Ep. 1909 Livin' The Dolce Vita with Jeff Porter Pt. 7  | On The Road With Stevie Kim

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at italian wine podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pots. Welcome to another episode of On the road edition hosted by Stevie Kim. Each week, she travels to incredible wine destinations, interviewing some of the Italian wine scene's most interesting personalities, talking about wines, the foods, as well as the incredible travel destinations. Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is David Kim, and welcome to the Italian wine pot cast Insta Live on the road edition, not so on the road because I'm in Verona, and this is the living the look. Oops, I don't see Jeff though. Living the not look. Dolce vita with Jeff Porta. What we do usually is to understand if Jeff is doing okay. Basically, he's moved to Torino, and we've been trying to touch base every week once a week. So as you know, I was in New York for the past couple of weeks, I'm finally back. I got back yesterday. I'm a slightly jet lagged, so, be a little bit patient with me. Hey, Jeff. Hello. Yeah. We're back. How's it going? Yeah. I'm back. I got back yesterday. Luckily, I survived the strike once again. Oh. Sorry about that. And it's okay. But I'm backing everything's back to normal. How are you? Back in Terino. Everyone loves it when you start, you know, speaking in time, it didn't. So, actually, manuela just wrote me a promo. Yeah. Do you know what that is? Promomodia. No. I don't like the new word. Yep. Promomodia. Memory. Promenia. See. So that's a reminder. Master class Jeff parenthesis. Vini dash abstract. Close parenthesis. Monday, April fifteenth, two forty five PM. Two forty five. Yeah. So that's It's a reminder. Yeah. That's for Vin Italy, babe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we need we need, Manuel needs your wine list. As well as I was working on it with some producers. Yeah. And an abstract. Got it. Okay. As soon as we get it, the more we can promote. Okay. So that's Perfect. That's the pro memo. Yeah. You've That's what I was gonna ask you Do you do you have any contacts? And maybe through this, we can at Bell Colle, the Persecco. I wanted to use their co fundo, but I don't have their information. Bell Colle. Yeah. I think that's what it's called. Let me see. I've never heard of it. Bay one l? Mhmm. One l. One word or two words? Oh, Belico. Two words. Okay. We can reach out to them on your behalf if you want. Which why did you Yeah. Their their cofundo perseco. Okay. Delicious wine. I'm a big fan of it. Right. And it's it fits into the reefer mentality. Julia had just joined us, Julia. It's on you. You have to look for Okay. Okay. Okay. So we'll take care of that for you. Grazia. I mean, I just got back from Lambrusco country, and I met with this really there's like two cool groups happening. One's within the consortium, one's without outside the consistency within the consortium, they're bringing all these young producers and and people who work in the wineries together. It's like this under, like, forty group, called the, like, the Jovenet de Lambrusco or something like that. And I I got to talk to them a lot. And then there's this other group of kind of more, like, hardcore, you know, super Vecio, old style, Vecio school, a lot old school producers who are, creating this, like, they're they're doing this roadshow of all these of their prosecco or not prosecco. They're Limbrosco and, Yeah. Don't call me Talk about. They might be a little bit offended. Just just like really focused on reefermentato and and kind of what we're gonna talk about in seminar about what reefermentato is because it is interesting. It's it is not Methodististrale. It's it's a different process. It's What's the difference? I mean, there are a lot of geeks out there. Brian Larky says smile. It's bubbly. It is bubbly. Exactly. It's what I mean, the thing after being a weekend, Lambrusco. I think it's one of my favorite places on earth now because you can drink a shit ton of it on just so delicious and there's so many different colors of it. It's just a fun wine. Yeah. Right? For the most part. For the most part. Let's do a small, like, you know, geeky lesson here. So from my under What's the if you think. So methodence, estrale is primary fermentation begins in in a vessel. Right? Let's say it's a concrete tank. And before primary fermentation's done, you bottle it. So there's really only one fermentation. Mhmm. So that's method interest rather. And this is after, like, talking to, like, ten different people about this. And then refermentato Right. Is is in a line with method of classical. So there's there's two fermentation. So one fermentation is in the tank. Mhmm. And then you would do another fermentation in the bottle, but you never discourage it. And the biggest difference between Methoclassico and this is they're only going up to two point five atmospheres. So the the must usually, they add a little must. And if they don't do that, it may be some like grape sugar. The process starts again within the bottle, keeping it at a low pressure, two point five atmospheres is the maximum. Some people go a little higher. But they they said sometimes they they cheat it. They want it, what would happen in the old timer as they do the fermentation, there'd be some sugar left in the tank, like ten grams per liter, then you put it in the bottle, you put the ground cap on it, and you put it next to your your warmer, your heater in your house. And a month later, you you have reefermentato. That's basically the old school. You a disclosure? No. You you sh traditionally, you don't. There are some people that do discord it. Otherwise, it was There's no It's a department. Exactly. Just with a it would be, like, below set team, you know, in Lenders in a financial court that. In a in its pressure. So and what is the difference in terms of taste? Exactly something between Mato de classical and, Ancistrale? Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is. I mean It seems to be the most most logical place. Right? It it's it's kind of in between. Some some method of ancestral because they bottle it in that fermentation. When sugar may be high, it could have a higher pressure. So, like, the amount of sugar used in the re fermentation of re reefermentato is just it's lower. So it's it's not as bubbly since you get the the fizzy, the fizzy fondness of of the frizzante. Depending on when you have it. So, like, we tried some age reframentatto, and it's it's kind of like Lee's aging. It's like having, like, Bollinger r d. Right? Mhmm. It's before it's discored. So you've got this, like, long Lee's aging, and you get that that different sensation on the palate from that. So, again, however, no discorging. Right? Exactly. No discorging. You and you drink you drink the the schmutz. Yeah. I'm not I'm not a big fan of the schmutz. You know, after the schmutz. We have to explain to the Italians and the rest of the world what a schmutz is. The schmutz is all the stuff at the bottom of the bottle. Listen. I just wanted to tell you that we have twelve no Italian wine ambassadors. I saw. I was few of my friends passed. I was very excited for them. Who's your friend? Do you have friends? I I have a few friends. Yeah. Marco who works for Brian Larky. Yes. At Bella Cara. He passed. Love that guy. You know when you can, you get a class and I, you know, like, you see from the get go. I'm like, he's going to pass. She's going to fail. He's going to pass. You know, she's going to, you know, you kinda and he was definitely on my he's going to pass. He and I used to work together at the the restaurants. He was the wine director of this restaurant, Popoto. Oh, okay. And, used to live quite near us, and he's he's a Montreal, Canadian Italian. Yes. Who now lives in Brooklyn. Yeah. He he was, and and he was always so attentive, very low key, but you knew he knew his shit, you know? Yes. He was he was great. Brian says He's he's one of the nicest human beings on earth too. Yeah. Who else did you know? To be honest, I drank so much last night. I can barely remember anything. It's been a rough day today. So I'll give you the names. Britney Gorgora. I don't know if you He's from actually Brazil. He came to wine to wine. He fell in love with the community. He did the course. He came all the way from Brazil. Oh, that's awesome. But our best student actually was Mihai Popescu. He's Romania. He was the best. Yeah. He was the top student. That's amazing. And so Congratulations. As as of the flagship, we have every year, like, kind of a sponsor for the top student, And he got this Sheryl Balmain from Sateponte because they were the they sponsored the pinning ceremony and the, top student award. So he got that not a bad deal, like a huge Sherylbaum. That's pretty awesome. Did you do the the the ceremony at Grand Central? Yeah. Yeah. So beautiful. It's so iconic. It's absolutely I hadn't been there in schooling interviews. The only problem is that because it's almost like a public space, I mean, it is not almost. It is public space. They don't allow you to use it like, you know, AV. Right? So so we couldn't we had a mic set up and a huge ass television set, but they couldn't allow us to use the the mic Oh. Because they said someone's going to jail. And I was like, I'm not going to jail. So we were kind of negotiating who's going to get go to jail. Right? So in the end, we didn't use the mic and I lost my voice by the end of the day. And I was screaming and nobody heard me, except Yeah. We did the Facebook live, and I guess they heard. Right. So and you might know her, actually. Melissa Graff. Yeah. I know. I know her. Yeah. She passed Yeah. She's brilliant. She works for Skurnig, Matthew Rosita. Xinfang. This is a very funny story. I have to tell you. So Xinfang, he is Chinese. Like, he's not a wine professional. He's originally from I I guess the, you know, the Silicon Valley. He moved to New York and he participated in this two years ago, the New York edition. So he comes to the exam and the first part of the exam, you don't know this, but first part of the exam is you need a computer is everything's online. He comes. He's like the computer geek of this world. He shows up without a computer. You know, so I did end up giving him my my, laptop, and he failed. And so he retook it and he was one of the best students right after, Mihai. So he gave me so much satisfaction. He really wanted to, you know, be part of the community. As lot of the, as you know, you know, it's very tight the community. You have you were the old edition, but Like, you know, it's the program has evolved. It's much more w set, you know, more standardized. Right. And and it's absolutely fantastic. Then parr hardy, Alice Barrera, Alice Banville, who's as you know, I I was like, this is going to be so embarrassing because Vanville was the, of course, ours, the Rayger sponsor. Yeah. They were partnering our venue. So I was like, it's going to be very hamagung to tell Leah, if he fails the course, you know, He was on the cusp, but he passed it on his own because now your name is not on the test when you take the test. So when Sarah mocks it, it's actually a number and you're anonymous. Oh, wow. That's cool. Because she's like very, you know, fair and square about it. Right. Yeah. We changed the entire system. So, there was absolutely lino favoritism and he passed. Thank goodness. And then That's awesome. Stacy O'Donnell and Stephanie Johnson. Oh, nice. I saw I saw that she was That was amazing because Stephanie, actually, it got kinda lost because I had asked her to audit the course. I didn't really think she was going to take the exam. She's like, I want to do the exam. But no one told her about the audio bit. There's a video presentation in a group. Mhmm. That's ten percent of your grade, which is most people are gifted, you know, nearly ten percent ten points. And she passed without the video because she nobody told her she had to do a video. Oh. So I was like, that'll be embarrassing if she doesn't pass because she didn't do the video. But Right. Luckily she passed and congratulations to all of them because they've, of course, worked very hard, and I'm pretty psyched. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel. Mama jumbo shrimp for fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond, meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now back to the show. So for those that don't know that are watching so how does one, like, get the information to start studying? How do you get involved? What are those? What are those things? Because I know there's a new book there's a new book and it was community generated. So a lot of the ambassadors from community at large, they revised the original book, which are the great entries, but there is a huge geeky section with, of course, Atilio Shenza is the vine, geneticist, and and I always say, you know, that if he spoke English, you did everything in English, it would be more famous than Johnson Robinson. So if you look at Janson's book, a lot of the things are from his references as well. It's work. Yeah. But the only problem is one, he doesn't speak English, but he doesn't really he has his own language. We call Shenza, you know, and it's so you have to translate Shenza into Italian. And then And then into English. It's like a two stop process. So it's, it at times, it's difficult to navigate, but he, of course, is a big, big, guidance for our the geeky, the anthropology. The geology, the culture, the history. All that bit, he, gives us that, you know, input and guide us through the course. Then, Sarah, you know, we have a special tasting grit for the time. You know, because of the texture and the phenolic, bit of it, especially for the white wines. So we have that. And they have it's basically like the diploma program, right? So There's two, blind tasting, two essays, one video project, and then one hundred multiple choice. So the entire exam is two and a half hours. So it's quite long. And, yeah, and it's just been getting you know, I think I hope better because thanks to the, you know, the feedback we get from from the community. So, yeah, if you want any information, all they have to do is go on Vineetechly dot com and, you know, we're all over the net as you know. So Right. We are now, we were three hundred and forty six. So plus twelve. That makes three fifty eight certified Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. And thirteen hundred people have gone through the program. So, yeah, we we love it, and, the community is growing. So what are you what are your some travels before Vinitely? I am going to Venice on Friday. And then I'll be there with my my dad and step mom. Your dad. Mhmm. They're coming out for just the weekend with my wife and kid. And then on Monday, I'm going to Swabay for four days. To do some tasting and some research. Oh, you should come by. Unfortunately, I don't have my car. Oh, okay. But I'll I'll I'll I'll always tight time, but I'll be back in verona. We should do the Insta live. Live. Oh, that'd be fun. Oh, like, at Ven Italy. Could we do that at on that Monday? Yeah. I I don't know because, like, Vinice is crazy, but we'll think about it. Yeah. We'll figure it out. Yeah. And then there's Venice and then I'm home, and then I I'll go to, Portona, which is the Coley Cortonese. To do some stuff with, T. Marasso and the the Dertona group. Yeah. And then the next week, I'm going to Gabby. I've never been to Gabby, so I'm gonna go check that out. Then it's, like, two days later, I'm in, I'm gonna go to Terreya to the Vicky varying and then, and then we gotta go back to the states. On a scale of one to ten, like, where are you in terms of your love for, like, quote unquote, the natural one? I mean, it's hard because, like, where's the definition. Right? Like, my I'm I'm I'm there because, you know. Right. I'm a ten for ten on conscious wines. And what I consider conscious wines are wines that where the the the grower is doing minimal input into the soil minimal input output. Right? Like, I less is more, and that's And I'm looking at this the total sustainability of the project. What are they doing for the environment? What are they doing for the people that work for them? What are they doing for their community? That, I'm ten for ten on, you know, just being a conscious person within what you're doing. So those winemakers, I, like, I'm all over. And then, you know, if it's, like, I like macerated wine, I I won't lie. I I dig it. I had a really good macerated wine at Milan on Saturday from Poterey, Laripe, which is they they farm about it. Amiclean just things in in multiple genome? I span the spectrum. If it's good, I like it. So I have another question for you. It's it's slightly related. Have you been to eleven matt since they've converted to I have. I went last year. Okay. So what do you think about you know, vegan meals and pairing it with red wines. We had some dishes that I thought went really, really well because, like, if you do mushroom and, like, cabbage, and there's a lot of umami flavors you can bring into with with different elements of seasoning and spice that I think works. We had this, like, smoked cabbage thing that was just like an umami bomb that went really well with the red wine that it was paired with. Yeah. I mean, I, it was my first experience since, you know, it converted. Mhmm. There was a group of us. And it was very, definitely, I love the mushroom thing that they do. I thought it was very, very nice. I thought it wasn't was less compelling with you know other dishes. You know, I've never had actually this was my first complete one hundred percent vegan meal, you know, and I think definitely talking about trends. I think this is one of the trends. And of course, you know, they are the pioneers of, you know, all trends. So the fact that they can still survive, you know, based on a vegan man. Right. But I did, however, like, you know, afterwards, I would have loved to have had, like, a piece of, like, real meat or, you know, I felt like, you know. So I probably can never become a vegan myself, but No, me either. Interesting experience. Did you have the avocado dish that has those, Japanese pine. They kinda look like quinoa, but they're not. They look it's like the it's kinda supposed to look like caviar. No. And it's this really beautiful avocado, and it was, like, in the middle. But I just have something that's similar of, like, vegan caviar. I can't remember what vegetable was, but no no avocado. Because when I went there, I was like, oh, this is where all the good avocados in Newarko. Because, like, you know, avocados are shit in most of their grocery stores. What are some of the other vegan, restaurants in New York City? There used to be a place called dirt candy, and I don't know if it's open anymore. I don't Dark candy. Yeah. I I'd been there once, and it was really delicious. In my head, I can't remember if it was vegan or just vegetarian, but it was delicious. I went to a vegetarian restaurant in Sicily. Uh-huh. What is it? And I didn't know it was vegetarian until I left Oh. That's crazy. I didn't even think about it. That's how good the food was. I will put it up when this goes Yep. Put it on the intersection. It was a one star Michelin restaurant in Sicily on the on the eastern coast. I I had no idea, and it was like, I was like, man, it's so so was so good. My friend who went with me is, like, did you notice there was no no meat or fish or anything? I was like, I had no idea. Yeah. And you know, that's a good idea, actually. We can start, like, compiling, like, the best vegan restaurants. Yeah. So we'll ask everyone to join us and, you know, put in the comment section the best vegan restaurants that they can think of. Vegan's hard, like, right here in Italy. I met my first Italian vegan. She's Italian, and she's vegan. And I talked to her about it. We were in in Modena, which I have no and I asked her. I was like, how do you do it? She's like Can you be vegan at more than her? She was like, if I go out to dinner, I have to eat cheese or something with eggs in it. She's like, the the you just can't there's no restaurant you can go out to just vegan. She said there are two vegan restaurants in Modena, but, like, not all of her friends like going there. So she has to make a compromise on that. But she tries to live her life, like, ninety percent vegan, but I I've been thinking about that. Living here. Being vegetarian, you can do. But being vegan, like, like, here in Northern Piedmont, like, all the pasta is egging it. Right? Yeah. And there's no You know? Like Right. That's all we got. Yep. So I think lots of fat. So I'm I'm not sure. It's not easy. My daughter is vegetarian, but there were two vegans at the office. Like, instead of, like, pulled pork, they would do jackfruit, which was very Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's I like that. I like that. We learned a lot about vegan recipes, you know, while they were at the office, but no more vegans at the office. Yeah. No problem. No. No. No. No problem. Is that though? Is that though? Okay. J j a cheek key. I'm I'm I've been playing with those, those verbs recently. Okay. And then She is a Janae. Janae. Oh, god. I can't add anymore right now. Okay. Alright. How is it going though, your time? Are you do you feel like you are actually improving? Yes and no. I I'm I'm a little frustrated right now because it's it's gotten it's gotten a lot harder when I'm out and about, like, I I use I use my Italian and I can get what I need. And the thing that I'm doing now is adding the proper things that I miss, like articles, you know, conjugating verbs, more proficiently. Right. You know, it's it's it's small steps. Like What about, like, symptoms? I'm not there yet, but I understand people better. Like, I I I can I can really understand a conversation that's in Italian? I just have a hard time response. So you're going back to stateside because of the about all the Barasco thing? No. No. I'm not going back to the states until April twenty eight. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then are you coming down? Yeah. Okay. I don't know. I'm I'm only going there for a few days. Okay. Okay. Okay. No. We're staying here until September. Alright. Okay. We have lot more instillights to do if you can last. There's a lot. Listen, Jeff, I get a, I get a jet because I have shit to do, and it's my first day that. But remember, I just wanna remind everybody that we have changed our slot to Monday, six PM central European time. Okay? So don't forget to. But in the comment section, your favorite vegan restaurants, and maybe we'll, you know, do a blog or we'll compile a list. All over the world. Yeah. Let's put them in there. Okay. Thank you for joining us on another installment of on the road edition, hosted by Stev Kim. Join her again next week for more interesting content in the Italian Warren scene. You can also find us at Italian wine podcast dot com or wherever you get your pods. You can also check out our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp to watch these interviews and the footage captured of each location.