Ep. 86 Monty Waldin interviews Alison Napjus (Wine Spectator) | Monty Waldin's Let's Talk Wine Biz

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast with Me Monty Ward. My guest today is Alison Napias from the winesburg data, and welcome. Thank you. Firstly, I have to ask you about your surname. How's it spelled? And did I pronounce it correctly? Did you pronounce it beautifully? I was well trained? Yes. You did a very good job. It's m a p j u s, but the j ends up sounding like a y in the Netherlands. So I'm told, which is grandfather was from the Netherlands. Okay. Now where are you based? I'm in New York City. Okay. So what does your job entail? Well, my job titles, it's senior editor and tasting director. So there's really two parts to it. First, as a senior editor for wine spectator and one of the tasters for the magazine. We have ten people who cover the world of wine. Each of us have an area that they specialize in. For me, I cover wines from Champagne and Alsa in France and regions throughout Italy. Italy has always been a passion and a love for me and it's a real pleasure to be tasting the Italian wines on a regular basis. So how did you get into writing and how did you end up with the wine spectator? I got into writing through wine, actually. And I started up by spectator in two thousand, taking an entry level position, unpacking boxes, cleaning glasses, setting up the tastings. I wanted to be somewhere where I really learn about wine from kind of the ground up. And I had an opportunity to taste wines on a regular basis there, and, kind of developed over time, including developing as a taster. And then, you know, I found that I had a lot to say about wine once I was tasting it a lot more regularly. Right. So hang on. Before you you applied for the job, what we what was your job? What would you do? You know, we were janitor or something like that. Do you have do you have a proper job or were you? Yeah. Yes. I was, I had in mind as a teenager that I wanted to own my own restaurant I went to a hotel restaurant school, and I started working as a manager at a restaurant in New York, Rebecca Girl. And at that time, they were really building their wine lists, and I realized what I liked much more was hearing about what we were doing on the wine lists and actually doing any of things associated with being a manager in restaurant. So where did the food love come from? Was that a family thing? I mean, food in mine, I guess all goes together. Certainly, yes, there's always been food and cooking in my family, but I wouldn't say, I hope my mom's not listening, but I wouldn't say she's by any means a gourmet chef. You only got two listeners. So it's unlikely that she will be. Great. But, yeah, I think, you know, naturally when you get interested in food or interested in mine, you end up being interested in both of them. So what did your friends think when you got this job? Oh, I mean, how many times have people said to me how do you get that job. I want that job. Yeah. Very, very happy. And I think that For your job, I do want your job now, your job then? Even the job then, because, you know, if I say, oh, yes, today was, sitting down to taste through fifteen or twenty minds, even if at that time I wasn't the person officially reviewing them, we encourage our assistant tasting coordinators to taste through everything because all of our tastings at wine spectator are blind. And so we rely on this kind of entry level position to come in, organize the wines and set them up in a way that's actually going to allow the wines to shine. So you have to know producer styles. You have to know about the grapes. You have to know about the region. And, you know, it's usually most of them come in with an entry level knowledge, and then you're doing a lot of study in a lot of tasting to kind of speed up the process. So, I mean, in the tasting room, well, I'm sure you've got several rooms for for tasting and organizing things, but, I mean, for it just for example, is temperature really important, the temperature of the room. Definitely. The tasting room, you know, is always actually pretty cool. I would say we're more focused making sure the temperature of the wine is correct and then, of course, that it's not too warm in the room so things don't get warm quickly. And we definitely focus on what the type of wine is, what the preference of the taster is. And for example, when I taste, I like to taste fifteen wines straight through one after another as the tasting coordinator has set it up and organize it. Then I go back and I pair things in a different order that also gives the wines time to open up a little bit. They warm up a little bit. So I like to start off things quite cool because by the end of the time I'm tasting all of them in my multiple iterations, you know, the temperature will have changed. So you start off maybe at cellar temperature? Solar temperature definitely for the reds and maybe even a little bit cooler for whites and sparkling ones. Okay. Which which is hardest physically to taste. Everyone has their own opinion in the wine industry about which are more tiring. Well, I mean, I, you know, surprisingly, despite the range of wines that I taste, I really don't taste a lot of very big eggs, the biggest would be Sacramento from Umbria. I do taste a lot of sparkling wine, and I think the combination of bubbles and acidity is really challenging. I mean, you definitely get kind of a a fatigue from that. But if I was tasting, for example, Bordeaux or for a cabernet, I'm sure that would be my answer. So it just it depends on kind of what grouping of wines you have, I think. I find tasting sparkling wine incredibly. I find it exhausting. Yeah. And my attention span is not, you know, I can't just do thirty sparkling wines. I probably do that for red. I've I've I've made red wine, but Swarky wanna find really, really tough. Yeah. I would say that I I never taste more than twenty, twenty five lines at a time, probably, and it's usually less. And and that would be true probably most of our tasters because you don't want to have an off day as a taster or get tired and then all of a sudden you're not giving the wine a fair shake. Yeah. And I think also sparkling wine, do you sort of when you taste have a greater respect for, say, sparkling winemakers often with their champagne, they make lots of money, you know, they're all driving BMWs or whatever, and it's really easy. Stick a few bubbles in, but it's not it's very complex, isn't it? Yeah. Absolutely. Making champagne or sparkling wine, traditional method is some of the most complicated line making out there. You have two chemical reactions, first fermentation, and second fermentation, and to do that. And then at the end of dosage, so you're kinda balancing out the vine. But to do that, you really need to know back in, you know, the wintertime when you're pruning the vine. What's your focus on getting out of that vine after its age for fifteen months three years in your cellar. So it's a lot of foresight and, a lot of real attention to detail, I think. So you come home from work. You've tasted x number of wines. You don't maybe written something and handles some calls, you know, probably a couple of grumpy people and some nice ones and work work is when you go home, what do you do to relax? I like to cook, and I like to have a glass of wine as I do it. Definitely. I I actually, to tell you the truth is, first thing is I probably I walk home from work a lot, and I walk through interesting parts of Manhattan, stretch my legs through your mind a little bit. So that's probably first before anything. And then I'm ready to have some food and a glass of wine while they do it. But when you're cooking and you have a glass of wine in your hand, you're just cooking and doing your stuff and other thoughts are going through your head, it's just a glass of wine. You're not saying, oh, this is a bit acidic or too sweet or too tannic or young or typical. Can you switch off? No. I think in a way that if something surprises me, yes, I'll still take note of it. But I think that that's actually a very good example of, you know, wine is supposed to be about pleasure. It's not supposed to be about deep analysis and thought all the time. And, yes, in that situation, I'm just enjoying having sips, stirring the onions, you know, and and watching my meal progress. I mean, how much pressure? Obviously, it's a world famous magazine, you know, any slip, and there'll be hundreds of people ready to shoot, not just you down but the people in the magazine. But how much pressure do you feel? Well, I think that, you know, we rely a lot, as I said, it's all blind tasting. So and we also, I will say that we taste wines often twice in blind settings. So I think, you know, you we're really giving the wines a good opportunity to show well. And and I feel like we all have all of the tasters, sir, wine spectator have trained for a long time, traveled to wine regions, have, you know, this depth of knowledge. And so I feel like our methodology is really secure. So pressure. Yes. I think in any job, you want to put the best foot forward, but we really rely on this methodology to be our sound basis for what we do. How about, I mean, this may may not be, this may be beyond your pay grade as they say in America, but, I mean, how much some sort of consumer testing does the magazine do for its readers? Like, what our readers like, what our readers don't like? Do could you get into that or not? No. Not not really. I maybe somebody in the company is doing that, but I've not really been made aware of it. More we kind of respond to what we're seeing in terms of page views on our website, feedback from readers, and also, you know, the magazine is now more than forty years old. And so, yes, I started an, a younger member, the senior editors, but I have seventeen years of experience, and there's people twice that or at the magazine. So I think they have a pretty good, you know, finger on the pulse of what our readers are interested to see, or at least we hope that we're giving them that on a regular basis. Next question. I mean, I've written for a few magazines and I think everyone that I've written for possibly our one has at some stage or has now at this current time a female editor. If the opportunity came along, would you like to edit the magazine? Or is that just not something that you're interested in? You're just happy doing what you're doing? It's not a loaded question, by the way. No. You know, I mean, I think in a light way, so wine spectator might have kind of a larger reach, but in fact, it's quite a small staff of people working there. So I am not necessarily an editor, but I certainly am asked to look at certain things that might be specific to what I know the most about to make sure that the facts are correct and also to just see if we're kinda going in the right direction. So in that regard, yes, I do some loose editing, but, no, as I said, I really got into wine and became a writer. So sure if I had to, yes, I could, but, I think that probably the magazine would be better served with an editor who catches all the grammatical errors that my editor catches for me. Yeah. And it's also the commission. I mean, people that a commissioning editor is actually somebody that decides what articles should be in the magazine or should get published. It's not just about dotting i's and crossing t's and things that's actually a very huge responsibility. No. Completely. And I think that, right now our executive editor, Tom Matthews, along with Marvin Shenken, who's the owner and publisher of the magazine, and really the ultimate say for everything, depend on a lot of input from the other senior editors, from other staff. But at the end of the day, yes, they're the ones who decide and say yes or no down to is this photo for the cover the right thing to really get people to pick up this magazine, and it is a huge responsibility. Definitely. So how much input do you have? I mean, can you ping ideas at Marvin and Thomas since I've got this great idea about x region and this angle. Definitely. Does it work? What's the way you send an email or you have a board meeting or? Emails, we have meetings regularly throughout the year. At least two times a year with all of our senior editors both from our Napa office in New York. And so there's a lot of brainstorming that go on in those meetings. And then yes, just send emails or, you know, stop in their office and sit down and say, hey, what do you think? And that's actually sometimes the best way to do it because then they say, well, yes, maybe, but what about this side of it and you can kind of refine the idea before you even start working on it. Okay. So what's your I mean, it's always difficult. Again, you're not your favorite wine region, but where is somewhere that you always feel really comfortable in your skin at wine region not saying the quality of the wine, but just something you really feel at home, the the countryside, the weather, the foods, the start of the pavement, the sidewalks, or that, that kind of place, not not oh, my favorite wine is Bruno there for I love Tuscany. I think my love affair with Italy began I was a child and traveling with my family. And so I would say in general, if I'm traveling for work, I would prefer to be in Italy than anywhere else probably to go down to a region as hard. You know, a few years ago, I was in Pulia for the first time. So that was something I'd never been in that area. I really didn't know the lay of the land, but I still I enjoyed it. And it would be hard for me to pick a a favorite or somewhere that was definitely. I mean, I've spent a lot of time in Tuscany, so I like that. But I also just spent, you know, five days on Mount Aetna, and that was completely comfortable and and lovely as well. So how's your Italian? Are you fluent? No. Certainly not fluent. And I actually just say that I I I get by when I need to, but it is my strong preference if we're going over details that it's in English. Maybe I will eventually get it to be an Italian. We'll see. No. I'm sure you will. It's, I mean, it's, if you speak with a French, it's not, it's not, too diverse. What's the what's the real passion? Is it the writing bit or the wine and travel and food bits. Do you just love writing and getting stuff out? Or is it? Well, I love wine. And I I think right now that in the US, we have come to this place where finally the conversation of wine is much more open. I think about fifteen years ago when I started in the industry, fifteen, twenty years ago, it was, oh, only people who are, you know, certified as an expert should be talking about wine. And I don't think that that's the case anymore. And I don't think that most American wine drinkers feel that way. So I think that this is now a great time to be writing about wine and hopefully engaging a whole new generation of wine drinkers. But we're all the time of arrival as well. So we're all in the kind of same position about, obviously online publishing and blogging and Yes. And everybody now has an opinion whether you're if you're a car mechanic, you can tell us, I tried x bottle of wine last night. Yeah. It was great or it was terrible. Do you think the future of wine journalism, seeing as wine is sort of a luxury flipping almost product? Is it secure? Are we gonna find ways to keep ourselves employed, and magazines like Spectator economically viable, or we were just gonna fade away? No. Definitely. I mean, I think that actually there's the world of wine is expanding. And so, yes, Okay. Your car mechanic can have their opinion and should have his own opinion about what wine he, she likes to drink. But I think the world of wine is expanding. People are going to be looking for an authoritative voice to help them navigate it and tell them where to focus their energy and attention at any given time. And so I think that the wine journalism will continue on in one format or another, for sure. Great. Well, it's good to hear good to hear your optimism as a as a wine writer. Most, I just wanna say thanks very much to Allison. Napier, great interview. They're really interesting. I mean, there are so many prejudices about the wine spectators. I'm sure you know, and I have to have been guilty of that in my time, but, I really enjoyed talking to you as you're great, great interviewee, and, I appreciate your openness. Be me. Very diligent about what you do and, a lot of respect. I I'm very diligent about making sure there's a good glass of wine in my future today. Yeah. We don't have a glass of wine, so maybe we should go and go. Well, it was a real pleasure. Alright. I wanna thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good night. Follow Italian White Podcast on Facebook and Instagram.