Ep. 2441 Barbara Fitzgerald interviews Sarah Heller MW | Masterclass US Wine Market

Sarah is a US based master of wine and leading expert on Italian wine, Vineendly International Academy faculty member. She also reviews for Club Ino Lojic, serves as the wine editor for Asia Tadler, also an advisor to Hong Kong's International Culinary Institute. And so the focus of our conversation today is really on the upcoming via course that's gonna be offered at the Naticelli USA in Chicago this October. So our key three takeaways for this episode and what we're excited to dive into with first, a look inside your approach to wine education. Number two, preparing for the Italian wine Ambassador exam. What strategies do you recommend for those that are preparing to take this test? Which is one of the most demanding wine certifications in the world. And then number three, why does it be a program matter beyond the credential? What does it mean personally and professionally to be part of this via network and how does it shape your career and your perspective on Italian wine. So lots of fun stuff to talk about. Welcome to Masterclass US wine market with me Barbara Fitzgerald. In this show, we'll break down the complexities of selling wine in the US by discussing the relevant issues of today with experts from around the globe. Each episode serves up three key insights to help elevate your wineries presence in the US market. So grab a pen and paper, and let's pave the way for your success. In the US. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Masterclass US wine market. Today, I am very excited to welcome Sarah Heller, M. W. To the show. Sarah is a US based master of wine and leading Spert on Italian wine. She's a Venadilly International Academy faculty member since twenty eighteen and one of the first Via Ambassador ambassadors. She also reviews for Club Ino Lojic serves as the wine editor for Asia Tadler and hosts wine masters. Her visual tasting notes and educational videos have reached millions, blending her background in fine art from Yale with deep wine expertise. A night of the order of the star of Italy, Sarah is also an advisor to Hong Kong's international culinary Institute and speaks multiple languages including Italian. So thank you so much for being here with us, Sarah. It's really exciting to have you. Thanks, Barbara. Really happy to be here today. Wonderful. And before we dive into today's discussion, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you came to work in wine? Absolutely. And I have to say joining the faculty of the Italy International Academy feels like a big homecoming in a way because I started out with Italian wine. So unlike many people who began their wine career in the Asian wine market, which is where I was until about three years ago, my point of reference had always been Italian wine. Because I well, I had initially tried to be fair to get into the French culinary sphere initially and, consequently wine sphere, but it was sort of a matter of luck. I was at school and, at college and was studying painting, as you said, and became interested in cooking, took courses at the French Culinary Institute over the weekends. And as a result, sort of swept up in the enthusiasm of the time, wanted to open a restaurant, wanted to learn to be a chef, and tried to convince my parents first to to let me take time off from college and go to the French Color Institute, which they wisely advised against, and instead said I should find a job in a restaurant somewhere. At which point, I started putting out feelers with French restaurants, none of whom expressed the least amount of interest. Ultimately, ended up finding, something in, in Torino, went and was interning there, and my chef happened to be a big wine enthusiast. Took me around the countryside. One of my first visits was the. Right? So you really can't go can't really go uphill from there. No. You can't. Yeah. So, I think through sheer luck, managed to be exposed to some incredible wines very early on. And so Italy sort of became the center of my wine universe. And I have not really moved on since. So from there, went back to college, graduated had planned to start working at a wine imported distributor in New York, where I'd been interning, during my last year, but then had an accident over the summer working at winery, told the story a jillion times, but had an accident As a result, I had to move back to Hong Kong, and it was another stroke of fortune ended up in one of the most dynamic wine markets. I think that the wine world will ever see. And, yeah, as a result, ended up working with all all different kinds of wines, not just Italian wine. And so as I say, when I first when I took the Via course, edition zero in twenty fifteen, it was just a wonderful opportunity to sort of reimburse myself in the world of Italian wine. And then in twenty eighteen, when Steve asked me to come on board with, via two point o, which Henry and I were involved in developing, which is the greatest honor, and has been ever since. Amazing. I love to hear that, you know, kind of all of these fortuitous serendipitous happenings that brought you to where you are because you're also quite accomplished. So you worked really hard for all of those things too. It's not just luck. And excited to have you here today because Yes. You are one of the key faculty members for the Via Course. You were my key faculty member when I did Via in twenty twenty three. And so the focus of our conversation today is really on the upcoming Via Course that's gonna be offered at Vineicelli USA in Chicago this October. So our key three takeaways for this episode and what we're excited to dive into with you, Sarah, are first. What is your a look inside your approach to wine education? So what inspires your teaching style? How do you help students navigate the depth and complexity of Italian wine? Number two, preparing for the Italian wine investor exam? So what strategies or mindset shifts do you recommend for those that are preparing to take this test, which is one of the most demanding wine certifications in the world? And then number three, why does it via program matter? So beyond the credential, what does it mean personally and professionally to be part of this via network, and and how has it shaped your career and your perspective on Italian y? So lots of fun stuff to talk about. Lots to dig into. On my teaching style, originally, when I was kind of figuring out what I was going to be doing post getting the MW. I've always enjoyed education as a sort of collaborative exercise, but I've never necessarily wanted. I think I barely taught WCT. I I did. I did one time. I did a WCT level one as a training session. I can't even really remember the context, except that nobody wanted to be there. It just it just felt like a spectacular shame to spend the afternoon doing something that should be so pleasurable with nobody really wanting to be there. And so I I think following that experience, I promised myself I would never be involved in wine education except for people who were genuinely passionate. About being there, whether they were whether they were from the wine industry or not. There are people I do events, of course, where people are from outside the industry, but everybody wants to be there. Right? They're there. They're there for a good time. I think that's the foundation of everything that I wanna do with Via is that, yes, it's very serious. It's very rigorous, but people are there because they love the wine. Nobody is there because their boss told them they had to be there. Via is not a box ticking exercise, a really important direction that I think has been there from the start is that it shouldn't be something that's easy to acquire. There should be an extra level of dedication required. And maybe that will require for some people sitting the program more than once. We don't, in any way, want those who don't make it the first time to feel like they failed. In fact, I routinely tell people after they've not not passed on the first round that it's the people who stay in the program longest who retain the most. Increasingly, our intention is also for it to be a self study program. More than a taught course in the traditional sense. So increasingly, I see myself as sort of facilitator for this community build program. Right? As I'm sure you're aware, when the middle of redoing our education platform, moving from what was the video, the video platform that was mainly developed at the beginning of the pandemic in response to the fact that we couldn't have live courses and towards a more community driven approach. So relying on the expertise and sort of really in-depth knowledge, firsthand knowledge of our ambassadors and experts to create audio guides that go beyond the course material that maybe you find in unplugged. Yeah. I will say to your comment about people that stay in the course the longest you know, I, am very type a. I was so stressed the whole time we had our in person tastings because I was, you know, trying to study for the exam too. And I I did pass my first time, which I was really grateful for, but honestly, part of me wished like, I had a really good excuse to come back again so that I could take it in with from a different mindset. So it wasn't that I was just like so, like, head down that I could really kind of marinate in all of the amazing wines we get to taste and doing that with you and hearing, you know, how you approach all of these beautiful wines. So kind of along those lines, can I ask how you opt often incorporate your visuals into how you how you talk about wine? So how do your artist sensibilities really shape the way you explain wine or or teach about how to talk about wine? So, as I think I've referred to before, I studied painting before I ever really became a wine person. So my sort of frame of reference has always been thinking about things visually rather than necessarily with words, although I also love writing. And I think wine because of its very kind of sensual sensuous nature, right, we experience it primarily through our least intellectual senses, right, or nose or sense of smell, and our sense of taste and our sense of touch, none of which naturally lend themselves that well to language, which is fundamentally an intellectual exercise. So understanding that in the wine world, we still need to primarily communicate with language. I feel like visuals are a very useful intermediate step for a lot of people to try and really embed things in memory. Right? One of the classic memorization techniques that gen experts will promote is trying to get as many senses involved as possible to really embed a memory and really get those neural pathways solidified. And so just giving people analogies a little bit along the lines of what Artirio Sienza talks about his nastasia. Mhmm. And so, yeah, I I think about things in terms of color. Right. This was, when we were redoing our tasting grid, it was really important for me to get people away out of the weeds, basically not be so fixated on, you know, what exactly, what kind of cherry is this exactly? Kinds of things I'm thinking about when I'm reviewing, but sort of trying to pull back. Right? Where are we? Are we red fruit? Black fruit somewhere in between with white wines? Are we more in a sort of green, white direction or a more yellow, golden, even orange direction? I think starting from these more abstract directions calms us down and helps us sort of think a little bit more intuitively and then get to the language sort of moving from large to small. Yeah. And this is like, I think fascinating and very helpful way that you really balance the complexity of Italian wine with accessibility is like, okay. Yes. These words might be not words that are common, you know, the names might not be commonly part of our language, but let's just take this back to first principles and get a little bit broad with it so that from the broad place we can drill down into the more fine tuned stuff. Here. Yeah. I think also A challenge with language is that the way it's been used for marketing purposes versus those down very particular directions. Right? So almost all Italian white wines for a while were being talked about as having a little bit of herbal character, bitter almond, and some mineral notes. Right? And so so it just becomes sort of a mantra. Right? It it you you forget about the real distinctiveness. And so I wanted to pull back from these sort of cliche descriptions and give people maybe starting from first principles, as you said, would allow people to then get specific in a way that's really accurate and true to what we're tasting rather than just going along with these sort of tired descriptions. Yeah. I remember that you very strongly dislike the descriptor minerality because what does that mean? Something like like iron can have mineral qualities or something like granite, wet stone can have mineral qualities, but these don't show up the same in wine at all. So So what kind of minerality? From your minerality, it's a an overly broad category. It's like saying the wine is fruity. Right? It's not that I disagree that there are mineral qualities in wine, but I think we need to be more specific than when we're talking about it in our course. Yeah. Yeah. Also, the other objection that I've had to it is this idea that there's a direct translation, right, as if the grapes can suck up the the granite or whatever, through their root that somehow expresses itself one to one. Obviously, there's some impact, the chemical composition of the soil, but there's so many intervening factors that I think we've gotta move away from that really simplistic one to one thinking. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the exam itself. I had the pleasure of being around the Via students in Verona last year while they were all taking the course and prepping for the exam. And so I it was like this bird's eye view of my god, everyone is just so stressed for the exam and wants to make sure they're doing the right things, learning the right information. So we know this course has a reputation for being incredibly challenging. What would you say though is the most common misconception options students have going into it? I would say something that has hindered a lot of people who genuinely are, I think Italian wine experts in their field, is that just their personal experience is gonna carry them through the exam. Right? And I think those are the people who have the hardest time, as you know, people who've been working in the industry, twenty, thirty years, they have all of this knowledge. It may not necessarily align with the way that we're teaching the wine today, or They may have very deep experience with a particular region, but not have the breadth that this course requires. And I think a really big challenge for people in that position is to set aside the ego. And I don't mean, like, I don't mean that disrespectfully. Like, you get to take all of your experience with you, but just set it aside and think of this course as something entirely new. I think whether you have thirty years of experience with Italian wine or it's relatively new to you, treating this as if it's new material, those who have the thirty years of experience will have some advantage, but treating it as if it is new material can really open up new ways of thinking about the wine. And I think you get the most out of it. If you're not constantly feeling like you need to prove yourself. Yeah. I will say that also last year, my husband took the course, and he is twenty five years a winemaker has an analogy degree. And even he said, you know, He said, basically, my analogy background didn't help me out that much. He said I thought I'd really have a leg up, and I didn't necessarily because this is such granular information, but also this is an information that is easy to find in any other kind of really learning course, at least the common ones. A lot of people come into this with maybe that experiential learning, but not necessarily the academic rigor that is available for other countries of origin. Yeah. I mean, I think something that I keep referring to, and I hope it doesn't get me into trouble is that we're a little bit trying to borrow the approach of the master of wine. And I remember coming into it and having discussions with other people that this being the master of wine. The there's no one job in the wine industry that would require you to have all of the knowledge you do for that program. And I think the same is very much true here. Right? Your husband's an excellent example. Right? As an as an analogist as a wine maker with that experience, it'll give him I think it would have given him a leg up in certain areas, but not in others, whereas people who maybe have specifically familiarity with one Italian region or Italy, in general, there are people who are, you know, Italian specialist journalists, so therefore have quite a broad knowledge and then maybe understand the country more from a sort of storytelling or historical perspective. They'll have another advantage, but maybe don't have a tasting experience. So it's just we really are trying to create these three hundred and sixty degree Italian wine professionals who understand the history of Italy, the culinary history of Italy, the grape varieties, the region, all of the complexity around insight specificity, whether that's climate, geology, better than anybody out there. So And I think that you're doing a phenomenal job in that. So kudos. But for someone who's preparing for the exam, what would you say? What is most important? And maybe it's not one thing. But is it like or should they be focused on memorization of the grapes? Should they be focused on a specific mindset? Is there a specific method? Like, what's your recommendation? Has a very pragmatic thing. I think something that has been missed by a number of students, and I'm always really sad if we get to the course. People say, oh, I didn't realize this, is unplugged. Our textbook is the foundational text of this course. Right? You need to know that text well. And primarily within that, the opening essay by Atilio, my guide on tasting, I think hopefully should get you a certain way along to practicing tasting, and then the regional entries and the the important grape varieties. So I think that's the must know and some of the lesser known, particularly if they're regionally important, something like tintillo would be a great example. So with that material, I would say That's sort of the diploma level part of this course. You really just need to memorize that stuff. It needs to be solidly in your mind whether that's through making flashcards. I remember quizlet with a was a big part of my study process. Whatever it is, that is the rote memorization that is necessary for this course, and that will feed into the multiple choice exam, which is still a big portion of the exam. And that's essentially because we want that to be the knowledge base that everybody has. As a shared sort of foundation for this course, but all the other parts of the exam build on that. Right? The group video project, right, requires you to go with your group and do some additional research, and often is specific to your market. I, like, we've had. I think when we did the Almaty course, we asked them to talk about their regional cuisine and how it goes with different Italian wines. Right? So we're very much expecting people to bring additional knowledge from their experiences, wine professionals. Into that and the same with the essays. The essays are also places where we give you the opportunity to show off if you're an expert in, I don't know, MGA's in Piamonte. Right? That's your opportunity to show that off. So that is sort of the videos and the essays. The tasting is another area where rote memorization comes into it. Right? You have to have a clear understanding of what each of the wines should taste like based on unplug. Right? So that's where there there's sort of a synergy between the tasting and the theory. But then beyond that, maybe not have tasted every single one of the must know grapes. Ideally, but I know for people from certain markets, that's simply not possible, but at least have tasted representative styles of wine from each sort of broad category of wine. So In the tasting now, we're increasingly trying to structure it around archetypes. Right? So we have the sheer reds, right, that being our classic fine wine red grapes, like nebbiolo, like, Nerelomascaleza, like Chandra. Versus the, quote, unquote, barbaric reds, which are more the sort of northern influenced darker skin, darker, hueed, darker aromatic red grapes, things like La Grayan Ceraldego. Right? That often have sort of more continental genetic material as well. You should at least be familiar with some examples from each of these styles in order to be able to write a reasonable descriptor for something along those lines. Right? Maybe you've never tasted, but you have tasted, right? If you were sort of funneling between those two. If you wrote a descriptor that's appropriate for one of those, I think you'd be in a pretty good place. So we're not necessarily expecting students to have tasted every single one in style out there. That's why we have the tasting workshop. Immediately leading up to the exam. But at least have tasted a broad enough range of representative styles to be in a position to describe them accurately. Yeah. And that the whole sessions the testing sessions that lead up to the exam are so helpful as well because it allows everyone to get calibrated to your palate too since you're grading the exam. So, you know, they have to understand what do you consider, you know, medium acid? What do you consider high acid. And it's so helpful to go through all of that with you and to see, you know, a little bit through your lens how we can understand these grapes as well. Thank you. You make a really good point, Barbara, actually. I mean, beside the fact that it is my palette, I realize there are some perhaps challenges around that. My being the single sort of benchmark, but it is the way that we've come up with to have some consistency in the exam that I am always the one administering the the Italy International Academy Ambassador exams and expert exams. But the other point that I think is really salient there is that Italian wine, something I write about in the intro to unplugged is that I feel like for so long in an international context. It's just been relegated to high acid, high tenant. Right? And so, obviously, our course is taking all of the wines within the context of Italy. Right? So we're calling certain wines relatively low acid. What would be a decent example, RNase. Right? And of course, there's a lot of variation within RNase as well, which is why we try to pick more representative samples, but RNase is a relatively low acidity grape in an Italian context, but is nothing like a Vionier, for instance. Right? It's still there's still a certain minimum expectation of acidity that comes in the Italian context. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you're willing to disclose this. Maybe some trade secrets, but how do you decide which wines end up as part of the blind tasting? Honestly, it's been only the law couple of years that I've been more involved personally in the wine selection. It used to be done more by a committee within Stevie's team. But in recent years, I've tried to work specifically with Valeria who's been incredible with her background, a Disneyologist, and her relationship within the industry. And, obviously, it's a team effort as well. I don't wanna don't wanna not credit anybody. So what we've tried to do is building on each session that we've had, wines that have worked well and have felt really representative and illustrating the points that we want them to illustrate and wines that maybe are a little bit atypical. We tried to cycle out. There are certain wines that are included, I would say, almost more for aspirational purposes than because they're necessarily representative. An example would be Tabarini. I wouldn't say his wine is an average of what's available in the region because it's really a spectacular wine, but as somebody who's a pioneer in the region and very well we're perspective within the region. Right? He was the former president of the consortium. Somebody who's also innovating a lot and really leading the charge where I think Argentina was going. We've made the decision to often use. We don't always use his wine, but we often use his wine in the course I think something that's representative of the direction we want. We want to see San Argentina going and that I think likely it will be going. I think a lot of the producers in that case are very aware of the challenges of being known as Italy's most tannic grape, right, and are trying to work with different techniques to try and create, yes, a very tannic and still characteristics, argentino, but one that has maybe some of the hardest edges filed off. Yeah. My year, we didn't get to taste his wines, but he was the president of the Consurgio at the time, and he came to give us a master class. And I was inspired just by listening to him talk about how he makes wine and was very excited. Now I've had the pleasure of trying them, but Yeah. He's amazing. Yeah. I was actually just inumbria at his winery, and it was, yeah, the people I said it was the most unique winery visit of their entire lives. I think Italy, one of the wonderful things that the opportunities that we have with the flagship edition, and unfortunately, not specifically with our course in Chicago, but at the same time we have all of these producers there for Viniddle USA. So there is some opportunity. Experience this is just the sheer number of really unique special characters we have in the wine in in Italy. It's that combination, that I think is distinctively Italian of being very, very rooted in tradition, but completely unafraid of innovation at the same time. Yeah. You said it so perfectly. I think that's what I love so much about the Italian spirit. Yeah. Well, let's shift our conversation a little bit towards anyone who's maybe on the fence. So, you know, for somebody considering this path, how do you think Via stands apart from other certifications, both in terms of knowledge, but also community? So I wanna be very clear that my intention is not to denigrate any other courses before I before I get into what is I think it comes from what I was talking about at the beginning. The fact that it is sort of growing into what we always wanted it to be, which is a community led and self study based program. It's really a community that's driving forward the knowledge base and right at the cutting edge. Largely thanks well, thanks to several factors, but one being Atidio Shenza and his involvement, And the fact that he is sort of a nexus of so much grapevine research, other research taking place in in the Italian wine sort of academic world that we get access to fresh off the press research. We're always pushing forward, not necessarily trying to ensure that our course is sort of the how to put this. There are things included in the course that we know may be speculative, but we want our students to know about. Right? So we this is why the the question that always bedevils us is the parent, the parents of Sanjay. Right? And I think in a more in a more standard in a more kind of conventional wine education course where they're they're reluctant to include information that maybe hasn't been vetted by, you know, that kind of general community. We're willing to put stuff in the course and make very clear that it's not necessarily been validated by the entire community, but fresh discoveries. We want our students to be our students and our ambassadors and our experts, especially to be people who have access to the freshest information who are completely up to date where we're not still teaching information that was true ten years ago. Obviously, they're exceptions. We we we are we are doing our very best to keep everything as up to date as possible, but we're not able to update every month, for instance. But to the greatest, to the greatest extent possible, we try to make sure that our students have really contemporary information, and that leads back to or sort of is a product of the fact that it is so community led. Right? So we have our ambassadors, our experts who are active in the industry, maybe have expertise in particular areas. We try to win ambassadors or experts published books on specific regions, our community finds out about it very quickly through our social media channels through our WhatsApp community that's very active. So I think the fact that it is so much the product of the hive mind or sort of limited hive mind rather than being an academic product that really needs to be to go through a very lengthy sort of validation process really makes it something very different within the world of wine. Absolutely. I mean, I've been in the wine industry for a long time, and I one of my favorite things about the industry at large is, like, what a beautiful community it is. But this the Via Group specifically is a level really, I've never seen. I don't know if maybe it's like trauma bonding. We've all, like, all gone through this, like, this really rigorous thing together. But it's it's amazing. I think the connectivity and you know, the the conversation, the networking, etcetera that happens from this group of people that all have a similar passion regardless of what sector, specific sector of the industry they're in. Absolutely. And thank you. That that raises another important point is that whenever we're we're thinking about integrating people into the faculty in different ways, the key thing for us has always been people who've gone through the course. Right? You mentioned at the beginning, I went through addition zero, and there was much trauma and much bonding. You know, I think it's really important for people to have an understanding of just how much intensity, how much care goes into both developing this course and studying for this course and certainly setting the exams. Yeah. The level of dedication that I see in the students, every time we do the course is something that keeps me coming back. There's nobody who passes the course and sort of shrugs and there's nobody who doesn't pass the course and sort of shrugs. You know, I mean, the people take a philosophical approach regardless of what happens. Right? Yeah. This is something that people really care about. I don't know anybody who gets into Italian wine casually or sort of does it in passing as I say, as a box ticking exercise. It's really something that you either buy into a hundred percent. There there are a lot of people and this particularly I remember from starting out in the wine industry in Asia who just don't get it out of it. Why? And that's kind of fine. Right? We're not here to sell something generic. This is not just a beverage. Right? It's a cultural product. It's representative something of a human tradition that dates millennia. Right? We're not here to make this simplistic even if we do wanna make it accessible. Yeah. That's a great way to put it. Well, as you mentioned, you were one of the first. You passed the original the inaugural via course, but now you're really a core part of the faculty. So what has it meant to you to grow alongside this program? I I will admit the very first time I heard about the course, the via course, was from a friend in the industry who said, Steve Pim's putting together a course on Italy. You should go do it. And then I found out that there was a huge number of other wine professionals in Asia who'd been invited along to this course. None of us had any idea what it was going to be like. I think there were a number of, MWs, even on the course. I was not yet an MW at the time. Were there MWs or the people who subsequently became MWs? Anyway, regardless, nobody had any real idea what it was going to be. And so the trauma was was arriving at the course and suddenly just being bombarded with this sheer volume of information. And in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. Right? There is so much to be learned about Italy. But at the time, we had sort of thought it was going to be an introductory course that would maybe, you know, sharpen our knowledge about Canti classical and Balpolicello. So I didn't have any great understanding of what the course would be and what it would come to mean when I first did it, to be completely honest. And it took me a couple of years to kind of circle back and reenter the days after that initial experience. But it was speaking to Stevie, an understanding why it was that she felt it was so important that it be so difficult. I had really been coming from a from a different place thinking about my wine people in Asia and how we could make Italy seem more accessible as I as I said before. And I felt like the course at the time was perhaps too advanced for where most of the rest of the world was. Right? I think the North American wine market is very, very familiar with Italy. And the students that we had on the course from those markets were the few who I think were able to get into the spirit of it and pass it in its state at the time. But what I felt was really, really important when I came on as a faculty member was to add the other, sort of, call it two seventy degrees and move away from just focusing on the grapevine genetics, which is really sort of the core of the course initially and fill in all the other sort of beautiful factors. I would say the things that have. Yeah. The cultural components. Yeah. It's a bit more concreteness for people who don't necessarily already love the wine. And give them something to hang on to. So we got there, I think, not by making the course less detailed, but by making it more detailed, but filling in all the information that was necessary to get you from somebody who's just, you know, starting to be interested in Canticlassical and Valcuricella to somebody who cares about the different Malvasia grapes. Right? That's a big hurdle. And learning about the country and its history and its food and all of it's sort of more approachable, albeit detailed factors before you get to the seventeen or eighteen or nineteen Malvasia grapes is really necessary. And that for me has been the part of the work that I love and having having the access to atilio, having the access to the community in general, and all of the information that people, students, ambassadors, experts bring to the table has just has really been life changing. Yeah. That's amazing. And what you've done with with this kind of structure is you provide the opportunity for people, like you said, whether they're very familiar with Italy as a wine country, Italy, just as a cultural place, you're you're giving them this information in context. Because wine in Italy is so contextual. It's not very often that a grape is predominant in a region because, you know, the powers that be said, we're gonna grow this grape. It is so linked to, you know, millennia of history and economics and sociology. And so you get the opportunity with this program to understand all, you know, kind of pull out all of those threads, not just the science ones, not just the art ones, but every single one. Exactly. And that that has been an amazing journey. Another layer of that that's sort of come to the fore over the past couple of years when we've been working with Andrea Nardi, master of wine, who's been just an amazing addition to the course, and I hope we can hold on him has been to bring air. Can anyone hold on to Andrea? For somebody who doesn't know Andrea, he's, like, the ultimate zoomer. Like, Ping, ping, ding. There is amazing contribution other than his sort of Italian heritage and his Italianicity and his contribution of his income, particularly. To our course has been really the winemaking aspect I've wanted to dig into more over the past couple of years. Also, as I've started reviewing more and more for Clavino Lijic, which I started a couple of years ago now, we've tried increasingly for the regions that are probably should certainly should be more familiar to our students really trying to delve in with greater depth to site specificity. And it just sort of so happens that the regions that I review are the kind of classic fine line regions of Italy, and I've really sort of personally tried place, a lot of emphasis on digging into MGAs, UGA, trying to get that additional level of detail into our wine knowledge, because I do think that's an important facet of Italian wine that we expect our ambassadors and especially our experts to have some familiarity with. Yeah. And as you said, I mean, regards to your comment of trying to stay relevant as things change within Italian wine, these things are, you know, the contrade, the MGA's like these are all kind of evolving and becoming more and more important for consumers too. So the people's kind of communicating Italian wine need to be aware of these things. Absolutely. And I mean, we try to take a critical approach as we do with everything where a number of times, and I'm I don't think I'm giving anything too much away in our short essays and videos. We've tried to ask our students to really think critically about the role that this greater site specificity plays. Right? Because on the one hand, there's a huge economic incentive. There is a a sort of, knowledge base incentive, right, in terms of collectors wanting to have a greater understanding of the region. But on the other hand, there's the tradition, which is very much sort of not one of isolating specific sites. And so we want to make sure that our students are not people who just get swept up in things for marketing reasons or for commercial reasons and really are able to be authoritative voices, but the voices of reason within the wine industry and helping the whole industry both on the consumer side, on on the consumer side, on the sales side, on the trade side, but also on the producer side, think about what they're doing, right, whether this is the right direction to be going, whether blending, for example, is still something that should be maintained. To the extent that it's useful. Yeah. Well, I think you have given some really juicy insights in this episode. So thank you so much for taking the time to share all of these things. I hope it's really helpful for anybody that is currently studying for any edition of Via, but definitely for Via Chicago. And we'll link in the show notes if you haven't gotten signed up for that yet, but this has piqued your interest how to do that. But as we start to wind down here on Master Class US wine market, we like to ask our guest three questions that help our listeners better understand the US market since this is US wine market, but also this episode. So just answer in a couple sentences if you can, please. Number one, what is your best tip for mastering the US fine market? I think it's really important to remember how many different markets are in the US fine market. I live in Seattle. Where I have for the past three years, which is definitely not, I would say, a center of the wine industry necessarily in the US context, but there is, I see so much potential for Italian wine. We're starting a chapter of the Caballierde de Chaturfou. Here and the number of people I've met who have an interest in Italian wine and who I see being somewhat underserved by the market just in terms of producer visits and kind of dedicated attention from producers indicates to me that there are any number of these really fertile markets around the country that are not overcrowded yet. Absolutely. I have my own phrase, which is don't fly over the flyover states. So Washington is not exactly a flyover state, you know, that typically refers to the middle of the US, but it's true. We have some really exciting, you know, metropolitan areas in states that might not, you know, come to your mind immediately. Absolutely. It's more a continent than a country as I used to say about China. Exactly. Okay. Number two, what is something you would have told your younger professional self about selling wine in the US? Well, my younger self was very fixated on trying to prove how much I knew. And so it was maybe not listening to people where they were. I remember particularly going into a not not quite a convenience store, but sort of that kind of vibe in New York City run by an older Korean man. And I am half Korean. You would you would have thought I'd I'd be a little bit more specific to this at the time, but I just I just launched straight into the same spiel. I would have given a high level psalm at the restaurant down the street instead of really listening to what he was looking for, and you can always find common brand with people. I should've, you know, I should've played up the Korean thing and and maybe. Or there there's always some way that you can find to connect to people or maybe talked about food pairings, right, and thought about what he might be telling his primarily Korean clientele. They could be having with their kimchi soup or their, or there was a much better way to kind of find common ground instead of trying to convince him of my view of the world right away. I love this advice. Connect with people by listening and finding common ground. Fantastic. Okay. Number three, you're on the road a lot. You just were in Italy for an extended period. You move around with Via. What is your number one travel hack for doing market work? Red lipstick covers all manner of ills. I remember first working in wine traveling with Deborah Myberg, also master of wine. I'm one of the first in Asia, and I remember one time in particular arriving in Italy very late at night and still having to go out and present a sort of acceptable public face. And I said to her, look, if we're wearing bright red lipstick, nobody's gonna notice anything else. Perfect. That's fantastic. Well, Sarah, thank you again so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it. If anyone wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Ideally, over Instagram. So my handle is Sarah Heather, m w. I do. Well, I mean, I'm fine to give out my email address. I'm not the best at responding. It's finally mandatory to email. But it it's wine at sarahheller dot com. If I'm slow to respond to anything that you send over the coming weeks. I apologize profusely. It's because I'm buried under my several hundred notes for well, possibly more than that, for Klebino Lacheek that I need to be into readable shape over the next month or so, but I will do my best to get to any emails, especially with questions about via that people might want to send. That is wonderful. Thank you so much. Well, good luck with all of those notes. I hope I get to see you in Chicago. I know your days will be busy, but thank you again for making the time right now. Thank you. Looking forward to a Barbara. Alright. Take care, Sarah. And that's a wrap for this episode of Master Class US wine market. Thank you so much for joining us If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay up to date with the latest industry trends, remember to like, follow and share our podcast. And if you find value in our conversations, please leave us a review to help others discover the show and grow our community. Stay tuned for new episodes every Monday. Until then.