing up and really distilled the importance of education, but also how fun it could be. And that's really what drives me in education is that get trying to get across to people that education is fun, and it can be really helpful. It's the silver bullet, I think, to to coin a phrase from Aaron Zorkin, another big hero of mine. And for me, the the great moment in education is when you're standing in front of a class of students, and particularly in wine education, because wine can be seen as this really snobby, really difficult, really complex thing. And seeing that moment with a student where you've managed to take something that's really complex and put it into a way that they can understand and something that they can then take away and use in their life. That's what motivates me. Like, seeing that spark in a student when they they make the connection between something when they make the link, when they have that piece of understanding and realize what it means. It's just it's brilliant. It's so much fun. And I really think I have a a personal motto of this idea that unlike wine, education should never be dry. And that's really what I'm trying to do with my educating, and I really think that's what all of us try to do with the book and fact is to turn this very potentially dry topic into something that's fun and approachable and and should be approached also with a little bit of humor. You should become a copywriter for an advertising agency. I love the line about line and dry and all the rest of it. You know? So what what you were you in your previous career? Were were you an advertising executive. I I was not. Yeah. It's a strange journey. Are are you sure you want the story? Yeah. I want the strange. Give me the strain. Because I I originally come from academia So I actually qualified, in architectural theory, and was trying really hard to get a fellowship to write a book, but I qualified during, one of our recessions. And there was just no funding available, and my PhD was really niche. So I took a job working in food, because I also love food, and it was through working with food and working with chefs that I realized that many chefs have access to really good wine. And so I started to understand that this this could be something that I could be interested in. And then my husband and I took a trip to Italy, and this is where we discovered really my love for wine. And shortly after we got back, I was made redundant. So I decided that that was the point. I was gonna take the plunge, and I started doing my wine, my WCT qualifications. I took the Italian wine Ambassador course, and realize that actually I could take my love of education, my love of wine, and kind of slam them together and finally make a CV that might make some kind of sense. And hopefully, I would achieve that. Well, you're not doing so bad. Any listen, any favorite wine styles or regions. I mean, when you were chasing these wines with the chefs, obviously, probably a small selection of what you've encountered since then, you know, what are your faves? Well, as it happens, it was working with, Italian chefs that really kind of opened my eyes to how complex wine could be and and how broad it was because, obviously, there are so many Italian grape varieties, so many regions, so many different styles. And then taking that and doing this trip with my husband through Italy for the first time was actually when we stopped in multiple channels, so not too far away from you that I really had, my eyes opened again to just how broad the styles can be, even in one region. Obviously, vino Nobale, Montalcino wines can be very different dependent producer in sight, and and that was the the Kickstarter for me. So multiple channel and multi chino wines are always gonna have a very special place in my heart. So when was that trip? I mean, that term sort of trip that you said was a change changed your life almost? That was twelve years ago now, I think. Okay. More or less. So what's And, unfortunately, my husband is still with me, so it didn't scar him too much that I decided to throw away my academic career and go into this crazy world of wine. Yeah. Finally enough, it cut out there slightly. It said, I don't know if it was, you're unluckily. I'm still with my husband or luckily. I'm still with my yeah. We're not gonna drop in that. This is a really professional interviewing can get into personal stuff. So what is next on your list in terms of any more books or education, projects? What's coming up? Well, we are already working on the next jumbo shrimp guide, which will be more of a deep dive into the northwest of Italy, allowing us to be a little bit more geeky about what we discussed, just having a little bit more space in the book to talk about it, in terms of education, I'm teaching with the Italian Wine Academy here at Verona. So we have WSTT courses coming up, which I'm very excited about. But also, I run the Italian Wine Education Program for Vanity International Academy. And it's been a great thing during this quite difficult period because it's an online program. So we've seen lots of people taking the opportunity to take the time and take their Italian wine ambassador status and convert it into educator status. So we now have Italian wine certified educators beginning to run courses around the world. So my next step with that is to continue improving the program, supporting our educators, and getting as many people qualified all over the world to teach about Italian wine. Interesting. So you're educating the future educate educators? Yep. That's what I do. Okay. So, the last question is probably the penultimate one because I'll probably send a zinger your way at some stages. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, why did you call it jumbo shrimp? Is that a sort of play on? Because I don't know if we've mentioned the gambara rosso. Is that is that a put play on that or something? Or Very well spotted. Very well spotted. Yes. Is a little bit of a play on the Gamoro Roso guide, but also No. Sorry to interrupt. What is a gambara? What is Roso? What do they mean? K. So a Gamoro is a is a prawn or a shrimp, and Roso is red. But this is also the name given to, a a quite famous Italian wine guide that, gives the scores for Italian wines. And they have this very famous award, the Trebicieri, the three glasses, which is awarded to some of the best Italian wines. So it's a little bit of homage, to that kind of aspiring to their greatness, but also, this idea of the the jumbo shrimp sort of taking a huge complex issue such as Italian wine and making it into this bite sized package, this this easily digestible fun package. And of course, technically, you can't have a jumbo shrimp. It's actually an oxymoron insert. Has these kind of three levels of of meaning. I had a very brief look at the book. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I really did. And, I just thought the the the register of the text was was really, really, really well pitched if I was a student. I mean, it's so it is so caught. And I've read a book says, you know, we've shared the same books on on courses we've been on together, but it's it's it's like walking through mud sometimes. There's so much to get through. And some of the images in your book and just and just how the text was laid out, I I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was a it's gonna be a really, really good tool for for students. So I wanna say, thank you very much to my guests, say Rebecca Lawrence, BA honors, MSC, PhD, w s e t diploma and an international, Italian wine. So Italian wine Ambassador, that was a great interview. And I would say thank you very much for coming along, and we wish you every success with this educational initiative. Thank you so much, Munsey. No worries. Nice to talk to you. Yeah. It's a great interview. Yeah. Really great. Yeah. I mean, if the writing Thank you. You're you're a pretty good speaker. So you've always got a backdrop if in case the book thing just kinda grinds to a whole which she'll say. I don't know. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, HimalIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time, chi chi We've just put together a video for actually yesterday, and there's some fantastic outtakes of me swearing in Italian. So Oh, honestly, no. So hopefully it won't be bleeped out. If it's for every No. I hope not. I think they will cut them completely, but my my mother was horrified. As long as as long as your cats don't hear you swear, I think that's quite important. I know you're a cat lover. Of course not. They're not gonna be a bunch of animals. But in front of adults, I think that's I think that's I think it's okay.