Ep. 1604 Mark Guillaudeu | Masterclass US Wine Market With Juliana Colangelo

Since two thousand and seventeen, the Italian wine podcast has exploded. Recently hitting six million listens support us by buying a copy of Italian wine unplugged two point o or making a small donation. In return, we'll give you the chance to nominate a guest and even win lunch with Steve Kim and Professor Atilio Shenza. Find out more at Italian One podcast dot com. Welcome to Mastercost 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. So sharpen your principles, get out your notebooks, and join us each week to learn more about the US market. Hello. Welcome to Masterclass US wine market. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Mark Wheeler to the Italian wine podcast. A recently dubbed Master Psalm with the Court of Master Psalms, Mark managed the wine and cocktail programs at comey in Oakland for five years earning accolades for both programs. All the while, Mark has also been studying in the master of wine program and even earned the title of best sommelier USA in June of twenty twenty two. Mark has taught the French wine scholar, Italian wine scholar, and Spanish wine scholar programs as well as the wine business management program at the San Francisco School Wine School. Today, Marcus is Salmoyais at the prestigious Riggly mansion in Phoenix. Welcome to the show, Mark. It's so great to have you here. Thank you for having me. Course and congratulations again to one of our newest master Salmoyais in the USA. So incredible, so exciting. It's a it's a long, a long time coming. It's finally done. It sure is. Just for our listeners, Mark and I know each other from from the Bay Area where Mark ran a a study group and tasting group for for many years. So we've all seen him studying firsthand and This is so incredibly well deserved, and we're all so excited for you. Thank you. Anyway, Mark, today, we're gonna talk, exactly about that, about wine education. But before we dive into today's discussion, tell us a little bit about your journey from a degree in Buddhist studies to now becoming, you know, a master sommelier and hopefully soon a master of wine. Sure. I study religion in college. Double major religious studies, minor in philosophy and logic. I wanted to work in interreligious dialogue. So coming from a Catholic background, I went to pursue my masters in Buddhist studies. Again, focusing, as kind of a foundation for, interreligious dialogue studying on cooperative logic. I was really fascinated by the juxtaposition of Thomas Aquinas, who integrated the, you know, so called pagan fathers like Aristotle and Socrates into the Catholic church and Jat senkapa doing more or less the same thing in the Gallic tradition in Buddhism at More or less the same time. Qantas was the late thirteenth century to talk about was the mid fourteenth century, and both of them chose to use debate as the primary form of pedagogy for their respective orders that they founded going on down through the ages. And that to me was just too kind of fascinating a topic to to give up. I ultimately decided not to pursue my PhD. And so I've been studying logic for a couple of years and a lot of kinda highfalutin not really boots on the ground sort of issues. So when I got out of grad school, I felt a little bit lost, and my parents had always had a garden when I was growing up And so I thought a great way to kind of reconnect would be to plant a garden. When stuff started being ready to harvest at the garden, I realized that I was, you know, twenty four and a half and didn't know how to cook. So I started learning how to cook eventually that led to a role at a local, kind of all sustainable, all organic concept called Lens Guard Market in DC. I their their opening beverage director walked out fifteen minutes, but he literally snuck out the back door, fifteen minutes before closed on opening day. And I was fresh from grad school reading, like, four to six books a week every week for two years. And I thought to myself, you know what, I bet I can learn this fast enough that I can be useful. And so I I signed up for a WSTT two class. My wine anniversary is May nineteenth twenty thirteen. And I found over the next, really half a decade that every dollar that I spent in wine education, or tasting groups or whatever it was would typically come back to me five times over in about Wow. Fourteen to eighteen months. And I rode that curve for a number of years Mhmm. Culminating in positions in the Bay Area, like my role at Comey, where that curve kind of finally leveled out. But it it the wine education treated me very, very well. I decided, I wanted to be, you know, as like a twenty four year old kid. Right? I decided I wanted to be the best, whatever that meant. And so I did my research and saw there was this master's only a thing, and there was this master of wine thing. And at the time, Master Cicerone as well, And I said, well, you know, if there's whatever, two hundred and fifty master songs, this was ten years ago, there's, you know, three hundred and fifty masters of wine. There's only four people that are both, and there's only thirteen master sister owned. So I'm gonna get all three. Indicious. Well, you know, like I said, if you're gonna do a thing, do it do it all the way, I think. Yeah. And I guess you had the training of the studying from your degrees and and that discipline. Right? Absolutely. So I I bounced around. I did w set two Then w set three, then my intro, then started my w set diploma, and my certified, finished my w set diploma, then did my advanced course, then my advanced sum, then stage one and w, then started sitting masters through the court and then stage two MW. And then, ultimately, in the summer of twenty twenty two due to various pandemic rescheduling, if I had gone through with it, I would have been the first person in history to sit the master sommelier and master of wine examinations back to back in the same week in different cities on different sides of the country. And I decided to not do that, which Sounds like torture. Which necessitated taking a little bit of time off from the MW program, which I'm looking forward to to kind of reentering and starting next year. And then hopefully with, you know, a little bit more time under my belt to focus. And I know we'll talk about this later about how those domains are different, but hopefully with a little bit more time Right. To focus on the NW domains. Hopefully, that'll be some enjoyable years. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I would say Mark since two thousand thirteen when he's head out to to be the best and be, you know, a master. You've you've certainly come quite a a long way in accomplishing that, and it's it's pretty incredible everything you've done. So we're excited to talk to you in this episode specifically about the role of wine education in the US wine market. As you mentioned, you've gone through so many of the different education programs. You're one of the few people in the US who's actually done all of the Wyinscholar Build programs, studied in NW and gone through the full Court of Master Somiers. As well as completed all w sets including Zake. So you've really had firsthand knowledge of how all of these schools of thought and then schools of studying work from both the scholar, and the teacher perspective, which is incredible. So our three key takeaways for today's master class and what we're excited to learn from you, Mark, in this episode are number one, what are some of the key differences between the Court of Master Psalms and master of wine and w program and other schools and certifications in wine education. Number two, what is the importance of wine education today, specifically in the US market? And finally, number three, how has wine education, you know, evolved in the US market? So for starters, let's talk about the court master so many days in the MW program. Those are the two most prominent, I would say, and most internationally recognized as well. Us a little bit about what each title represents. I think it's probably best to to dig a little bit into the history of the organizations. I think that's a pretty quick cipher. So the master of wine was originally founded as a British trade organization. Under the auspices of the, the Society of Vintners, which is a organization that goes back hundreds of years through Royal charter to thirteen forty something. Really as a way of, post World War two you know, the British trade was suffering a bit, not just because of all the economic issues associated with the damage of World War two, the loss of young men, but also the Sonyate profession as a whole was kind of going down. Right? We've just seen some some real paradigm shifts in the world of wine. Not just in in political boundaries being reacheron, but also like in nineteen forty two, I think it's useful to remember that most wine was still sold in barrel, rather than bottle. So The role of this only it had changed, you had this gap in World War two, and they really wanted to find a way to bring the industry together and sort of start elevating people at a high level. So the first exams are nineteen fifty three. The Institute of Masters of Wine is nineteen fifty five. Over the subsequent decade, they kind of come to realize that while what they study, which I had I think it was Mary Margaret Mcameck, as an MW, said very, very well that the most succinct way to think about it is that the the MW is how and why, and the CMS with who and what and when. Okay. So how and why an MW and who, what, and when in the court of master some days? Exactly. And then they just kind of realized that I think very early on. And because they wanted to help the hospitality industry, help the service industry, and also realize that their program as great as it was was fundamentally not suited for people that are working in restaurants five nights a week. Right? They're a they're a trade organization. They're dealing with retailers, with importers, with distributors. And so they proctored the very first master summary exams in, I believe, it was nineteen sixty nine, I think, flash forward a decade later. Mhmm. And they found the organization, the Court of master sommeliers in Europe, again, originally British. Nineteen seventy seven, grown from there, of course, Okay. And the, I guess, the the kind of broad way that I think about it is, you know, for me, one thing that I love to teach people is remember that, you know, it's really easy when you're studying wine to get sucked into facts and appelations and what's the minimum residual sugar there. Right. What's the minimum time and hope here? And fundamentally, what wine really is is its communities of people, right, without people actually handling these things, then you don't have anything in a bottle, you don't have anything in a barrel. And all of these rules and legislations and appilations, what they really are is their conversations amongst communities of people. Some of them very tight knit. Right? If you look at a community like Despe de Oc, you're dealing with maybe thirty producers. Right? Those guys all probably know another one way or another. Many of them are probably even related to each other. Some way, if you go far and like that. But that community of Chatea Mayor not only has to interact with the community that is Sancerre, a much larger appalachian just up the river, They also have to interact in some way through the market with the community that is Napavax. Right. And so for the CMS, I think it's a lot more focused on those people. And because it is also in restaurants, focused on how you take care of people, how you represent these these people who are represented by these bottles. Right. Whereas the MW is for me very much more of a a process driven, a little bit more abstract, but but you you really need to dig in to understand standing the complete role of cause and effect from the dirt all the way through to the finished product on shelf or the cork being pulled in a restaurant. There's a lot of complementarity and a lot of overlap. I found studying and pursuing both that the point really where it was no longer feasible to meaningfully study for both was stage two in the MW. Okay. At that point, I found that the type of information I needed in terms of international wine law distribution models you know, major major court purveyors and brands and how the different lines function, learning about, you know, oxygen transfer rates and how that applies, you know, everything, the history of it in New Zealand through Australia to how that even has impacts on sake production. Right? Right. That was the point where it was like, oh, as a sum, I understand the styles of wine. And because I've been studying through notes at this whole time, I understand well enough, Viticulture and Vitification. But the the NW exams divide into five parts or the theoretical exam is anyway. You've got a paper on Viticulture, everything that happens until you get grapes to the winery door, a paper on vinification, everything that happens from winery door until bottling. A paper on, they call it handling of wine, but it's basically trade. Everything that happens from when a court goes into the bottle to when that bottle and how that bottle gets to its end consumer. Then they have a a paper as well on tournaments. Sorry about that. That's okay. Yeah. I mean, from from the outside perspective, and I've studied through, W set up to to level three. So nowhere near as as far as you, but I have had some exposure to that program. I've also spoken to some other MWs. There's really a lot more business theoretical research involved in the MW, whereas, like you said, with the the Court of Messer Sono Yves, it's about understanding the regions, the wines, from around the world to properly represent those, specifically in a restaurant setting as it's designed for. And, you know, I think as humans, we look in all parts of life. We look for things that help us understand the world. So we look for ways to break down things and understand information. And I think so much of wine education for both programs does come down to that as well. How do we create systems of thought processes that allow us, you know, to understand such a dense and complex topic. And that's often how I think about wine education as well. But Mark, I'd love to get your perspective since you've gone through both of the programs. You've worked in restaurants as well. What how do you think both titles are used in the field? Like, in the market, specifically in the US, like, for a master, Tom versus an M. W. How are they marketing themselves or utilizing those titles once they have achieve those credentials. I think it's not possible to answer that question without talking about the the Solmier documentary because of the two credentials, you had one that suddenly burst into popular consciousness through a very well made that may or may not have aged well based on subsequent events. We'll just leave it at that. And so all of a sudden, everybody had this image where it was all well, kind of like the the answer to the rock star chef. You know, like, we got our iron chef in the late nineties became popular. We had Gordon Ramsey, we had, you know, bar rescue and all of these other TV shows just kind of saturating the public with what it's like to be in restaurants or, a largely fictionalized version of restaurants. And and the the sound documentary was kind of the pendulum swinging. Right? Where it's like, well, it's been fifteen years that we've been watching people put things on plates and watching people have dirty walk ins or whatever else. Isn't there a little bit more to this. Right? And I think it's useful to note that a lot of those programs were really filmed from a back of house perspective. I I don't recall ever seeing any of them where front of house employees really from that era, look particularly spectacular. And so I think that the the public was maybe ready to get a glimpse of the other side. Meanwhile, the MWs have always been a little bit more pragmatic. Right. You know, so my example here is is very often you look at master sommelier's and a master sommelier might be the general manager of a restaurant. They might be the corporate beverage director for a restaurant group. And they travel around the country. They train people. They lead staff education. They fly in for a wine dinner here. They lead a group of clients on a trip over there. You know, people that make the selections of what wines you have available on most major airlines. The vast majority of those are Master Solis. Even if if you just kind of look at that perspective of what people are drinking when they're in transit from coast to coast is chosen by master Sonier's. Meanwhile, like, the person in charge of the bottling plant at Gallo is an M. My original, W Set diploma instructor Carolyn Herman is an MW, and she, at the time, was in the TTP department for label enforcement. Right? Like, making certain that when somebody puts something on a label, it's actually accurate. Right? There are MS's that run estates. People, I know there's MS's that run Estates in Bordeaux. You know, people kind of MS adjacent, like the Lynn Proctor, right, have wineries in Napa. Carleton McCoy, you know, tight. Exactly. Yep. What? MWs more often end up running distribution. They run import books. I find them more often on that kind of nuts and bolts side of things. There's a huge the the IMW even put on a tasting of wines where the entire theme of the tasting was wines made by M. W. Wow. Right? It is a is an incredibly common thing for an M. W or a winemaker, a winemaker to seek to distinguish themselves by coming an M. W or an M. W through their passion that leads to them being an M. W. Choosing to go on to make wine. That makes sense? Yeah. Absolutely. So it's more of just, like, it's different perspectives, I think, on on the slim thing. As the MWs, I think, more often have this desire to get their hands dirty in the nuts and bolts of making the thing, Whereas the MS's very often have the desire to get their hands dirty in the absolute polish and refinement of serving the thing. Right? The to me, the master's only a is fundamentally around this beautiful moment of service. Around someone else where, you know, one thing that I've said for a long time is is our art is about curation. Right? We should on some level be invisible in the guest interaction because what we're really doing is we're there as an avatar, a representative of the winemaker, and the community of people, and that however many centuries it may or may not be of history that led to that juice in that bottle. And we're trying to match that one way or another to a moment and a mood of another person. Mhmm. And our skill there is that it's best, most shown when it is most invisible to the guest. Does that make sense? Yeah. It does. And I also think about this, I mean, the floor of a restaurant as more of a it's a performance in a way. I mean, you've to think on your feet interact with the guests. Like you said, be that avatar, like that expression for the wine and everything that went into that bottle as seamlessly as as possible and really use all the knowledge that you you've gained in your in your studies in real time and on your feet, whereas with, you know, maybe the NW title and people that take that course, and apply their skills and knowledge in, like you said earlier, maybe more I'm gonna say practical, but a more nine to five position, maybe we might say, or some more traditional roles or some other aspects of the industry. So I think that's a really helpful way to think about it. Wind to wine business forum. Everything you need to get ahead in the world of wine, supersize your business network. Share business ideas with the biggest voices in the industry. Join us in Verona on November thirteen to fourteen twenty twenty three. Tickets available now at point blind dot net. Let's talk a little bit about evolution of both of these. You know, we had the first MW exam. You mentioned nineteen fifty three, and then the first, master Salmier examination nineteen sixty nine, both in the k. You know, obviously, the world has changed quite a bit since mid century, mid twentieth century. So talk to us a little bit about how these programs have been adapted and also how have they evolved for the US market specifically as they came, over the pond. Sure. I mean, I think that the the largest the the most significant, probably pre COVID anyway, adaptation of both of them was the moment where each organization really ceased to be a British organization. I mean, because of the British empire and that legacy, there's even been a recent book published about more or less how the British empire established the global wine trade, a really, really good read. And The first non British MW wasn't until nineteen eighty eight, right, a full thirty five years after the founding. Wow. The first, non British master Somier was back in nineteen seventy three. Master Somier named Eddie Osterland, who sadly just passed away very recently. I believe it was last week. But the moment where the master Solmier's really begin to be a part of American culture is Fred Dame passing all three parts his first try, the first person ever to do so in nineteen eighty four. And he came back and was kind of like, you know, and this is somewhat recounted in the sound doctrine, and he was more like, okay. Is that it? Like, what do I do now? And so his idea was to get other people involved. And a lot of the real key figures of late eighties, nineties, wine culture in America were that first generation that was more or less recruited by Fred. Right? Your Larry Stones, your Evan Gold's team, even, you know, to an extent, people kind of elsewhere in their circle. Right? You trace the lineage and you have Larry Stone to Rajpart, Emily Wines, who very recently was the chairman of the board. Right? Like, this is a really kind of key period. Right. And, you know, the Americans went after everything like they do with a great deal of gusto. And so now we have two hundred and seventy five two hundred seventy four, global members of the Court of Master Sonillas after Master is left back away. And a hundred and seventy, hundred hundred sixty nine. Sorry. I keep on having to update that count. A hundred sixty nine of them are And so, you know, even to this day, right, that's an organization that begins as British and grows out of another organization that begins as British is now really geographically anyway the locusts of the organization. We outnumber the non American master so many days by what is that? One point six to one, one point seven to one, which is a pretty pretty impressive feat. Yeah. Absolutely. I'd say so. In terms of adaptation to the US market, I think that that's also a good historical moment to look at. Right? You've got Robert Parker coming up in nineteen eighty two, especially, and then subsequently throughout the eighties. Like, this is the real decade when the locust, the global balance shifted from England to the US. When the US became the foremost wine importer in the world. I think was at some point in the late eighties or early nineties. And so in a way, you know, talking about how organizations change, you know, the master sommeliers have really grown and influenced over the last ten years, but I think it's it's worth noting that that the American market started driving how wine was sold and then eventually made worldwide going back to, again, that kind of period in the eighties. Now how have they been adapting lately? I mean, the MWs are really And and what I think is a really fascinating kind of parallel. Right? So I just mentioned two hundred seventy four total MS's rope wide, a hundred and sixty nine of them are American. Meanwhile, currently, we have about four hundred and fourteen MWs worldwide, forty five. Wow. So, yeah, much different. Type of ratio there. Absolutely. So the NW is a lot more inter a lot more international and global of a program. Yes. And also, I mean, to that point, because I I think that that is baked into what they were made to do. Right? Like, the MW was built to serve the British trade. I remember I don't know if it's still there, but the the tag line on my w set diploma textbooks was shaping the wine professional, if I remember right, which is this very, like, British, like, We have the answer, we will impose it upon the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will be better for it, kind of perspective. Right. And I guess that just hasn't you know, I think that there was so much international interest in the MW program versus the CMS because the MWs really drive a global perspective online. You know, the the CMS I've said as well for a long time, we focus really truly on the market segment that the MWs would call fine line, which is about two percent of production worldwide. And I think if you look at the way that that that boundary is drawn, it's something like an average price of over seven dollars US a bottle, which gives you an idea of of how low prices wine sells for in most of the world. You know, in the end of the program, I've been blinded on canned Rosay Muscat from Australia. And I've been blinded on yellowtail chardonnay, and I've been blinded on class growth bordeaux with age. And I've been blinded on dom Perignon with age. Right. They really, really want to cover the entirety of wine at every price point and every market. I mean, there's a recent exam that I read where they had, they had put Velonia Frank, which is probably the most unfamiliar style in the States. It's a an iconic cabernet franc style from Southern Hungary, and that was a wining the exam. Right? They really Wow. They're all of these people that were elsewhere in the world. That's where you're stretching it. Yeah. Uh-huh. I mean, it's Ford Forest, Europe. It is the local cabernet region. More or less. Right? Right. But for all these people like the Brockovitch's of the world in New Zealand and and everywhere else, this program offered you if you were in winemaking or if you were in the wine trade, this was the way that you really could get your global education. Learn the nuts and bolts of how to do anything in the wine industry outside of a restaurant. And I think that's part of why, especially in in parts of the world where restaurant culture is still very much seen as, I think, a little bit more of a servant class. Unfortunately still this day. I know that in Europe, in many markets, Solier's makes anywhere from two thirds to half of what they typically would in the US. Also, you know, social welfare and everything else plays a role in that where they have anyway, that's a different conversation. And so I think that there was a lot more impetus to push that more academic and abstract side internationally, and people didn't wanna work in restaurants. It's also less, I think. That makes a lot of sense. I think it's less highly viewed, you know, like, master Sonye in the United States for a long time, at least for the last decade, it was very much kind of a rock star position, right, like a master chef or an engine chef or whatever. Right. Mhmm. And a master Sonye in Europe, I've always thought was viewed a little bit more like most other masters, like a master carpenter or a master baker. And I think you see this, for example, in France, where you have the Mayor, the best craftsman of France, and they have it for wagon makers and they have it for people who make clothes and they have it for pastry. And, of course, they have a sommelier. But it's lumped into craftsmanship to handy work effectively, if that makes sense. And I think that's just a a very fundamentally different view on the profession and what it means to be masterful than it is in the states where it kind of due to a group of people and the publicity around the movie kind of ascended into this almost celebrity status. Totally. Yeah. It seems like in a way the the Master Psalm title has evolved in the US to be a figurehead for the wine industry in a sense, like a wine celebrity and the MW has evolved to become a title that can be applied to a number of different professions, whether it's by making distribution, education, sales, you know, so many so many different things. And that's how I've seen the the roles kind of evolve in my own experience in terms of the MSs and MWs I've interacted with in the in the US. Yep. So, you know, Mark just getting down. So now, you know, we talk a lot about the next generation. It's hard to have a conversation about the state of the wine industry today without talking about next gen, who's drinking wine? How are we getting young people drinking wine? So as a wine educator yourself, how are we getting younger people into the classroom to study wine? What are what are the trends of things you're observing when you're teaching about wine to this next generation of US wine professionals? I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on right now that is both exciting and worrisome. Right? I think everybody's read the headlines that I mean, number one, we're seeing stuff like, US Department of Health changing the wording around their alcohol recommendations. Right? The total number of drinks per week was recently dropped. They also changed the way that they phrase it. It was pointed out in the recent editorial that was a clear shift. I think in the nineteen sixties or seventies when they talked about first limiting tobacco and then tobacco being a part of life, but not recommended too much. And then at a certain point, they shifted language and started framing tobacco as just a fundamental threat to health. And it was pointed out that the recent language really adopts that that shift that they made in tobacco, but now applies it to alcohol, where it seems like the the future perspective of our government is going to be. Law calls are a thing that you can do, but it's bad for you. Right. Which is It's scary. I mean, it's it's it's not encouraging. I believe there's ample evidence that it's also not true. But at the same time, right, we see that there are younger people are drinking less and less wine than ever before, and yet market values are relatively stable. So they're trading up. They're drinking better wine, just less of it, which is going to be a huge, just huge shift in the industry and what kinds of market plans and what kinds of wineries and brands can survive and how they survive. But also, we're at this moment where for the first time, there was enough of a break between the generations in drinking culture. That the new generation goes in almost like a blank slate. Right? We we have a really useful conversation and the topic around hybrid varieties and their use in wine. And how what generations ago with a pure French perspective, what's considered to be a completely abominable flavor is now recognized as a different flavor. Right? Like, these are not wines that taste bad. They're wines that taste different. But when you have people that never had the connotation that different was bad, then you find them drinking all kinds of stuff, right, coferments are coming back. Pekat is coming back. All of these ancillary categories that were kind of rooted out, really, especially, I think, postvaloxera. All of these categories are making a comeback because people are open to flavors that they never been open before. Yeah. I just got a email for my the tasting group I'm a part of, for Monday that the theme is Kopher Men. So, I mean, there there you go. It's it's definitely and I'm in in the Bay Area. So more likely to see that here than maybe other parts of the country, but still, like you said, I mean, that these different styles that haven't been as mainstream before are are definitely starting to become more and more popular. Right. And so as an educator, I think that people have They come in with humor preconceptions and a lot more just over the years that I have been teaching, at least in a more professional capacity started teaching about five years ago. I'd been teaching through the tasting group that you mentioned before that. But there is a point where I noticed that a lot of the people that were younger and still coming to wine classes asked a lot more questions, whereas I I had any number of people in my classes who maybe they had a job in biotech or they had just retired from software. And they were taking wine education to learn what the best things were for them to enjoy in the time that they had left and possibly to build a great seller, whether that was, you know, to leave as a legacy or whatever. And that's a very there's a lot of preconceived notions good and bad baked into pursuing wine education with that intent. Right. Whereas a lot of the young people that were coming in were coming in because they wanted to drink better when they were out and about wanted to know more so they they could drink better and be more informed with what they were doing, which I think is it's just a, again, it's a fundamentally different perspective. Mhmm. And I saw more and more of that as time went on. Right? Like, all of a sudden, it's like all of the guardrails around topics like Brett or mousiness. It winds not just white red and rose anymore. It's orange and amber, and there's all of these other things. It's like all the guardrails came down seemingly all at once over, like, a five or six year period. And now we're standing in this vast open plain of style. I mean, that gets into a different issue. Right? But at exactly that moment, then you have a lot of things that lead people to not trust people that might have experience to kind of give them some perspective. I don't know. I don't wanna be super pessimistic, but it's it's it's an interesting time where things that have been considered to be technical flaws for hundreds of years are suddenly pursued as as a particular flavor. Right. There's not as many standard. I mean, the standards are are changing too in terms of what is being put into a bottle and sold. Exactly. And the consumer preferences are adapting accordingly, and we've seen that a lot through the natural wine movement. I mean, I went to a tasting in April, and one of the wines that was poured for me I couldn't believe it was being bundled in solar. So, you know, as technically incredibly flawed, but also for me, the flavor profile was undrinkable. But here, they were boring this wine to to people in the room that were enjoying it. So it's who that just wasn't my preference. I guess we can we can look at it that way Right. And say it is someone else's preference, but, I imagine as more of a classically trained educator, their is gonna be some need to adapt how we're teaching about the category as those styles become more ubiquitous and and more mainstream. Yeah. And we're seeing more diversity of flavor and and the the paradigms that people have to think and talk about wine, even down to the words that we use, are all in this period of of really incredible flux, and it's gonna be pretty pretty fun to see how it all shakes out. Definitely. Definitely. Well, Mark, we're coming to the end of our time. I mean, I feel like we could talk for several more hours, but, at least for this episode, maybe we'll have to do a part two because there's definitely a few things I wanted to ask you that we didn't get a chance to dive into. But before we end the episode, we have our rapid fire quiz where we ask our guests three questions that will help our listeners better understand the US market. So question number one, and please try to answer in one sentence or so. What is your number one tip for mastering the US wine market? Understand your point of differentiation. You have to have some kind of a unique proposition for the client that you're trying to sell the wine to. In an era where more and more wines are organic or sustainable or biodynamic or native yeast or unfind or unfiltered or whatever else. There needs to be something that you understand. That makes your wine special, unique, and different because otherwise you're just competing on price, and that's a surefire way to lose. If not now, then later. Absolutely. That's really great advice. Question number two, what is something you would have told your younger wine professional self? About selling wine or about wine in the US market? I'll speak here to restaurants, and that would be remember that you're selling a moment, not just juice, mood, feeling, occasion. These are as important. If not more important, than grape variety and vintage when you're interacting with a guest. I like that a lot. Yeah. Absolutely. It's coming back to what you said earlier too. One is about people. And finally, number three, we all travel a lot in this world, and I know you've been bouncing around quite a bit from Cicily and other places this fall alone. So what is your favorite travel hack when you're out in the market and and working? I think it's really important for your health to understand sleep and how it works. So for me, melatonin to offset jet lag is key. GABA is key to make you get better quality sleep magnesium. Right? There are a handful of supplements that on the back end before you go to bed will really, really help you adapt a lot faster and help you get better rest. I always find if I travel too much, I get sick because my sleep cycle is off. And so being able to combat that very deliberately, I think, is really, really important. And the other thing too that's that's kinda tied into the sleep is as painful as it is. If you are gonna be in a market for more than two or three days, always sleep with the windows open because the best way that you're gonna be able to adapt is with that natural sunlight. Oh, I never heard that one. I like that one. Sleep with the windows open. Okay. Great. It's not necessarily the windows, but the the blinds. Right? So in the morning, you get woken up full sunlight rather than I was gonna say that my fear had to do in the wintertime, but okay. The Blinds. Alright. I like that one. Great. Well, thank you, Mark, so much for being here today. How can our listeners connect with you? You can find me probably the Best way in right now. I'm on Instagram at and this is my slightly embarrassing many years old, Instagram name, but I am at d c Samuri. That's s o m m u r a I. That is probably the the most surefire way to find me. Great. Well, we love a little word play. I learned at some point that the root, for the word samurai comes from the verb that means to serve, and I felt like that was a pretty good play for Somoyais as well. Yeah. Of course less glamorous is that Somoyais comes from the root word meaning beast of burden, but you know, you pick your battles. Absolutely. That's her next that's her next episode. We'll dive into the etymology more. Thanks, Mark. It was great to have you here. You as well. Cheers. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned each week for new episodes of Masterclass US wine market with me, Juliana Colangelo. I remember if you enjoyed today's show, hit the like and follow buttons wherever you get your podcasts.