Ep. 47 Monty Waldin interviews John Baum (The Winemakers Club, London) | Italian Wine Personalities

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. My name is Monty Walden. This is the Italian wine podcast. I'm with John Bourm, who is a wine importer based in London. John, you specialize in Italian wine. Why is that? Why is that the case? Well, it's it's it goes back a few years about how I started to get interested in wine itself. I started off because a friend of my father's was in the wine track for many years. I was interested in perhaps doing some working wine. He offered me a vintage, which turned out to be Montagino. A harvest. Yeah. Harvest. Channel. I spent a few weeks out there. I had a great deal of fun. I got to taste some interesting wines, and really it started there. How old were you? I was twenty. Oh, quite young. Then the next year, I went to Kianti Glasgowco, where I where I started to work with really my wine mentor, which is, Shawna Calaghan. For me to re etch a name. I also worked with the likes of Tom Shrawbrook, a few other producers from around Europe. This was kind of a place where I was able to go out buy lots of rare interesting bottles at this time in the early two thousands. They were quite cheap. We would go home. We would cook dinner. We would drink burrolos. We would drink stuff in the south, in the center, and that's how we all learned about wines. So, I mean, the companies that you own at the moment, what exactly is your structure? I would say I'm quite careful with these things. We have the importing distribution business, which deals. I'm very proud to say with some fantastic restaurants mainly in London. And then we have the bar in Ferringdon, which, works the shop in the day, a good office space for us to do our deliveries, etcetera from. And in the evening, the bar takes over. And recently, we opened a foot as well, which is more of a restaurant idea matching to some extent are the wines with us. Okay. So these these these are all in London. Right? They're all in London. So just going back to, I mean, what we like at school, did you ever think you get into the wine trade union? You're at school? You presumably went to school in the UK, right? I did. I actually think from the age of nineteen, I suppose, I always knew I was gonna be in the winter. I still went to universities, but I I went knowing that when I left, I would be going to the ones. What did you study at university? Religion and field as you Oh, I did this training. I was the same as you. I knew I'd got a divorce in my first venue. Before going to university, knew I'd never used my university degree. It went off to board over as soon as I finished. So you ended up in Italy as soon as you finish it. Right. Yeah. So how good was your Italian then? Wharfle, it didn't have any. How good is it now? Partible some days. It depends how much I use it. See how many glasses I've had here again. So how easy is it dealing, you know, being a being a brick abroad so to speak dealing with, Italian producers and and making them understand what you want as a as a as someone that's gonna sell that wine? And and then how can they communicate with you what they want from you as a business I'm very truthful with our producers. So I I don't hang up with my producers. I go in there, and if I taste a wine, I see the price on the wine, I think it's worth the price. I'm not gonna push a producer down. There's no point in what's their livelihood. Most of our producers make between ten to eight ninety thousand bottles a year, totally dutch. Very small. Yeah. They can't afford to be pushed on price. They're trying to live in like like we are here as well. And how how do I communicate with them? Well, I have decent enough Italian to get by now. And in the early days, I had friends with my group who are also stronger on the language than I So what are your personal favorites in terms of wine stars from between all of Italy or just mainly tuscany? I don't all over Italy. I mean, I'm much fond of traditional methods of wine making that I hand it out to eternity. I've been very happy to see in the last decade that people realizing and changing back to the way things work. I'm not a big fan of using masking, that's a new oak, smaller barrels, situations like this. I, you know, I like to think that Italy is evolving in my making by going back as well. Okay. So what about, I mean, the whole organic, but I don't think it's that important to you, or is it important to your customers? It's important to me. I I'm I'm not really an important who who talks about it very much. I don't believe it's actually done. I believe it's very important, but I don't think it's important to use the soft marketing Chitra I'm pushing ourselves, you know, arguing your wines of quality because they're gonna, like, that just annoys me. I think the wine to speak for itself always, and I think although I am considered in London to be part of a natural wine situation, I am never happy using the term natural wines. I don't think it explains anything. It doesn't mention anything. It doesn't say anything about the wines. So, you know, it's important for me personally because it's it's healthy living. I mean, it's you don't wanna eat food that's been sprayed with chemicals going to your body. Why do you wanna do with wine? It just seems to me sense. Common sense. Our soil is there right now. If we kill it off, it's not there for our kits or the brackets. So what about sort of trends in Italian one at moment here? And then the classic areas like Chianti, which for my money is one of the most underrated blessons in the world in terms of food friendliness. I mean, what are you what are you seeing happening in county? What's exciting there now? And why? I think because county's in a funny position right now, because as you say it's not necessarily as fashionable as at what. So less outside coming in, putting money in buying states, which means in turn there are many estates suddenly up for sale or warehouses up for sale. Space are people to go and make wine and couldn't afford to do it previously. Land has dropped to a lot in price. You know, you find land in crazy places like Moremia being more expensive at Chianti Passicle and you think is why. But, what do I see? Hopefully, we'll be seeing some producers who may have been struggling over a long time to be able to find a true expression themselves because they've had to work for bigger companies, recipe winemakers suddenly actually be able to make something which they believe is an expression of their region of their zone. Think that kind of garage east, what's called the garage east, movement in France is now gonna take off it Italy as well? Well, I hope so. I do hope so. I mean, I I think if if premises are affordable, food is affordable. The premises, you mean, like, a small building to it in which you make wine to. I mean, warehouses, where it costs actually not too bad in a lot of in a lot of areas of cairns. And fruit is is other wine grapes? Yeah. So in terms of the terroir there, I mean, what gets you excited? I mean, like, the tour about these stores like Galestro or schist and things like, why do they make candy so special when you can find those those places and wines from those places? In terms of the texture, the taste, the flavors. Do you mean what's funny if you plant a sangiovese in or else? No. When you go and taste wines, could what what do you love about the sangiovese from that that particular area? Well, as I say, I mean, for me, I'm a classicist. I like elegance in those wines. I don't want massive concentration. I enjoy altitude still. I mean, global warming's occurring, you know, that's so we can go higher and higher up, and there's still arminyards which twenty, thirty years ago, people would not have used because they'd be too green. The white grapes wouldn't ripen. It was too cool, you know. But now you've got seven hundred meter San debates in Gioli, which is beautiful. Six hundred meter stuff in Martacino, suddenly working. This is exciting thing. Things moving forward and then getting more elegance, getting more balance from the wines, not working on just pure concentration, fruit, and oak, and bringing out the expression of the tower. So what about white wines, white Italian wines? Where are you looking there for your for your little niche? For white tea, I was trying to look for raffles, which are perhaps a little less known. And I've always done that with red wine the exception of being Tuscany. So for example, when I started out, I took over the business about nine years ago. It was important to stand out. So one of the ways of doing that was to move away from my sort of safety net of Tuscany and move around. So you ended up going up to various areas, trying to find interesting references and nobody else had any Well, I've been to Piamonte, you're talking about. Well, Piamonte, so I believe she, for example, you know. Did you see what you're doing? It's almost like a crusade to save some of these, forgotten or ignored but magical great varieties like Edward would change. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's a crusade. It's just that to keep my more selfish, actually. For me, wine is continuously intervention. So you always have to find something new, strive to find something different and to try and learn from that well as time goes on. Yeah. That's probably more of the interest for me than actually crusading running out there and spraying these problems into people's faces and forcing them to go on. The great thing about having two bars is that I can do that as well. But does that help you? When when you've obviously brought a wine in and you've got you can actually see somebody drink it or taste it in front of you and they give you feedback. How can that could can that be confusing thing or a helpful thing? It's a nice health. Always helpful. And some people, you break the customers, you you acquire your parents, you learn to trust or understand some way. It also is, it's it's useful for for you as an importer because instead of spending six months on the road trying to sell the wine that somebody might some people might like some people where, you've gotta order it straight away. You get that feedback straight away. And you know if you're on the right track and for doing the right thing. So far, it's been okay. What about Southern Italy? Do you event yourself? Yeah. I do, but I I'm not a massive fan of some of the famous regions. Pulia has, I think, great potential, but I do think they've sort of championed the wrong battle. What you're in in Primitivo or what? Really? Yeah. I think they're going out. It's fine. We're interesting as a great variety. Why? Because it's easier to drink? No. I think there's slightly more complexity in the great variety itself. And in Primitivo, it's people are focusing a lot on the fruit whiteness of it. The rich of it. Making big, heavy ones. Yeah. Yeah. When their grandma seems to have a rusticity to it, it's turning towards it. Like, well, the great old name for us is weird. And I had the same problem slightly earlier. I swear I spend more time. I'm more interested in Ashley in Calabia. The Calabrio is probably the most interesting place in the south. And basilicata's got some very interesting stuff. When you go down to Calabrio, I mean, how obviously it's it's quite a remote So the remote way ends exactly. Yeah. Right. It's a very special last area should we serve. And how? When you go down there, you're a little bit too nervous or you're happy or excited. Waited a good few years to go down there for nervousness, but then, to be honest, when I arrived, I was treated very, very well. And there's a great food culture down there. Fantastic. I mean, it's one of the best I've seen in it. You know, bit of chili in there. It's a lot of fresh seafood and they they look up to a lot of other areas and they, somewhere locate in their own way. And there's great indigenous grape varieties. I mean, predominantly, you're going on the reds, but, I mean, Galliojo is a difficult one. Of course it is that Maliojo on the other side has serious protection, and there's some great people making ones with it as well. Johnbaum from the winemaker's club in London, a much traveled man, looking slightly grizzled as well with your What do you mean? That's that effect on me? Well, you've got yeah. Don't wanna mention champagne. You've got a pop star hairstyle, but, that's great to be great to see you and also, great find out what you're up to with your with your wine bars or what it's lovely. And you can actually, as you say, see people consume what you're bringing in, drink the wine in front of me, and then you get direct feedback. Well, one of the greatest things that important you can ever see is when they sit in a restaurant and they see another table that don't know if drinking their wine. That really is one of my self proceedings. Brilliant. John bound from the winemakers Club and London. Thanks very much for coming in today on the Italian White Podcast. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.