Ep. 172 Chris Scott (The UK Wine Show Podcast)on podcasting | Monty Interviews Other Wine Podcasters

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast. My name is Monty Walden. My guest today is Podcaster extraordinaire, Chris Scott. Chris Welcome. Hi, Montey. How are you? It's the first time you've ever been called extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah. It's the first time I've been interviewed for a podcast. You're joking. No. No. No. No. I do all the interviewing, normally, and not the, Does your wife not interview you sometimes? No. No. We just do the news together. The news. Yeah. Right. Well, come on to that. Now listen, you have many strings to your bow. Yep. Yep. And the last time I saw you, I seemed to remember we talked about podcasts because you interviewed me. That was about three, four years ago. Yeah. About that. And you did give me some tips, didn't you? Probably. You've made, well, you've got that house in the Cayman Islands now. Thanks to me. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The multiple houses in New York, you know. So it's good. You know, I'm still so I still have to sweep the loose here at the, basically, you know, just to just to get my podcast. Just meet your boss, Stevie, Kim, and she's she's Streless. Oh, yes. Yeah. She was saying, you know, he does what he's told when he's told. Yeah. I have to bother. I get fired him on the street. Now, so you have the world's, longest running wine podcast. So just gives it Longest continuous wine podcast. Yeah. Right. Go on. Just tell us a bit about that. So I I can't remember the year I started, actually. It was around two thousand and three or two thousand and four or five, something like that. So you one of the, yeah, one of the earliest podcasts. One of the earliest podcasts. Yeah. So podcasting had just started out, and I thought, oh, I'm electrical engineer. I like this sort of stuff. My my wife's told me I had a face for radio, so I was going wrong. Yeah. So I thought, you know what? I'm getting into this. Because my buzz is really about learning. And, I'd done my WCT qualifications, and I'd stopped learning. And I was like, how do I how do I get to learn by and the easiest way of getting to learn was to, interview people who know lots about stuff. So I, I decided I would start podcasting and just talk to people about wine. So you're killing two birds with one stone. Two birds with one stone. So where are you from originally with that accent? You're from Australia, aren't you? I'm as much from Australia as you are from Sardinia. No, I'm a Kiwi, Kiwi from New Zealand, and I'm proud of that. I've got some family in Australia, so I spend a bit of time in Ozi. Mister, missus Scott, is she from New Zealand as well? No. She's English, which is why I live in London now. So, we had a choice living in New Zealand or London, and, she won the bet. So when you started your podcast, which is obviously one of the most lucrative things on the planet, but she was she thrilled by that. Oh, you know, mortgages, kids, that kind of thing. She was a little bit most of the stuff, when we start something new, I do a lot of the new product development in our business. And, to be honest, don't tell Jane this, but most of the stuff, she's like always a little bit, oh, this is not good. This is not good. This is not good, and bit negative. And then after a while, she gets behind it and she's like, oh, this is brilliant. So yeah, she wasn't she's never a hundred percent sure about new stuff, but then once we get into it, she either tells me it's wrong. We have to stop it or or she gets on board. Right. So you do a podcast. And what about the wine educational aspect? Because that has really taken off in general wine education. And you've been a big part of that, combining audio and you just teach people direct as well, don't you? Yeah. So we do. Our business actually started out as a wine tasting company. We were the first company that we're aware of that was willing to go to people's homes and do tastings with them, which is great. And we've been we did that for a while and then we've done corporate work. We started running our own wine appreciation courses. How did you get into people's homes? I mean, that's quite an not an invasive thing to do, but how did you actually sell that concept to members of the public? Do you start by doing it with friends? Friends of friends. So how did you advertise? Yeah. We started well, so we started out with doing it with friends. They're the worst tastings you'll ever do is with your mates because they just give you a stick. If people don't know you, they're a little bit more respectful, whereas your friends and family are terrible. Really? But stick about what about you being too whiny or Oh, just whatever. They're they're they're more likely to give you a hard time than than That's just joshing that, isn't it? Yeah. A little bit. A little bit. When you're nervousness, your first three or four tastings, you get really, you know, it can be quite hard. So we did that, but to be honest, our business couldn't have really existed before internet because Google and the ability to find you on the internet was key to being able to move into people's homes because the income from a tasting in someone's home isn't enough to really justify Arabia or TV advertising. So you need to be able to reach an audience in a relatively cheap way. And the, search engines are the way to do that. She did very little advertising, but word got round that you were kind of, you and your wife and sort of fun tastings at home. Yeah. Entertainment, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I always think it's, you know, people won't pay for education, you know. You you talk to students, go to university, and they will scream blue murder about paying university fees. But then they'll drink twice the university fees and pee it against the wall and and not not even think anything about it. So people don't pay for education if they can help it, but they will pay for entertainment. If you can merge the two together and give them a really good time, but at the same time, they come away with something really solid they know. And that's really the the sweet spot for us, and that's what we try and do. So we look for the people who run our events with us because we're good team about twenty people now throughout the UK. We look for people with great personalities that can really engage, but also entertain. To like you, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you are you're larger than life character. Yeah. You got a lot of energy about you. You're very good communicator. You're fine. The kind of person that, you know, I'd like to learn from you. You got that energy. You're not some boring old wine snobbed, boring on about Bordeaux. Well, I think that's your new world background that helps that with that exuberance or not. I don't know. I I, to be honest, I often class myself as an introvert, who's an idiot then. Oh, that's take it. Finally. No. No. No. No. Because in a in a group of ten or twenty people, I'm I'm I can be quite quiet, but put me in front of a hundred people. I'm really quite bubbly. Yeah. I don't I don't really understand why When you do theater at school and things like No. No. I'm a literal engineer, mate. That's why I was hitting the book studying. So what about the corporate side? Does that develop in quite strongly? And how does that work? Is that very different when you present a tasting to friends in a in a house and a private house or a event. Is it a bit more starchie sort of smart suits? No. Or are they looking to let their hair down as well? Yeah. Looking to let their hair down. Yeah. We we really, especially the corporates, you know, it it's about fun for them. You know, they want to learn something or some often they want to learn something, but often they want to have a bit of fun and tasting nice wines and learn something. So it's about getting the balance right. And I think, you know, you gotta get that balance right if you wanna have a really, really a fun business. You know, there are people who run very serious tastings, and that's great, but that's not really my scene. So you're not turning up with bottles of first growth board you're turning up a sort of not fairly normal bottles, or are you doing some high end tastings as well? We do a range. And we do a range. It just depends what the client's budget is and what they want. For me, it it doesn't bother me if it's a, you know, we don't normally go in the UK anyway. Ten pounds is for me is about the sweet spot for a wine that's got some interesting attributes. Tastes pretty good, nice and reliable. You know, so we normally start around that price point and go up, but we don't, you know, we don't normally do first growth bordeaux. Although we have in the past, it just depends what the budget is. So do you get asked for an Italian only wine tasting or wine event? We have done Italian only tastings in the past. In fact, we used to do, we used to have a tasting that we sold in as an Italian tasting. So what was the mix in that one then roughly? Well, the way we work is we're more I'm a big man on climate. So I think that climate is the main driver of style of wine. Think about it, climate drives the great varieties in growing a region, and therefore, and also drives the style of wine that comes from that. So I'm very much looking at going through Italy from north to south, looking at how the climate changes and how that reflects in the style of the wines that get produced. It's quite an interesting take though, isn't it? I mean, I could see your logic behind that. Everyone did Ted wild about old soil, macro climate, major climate. Yeah. But people don't Yeah. Can't understand that words. If you give them a warm climate wine with, higher alcohols or more extraction of tannins or something like that from, you know, the southern end. That was actually somebody having tannins extracted from their teeth. They've been drinking a lot of, nebbiolo and brunello over the last couple of days. They're doing very well, apparently, the doctors tell us. Yeah. So yeah. Back to your point about climate. So so if you can understand, you know, the how city changes and how you in a hotter climate, you can. If you want to extract more tannins and color and things like that, then people can understand that. But you start talking about micro climates and all, you know, you know, this limestone soil is slightly different from this gravel based soil because it's cooler and therefore it makes a slight difference. You know, that's a little bit too much insight based for the general public. You know, for you and me, we love that sort of stuff. We are standard, you know, we can I can look at a a vineyard soil and go, okay, that means this, and that has effect on the climate because of this and all this? Most people don't care. They just wanna have a bit of fun, learn something. They can take away. That's practical. We give a really dirty lady as this is a family chef. Yeah. Yeah. Now we give a daddy Blagger's guide on how to buy it, but it bottle wine by tasting it. You know, you can taste the bottle of wine, looking at the length, and things like that. You can actually get a rough idea on the price of the wine. And people love that, whereas if I was to go on about long limestone, versus clay, they really wouldn't give a they wouldn't care. They they they switches them off. Yeah. Yeah. It does. And that's for the general public, you know, for the wine gigs. Great. But for you and me, for the general public, nah, they're not interested. At a taster when people come to any of your tasters or have one in their home. So you're giving them some material to take away like print offs or anything like that? No. No. No. What we do, they get, we have a PDF, two page sheet that we have. You email them. Yep. No. No. If want it, we'll give them Oh, that's a vertical one. Okay. Yeah. But to be honest, we used to give it out to them, but now most people just take a photo of it. So, and it's it's really good. On one side, it's got just all the common grape varieties, the aromas, and the climatic ranges they're growing. And the flavors that you get from those climatic ranges if you think about a a shabbley, you're gonna get sort of an apple y flavor, maybe get into lemons, get into burgundy, into more stone fruits, to get into southern France, you're gonna get into more tropical fruits. And when people start to see, oh, climate has that and changes in acidity in alcohol, they can really grasp it. So our sheets are all about really basic stuff like that. So you also do a lot of work with the wine and spirit education trust. Yep. Members of the wine trade, maybe we'll be working in shops or in the restaurant industry. And in the general public as well who are really engaged. Yeah. Really taking off. Isn't it? So where do you fit in that? What do you what do you offer them? Okay. So we do two thing. Or three things, really. We started out running courses, w c, level one, two, and three. And we run them for the public on set days and and trade and we also run some during the week for mainly for the trade, usually on Mondays. But we changed tack about a year and a half ago and reclassified ourselves personally as a WSD service provider, which what does that mean? Well, it means that Instead of just being running courses, we wanna produce materials and educational is the stuff that people can use anywhere in the world. So the first big product we launched was our WST Level three questions because when I learned to study for exams, one of the things I learnt was do lots and lots of examples of questions. And there really wasn't a really good database of questions. WST had some, but they expected the different lecturers to provide their own questions. So we produced five hundred questions of multi choice and short answer questions that they can do in mark themselves, and we sell them to people all over the world now for about twenty quid a pop, and it just sells. Is it like a book or something? No. No. Do it online. Right. So so basically you have the question, you know, what is the main grape in Poiac, for example? And on page four, then on page three hundred and twenty, you find the answer? No. No. No. No. We just have lists of questions, multi choice questions, and then divide it up. So if you're doing the course, you might read chapter four, and there'll be a set of questions on chapter four. And then you do the next set of questions or chapter five blah blah blah. The problem is the exam isn't like that, that the exam looks at questions from chapter four and then asks, compares wines from chapter four to chapter twelve and all this sort of thing. So we have questions that are designed to assist you as you're doing the course, and then we have more exam questions at the end where they really range over the entire course, and they've been really popular. So we So who does the fact check it on that? Is that you? Oh, I did all the work on that. That took me forever. I mean, there's a reason people don't do it is because it's so much work. And you really, really, really need it's a lot of work. And every time they change the book, it's weeks of work. Has anybody come back to Chris on question number four hundred and seventy six? Yeah. No. There is. Wrong. Yeah. Yeah. No. That happens. I mean, I've done a lot of work to do it, and my students, we give them to my students, and I tell them, you know, you find a mistake, you get a bowl of wine. I was gonna say they must get something. They must get something back. Yeah. Yeah. And then And you gotta kick up the bum. Yeah. And the first time we I said that to them, it cost me a bit of money. But after that, it got less and less and less. And now, you know, we get the odd mistake here and there, but out of five hundred questions, it's the best database of questions you'll ever it. So we've done that for the level three. So give us to give us a a a question on Italy. I know it's difficult for you to think of one off the top of the of off the top of your head. Is it like what is the main grape in Swate? No. No. It wouldn't be like that. It it might be sort of a deep red, powerful wine, high alcohols and canons is it Swave? Is it Castaleesi? Is it is it? Or is it a valpolicella Rapasso? I'm gonna say valachylla. Was that? I'm joking. Liannege. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, because, like, to be honest, I know you're an Italian podcast, but some people, you you see Swave and people won't know if it's White Reed or Rosa. Yeah. Together. People never work in a wine shop, people pick it up and say, is that a red wine or a white wine? Yeah. Yeah. Not not because they're stupid just because they don't know. It's like me if I walk into a furniture shop. Is that tea or oak? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Most when you name a wine by a region, it doesn't give an side. Well, soave isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? No. It's not. It's a region. It's a really That's fine. That's ten pounds. Shane, if you're listing this, I want this. I want an ounce of yours. Sabala wine, mate. He's done it on air. Actually, we'll give you a discount on air here. Yeah, yeah, fact checking. You gotta check it. Alright. So we did that. We've just we're just about to release a new podcast. Well, one of the things that, is the tasting exam is quite tricky. You know, people have never been if, you know, if you've never had your taste buds, a set list. People really worry about that. So we've produced a series of material. We we produced a two page document we gave to our students, with a snappy title of decoding the WST systematic purchase tasting. So quite a catchy title at one. We've just in the process of launching a podcast that complements that. What are the what's that called? The new podcast? Well, it hasn't been launching a bit of a Do they breed your podcast? And I think it's like they mate every so. What's the gestation period? Yeah. This one's about twelve years. So it's it's born fully formed twelve year old. The podcast itself, we haven't launched it, but we're about to. It's called gonna be called thirty fifties, WST Level three, and it's just support material. So we've recorded for the UK wineshare. We've recorded loads of interviews and at the time when I interviewed them, I had a a focus of making sure I asked questions that were relevant to the WST level three. So we've got all these content now. So we're we're gonna release that package up and release it. And also, we've got some very specific content that work with some of our support materials. So out So level three, I mean, how how tough is that in terms of questioning? It's got a sixty percent pass rate. It's a five day course. And if you work really hard, it's not hard. So it's an multiple choice answers at the end again? No. It's multi choice plus, written an exam. Alright. So give us give us an example of how difficult that would be. Okay. So, of a map of of say of Napa Valley. And you'll you'll get a picture of Napa Valley, and you say describe the difference between this region and this region on the map. And one might be Hal Mountain, which is on the right hand side, and the other one might might be, oh, what's the one on there? Mark Kamers. I wasn't there. I was thinking about the one that links, it's altitude on the left hand side between Sonoma and, Napa. Brain's gone dead. Let's let's try another question. But but the idea is they can look at the map and they realize, okay, one's facing east, one's facing west, one's at altitude, one's below spring mountain. No. It's not spring mountain. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it is. But the idea is they need to be able to understand the geological effects that will influence the wine. So if you're below It's more heavy stuff. Yeah. You know, you need to know that whether you're below the fog line or above the fog line, above the fog line, you're gonna get more sunshine. So therefore, you're gonna get riper fruit, riper tendons, more extraction, or potentially more extraction, things like that. So and if you're facing facing the evening sun, you're gonna get more ripeness as opposed to facing the morning sun. So it's those sort of things that people can sometimes know, but it's very hard to apply. And so it's about being able apply that. Multi choice questions are easier. I mean, if you are you good at were you good at wine exams? No. My wife did better than me in the exams. But you were at W. You got a diploma, I guess. W. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you do your own master wine? It's value, really. The past rate's so low. I talked to that we see a while ago about it, but their pass rate's so low and the cost is so high that to me it was like, I've gotta invest two to three years of my life and the return may be zero and it's a lot of money. And the other thing was that it's very hard to monetize it. You know, I don't want become a supermarket wine buyer or any of that sort of stuff. I wanna do what I'm doing. So if I do all this work, take a big risk, and at the end of it, possibly have nothing to show for it, it won't actually make any difference to my business. So I get my buzz from learning, and I get that from the podcast. So why do need to continue doing a piece of paper. And you get it from teaching as well. That's your buzz. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Standing up front of people and talking about booze. Can't get wrong. How how difficult is it to have a business that you run with your one and only love? It's not as bad as I would have thought twenty years ago. Go on. More detail. Yeah. They're Jane Dental's to this, but, no, it's it's actually alright because we've got very different roles. She's very, accounts, administration, dealing with clients, all that sort of stuff. And I get to do lots of tastings in the showman. Yeah. Yeah. Tastings. And I do a lot of the new product development and a lot more in the sort of intellectual side of the wine tasting side of things. So we've we've got very different roles. And I think that clear demarcation of roles makes things a lot easier. Yeah. That's okay. But you you you know, you are a very bubbly chap, you know, you got a lot of charisma and you're good communicator. So you you someone in mind that you seem like you're really happy with what you do. When I first met you, so then when you walked out of the door, I remember you interviewed me, I thought, this guy he's got a great job, you know, he loves what he does. Yeah. It's true though, isn't it? It's like, I'm not doing here now with you. Today because I get to meet really interesting people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And but you know, I thought, you know, you've got the giant. I love what I do. And I've I've got as kind of spirit. You're very similar to me. And, are you are you incredibly successful on you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. The business is good. No. The business is good. It's growing. Well, it's always been growing because we've always been pushing new stuff. But, yeah, no, it's like, it's one of those things as long as you're happy, I'm I'm pretty easy to keep happy, you know, as long as you're a man. Well, yeah, possibly, possibly. But as long as I I've got what I need, you know, minimum, and I'm busy and I'm I'm learning. I'm pretty happy, you know, and how do you how do you deal with all the kind of Italian? You know, you're sp people would expect you to know that the disciplinari, the rules of every single EGT in Italy. How do you deal with that? The kind of constant change of the rules. I mean, it's just, I don't know, a thousand different EGTs or whatever in in Italy. Alright. So, first of all, you do have nightmares and No. No. No. No. Because, I'm a little bit this is sounds funny, but I'm a little bit autistic. Right. In that I, I'm not very good at names. I just cannot member names. My name is John, by the way. I thought it was Fred, but okay. Okay. But I'm I'm not very good with names. So I accept that. You know, I if if there's something I have to learn, I'll really, really, really focus on learning it, but I really struggle So I just don't worry about it. You know, deal with what you can do. Don't worry about the stuff you can't do. So you basically found a coping mechanism to deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. No. I just don't worry. Okay. I mean, I know, like, in Italy, I was talking to Steven, you know, and there's Steve Kim. Steve Kim. Yeah. And, we were talking about sort of, you know, the thousand regions and the five hundred old, great varieties and all that sort of stuff. And my I have a good working knowledge of Italy, but it's mainly things like what's driving the style of wine in this part of Italy? You know, is it altitude? Is it climate? Is it fresh winds blowing up a valley? Is it whatever? And by end, I can I've got a very engineering mechanical brain So I can analyze and understand. I just may not remember the name of the place. Yeah. The stress is frustrating, basically, on the particular region. Yeah. I mean, if you, ever made wine, you're from New Zealand, but you're not from a farming background, aren't you? I may I tried fact what I was. At home. Yeah. When I was about twelve. With what beetroot or something. I did that with oranges, super gorgeous. I I I I cressed some grapes and I thought, oh, I better not table grapes. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't better not let my family know. So I put it in a in a tiny little container under my bed. And I and I let it ferment and I grew mold. I am not a winemaker. I thought, you know, when I first got into the wine trade, I thought, oh, maybe I'll get into this winemaking lot because, you know, it can be very scientific, and that's very artistic, but it there's a lot of, some science here, and I I quite like the science side of things. But it's just not for me. You know, we we thought about following the remains, particularly when the English wine scene started to burn and we thought, oh, maybe we'll go into English wine, but we looked at it in the capital capital cost was really high and the investment and time and effort, and there was just easier ways to make money. And climate change, the elephant in the room for the UK wine industry. Yeah. And not for the not for the better. It's not necessarily gonna get warmer. It would probably get a little bit wetter. When you are in Italy, final question, on holiday, do you, can you just switch off, or you sit in the restaurant and the waiter, the waitress brings over a bottle of wine? You're looking at the back. Oh, this has got sixty percent negro amaro. And how fascinating? Or when you just forget it? And he your food and have a chat with your wife. And So my the way I slip wines on a wine list Price. A little bit. Yeah. Cause I never go down the bottom end. Shame the bottle. No. No. I go Favorite cut on the label. No. I go I don't have a scooby what that is. If I have no idea what it is, I get it. Right. So Good policy. Yeah. Well, you know, you learn. That was some interesting thing. You know, you'll check with the the the sommelier of the waiter if you can, but, yeah, I just choose the wine that I have never no idea what it is. Do do do do do to see right tasting notes on holiday. You just taste it. Yeah. That was No. I just enjoy it. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. I I think, you know, you gotta switch off sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and also, you know, you and you taste a wine. You analyze it. You give it a sort of a a rough idea of what it is in and understand it and that takes all of a couple of minutes and then you just enjoy it. Cool. Alright. I just want to say thanks to my guest today, Chris Scott, who is a phenomenon really in, in what you do, you know, in terms of, your podcast, last. Number one, first one. Yeah. And your and your educational stuff. And you, you know, you're very engaging guy and you obviously make wine education fun for people as well as as well as informative, you know, for the information and education and entertainment. You've got it. You got it's a sweet spot. It's really good to see you, Chris. Chip much. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.