Ep. 155 Monty Waldin interviews Ole Udsen (Estrup & Udsen Vin Aps) | Italian Wine Personalities

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast. My name is Montewood, and my guest today. Is Olay Utsun, as I call him? Yeah. Say that again? Olutsun. Okay. Ole was born in Greenland, which means he is on Danish nationality. And you've just started a wine company called. Espo O'utsun Veen. So that's, a presumably a partnership between you and somebody else. Yeah. A guy called Yong Aspo, who's been in the wine business, working for others for thirteen years, and we're now doing this in in partnership. How long have you been involved in wine? Is this a new thing? So in terms of being involved in wine, I've I've written about wine for twenty five years, particularly Italian wine and with the special emphasis on on Southern Italian wine, but apart from that. I've never actually dealt commercially in wine, whereas Young, my my associate has been dealing commercially in wine for thirteen years. So when you say twenty five years, following particularly Southern Italy, you're working in the in the energy business before, I think. Yeah. So I've I've been an executive in the oil and gas industry for, for many years, I started in the business, or in the industry for, you know, about thirty years ago, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and for most recently, we're downsizing very significantly. There was a package there that, that we signed a deal on, and I exited and how I'm doing this. With great joys, I have a great smile on your face. It's quite nice isn't this to change career. You know, and I don't know how long they'll keep me doing this podcast, but every podcast, I think that's gonna be my last one. So just take a resiliency. So Southern Italy, you have also passion for Frederick the second. I mean, why the hell is Monty asking Olay about Frederick the second? Who was he? And why was he so important for Southern Italy? So Frederick was second was not just important for Southern Italy, but particularly important for Southern Italy. He was holy Roman emperor, basically from, well, from about eleven ninety four until about twelve fifty. And and he was a a person with a singular individual impact on the history of Europe. Essentially gathered together what had been smashed a part of his father's empire, but apart from that, instituted a reign of great enlightenment and and and and and and fantastic achievement. I mean, So the zero, for instance, was introduced, to Europe by fibonacci, but it was introduced in common usage by Fred. The second to the zero, the zero whose administration actually started using it. But apart from that, he was in constant communication with, learned people from the Arabic countries and so on. There would quite likely not have been a renaissance without, Frederick the second. And why? Because he sowed the seeds of all of that. Now his court was the first court where they wrote in, normal Italian rather than Greek or, Latin? He had an enormous influence on the language. So everyone thinks it was Dante and and and and the divine comedy and so on. Who came about three hundred later? Yeah. Well, yeah. Two two hundred years ago. Those were the guys who started it at Frederick, the second court. He was, he was excommunicated by the Catholic church three times, taken back in, when when he did stuff. He was king of Jerusalem He was a lover of everything Arabic. His, lifeguard was Arabic. He moved the Arabs from Sicily to Pulia to Lucera in order to protect them, and and and he used them as his lifeguards forever, he toured the world, basically, the the the European world, his world, with an entourage, of a harem and, animals, and many, many interesting things. He he was absolutely larger than life, but also had a lot impacting impact on the history of Europe. So he will, a man with the social conscience, a sense of justice as well. He was, but in a very strange way in sort of a a very, unemotional way. So he did an experiment, for instance, at one point, to find out whether the learner people who were discussing whether Latin or Greek was the original language of god. So he took two children and isolated them and had no one speak to them for years. No one ever spoke to them. And what came out of it was gibberish, of course, and they died fairly soon, anyway, I mean, after a few years because they they simply, as human beings, could not take the fact that they were not, socially engaged. That they couldn't communicate with anybody. They could they could. So what about his, in terms of architecture, in terms of, his designer fortresses, which are very important in those days when there were a lot of marauding bands of soldiers, etcetera. So so he constructed fortresses along the coast of, of Southern Italy in particular because the Saracens were very, very active at the time. That is more a marked feature what is left now of, of the aragonese came after him, but but he started that. At the same time, he constructed some very, very interesting, buildings, which were not necessarily fortresses like the, the very mysterious castel de Monte in, in, in, in Pullia. He had an impact on architecture. He had an impact on, poetry. He had an impact on language on mathematics, on, on how to govern, a country. He had an impact on removing power from the popes, and and and the fact that legitimacy could only come from the popes. He started the the rebelling against that that was brought to its full extent basically, rather than being ruled by a far off plaintiff. That that that was brought to its full extent basically during the renaissance and and in the period after that. So he laid the foundations for that in your view. Very much so. Did this idea of free thought He was a free thinker very much, and mocked, you know, popular faith and so on, whenever he could. So he was kind of, he was kind of like, a powerful intellectual. He was kind of, we might say it a little bit, so not trendy, but, avant garde pushing boundaries and rebelling, but in a very logical way, in a humanistic way very much. Very much. Is that what makes it, you know, you I just I I get that from you when I first met you. Yeah. You are somebody that engages with everybody Yeah. That you're a fantastic communicator, and I would, you know, I'm I'm seeing tasting, you give all your knowledge away about the wines that we were tasting down in southern Italy, and I picked up so much information from you. And for me, you were like a humanist, so I can see why you absolutely love Freda at the second. There's a long history of humanism in my in my family, in the past part of my family was were the first people or among the first people who were married outside of church in a in a in a town hall. The lady was actually a priest's daughter, so it's a huge scandal. And and since then, we've we've essentially been human and and and and non denominational and and and so on. So there's that aspect, and and and it may make me, emphasize, you know, the humanist aspects of Frederick the second quite a lot. Do you think we need more humanism in our current societies? All arguments that are going on about city things like religion and and all these things that really we should not be arguing as bigger, bigger fish to fry? Absolutely. Humanism is suffering at this point in time, and and, and, my heart bleeds for the current situation I have to say in in in in in in current, not just European, but world affairs. You know, people people's intolerance towards others because they're different intolerance and and and and and willingness to the willingness to embrace absolutist, ideologies and that goes for all sides and and it's it's a dreadful situation. Yeah. So my my it's only my view counts and your views don't count. So I'm I'm stronger. I'm better than you. I'm stronger than you, and I don't want you living on my passion. And and with current technology, you can rile up people very easily, and and and you can, go make them go to each their polls rather than meet in middle and so on. So, yeah, humanism, I think, is suffering, and and we need a renaissance of humanism. So where does wine fit into your worldview? And in terms of the company that you're you've co founded, and, where are you gonna be looking to buy your wine from and why? That was quite a lot of questions. It was, but you're a clever guy. You can you can decipher my mum of a jumbo. Yeah. So where does wine fit in in terms of good life and and and and humanism and and brotherhood among people and so on. It does very much. So, I mean, whoever has sat together with a person and and had a glass of wine with that person and had a decent discussion is better for it, and it moves the world forward. I just came by a shop window today in fact, which said the Italian equivalent of whoever does not drink wine has something to hide, which is an old Italian sea, but beautiful, I think. Right. And what are your sort of favorite grape varieties in a nutshell and wine? And what are you gonna focus on for your own oil company? So the import company is actually quite widely focus. We we want to, we want to, feature the exciting wines that are being put out today, throughout the world with a huge emphasis on, on, terrace recognizability. What about native grapes, things like that? So very much grapes. For me, that's Tarara, as well and very much native grapes. We're not so much into the, you know, mix it all together to to make it fit some sort of, focus group or anything like that. That's that's not what we're going for. So in terms of the Danish market, eighty percent of the wine is sold in supermarkets, and and and they can have that for themselves. I mean, that that's that's not a an interesting market, but then the rest, the twenty percent being sold essentially by, a bewildering variety of very, very many people and companies, large and small and so on. We have one thousand seven hundred registered imports of wine in Denmark. And we're a a a country of five and a half million people. Wow. So we've got just about everything. Except the wines that, my my associate, Yawn, and I, looking for. They're not on the market and they're not at this point in time. And frankly, we find that they are among the most interesting ones on the world scene today. Good. So you're you're sort of looking at a niche within a niche in a small country. You could say that. Yes. And, I have every confidence in you knowing you and how you I think one of the great advantages that you will have, you have many advantages, but you have a fantastic ability to talk to wine producers on their own terms to get inside their heads in a good way, in a way that they will trust you and, which is so important if you're a wine producer. You don't just wanna get paid. You wanna work with people that you trust and who know where you're coming from. And you you clearly do. And vice versa. I have. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. And, if all else fails, you can just crack open a bottle of wine and talk about Frederick at the second. Absolutely. Olay, I just wanna say thanks, we could have talked for hours and I wanna get feedback. Yeah. No. We want I I love history, but I'm not, I know that was a bit unusual for people listening. But if you don't know some of the backstory about history and what Ollie was saying about that the whole situation in the Mediterranean several hundred years ago, into, you know, people traveling and fighting and winning and losing and great varieties, the spread of grape varieties was absolutely linked to what was going on politically with, you know, as I always said, the popes and the emperors, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So it really is worth thinking about that kind of thing. It's a little bit of a backstory to why X grape tastes as it does because trial and error, it landed somewhere and it's stuck. Absolutely. Thanks, Olay. You're a superstar. Thank you, Marty. You are the superstar. Thanks. I'm just a side show. Hey. Well, thanks, Eddie. Great stuff. Thank you. Brilliant. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.