Ep. 761 Jane Anson | Uncorked

Hello, everybody. My name is Polly Hammond, and you are listening to Uncorked, the Italian wine podcast series about all things marketing and communication. Join me each week for candid conversations with experts from within and beyond the wine world as we explore what it takes to build a profitable business in today's constantly shifting environment. In this episode, we are joined by Jane Anson, my favorite world's expert on the wines of Bordeaux and a delightful, hardworking human being. In 2021, after nearly two decades at Decanter, Jane made the bold decision to move on. In October, she launched Jane Anson Inside Bordeaux, a subscription based digital platform featuring tasting notes, comprehensive reports, on the ground insights, podcast, and a brilliantly searchable database. Today, I talk to Jane about the business decisions and lessons learned as she builds Inside Bordeaux. Let's get into it. Jane, welcome. Thank you so much for agreeing to be here today on this, our inaugural episode of Uncorked for the Italian Wine podcast. I guess the best place to start with Inside Bordeaux is the elephant in the room. Here we are. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Wine writing is being questioned as a viable profession. You have a seemingly cushy spot after almost twenty years at Decanter, and you decide to go your own way. I'm certain there are people who are asking, what were you thinking? Okay. I think it's a it's a very fair question, and, honestly, one that I asked myself a number of times when I was making the decision of whether or not to hand in my notice and to do this. I mean, one thing actually is fair to say that I was a freelancer. Although I was with them for a very long time and I and I hope I was a a real part of the team, I wasn't on staff. So that does make perhaps a bit of a difference to begin with. But, actually, the the main reason, I feel so grateful for everything that I did with Decanter, and they've been wonderful. And I hope in the future that, you know, we'll still do Decanter World Wine Awards and certain things together. But, honestly, the main reason was I'd got to the point in my career where I felt I really have a great base of knowledge about Bordeaux, and it's an important area. And I could see that there was a gap in the market for this kind of a site. So you look at Burgundy, which is, you know, a similar level of of prestige and global interest, and there are five or six sites which are dedicated purely to Burgundy. And to date, there hasn't been one for Bordeaux, certainly in the English language. And it seemed to me that this was a good time to do it. We're looking more and more at content being specialized that people will pay for. Exactly as you said, a lot of these traditional media are struggling, and it's certainly not gonna be easy to get this off the ground. And I'm not I'm not suggesting it will be, but we are seeing a move towards, you know, we're seeing a move towards paid for content by specialists. You see things like stub substack and the rise of things like that. And and I I could see that there is a a place in the market for a site which really specializes in Bordeaux, which is sold, we shouldn't forget, in a 170 countries worldwide, which is a huge part of the business model of many, many wine merchants around the world and that a lot of wine lovers have in their cellars. Bordeaux is a wine which will age fairly easily at the top end for thirty, forty years. It means people have, you know, are buying and selling these wines. And I'm hoping to be able to provide a place where there's a lot of information about it, not just from me, from other Bordeaux experts as well, which will grow and become a a great resource for people. So we can talk about it rationally right now. But at some point, did you have that moment when you're like, oh, shit. I'm leaving Decatur. What am I doing? Okay. So you're definitely right. On one side, I had a I had a job which when you tell people you're order correspondent for Decanter magazine, pretty much everybody says, okay. How do I get that job? That's the dream job. What are the dream gig, etcetera? And, honestly, I'm hugely, hugely grateful to Decanter for giving me the opportunity, and I hope that I also did a great job for them. I mean, I think over the years, auto has been seen as the, you know, the domain purely of old white men, and it really has has needed, I think, to to kinda connect with wider audience. And I hope that I've been helpful in having a more you know, I'm I'm a woman. That's one thing. I'm a little I was younger when I started, not so much now, but when I started, when I was given the job. But also, I think I communicate about wine in a less formal way, and that's something that I've always liked. I'm a writer. I've been a writer before, and I always care about connecting emotionally with my audience and with, just being myself when I'm talking about wine. And I think that's that had a, you know, had a good response to it. And so I hope it's been a good two way street for decanter as well. And the last couple of years, I think so many of us have stopped and looked at what we're doing and thought, can I do better? Is there a way that I can, you know, grow what I'm doing and keep challenging myself? And if we look over the last couple of years, it also coincided the beginning of lockdown with the launch of my book Inside Bordeaux. So that had been about a three year process of of research. It wasn't with Decanter. It was with, a brilliant publishing, BBR, BBR Press or BB and R Press, who also did Inside Burgundy. And it was just a great team who really took the time to do a an in-depth book with fantastic maps, fantastic, just giving me the freedom to really explore Bordeaux in a way that hadn't been done before because I really looked at the terroir of Bordeaux and, just kind of gave as much equal space to new people who are doing organic biodynamics as well as the classified growths. And I think it really did kind of expand my knowledge of Bordeaux as well, I hope, of the people who are reading it. And so by the end of that, the lockdown happened. So the launch wasn't flying all over the world to be really fabulous in in every country. Instead, it was an awful lot of of Zooms, but it worked really well. It also coincided with sixty seven Palma launching or first of all, with Zooms and then going into the TV. Basically, these things expanded my profile and expanded also my understanding of what content can be. I think one of the things that I loved with sixty seven Palomar was that I was much more in direct contact with the people who were drinking the wines, and I loved it. I've always liked teaching. I I teach at the Ecole du Vin here, and I like being in front of people and make and kind of trying to make people feel excited about wine the way that often it makes me feel excited or frustrated about it when it makes me frustrated. You know, the Bordeaux is a kind of funny system, which can be fascinating and can be hugely annoying at the same time. So just kind of, you know, opening it up and being real about it. So how did your history, your understanding, your experience, your awareness of the complexity, as well as really understanding who that audience is, factor into the site planning and what became inside Bordeaux? By the time that, that I decided to to stop and launch my own site, I knew that I understood my, you know, my subject matter. I I knew that I had a a good kind of handle on on Bordeaux, and I also know how complicated this place is and how much nuance there is and how it isn't just about the huge chateaus, which are wonderful. I love them, of course, but there's so much else that's going on here. And so I had a couple of things that I wanted to do with my site. And it was most importantly, I wanted the database to be simple, usable, fast, and actually do what you want it to do. So I'd had a bit of frustration over really a nu