Ep. 441 Dewey Markham Jr.

Italian wine podcast is a proud media partner of wine to wine twenty twenty. This November twenty third and twenty fourth is the seventh edition of the business forum wine to wine. Featuring seventy sessions dedicated to the wine industry. Normally held in Verona Italy. This is the first ever full digital edition of the forum. On November twenty first, wine spectator will kick off the proceedings with a free to register opera wine presentation. Featuring the hundred best Italian wines of the year. Point to wine twenty five tickets available at wine to wine dot net. Italian wine podcast with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast. My name is Monte Walden. My guest today is Dewey Malcolm Junior. Dewey was born and raised in New York City. Tell us a little bit about your life at university and when you were studying and what your bachelor's degree was in? Well, university was basically, just three and a half years of discovery. I majored in English for a bachelor's degree, English literature. And that's simply because, my first semester, at New York University. I was used to taking the standard distribution of classes from high school, meaning one English class, one history class, one science class, and, one mathematics class. And I ended up with the lowest grade point average I've ever heard anybody get. It was zero point eight seven out of four point zero. But I got a b in English, and that was my highest grade. So I became an English major. And, it all really, so much of my life is just falling into place by accident, and that's just the first example. Then you took a film course. Why did you do that? Well, I've always been interested in film, and what happened was, although I majored in English, I took a great amount of classes in film, and the problem was I could not get a double major. So, after getting the, bachelor's degree in English for three and a half years, I went back for another three semesters, a year and a half to get a master's in film just to close that out. During that time, you met film directors and actors, because they were Q and A with them. Any famous names that you remember or any bits of advice that you picked up that helped you in your subsequent career? Well, the reason I went through that, I didn't want to work in film. And what I did for, a couple of years after getting the degree was look for work as a production assistant in New York City. I don't know if it was mentioned, I made I'm a native New Yorker. And at that time, the, the big film that was going on was Superman, the original Richard Donna Superman, and, everybody that was, like, a multi month shoot. Everybody was involved with that. So I was very fortunate to get in on that. One of the curious things that I found, when I was watching the film again with my son, who was just a child about, oh, maybe eighteen years ago, was there's a scene where Superman is doing all these super things. And he foils this bank robbery, this this robbery escape on a boat. And one of the robbers was actually his boss clock, which is what he was doing when he was still, getting himself established, in his university years. Ledia Oss Clark is a well known TV personality and wine expert. Yep. So there's a lot of wine connection, in the film Superman that most people are not at all aware of. So your next step was you've somehow got a job on a cruise ship and visited Europe, I think, for the first time in France, for the first time. How did you get the job and tell us about your adventures that that created? Well, that was a direct out put of, result of my, my film background. One of my film professors did a class where we would have a screening of a film on weekends before it opened. And then in the class on Thursday evenings with four hundred people. There'd be a conversation with one of the principles of the film, director, star, screenwriter, I don't know whomever. And he was asked to take this program onboard a cruise ship that was going through the Baltic, Norwegian American lines. And he asked me to come along as his assistant. And that was my first time in Europe in nineteen seventy seven. And, thanks to that, I, you know, really, it's indirectly again, I got into to food, and I got into wine. Okay. Carry on. Well, because the cruise ship company was paying for everything, transportation, expenses, etcetera. During the cruise, I met somebody who was one of the friends of one of the celebrities. To be interviewed. And we hit it off, and, she was going to go to Paris after the coal cruise finished in Copenhagen, and I decided to tag along. I rearranged my return to go from Copenhagen to New York, to go from Paris to New York, to go from Paris to New York. But it was I arranged for the last day that my ticket was good for. I had a fourteen to twenty one day excursion ticket, and I ended up, missing my flight back to New York on the last day that the ticket was good for. Again, now I I gave myself an hour to get from Paris to, Charles School Airport because I had known that it took about an hour to get from Manhattan to JFK, John F Kennedy Airport. So, Mrs. Markam's idiot son made the connection that it takes an hour to get from any city to any airport. And, as I was getting off the, the transport bus to the airport, I was six minutes late. And that meant that I could not get back home. I ended up having to spend one hundred dollars to upgrade my ticket, which then made it good for a year. And I wasn't gonna come back on the next available flight. You know, this is the first money out of my pocket. I was determined to stay in Paris for one hundred dollars worth, and I spoke no French at all. So I registered at the Allianz Frances for a month long class. It turns out a hundred dollars worth of Paris. Was one month. And it was during that time that I fell in love with Paris, determined I had to do anything to get back to Paris to live for about two years. And I'd always enjoyed cooking, and that's what put me on the path, towards a professional career with food. Okay. So you then qualified, and learned, you were studying food in that was back in Manhattan. Right? Right. At the time, I was actually working in, as a, as a typesetter. I had done that when waiting to, for film production jobs to come along, just got tiring. And, from that, I decided that I would go to cooking school. There's a school called The Colony Institute of Amera in Upstate New York. And so I registered for that, and I spent twenty one months in that program, and a further year and a half, as a fellowship after I graduated working on a cookbook that they were doing to use as their new textbook. And you're very pragmatic. I mean, you say that you're rational in in in signing up for the, the culinary institutes of America, which is the cooking school that you've attended. Your rationale was everybody needs to eat. So, obviously, that's true. So There's always a job for life if anything goes wrong being a chef. Well, because I figured that my, my French was so poor at that point that I could not get a job as a typesetter. But, you know, again, pragmatism worn out. So whilst you were still a student at the institute, you started to write what were you writing about and why? Well, I started actually by writing for the school newspaper, a, a film column, reviewing movies. So, again, I've always had nothing goes to waste. So that brought into play my film background. And because the reviews were so popular, people in the school administration approached me to start writing articles, for a magazine that they published as well. And that, you know, led to, being offered this fellowship upon graduation and editorial fellowship. So it all kind of knitted together much better than I had ever hoped or even could have planned. I mean, how did you feel about that? Did you just think, well, I'm just a lucky guy, or did you think, wow, I'm a lucky guy. I can't keep, cutting things fine as I am. How did you how did you see yourself at that time? Thomas Jefferson, is no saying that it was quite attributed to him, the harder I work for luckier I am. So, yes, it was a lot of it. It was a question of being in the right place at the right time. But as I say, a lot of what I had done, everything that I had done, up to that point, came into play, the film, the English, for writing, it all came together in a very rewarding way that, continues to this day. So from eighty six to eighty nine, you lived back in Paris, and you became the director of the French cooking school de cuisine La Verne. How did you get that job? Well, when I was doing the editorial fellowship at the school, I learned about this cooking school, Laverne, founded by a woman named Anne Wilen, a prominent cookbook writer. And she had these positions, trainee positions for a Stagier position. And you either worked in the kitchen translating the, recipes from the French chefs to the English attendees. Again, my French, I didn't feel was good enough for that, but she also had a secondary traineeship, an editorial traineeship helping her with cookbooks and with the recipes that were taught in the classes. And, again, what I was doing at the culinary Institute just seemed a perfect match for that. So I sort of segued into that. Nine years after my first time in Paris, nineteen seventy seven, I'd finally arranged all my ducks in a row to where I could return to Paris for those two years that I wanted to do originally. And it turns out I was in Paris for three years. And not only did I start as a trainee at the school, But, after the one year training ship was over, was drawing to a close, the fellow who was the assistant director at the school left. He was going to work with a three star Michelin chef down in the, Riviera, the French Riviera, He was opening up a cooking school there. And so I was asked to become, the assistant director. And about a week or two after taking on that position, the woman who was the director left, she wanted to start a family and have children. So I became director of, the Cold cuisine Laverne after being there for about a year. I've always had Frances the land of opportunity, and that certainly bears it out. So that was a real kind of shift. Obviously, in responsibility and an emphasis in your career. What was the next step? Well, what happened was, as working as director of the cooking school, I had the opportunity to work with restaurant chefs in Paris. And through restaurant chefs, I had the chance to were to actually meet winemakers. And I'd always had an interest in wine. I'd read wine books and magazines, at the culinary Institute. You take a class in wine for seven days. And what all that exposure to wine just proved to me beyond any doubt was that I was never going to understand wine. Wine is just too complicated. But being able to talk to winemakers, and I'm sure that you, and many, many of the people listening to this, have had the same experience, winemakers can talk about what do they do with such clarity and passion that listening to them talk about wine, all those complications that I encountered in the wine classes, and in the books, etcetera, They all just sort of fell away and I came to the understanding, the appreciation that wine is among the probably the easiest food that we consume to understand. Wine is really simple. They make it hard. But it really is easy. And so during those three years in Paris, I began to make the transition from food towards wine. And in nineteen eighty nine, I left Paris to return home to New York City to set about reinventing myself in wine. So to do that, I started working at wine shops in New York City, couple of shops. There's, I did a Christmas season at a shop called Marrells, and then worked at another shop called Sherry layman. You can't just say Sherry Lememan. This is, like, one of the most famous stores in the United States for wines and spirits. Yeah? Exactly. I've always called Sherry Lehman, the Harvard of American wine stores because not just working there, but also just shopping there. Their their selection is so wide and deep that I learned a great deal there. And it was during this time also I began to teach wine classes in New York, and I wrote my first wine book for beginning wine drinkers called wine basics. And that really got me on the path toward towards wine. And that was a tremendously successful, book published in the United States by John Wylie, I think, and what John Wylie concerns. Were you surprised about just how successful that book was? So do you think, well, if I sell maybe a couple thousand copies, I'll be really delighted. But it became to become a really, really well known book in America, a massive, massive event, really, for hitting people to to be more comfortable with wine. You must have been so pleased about that. Well, it was very gratifying. It went through, nineteen reprints, became one of the standard titles for American wine drinkers, for basic, wine knowledge, writing it. I recalled my experience with wine books for beginners that I had encountered. And I remember, I mean, the basic structure of most wine books is there is a section in the beginning of about maybe ten, twelve pages about wine in general. Then there's a very long section on grape varieties. And then another very long section, all these vineyards around the world. And I remember as a novice is a beginning wine drinker, going through these books, And getting the impression that, I mean, just to understand this glass of wine I had in front of me, I needed a degree in agriculture or geography. And so what I did with wine basics was I took those first ten to twelve pages in all these other books. And I expanded it to two hundred. And, I don't talk about a single grape variety. I don't talk about a single wine region. The idea was that you can open up just about any page of the book and find something that will help you better understand and enjoy the wine you have in front of you. Yeah. A great idea, and it's nice to hear somebody with so much knowledge, be able to communicate the complexities and contradictions of wine and the jargon into something that's, in bite sized chunks for normal people, that's one of the big issues I think we have in our industry is is poor communication. Now you've got a degree in wine tasting from the school of Anology at Bordeaux University. I mean, you know, that's not like an easy thing that you pick up. Is it? How did that come about? Well, I came to Bordeaux in nineteen ninety three. It was a period of four years of reinventing myself in wine. And during this time, I developed, particular interest in a subject very germane to Bordeaux wine, which is this eighteen fifty five classification that they have here. When you hear people talking about Bordeaux wines, hang as a first growth or a second or a fifth or a fourth or whatever, it refers to this document, this list drawn up in the year eighteen fifty five. And so I started doing research on it, and I saw that no one had ever written a book about that subject before. There were paragraphs, maybe a chapter or something in wine books here and there, but not an entire book. So I ended up coming to Bordeaux for what I thought would be twelve months of research, and it turned out to be four years of research and writing, for this book. And after I'd finished the main bulk of the writing and the editing, I decided I wanted to take this class that is offered at the analogy school here. And the analogy school is where people go for, like, three, four year programs to become, analogists, seller masters, winemakers, but they offer a nine month program in wine tasting called the DuAD, duAD, which is a university, program, diploma in wine tasting aptitude. And, I thought it was gonna be just me twice a week sitting with my nose in a glass for nine months, saying, do you smell this? Do you smell that? And it was much more intensive than that. I'm, by no means, a winemaker and anologist, but every one of the instructors, every one of the professors, the teachers in the full program would come and do a week or two of their their specialty. I called it the the the dog and pony show they would bring in. So we learned about malolactic fermentation, white grape growing, red wine fermentation, filtration, one professor. It was Danny Du Boardieu, genius in the world of water winemaking. Hammond did four weeks on yeast. So it was a comprehensive education into wine, and I can honestly say that I could not do the things that I've been doing since if I had not taken those nine months of study. Yeah. Don't need the board here for those of you that don't know. He's, the late, Denise. He was, a late extraordinarily nice man with a ridiculous amount of knowledge and always prepared to share it, and he's very much missed. Exactly. So we could talk a little bit about Italian wine? We could. So are there any particular Italian regions, grapes, or wine stars that get you particularly excited. Frustratingly, the answer to that is no, not at the moment. And this is because I've been in board O' now for, twenty eight years. And, when I was in New York, which is not a wine producing region. Yes. I was very much, involved, you know, enthusiastic about seeking out Italian wines. Fact when I was teaching classes, I turned on a number of people to, Vincent, for instance. But when you are in Bordeaux, maybe you found this, just, you know, you know, wine regions in Italy, you go to a wine store in Bordeaux, and that you can find Bordeaux. There are some bottles of Bordeaux. They have a selection of Bordeaux. And once in a while, they can even find a bottle of Bordeaux. I mean, it's all Bordeaux. And originally, I thought that this was because the Bordeaux A are just very chauvinistic, they're snobs, But during my research on the eighteen fifty five book, I went to Burgundy to look in some archives there and found that going into wine shops in Burgundy, there was this Burgundy Burgundy. So even in Bordeaux, trying to find, you know, a nice decent, maybe good, but not a blockbuster wine from Alsace or Burgundy or the Roan, wherever, it it's easier now, but it's certainly traditionally rather different. And so I have been cut off from, not just Italian wine, but so much of the world's wines in a way that I was not when I was in New York. And it's I understand the logic of it because if I'm a wine shop owner, in a wine re wine making region, I'm there to give people what they want. And my customers, you know, if they want what they know. And in a wine producing region, they know the local stuff. So, being in Bordeaux has been wonderful in so many ways. But it has closed me off from the greater world of wine to a greater extent than, than I really liked over these last several decades. Just why did you, obviously, you visited Bordeaux, and you ended up staying there, what was the reason for that? Well, doing, as I said, it was four years of research on this book on the classification of eighteen fifty five. And during that time, I not only went to libraries and archives here in Bordeaux and in Paris. The Bibliotheque Nacional and, the British Museum in London. But I also went to all of the classified growth, sixty one red wines and about twenty seven white wines, to see if they had any archival material that could help me in my research. And at one of the chateau I visited, the contact held. And, today, that contact, she is my wife. And because, she is from Bordeaux, I am now from Bordeaux. I thought I was gonna spend only, like, twelve months here, but it's, you know, it's it's a life I'm here for the duration, basically. But I've always said that if that Bordeaux book only sold four copies, it would still be a great success, because thanks to that, actually, I met my wife. So your wife is called Catherine or Kathine Guillon? That's right. She was my contact when we worked at when, I went to Mouton Roth's child. Right. So that's where she was working for at the time. Right. I married a first growth wife. Yeah. I can't I can't let you say that. I can't can't say that. Did you judge any Italian wine competitions? Doing the the competition this spring for five star wines. Was a delight because it really got me back to Italian wine in a way that I have really had the pleasure, over the past twenty eight years. I have traveled to Italy, on a couple of occasions. Basically, well, you have to understand I hate to travel. Number one. So my wife drags me all over the place, and we went to Venice for our honeymoon. And for our twentieth wedding anniversary, three years ago, she she pulled me over to Rome, and that allowed me to dip my toe back into the, the world of Italian wine. But it has really been insufficient. And so having the chance, to judge, you know, some three dozen Italian wines was was delightful. And I really I'm I'm very grateful for that opportunity. I mean, how does just, you know, obviously, you traveled a lot in your life. And just a brief snapshot. The difference between wine culture in France, obviously got deep knowledge of that, and the differences between France and Italy just maybe go into a restaurant or, in the way the wine served or described or what are the differences? Well, a lot of my perspective on this goes back to two things, number one, my being an American. And and number two, just, you know, the decades, my experience decades back, before I even really started drinking wine, when I think of the post war years in the United States, for me, meaning the 1960s, where, at that time, and what I want to say now is very, very cliched, perhaps very unjust, but this was the perception. Italian wine in the nineteen sixties. And before, even though Italian wine has always been the most widely imported wine into the US market, It had a reputation that was not all that stellar. You would think of Italian wine and you think of a red and white table cloth with a straw covered bottle and a candle sticking in it. That was the image of Italian wine. Even though Italy has always made these wonderful, wonderful wines, you have barbecues, Montepulciano, you have all these great wines, but you thought of Italian wine as the Chianti Fiasco. And France, on the other hand, has long been, you know, what when you would, you know, say wine to Americans, say, oh, French, unfair as that is, that was the case. However, and it's really, for me, goes to a certain extent to the key between the perception of French wine and Italian wine, even, I would say, nationally, the French have kind of seen wine as an expression of, their national grandeur. And so they would send all these wonderful wines out to the world And if you have the experience of being in France and you're invited to someone's home, you're not gonna be drinking Chateau latour, you know, with, you know, whatever the dinner is that night. There are wonderful wines of lesser status that are good everyday drinking wines. And the Italian wine experience seems to be the exact opposite. These wonderful great wines Italy produces did not, at least, you know, to my experience, get the, the wider appreciation they deserve until relatively recently, about maybe thirty, forty years ago. And so, that to me is always truck me as one of the main distinctions, in my thinking about, French wine vis à vis Italian wine. Curious, but, I mean, but there you are. I mean, if you are asked to do a tasting of Bordeaux wines and you're asked to do a tasting of Italian wines, do you think I should say actually the tasting of French wines and Italian ones. Obviously, both countries are massive in terms of production, the top two countries productivity in the world. Do you think, one or other is easier. It is our French wine is easy to judge the Italian or vice versa. Was that too simplistic? No. In terms of judging, no. I would say use use the same methodology for both. And even in terms of just drinking, I don't think that besides the fact of at Italy being a warmer climate, you know, being more Mediterranean as opposed to the majority of the wine regions in France. There's that difference in style, but it really good winemaking and a satisfying wine, which is one of the reasons why I think Bordeaux is going through such a difficult period now because you have a level of winemaking knowledge and technology, allowing great wines to produce, you know, all over the world, not just the classic old world wine regions, like France and Italy, but you have, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Chile, etcetera. Because good wine will be appreciated no matter where it's from. And as I've really enjoyed listening to you, I feel like I've I've dug out, like, no point, no, no, no, no, no, no, five percent of your knowledge and, and experience in life. I I have so enjoyed listening to you, honestly. I can't, well, thank you. That's it. I know. I'm not I used to live on board. I funny enough, I was working on board over nineteen ninety three when you were talking about that, and that brought me back. But it's, what I like about what you've said is is every time you've faced any kind of barrier, you've just managed to circumnavigate it. You seem to be somebody that has a wonderful sense of humor, obviously a huge intellect. And just basic common sense, the idea of kiss, keep it simple stupid with the book that you wrote, incredibly successful. And, you know, you gotta say hats off, you know. Thank you. I mean, could you put all this in writing? I'd like to show this to my wife next time. She gives me any difficulty. Okay? So, I'm good. I just wanna say, thanks very much, Dewy Malcolm Junior, I should say. Even an absolutely fantastic guest, magnetic voice that you have, and it's not just about the style. It's more about the substance, and I've absolutely been thrilled to share that time with you today on the Italian wine podcast. I hope we can get you back again soon. Take care. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Here we go. Thanks, Julie. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud Apple Podcast HeimalIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italianline podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment and publication costs. Until next time.