Ep. 350 Pedro Ballesteros Torres MW

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. So let's begin the podcast with you today, Pedro O'Bajastellos master wine. We've just finished the Vine Italy International Academy. Education course. What were your takeaways from the Ven Italy International Academy as one who is also already a master of wine? How did it go? How did you see it? What I think is, It is an excellent initiative. I think is to make Italian wines much more attractive by making those wines by explaining those wines by helping a a number of people to have a much deeper knowledge on the Italian wines. And the things that you know, you tend to love them more. So I think it's a very intelligent approach. It has nothing to do with, promotion. Is real, education formation. It is just to to trust that the raw material of Italian wines is so interesting that it it is enough if there is a good number of intelligent people all over the world that are knowledgeable about Italian wines. And it was very interesting for me. It was studying a lot, and there were some difficult fees. And Italy is one of those infinite countries that you never know the whole of Italy, and that you are discovering new varieties and new expressions, it's really fascinating. I mean, you made a very good point there about the complexity of Italian wine. How do you, you know, from someone who's obviously very good at studying, how do you help a student that is a bit stuck? Do you have any just tips? Yes. I I I will say I think that the key element for studying is, it is motivation. The motivation is not something that is, a fixed point of reference. It's something that, goes up and down, up and down. We have to understand this. We have to love, ourselves enough to know that some days we are not going to be very good at the studies or other days. We are going to be much better than what we could anticipate. But we have to keep in mind, a certain, a certain motivation. We we need to know what we are looking for. And I think that the other crucial element of many, many students they fail because they they don't consider this element. And with wine, it's even more important is that you don't need to study thinking, I I will be that and that and that you need to enjoy. With your study because if you don't enjoy what you are learning about the wines, even if sometimes are difficult things, there is not any point on on studying about wine, then you can decide to study I don't know, administrative, right, or or or whatever thing, you know, but, when it has to be about, enjoyment. And then there is not any merit. Then if you enjoy what you are doing, what you are learning, is something that is part of your life, I do I do care much less about the result, and then the results normally are much better. Okay. You, may have lectured on Canal Now. To the Viniti International Academy students, within the past, few months. Do you have any words on how this particular grape variety connects? The populations of the Mediterranean, all brings us closer together. Yes. The the canal now is the is the is the Spanish, the Spanish, the French, Grenache, there are, of course, many discussions where the where the Greek variety was born to etcetera. This is not very important. The important thing is it's a, agreed variety that has been for many, many years considered something not very interesting compared to covering my employees, other kinds of varieties. Many people used to say it was, auxiliary. And his ideas, and it was only after in poor regions of Europe, in Sard, in Spain, Spain, the people they have access to technology to to look at their land in a different way than kinda now. Your ma the car nature became, a very noble great variety and capable of making very good wines. Garmeche has been in many parts of the world, right, has been traveling from Aragon, to the west, to Rioha, and Mr. Madura, to the east, to the north, to Chateona, the Pop, to the Rome Valley, Salvina. You have the tower also in in Veneto. There is a lot of green ash in Australia. They used to be much more or there is less, but there is a very high quality, you know, wines there with green ash. Also in California. It's it's it's amazing how much green mushroom can find all over the world, and it's amazing how much of a different character it has. You know, I always say, Kevin Desuvignon is a egocentric character. In any place in the world, cabernet will be cabernet and you can spot if this is a cabernet wine, and you don't care where the wine is is cabernet wine. Gernetcha Greenache can now. It is a conditional conditional altruistic. Personality. It's altruistic because Canal is going to tell you where the binger is not, it's not going to tell you. I'm canon now. It's going to tell you I'm coming from that particular vineyard. And it's conditional because if you want to get a very high yield, if you want to get a very moving expressions out of Canal Now, if you don't respect the very natural of Canal you will not have very noble wines. It's very conditional because you need low yields, whole wines. It's very important that the that the virus in this climate is also right. They have many years to explore the soil. And then you will have the personalities of a place because of that, at the end of the day, it's not so important if the the WAN is kind of now green ash can, organize. It's important that the that the WAN is coming from that particular area. And, Salvini and this, they I think they have excelled in in producing very good kind of now. Mhmm. Yeah. I'm with you on that about, it being a great vehicle. When it's growing well, of, of Telwari expression, And, yeah, often it's in a grape that's a little bit as you say ignored and abused, but, yeah, interesting to hear your point on that. Now let's, talk about, karma. How are you, working to elevate the profile of Kava, which is, say, sparkling wine, on the world stage. Well, this is a good question because it's difficult question. Kava was invented as champagne. It was called champagne at the time. It was the catalan, imitation of champagne. The important thing there was to follow the method champion was and the second fermentation in bottle. Then it was a big success in national national level. There was a, a middle class that was, thirsty of bubbles. And bubbles are very important things that the the life is getting better. And, leader by leader, the companies in Caba, mostly Coronio Frisionet, they develop very good technical skills, and they just started looking at the vineyard and they realized that they'll talk to knows great varieties of the. Charrelo Parellada Machabeo. They were, ideal for having very good quality, sparkling wines. Then some small companies started also investigating on very long aging time, in the lease in the border for Caba, and there was a new quality that was discovered. And then finally, now there are some cabas recaretto Ramona that are in very particular spots very used in single dangers and are an amazing quality, cabas that they need to be aged on the lease for at least, eight to ten years, even twelve years. And then the the there is something wonderful in the mode. The problem for cover is that most cover is an affordable, good quality wine with a metal champenoise that is maybe too expensive for for the for the wine, but is not very ambitious in this quality. And the small producers that they would like to be identified, according to their quality, they feel a little bit, lost with so big producers producing very cheap, wine. Caba now is in a strong competition with Proseco. Proseco, I think they have been, very smart. Proseco is, is, is, is, is amazingly interesting as a, as a as a wife. I I will speak on this. But cover, now there are a lot of tensions there. There, there is a number of wineries they have created, a private association. They are getting out of the operation of origin. At the same time, that cover is improving a lot because they have created a new regulation for specifying the single vineyards for higher requirements on quality. And now you have very, very good cabas that are of, extremely high quality. But the real thing is that very, very good cover is maybe ten percent of the production. The other thing is, a commercial quality wine that is made according to the Meadows Champpinvos, said that this is always an argument. But at the end of the day, it's, it's a simple good wine, but not very ambitious for this. It has not so much to do with champagne in this, in their respect. In this cave is competing with prosseco, but prosseco is, is wonderful. It's and this is these are things that the Italian, they never say about their country. Italy is the only country the world that has developed, very good market strategy by cooperatives. The cooperatives in Emilia Romagna in Veneto are really world leaders. The pinocchio, the prosseco, the Lambrusco are inventions by cooperatives. This is something that deserves a lot of respect. When you are creating a lot of wealth, in the regions. Very well distributed wealth among all the buying growers. SARS to the cooperative, and you're having a product that commercially is extremely, well defined. And it has is having a a huge success in the world markets. I think this is something that, this serves a lot of administration. I would like to see this much more in my country. It's paying in France. In many other countries, in which you see that the successes are just a private firm, with a different thing and that the the wealth of wine is not so well distributed as a as an Italy. It's interesting that you focused at the end on that social element, the socioeconomic element about the about the wealth being spread. More or less evenly across the board. And, that's something that in wine, we often forget the importance of that. And, it's a very, very strong point that you've made there. About, about the need for that to, to, to continue. Absolutely. And this is it is not only because of, social consent. It's it's simply just to have a a certain vision of the business If you are having the bank growers that they have good quality of life, that they can think that one of their daughters or sons can become a bank grower and that this is going to be a job with a lot of dignity and a lot of hope a a a a a a many good things. You are paying well the grapes. You will keep a certain level of quality. If you are simply exploiting the growers, as it is the case often in Spain, paying nothing for the grapes. Then sooner or later, the whole business is going to disappear. For me, the big difference between prosseco and Caba, and especially people say, no. Because cowa is better than prosseco because we use the Sharpen West method and the prosseco is the Sharman method. I I don't know what. And he always said, no. Prosecco is much better simply because in prosecco, they pay zero point ninety eight euro per kilo of grapes more than sixteen thousand kilos per hectare. Are in cover, they pay thirty two cents of a euro per kilo of grapes, yields of ten thousand kilos per hectare. One business model is sustainable. The other are not. Okay. That's, talking about wine. Let's talk about about wine judging. What are your impressions of the of the wine judging circuit? Somewhere in the world, every single day, there will be a wine competition being held. What are your views and your impressions? Well, I think that, one judging is a is a good idea. It's, if it is well organized, I think it's a very good, indication to the consumers is also a very good feedback for the producers, but not all wine competitions are the same. And I think that now there are far too many wine competitions And I would say that, I would doubt in many win competitions, which is the point of paying attention, to what this judge is is doing when sometimes they simply are ticking boxes and saying this is eighty six. So this is ninety two and no comments and no discussion and no knowledge about the wines. No? I I think that producers, consumers and distributors, they should be quite, strict as per the requirements for a wine competition. Now it's also the time for the wine producers and and for the distribution, the great distribution to say, I like this competition. I want to know how it is, and I don't like this other competition because the judges, they go have the the profile, or because the system is not, it's not very good. And then for the consumers, you can have a wine I'm sure that if you sent any correct good wine to twenty competitions, you will get a medal in in in in at least one or two of them. And this is something just to put a question. I think that is important now that, there is a certain movement that is certifying the quality of wine competitions. And this is not just to say this is a competition according to OIV rules, that me personally, I'm completely against those rules. It's a it's a no sense. The OIV rules is, you cannot speak with anybody. You know nothing about the wine. You are not allowed to comment on the wine. You have to tick boxes, and you have to to to say how much, what do you think of the color of the wine? How can you think about the color of a wine? Which is the indication of quality on this, you know, many other things, you know. But I think it's important. I think there are so many wines. So many small producers that you need competitions. But I think that competitions now There are far too many, and there should be a kind of, a quality seal for wine competitions. Mhmm. You mean, for the judges or for the competition itself? For both. Okay. So what isn't if, you know, if if you're sitting down at a table and you've got three days of tasting ahead of you, and you're gonna have three or four people on your on your table, what qualities do you want to see, in those judges? The first quality I would like to see is a is a little bit of experience. And if they don't have experience, I would like to see, and it was my case many, many years ago last century. When they was at the presidential and challenged, the judges, they were classified according to categories. They were the associate judge, Josh, somebody who was being trained in order to become a judge, the judge, the senior judge, and the super jurors. And this is, I think it's already a very good thing to have a classification of the judges and to indicate the judges, you have to learn and you have to follow a learning process. Then the second thing I would like to see with the judges is their capacity to work in teams and to put their ego out. Just to concentrate on the wine, I couldn't care less if a wine just likes or dislikes a wine. This is of no interest whatsoever. The important thing is that at WANJars is spotting a number of characteristic of this one, and it's measuring these characteristics against a certain pattern. And then the third and as important, as the other two characteristics is that the, I would like judges that are humble people, members of a team, and that are they realizing that they are just vehicles for elaborating an opinion on a wine, an informed opinion on a wine, and that they are so likely to be wrong in twenty percent of the cases that it is very much in their interest to speak with other people. They have also left their ego out of the table in order to taste and retrace in order to consider all the elements of why. We the people who are judging wise, we have a a fundamental problem. It's a problem that didn't happen in the past. The fundamental problem is the great wines, they need time, time to be judged, time to be enjoyed. You cannot be tasting wines one at a minute, and to taste one hundred wines in a day or to taste as some very famous precipitous are so proud of ten thousand to a thousand wines a year. This is simply you've it's something very banal, very, very narrow unit time, but we don't have this time. We need also to look at the economies of competitions, etcetera. The only way of overcoming partially, this, shortage is by having frank discussions with people you trust, with people that you don't feel that you have to be in a defensive with them and to accept that you may be wrong and that the collective knowledge is always much better than the addition of the individual knowledge. Interesting. It's, yeah, a lot of, a lot of common sense there in terms of the job. I always say to my judges, tell me what you like about the wine, and then you can tell me what you didn't like about the wine, but don't start with a negative start with a positive because it's very easy to get a a bit of negativity around the table. And, once it's there, it never goes away. Anyway, this, yeah, amazing interview to, we could talk for probably a couple of hours, but we'll get told of I think what we should do is, we can we can stop you, and we can have another podcast with you, hopefully very soon, and we can dig deeper into your extraordinary knowledge and your extraordinary way of explaining big issues very simply and very under no wonder you're an incredible educator. You know, the way you talk is, very, very effective. And, I've really, really enjoyed listening to you today. It's been a privilege to be, the person asking the questions really. I just wanna say thanks to Pedro. I wanna say, I hope to see you soon, and, we'll have another podcast. I promise. Okay? 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