Ep. 1222 Matt Paice Interviews Manfred Ing | Clubhouse Ambassador's Corner

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So we're going to be doing a bit of no frills, type of ambassador's corner today. Welcome to the Italian Wine Club on Clubhouse, and this is our how many episodes have we done so far, Laika? Oh, god. Check that again. I I can't I lost track. I'll get back to you, Stevie. I'll just open the box. More than a year we've been doing. Right? So Yes. Definitely. Like, the sixtieth or something like that? Yeah. I guess it's it's something like '70 something. I think Joy wants to say some. Hey, Joy. Hello. I just, I just scheduled the sixty ninth after the to, like, '71 or Okay. By the way, folks, of course, Joy, the one with this is Avatar, that's when she was dancing on top of my desk in my office. That's Joy Livingston, and that is, of course, our producer for the Italian Wine podcast. As you know, we replay all of our, interviews or calls on the Italian Wine podcast, which will be scheduled usually on Thursdays. And we've we've had more than 3,000,000 listened so far this year, so crazy, crazy. Thank you very much, all of you, for joining us. And I think, we will be closing up. Are we still producing what is the schedule now? Like, what are we how many more, calls do we have in in the month of December? Okay. So we still have three. So we've got Valentina, Severinova with Simone Foti on the December 13. We also have on the sixteenth and the twentieth and the Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay. And then but the pods are still scheduled every Thursday, and they are the most popular pods. Although it's, you know, when I first started doing this, we used to do it for about fifteen minutes because I didn't think the attention span would be, so generous. But then we do here sixty minutes from, beginning to end with our Italian wine ambassador. So today, our Italian wine ambassador, of course, is Matt Paice. Hey, Matt. How do you say your name? I always forget. Italians can say paiche, but it's pace. Pace. Okay. How are you, Matt? Well, super busy today. Today is probably the busiest day of the year for restaurants in The UK. But Why why is that? Not, not like just leading up to the holidays today? Next next week, we are beset by more rail strikes. So that's taking, tens of thousands of pounds of margin on off of our business. Yeah. It's, horrendous. And then the final week before Christmas, no one's But is that definitive? Has that been, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. All the big groups have canceled their bookings. Yeah. It's, it's pretty brutal. Oh, that's a nightmare. Yeah. So, yeah, it was a busy day today. Well, thank you for joining us, Matt. Matt, listen. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do. I know you are, of course, in the hospitality business, and you have become our you were acclimated as the Italian wine ambassador just this July, the London edition. But tell us a little bit about your connectivity, with the Italian wine business. So I'm operations director for, a group of, Italian restaurants in, London, the city of London, which is like the the financial district. They're called Enoteca da Lucca. They're not really Enotecas because no one in The UK knows what an Enoteca is. They're kind of they're like they're like a hybrid kind of wine bar, restaurant type thing, and all our all our customers are kind of city professionals. Yeah. It's kind of independently owned, been going for about ten years, very, very successful, very nice business. Eight about 80% of the list is Italian. Lots and lots of sangiovese on the list. Thanks to me. Lots of Navbiolo as well. Yeah. And I operations director means, I I'm in charge of, like, the wine training, but also I I make the trains run on time, like, just the the day to day managing the general managers and all all that sort of thing. So what kind of of, first of all, are there more than one Inoteca? Three. There we've got three. Oh, and and they're all in Central London? Yeah. They're all with ten minutes walk between each other. Oh my goodness. So it's it's a cluster, basically. Yeah. Exactly. Listen. So what kind of wine training do you do exactly? Funny, I just done I mean, I do kind of ad hoc training, kind of on the by the glass stuff. Once a year, we do all of the I go through all of the premium wines, and we all taste them together front of house. And then I've just done an internal course, like, six hours for we had about seven members of staff. And, you know, for us, WCT level two is is too broad because we don't need them to know about Californian wine or South African wine. We need them to know about European wines, specifically, really, Italian and French. So I kind of designed a course that, you know, involves some bit of theory and also some tasting of French stuff. Because if you're used to serving Italian wine, if you're Italian, you don't really know what a low acidity wine white wine tastes like. No. You don't. You you just get I was in Edna yesterday. No. Not at all. Yeah. And you don't really know what syrup tastes like either. Right. You've got a bit of a view on what bought you know, and so all these really Actually, there is a big syrup production in Italy, Italy, but nobody's heard of it. So it's fine. Yeah. And the whole kind of bacon and cloves thing that you get in the Northern Rhine they're not familiar with. So, yeah, it's a bit of tasting and then a kind of different theory and getting them to hopefully understand a little bit what how a winemaker, wine producer might think. So yeah. So that's kind of different bits of trading that I do. So you know I don't know if you know, but in the past, few months ago, we had, Michael Marcarian. He's your fellow Italian wine ambassador, and he interviewed Sebastiano Castiglioni. Alright. Yeah. So it's actually, I think it's the episode here I have from Regia, episode 928. And Sebastiano, for Kosia Castiglione, that's his full name. He's the not just the principal, but he is an animal activist, an incredibly, passionate about, you know, vegan rights. And, his focus is also to he knows everything about vegan based food. It's it's pretty interesting episode for for our audience if they want to get a hold of that. And his big thing is, like, plant based lifestyle. That's his motto. So, everyone should check that out. But getting back to the show today, you are interviewing Manfred Ng today. And he's the winemaker? Yes. He is. I can see he's on the call. I know he's he's very shy and retiring. I'm sure he's gonna step forward in just a minute. Here we go. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. Hey, Manfred. Listen. So, Matt, why did you choose Manfred Inc to, be on the call today? Well, I'm I was already a fan of Cuatro Bella, but then I participated in a thing that the Chianti Classico did looking for a their to appoint their first UK ambassador, which is a thing that thing they did earlier this year. So are you the ambassador for UK? No. I am not the ambassador. However, I was down to the final six, and there's a a consolation prize for not getting the silver ribbon. Right. They took the cons