Ep. 1387 Karen MacNeil | Masterclass US Wine Market With Juliana Colangelo

Hey, guys. Check out Italian wine unplugged two point o brought to you by Mama jumbo shrimp, a fully updated second edition, reviewed and revised by an expert panel of certified Italian wine ambassadors from across the globe. The book also includes an addition by professoria Atilushienza. Italy's leading vine geneticist. To pick up a copy today, just head to Amazon dot com or visit us at mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Welcome to Mastercross US Market with me, Juliana Colangelo. This show has been designed to demystify the US market for Italian wineries through interviews of experts in sales and distribution, social media, communications, and so much more. We will quiz each of our esteemed guests at the end of each episode to solidify the lessons that we've learned. To sharpen your pencils, get out your notebooks, and join us each week to learn more about the US market. Hello. Welcome to master class US wine market. Today, I'm thrilled to have the honor to welcome Karen McNeil to the Italian wine podcast. For many of us, Karen does not need any introduction, but Karen is the author of the award winning book, the wine Bible, one of the best selling wine books. The United States with over one million copies sold. The former wife correspondent for the today shown on on NBC Karen was also the host of the PBS series wine fruit and friends with Karen McNeil for which she won an Emmy. Karen is also considered one of America's foremost wine presenters and the cratered editor of wine speed, the leading digital newsletter in the US for fast, authoritative information about wine. You can follow Karen at at Karen McNeil Co on Instagram, and Karen mcneil dot com. Fair enough, and I have had the pleasure of attending some great tastings together here in San Francisco and in the Bay Area, collaborating on virtual tastings, and I'm so excited to have her on the show today. Welcome to Italian White podcast, Karen. Thanks again for being here. It's such a pleasure to be with you, Julian. Thank you. Of course. Well, let's just get right into it because there's so much to cover in just thirty minutes. And I wanna make sure we can learn all about your background and history and then talk a little bit more about what's going on. You know, in current day to educate our our audience from your perspective on on why communications and and how things have changed in in recent years. But let's start from the beginning. You have such an accomplished and impressive background. You've seen nearly every side of the media landscape which is why I'm so excited for this conversation. So tell us a little bit more about the evolution of your career, how you started in writing and specifically ended up in wine writing. First of all, I started out trying to be a writer, and anyone who's ever done that knows that it's It's not instantaneous and it's not easy. So as a young adult, I, at nineteen, had moved to New York City to try and become a writer. And over the next couple of years, collected three hundred and twenty four rejection slips. Which I know. It was a lot of rejection, which I thumb tacked, actually, to the wall of my fifth floor walk up in a not very nice neighborhood in New York. And You know, I at that time, I was writing about everything, you know, politics and women's issues and social issues. And one day I got this, what I thought was this brilliant idea that I should try writing about food because maybe they gave you samples. And, you know, you could I mean, I was on food stamps at the time. I was really poor and, you know, that sort of the epitome of the poor struggling, rider And let and it was true. They did give you samples. And so, my first article, sold to the village voice and of all things it was on butter. I know I got paid thirty dollars, thirty dollars ever. And, you know, I get some butter samples as part of that story. All kinds of butter samples. And I, you know, I went out to the hip nightclub in New York, sat at the bar, ordered a bottle of champagne, which at that time, you could buy for thirty dollars a bottle, and, and drank the whole thing. So because you can't add champagne with food stamps. Too bad. Well, I used camp ice bottles champagne today for close to thirty dollars in a in a night club in New York City. So it's on, like, the good old days. But, you know, I was reading something recently in the economist about, you know, the value of incrementalism you know, of just asking, asking, asking, asking again until you get there. And it sounds like, you know, that's the approach that you followed when, you know, you were breaking into to your career and writing into your city. Yeah. You know what I realized though is that I really wanted to write not just about food, but also about the whole world of gastronomy. And dining behavior and manners and and of course all the great beverages of history and the four great beverages of history are tea, coffee, beer, and wine. Teach yourself about tea, coffee, and beer. But wine is hard to learn about, and wine takes access. And somehow you have to be able to to taste a lot. And, you know, I dwind. I I was drinking like eighty nine cent Volgarian reds, and, one dollar would leave for a milch at the time. So eventually, though, by by great luck, I I was allowed to taste with about five men who were much older than me, but they controlled all of the wine writing in the United States in the 1970s and early 80s. Mhmm. And and they even wrote for magazines that you would think might have a woman, wine writer, like Vogue and good house king. But anyway, I tasted with these men for the next six years or so every every week. And learned an enormous amount from them just from watching the seriousness with which they tasted. Of course, it was my great luck to be invited to these extraordinary tastings because people, you know, wine groups, the the Chianti classico, Consortio, and the real hot producers, and the poor producers flew into New York on a weekly basis to do tastings for Wow. That sounds like a pretty powerful group should be a part of, especially at at that time in in your career. Yeah. It was, you know, they they took a vote, actually, on whether or not they would let me join them in these listings. And the vote was I could, but on the condition I didn't talk, which is unthinkable today for it. It really is. Yeah. That's that's wild to think about. So did you talk? What what happens? No. I I I didn't talk for about six years, and I tasted with them almost every week. But, you know, Juliana, I didn't want to give my opinion. As far as I was concerned, I didn't yet have enough knowledge to have a wine opinion. But I was just going to ask them questions. I am Great. Questions. All the, you know, years later, all those questions became in a way the basis for the wine Bible. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So it turned out okay in the end. Right. So that that silence just created a need for for what you have created in the in the wine Bible and but that is still pretty wild to think about, you know, on the conditions she can't talk with. Did you come to New York with any background in wine, or did it really form through the expiration of writing, the introducer introduction to this tasting group? No. I had I did not have parents who drank wine. I I didn't know anything about wine, except maybe what I read in novels. I But, you know, as everyone who's listening knows, wine has this amazing ability to make you desire it in a way. Sure. And I was drinking really, really inexpensive wine, but I've loved the fact that wine was a way of kind of taking nature into your body. Right? And and you could even if you were drinking, very humble wines, There was something so satisfying about drinking wine. I I just instantaneously loved it. And I'm actually very glad that I started with such humble wines. Years before I tasted a great barolo or a great bordeaux, but I learned my appreciation from, you know, from from that connection that wind has to the earth. I've I've learned from Mia. Yeah. No. That's a a beautiful lens from which to to think about it, you know, nature, but history, geology. It's so many different so many different things. Well, I think we could have an entire episode about your casing group and that experience, but I do wanna get to the the cracks of today's conversation, which is really about wine communications and and you've experienced communicating about wine from the broadcast respect from print, from online, from digital, from so many, from in person presentations and lectures. There's so many different formats. So there's so much insight and knowledge that decided to dive into. With you today. On today's master class are are three takeaways and and the focus of today's episode are gonna be on the biggest differences between why communications today and when you Karen started writing about wine in the nine nineteen seventies. The fundamentals of educating about wine and a virtual digital and print space, since that is so critical to the work that you do. And then also, you know, it is the Italian wine podcast. So the wine rival and Italian wine and would have been of the most popular topics of discussion. So those are a few of the things we're gonna dive into today, and let's get into it. So, you know, for starters, and Karen, you wrote about wine for decades before you created the wine bible for numerous publications, lifestyle like elle, news like USA today and New York Times. What was writing about why, like, back in the seventies and eighties once you started breaking in, and really focusing in on that space in your writing career? Right. Well, at first, it was a much smaller world because, you know, you had to kind of there were maybe five places you had to really know about. You had to know about Bordeaux and Rioja and Port and Kianti Clasico and Piedmont, maybe, and the Mosel in Germany, and Rhine. But as we all know, the world of wine has been explosive in the last thirty years. So the sheer that you're sheer the amount of information you have to know to be a globalist is much bigger. But the other thing I think about is You know, most of the big original books online were written by British authors and but even in the United States, there was a a characteristic of wine communication that kind of it went like this. Here's all the great wine I have tasted, and the great places I've been to, too bad you'll never get to do. You know, I mean, it what it really was like that. It was what I sometimes think of as show off line writing. Right. Let me tell you about all the things I know. Very, visionary style as opposed to intubationals. And I think I as when I was early on when I was writing, I I was lucky to also start a bit in television and radio at the same time. Right. And for me, I immediately sort of turned the binoculars around. And I I thought, you know, it's not so much what I know. It's what does someone want to hear? What would someone find intriguing? What what would someone find really memorable. And so I've always written in a conversational way Right. In a way that really respects the reader or in now, the viewer or the listener. Italian wine podcast, part of the momo jumbo shrimp family. Right. I think that's especially today, but even back then, it's really inspiring to hear that that's the approach you always took. And I wonder if that had something to do with your own experience or sitting in in that that tasting group and and not being allowed to to ask questions, but seeing the need for that more conversational style and more approachable style of of of communicating about wine? Well, it really worked in in the US in particular because in some places, wine is very, you know, classist. You have to be of a certain class to allowed to be in the club, so to speak. But that that doesn't ring right in America. We don't I I don't think Americans really feel comfortable when wine is presented that way. And so the wine Bible became in a sense the first big book that had an American sensibility. And and also the Europeans, and in particular, the British too, they presume a familiarity with European geography that Americans didn't have. I mean, I remember myself thinking, mecon Meursault Montani, like, one of these places. Right. Right. So I, you know, I was really careful to not be insulting to my readers by assuming that, of course, they would know that Siana is south of Florence or or whatever. Right? Right. How would you say that the the wine bible when it was first published was received both, you know, here in the US, but also abroad knowing that you were taking a pretty different approach from the other wine books that were out there, you know, on the market. Well, when my publisher, Peter Workman, the late Peter workman of workman Publishing, who they've always been my publisher. And when He told me that the first wine Bible was published in two thousand and one. And I remember sitting in his office, and he said, were we going to print a thousand copies? And I said, Peter, don't. I don't have a thousand friends. Right? I had it had taken me ten years to write the first edition of the wine Bible, but I All that time, I did not I didn't expect it to sell. I it was my in a sense, my I don't know. My the book I wished I'd had, my gift from my world, but I Mhmm. I thought And, you know, in those, it is still true that the average wine book in the United States sells about eight thousand copies. So to be close to a million copies is is incredible. I I'm still surprised in a way. It's amazing. So ten years writing that first edition. Wow. That's it was it something you were working on very full time or was it more you know, part time as you're working other other jobs, and tell us a little bit about that process of putting together the first edition. Yeah. It was I was not writing full time, but on the other hand, the ability to get information was much slower then. Right now, if you wanna know how many wineries are there in Sicily, you can Google how many wineries are there in Sicily. But back then, You had to have what I call and I still have my golden rolodexes, right, eight giant wheel rolodexes of contacts of people who knew people, who knew people, whole, I mean, you had to be a really good researcher. And Mhmm. And I remember because much of the research, even in the nineties, you did by phone and by fax. Not by the internet. At one point, I had something like forty running feet of legal transpile boxes filled with research. That kind of old style research is almost nonexistent today. In fact, it was very funny a few months ago when I was, we were still well, I guess this was more than a year ago. When we were still putting the finishing touches on the third edition, I said to someone who who works for me, we were talking about a certain law in Europe. And I said, okay. So call the EU and find out. And this young person started laughing. She said call Then you and I said, yes. Call the EU. They have a phone. I'm sure. Yeah. But in Oh, my gosh. You know, that's the way, research used to be done. And Right. I will tell you that I still I still love doing, that kind of research in person. I agree. There's something so nice and tactical about being in person with someone conducting, conducting live interviews firsthand research. It's certainly not the most, maybe, efficient way to to write something in this day and age. I think it's the way in which the, you really learn the information firsthand and truly take it all in. So true. And, you know, the other thing that I should say here is and I think Italy in part taught me this is when I was just beginning, and I I was really young when I was beginning, but Wine books were very stripped down. They were like here are these facts about this wine region. Right. But as as anyone who's been to Italy knows, wine exists in this larger context of history and art and fruit and culture. And it's all that stuff that makes wine come alive. And so the wine Bible really started, you know, it has I don't know what feels like a thousand side boxes on every fascinating aspect of those kinds of things that I think help you to really experience and see a a wine region. And of course Right. Italy has, you know, it has an abundance of all of that, that kind of riches of culture. Oh, absolutely. And I think when, you know, it's even for wine professionals that I've spoken with, they look at Italy as a daunting region to learn because of the sheer number of grapes and the regions and each region having its own laws as it relates to DOC and DOCG and and various things. So talk to us a little bit about your approach to tackling a region like Italy, when you wrote the first edition of the wine bible? Well, if you start with the discipline are, right? If you start with the rules and regulation, you will put your reader to sleep so Great point. I mean, you cannot start there. It's important to know those things, but I think that's that's the part that you tell at the end. It's important to start with what we what people know and love which is flavor and how wine fits into maybe the larger flavors of a place and a region. And often you can get into there through food. I I was writing something in wine speed, my digital newsletter last week, and I said about a certain wine, the first line was this wine makes me wish I had an Italian grandmother. What was the wine? I have I have to I have to scoring up with two Italian grandmothers. Yes. It was Masolino from Piedmont, Masolino, Neviolo. Oh, beautiful. Yes. And I thought and it was true. You know, I suppose I could've tried to tell, you know, the legal definition between Nebula Longen pay and and the fact that it wasn't exactly a barolo, but made from the same grape variety on and on and on. Right. But you know, I had several people wrote in saying, I have an Italian grandmother, and here's what she would make with. Right. That was my first reaction. I mean, you connect with someone more emotionally, right, when you put it in the context of their family and their heritage. That's so such a good point. Yeah. And I think the other thing, the other very important message to a reader is if you think about how daunting Italy is, right? It's on the one hand, just even climatologically. Right? You can stand on Italian soil and look at North Africa, or you can stand on Italian soil and look at the Alps. I mean, it's a really interesting, diverse a country that only became a country in eighteen sixty one, I think. So when when you have something like that, you have to somehow imply to the reader that they should not get overwhelmed. Don't get overwhelmed. Right. About wine first as a delicious experience. And here are all the delicious experiences you could have mean, you could have hundreds of them. We're gonna start with ten of them. Here you go. Great. Because one of the great gifts of Italy, especially recently, has been the saving of indigenous varieties. I mean, the elite is a wealth of indigenous varieties. And if you present that as an exciting challenge, right, a mountain of deliciousness, start anywhere and but just get in and taste all this stuff, then it's a little you know, it's I think it's flavor is something that that everybody understands. And for me, that's always been the first road in to a place. Yeah. I think that's such a good point to remember for all this in the wine industry because I think we forget to ask that question oftentimes because we taste wine quote unquote professionally, but to just well, what does it taste like? I feel like that's not a question that comes up in your average wine industry conversation, but when I talk to friends that aren't in the wine industry, that is typically one of the first things they ask me. So what what does it taste like? And you know, that it's it's so so right and so important that we have to start with with flavor, and what it's going to impart on on the drinker to to try to teach someone about about wine. So I love that you've always taken that approach and you know, Italy, especially to me as a leg up in terms of the cuisine and the heritage being very popular among Americans. Right? Absolutely true. And, you know, of course, for many, years in the whole century in the last century, the dominant ethnic restaurants in the United States were Italian restaurants. I mean, that was just in the nineteen hundreds. A challenged occasionally, maybe by, the number of Chinese restaurants. But lady, Italy had a great advantage in America because of that because people understood some of the basics of Italian food, and wine was just one you know, one more baby step right away from the food. So Right. You know, I also think, this conversation is important for producers because You know, COVID, of course, accelerated the way we talk about wine. And and all of a sudden, you know, we were a lot of people, a lot of journalists myself included began doing live virtual tastings where we would invite winemakers to, to to come on, have these new tastings. And, you know, a lot of winemakers want to they wanna tell you what they did to make the wine, you know, first we cold macerated it, and then we, and we left it on its skins, and then we opened an oak. And that does not work well, on a visual medium, like, family, boom. People wanna quickly get to well, you can tell me that later, but first, like, why should I drink this? What is it like? Very What should I be drinking it with? How should I be drinking it? You know, what should I be how should I be enjoying this? As well, I feel like it was a common question coming up from consumers in in that in the virtual space. Absolutely. I agree. And, you know, I see I I'm sympathetic with with winemakers who wanna tell you how they made the wine rather than what it tastes like because wine is genuinely hard to describe. And for that reason, there are no real wine television shows in the United States. There are a whole lot of cooking shows. Wine is is difficult to describe, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't give it the old college try. We we just Right. Of course. Yeah. Exactly. And I know that you launched a great series virtually, over the course of the pandemic, taste with Karen Live. Of course, you've got lots of appliance that you do virtual tastings with as well as in person tastings. So tell us a little bit about, you know, the evolution and creation of that series, how it's going now, what what you're seeing kind of trending and and out there in those tastings. Yes. Well, like, I suppose, like, everyone in the US who works in the journalism field when twenty twenty rolled around and it was and we all now had the words pandemic and COVID became, dominant words in the language. You know, we all thought, oh, I I can remember in March, February, in March of that year thinking Well, this will be over by summer. Right? And and so, yes, business, lots of events went away, lots of in person events, of course, went away. When summer rolled around, and COVID did show no signs of going away. I I realized it was time to dust off the old television and and start doing these live virtual tastings. So we began, doing them quite often. We've I think we did something like two hundred in the first year and Wow. Four hundred in the second year. It was great because I think winemakers were getting the hang of it too, and they realized that one of the best things for a winery is that you can reach a lot of people quite economically Absolutely. Yeah. And if you have a good interviewer, someone who who isn't going to, I don't know, they're not going to challenge you in a negative way, they're gonna keep coaxing out of you, all of the the great information you know and and their own excitement for the wine matches the winemakers, then viewers get caught up in that that excitement too. And it is like television. I've really loved that. And we even though, you know, the United States has certainly been open quote unquote now for a long time, for our business, we do a lot of video. We still do a lot of live virtual tastings. With winemakers around the world. And it's exciting. You're to stay. Yeah. I think it's one of the silver linings of the pandemic that, you know, we took as a wine industry, digital communications, took a a big leap forward, right, in in our industry and and brought some really efficient, but also great ways to connect wine to to consumers and to connect people from around the world. So I can feel like that's that's something that we we definitely see as being here to stay. And you know that as a group, I think Italian Vintners are terrific because they, the Italians and the Australians both know how to have fun on telling us. That's for sure. Absolutely. Very fun. Yeah. So I asked to come to the close of this episode, and I wish we had more time, but Steve keeps us on a on a time limit here on the Italian wine podcast. I do wanna do our quiz, and I love your quizzes in, Y Speed every Friday. I look forward to challenging myself with them every week. So, Karen, we're gonna turn the tables and and do a quick quiz to you. Three questions, and and please try to answer in one or two sentences or less. So question number one, what are the biggest differences between wide communications today? When when you started writing about wine in the nineteen seventies? I think, producers have to be more well diversified in understanding how video in particular works in an overall communication strategy, in terms of how they tell their story. Absolutely. And video is is king these days, and I think is here to say. Number two, what are the fundamentals of educating about wine in a virtual and digital space to consumers? Yeah. I think there, the story matters so much. The recipe behind the wine matters much less than the emotional story behind why you mister producer or misproducer. What is it that love about wine. Why why should we fall in love with your wine? What was, you know, what were all of your challenges? How did you how did you come to create this wine? I think producers have to really think through their story and why their story is compelling. Absolutely. Storytelling is so fundamental. Alright. And number three, what is the most popular and celebrated Italian wine, whether it's a region, a style, a grape in the wine bible. Oh my goodness. Sorry to ask you to choose favorites, but Yes. It's so it is so hard. Right the year before COVID started, I, spent some time in Piedmont right at the time of White truffles. And I felt like, okay, god. You can take me now. Right? The food, the the truffles, the tagliaroni, the Fazing. The bros were just so phenomenal. But that said, I came back and started. It just so happened that It was time to start on the Chianti classico chapter and I thought, okay. Yes, Chianti classico. How how fabulous a wine is is that? I mean, it's just a so much phenomenal kiss three. Absolutely. So I think both Piedmont and Tuscany. Although, man, the wines of Sicily, Mount Edna, are so good right now. I know. It's hard to pick one. That was a tough question. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us today, on Master Class US wine market on the Italian wine podcast. How can our listeners connect with you, reach you, engage with you? We are on all platforms. As Karen, hashtag Karen Mackneal Co, c o. You can also take a look at wind speed dot com, our free, digital newsletter. We have about forty thousand subscribers. We'd like you to be a part of them. And, and then Karen mcneil dot com. You can see what we're up to there as well. Fantastic. Well, thank you again, Karen. We so appreciate your time today and for being here with us. My pleasure, Julianna. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned each week for new episodes of Master Class US wine market with me, Julianna, Colangelo. And remember if you enjoyed today's show, hit the like and follow buttons wherever you get your podcasts.