Ep. 2286 McKenna Cassidy interviews Emanuel Schürer and Christian Ramisch of Munich’s Society of Sommeliers | Next Generation

I wouldn't call our meetings really like tastings. It's more of a get together. The structure of our get together is in the beginning. If you're interested in a theory, then you can join our academy sessions. It's not mandatory, but if you're interested, you can go there. And that is always followed by an after party. Now that we have many members that are really into wine, they bring amazing bottles. So we have one member. So he's retired, but he decided to start his studies again And he always brings some of his spotters from his private inventory, and it's just amazing having people or having member bring those spotters that are rarely accessible. Yeah. It's just amazing. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This is the next generation with me, Mackenzie. For the next episode, I invite you to explore with me what young adults are up to in the Italian wine scene. Let's feast on our discussion of Italian wine and culture. Grab a glass with us. Chinching. Welcome, everyone. I'm Mckenna Cassidy on the next generation of the Italian wine podcast, and I'm joined by two special guests today. We have Chris and Emmanuel both calling in from Munich. They run Munich's first student wine club, and we are delighted and excited to hear more about that today. So welcome Chris and Emmanuel. If you would be so kind, just break the ice for us here. Tell us how old you are and where you were born and how you started this wine club. Thank you for having us. I'm Emmanuel. I'm twenty one years old, and I'm studying the thing as Christian, management and technology at the Technical University of Munich. And three years ago, quite exactly three years ago now. I went to my first cost accounting lecture, which is, maybe or some people might say, quite a boring class. And I was half asleep, and suddenly I heard wine in the lecture hall. What's happening here? And it turned out that it was because of being the first class of that course, It was pitching day. So some student initiatives were not to pitch there. They're themselves and, to acquire members. And the first one that pitched was a society of Solis in their founding semester, and I applied immediately during the lecture and got taken, and, in society of Solis for three years now. We'll tell you more about the site of your so many years soon, but, I'll give it over to Christian. Yeah. Thanks for having me as well. So first of all, yeah, I'm studying the same thing as Emmanuel, and I pretty much heard about it in the same lecture, but, I didn't I didn't apply yet. Because I don't know. It was just the uncertainty in the beginning, but, after Iman was first year and all the amazing stories he told me and about the field trips that we're gonna tell you later as well, I knew the head to join. That was basically my first contact point of serving a manual in the club. I think Emmanuel and I met in the first semester. And, since then we've became best friends, so that was, like, my number one reason to join. And my family is into wine, and my grandpa's also, like, really really interested and has a lot of bottles in his cellar, but I never knew what it meant when he told me that he's pouring me a Houston cabinet or something. So I was, like, really interested in in learning about the wine and what he's talking about. And that that was, like, the perfect contact point for me there. So I knew I had to join the club. Incredible. So how many years now have you both been in one year, two years? So, Emmanuel, you joined three years ago. Right? I applied during the first lecture, first page, first everything. So I'm in for three years now and, the anniversary is soon. Yeah. And I joined more or less exactly a year ago. Actually, I did apply one and a half years ago. Sadly, my application wasn't enough back then. But, yeah, now, like, I joined, I joined a year ago, and I wanted to take over some responsibility, and that's why half a year ago, I joined the board as well. Okay. So this is at your university. There's a club where you can taste wine and learn about it. In my second. Okay. Incredible. And you did not found this club. You joined this club. It's been on campus for a bit, but now you're in leadership. So it's called the Society of Sommeliers, Actually, our president is a trained winemaker. So his family owns a vineyard as well. And what vineyard is that? A wine with Bernard in Manhattan. So, Senator of Germany. Wonderful. Okay. So it's not not everyone can just sign up on the street and say, yeah, I wanna taste wine. And the room could get a little busy with people just drinking wine, but these students seem to be have a proven interest in wine. They have some certifications already in wine. So so kind of what are the credentials you have to have as a student to be able to enter a call like this? Just recently, we discussed our next application phase because right now, we do face a lot of applications. Last year was one hundred and seventy two applications, which was a record high. Wow. They're fifty spots. Great. You're fifteen. One five. It's it's yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Wow. Yeah. So, basically, our application period starts at the beginning of every semester. And, yeah, we start our social media campaign. So the first step is to apply via a Google forms. So it's really just answering some questions. Why do you wanna join the club? Do you have any connection to why so far? Do you have prior knowledge? What's your study course? Which is also quite quite interesting for us as we are really heavy on on business students, and we do wanna broaden that a bit, get more diverse as well. But we're on the right track. We now have some biology students, some law students. So it's getting, it's getting a bit better. And we actively, try to gain more non business people. But, yeah, so in the beginning, you apply via the forms, you tell us about your interest, your prior knowledge, and Once we have, like, the the board has reviewed those applications, which takes about one to two weeks, we rate the applications, and then we invite people to interviews. In the interview, we have two of our members, also to determine the personal fit because for us, that's pretty much the most important thing. Because I think we join the club to learn about wine, so we do not really expect prior knowledge. You but obviously, it it's cool to have prior knowledge. But, the personal fit is the most important thing. We want to have nice people in the club, and in the end, it's all about networking. So we we really keep an eye on that. And after, I think another two weeks of interviewing, we come we order, we start by the best points, and then, internally, we discuss which members we want to accept to the club. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Emmanuel, you're sipping something over there. Tell us what you're sipping and why. I hope you have to get an Italian wine. It's not expensive. It's the primitivo quite basic. I figured I didn't wanna go too heavy because I can't finish the bottle now because I still have some work to go. After this thought. So Of course. Maybe one small glass for me. Oh, cheers, Chris. But for me, it's, honestly, it's only apple juice mixed with some sparkling water. Oh, it's eight AM in Chicago. So if it weren't me, I'd be having champagne. Was actually Friday afternoon in Munich. Yes. Yeah. Maybe maybe later. But now, for now, I'm I'm gonna stick with apple juice. That's perfect. I guess so on an Italian wine note, what was the if you can recall the last Italian wine related class or meeting for the group. And what was that like? Amanda, do you wanna talk about South Dival? Yeah. So South Dival is, of course, Italy, right, North of Italy, the various wine region, and actually two tastings ago. We had a South Chirul tasting guided by two members who are both from South Chirul and very well connected. I think one of them works in the astronomy there. So very well connected. We had amazing wines But finally, I think we haven't been to Tuscana tasting wise, but we have been to Tuscana physically. Oh. Okay, Verona. You went as a group to the north? Yeah. Maybe let's, start off with the basics what the club actually does before we get deep. Let's do that. So I divide it into three main parts. So the main part we do during each semester is four tastings, four wine tastings. Each of these tastings, it's got one theme, one topic, So Turkish wine tasting stuff, teal. Some things we're going to do now are a vertical wine tasting. So different years from the same grape variety. South Africa is coming up, Australia. We've had everything. Feel a lot to go. The second main thing we do is our field trip. So once per semester, we do a field trip and actually the last field trip was to verona. So it's a week. I unfortunately couldn't join, so I can't tell you too much about it. Next time you go to verona, that's where the Italian wine podcast is based. Nothing. Right. If you go to verona, please message me. I beseech you. Okay. Good. And the better part of the club are competition. So contrary to maybe common conception, there are quite a lot of student wide initiatives worldwide, at least. And there is one giant competition hosted by the Whocho family, which is called the Left Bank Baldo Cup and this competition basically invites all student initiatives for wine all over the world. It's two eleven jobs in total, and it's a two step process as well. So first of all, you have to qualify within your peer group, or continent, basically. So there's a Europe group, America, and so on. And, we actually did a team qualify to the finals, which happens at Chateau Laf. So where the Richard Wine is being made. And our two members actually got to go there. One of our friends. His name is David. Actually got his wine, poured in by Barun, which was himself, so quite impressive. But, unfortunately, too, a team only made fourth place there. So he's still in a nice success. And, maybe to add to that, we are a bit more diversified, uni wise. We're not only at TUM, so Technical University of Munich. We are also accredited at the ElmU, so the Ludwig Museum University, it's called and we even have some members from other universities such as Oxford. But apparently, since our club has become more big in size, they are competitive clubs are being founded. All of them. They're taking inspiration and they're creating a side club or a side club. Wow. Christian, I think the best way is to work together, have tastings together, have the members join each other, get to know each other. Absolutely. Which we're also also planning right now. Having collaborations with other student wine clubs such as Zangayan in Switzerland. Oh, outstanding. So okay. So there's a university in Switzerland. You're also collaborating with to do travel? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The colab is probably gonna be the students from Zangain University, which is in Switzerland and Zangain. The town is called Zangain. They are likely gonna join us for one of our tastings this summer already. And, I think this is one of the key takeaways for us to really nurture the student life to have, like, shared initiatives. We also do tastings with other student initiatives that are non wine related at all. For example, with the Tum blockchain Club, we had one, which cares about blockchain technologies, then we did one with Inovus DC, which is focused on venture capital. And I think focusing on that will really get as I had even more in the club and, yeah, help us with our people's focus. Sounds like quite a good recruiting events for us. I'm sure it is. So what would you both say? There's a lot of commentary in the wine scene at large about how the next generation is drinking mostly cocktails. They're not drinking as much wine. In one night, they might have a cocktail, a glass of wine, a beer, a different cocktail, then a glass of wine, it's not wine all night anymore as if it ever was. But there's a lot of concern about the future of the wine industry because of the way the next generation is engaging with wine. And I'm looking at you seeing that you have a quite a dedicated list of people who want to learn about wine and are hungry. And thirsty, if you will, to learn about wine, And so, like, what would you say to someone who says, oh, the future of the industry is at risk because of the way the next gen is engaging with wine, and how does your club kind of respond? To this concern. It's perfect that we are responsible for partnerships, because we do have the insights. So first of all, there is definitely demand from companies or from winemakers to access new customer groups and to access the younger generation, which is also one of our use piece actually because we do have that target group. And with our Instagram channels and TikTok channels, we are, like, we have we have quite a far reach. So there is the really demand to reach the young generation. I think it's definitely reasonable. There are a lot of people just partying, but I think there is a clear trend. So also just seeing the number of student initiatives about wine and also the rising demand for our memberships, which is absolutely insane. We never had such a strong application phase. Like I said, one hundred and seventy applicants of people that are actively interested in wine that wanna learn about it, that wanna go to tastings, So definitely there is an incline in in party people, but on the other hand, there's also a lot of people that are really, like, interested into Yeah. In in white. What's the what's the ethos of the thing? Like, what are people attracted to? Is it the story of the wine? Is it interest in geography? Is it the detail of learning about wine? It's a cool challenge to learn about it. Like, what's attractive about line that that makes all these people, these young people wanna apply to the club, for example. Like, what's the draw? What's magnetic about what's going on in that room? I think that's actually the part that's changing. That's a trend that's interesting. That's maybe also the thing that's worrying the old two wineries because they're used to customers fifty plus checking out their wines and wine tasting. And if they like it, they buy like three boxes, a six bottles and so on, But I think the industry is changing and that's what we're kind of embodying. You can see that on our Instagram. It's becoming more about the people, about the stories, about the wines, where the wine is from, storytelling from a winemaker, not only like, okay, this wine tastes like that. That's it. It's about storytelling, it's about marketing, getting it across. And I think that's what we are really doing, and we're trying that. And of course, we're combining it with the people, which is my favorite part of the club. Enjoying wines together discussing having something to talk about with a person, maybe from a completely different background, the one person studying electrical engineering, the other one is studying medicine. And they might never meet in university otherwise, but we are connecting them because they can talk about which attributes this wine they're tasting to get their heads. And I think, that's one of the things the wine industry might have to focus on, more get together, more lifestyle. I know it sounds a bit unsexy, especially for the more traditional generation, but, I think the trend is going into that direction now. That's awesome. It sounds like this kind of, this education, this transparency about the details behind the wine, and then an opportunity to hang and actually enjoy it. Like, Those three things are kind of magical draw. Like, we just mentioned. I also think that wine becomes more and more like a lifestyle product. You do wanna match with the vibe. You wanna drink it outside. You wanna meet with friends to drink a glass of wine. It's not just going to a restaurant or just tasting the wine and discussing the scents. I mean, obviously, that's a big part of it. But, I think for us students, for the younger generation, it's actually about the people. And, that's also, for example, why I wouldn't call our meetings really like tastings. It's more of a get together that consists of several parts. So, like, the structure of our get togethers is in the beginning. If you're interested in a theory, then you can join our academy sessions that are hosted by our head of education. It's not mandatory, but if you're interested, you can go there, then usually our tastings are with a certain topic like a man who's head, region, or horizontal. What we do on a plan for the next semester is always New World or even some different grape varieties for horizontal tastings. And that is always followed by an after party, where every member brings their own bottle, then we shared with other people, tell the stories of the wine how we experienced it when we drank it the first time. It's also amazing because now that we have many members that are really into wine, they bring amazing bottles. So we have we have one member, so he's retired. But he decided to start his studies again, and He always brings some of his spotters from his private inventory, and it's just amazing having people or having member bring those spotters that are, you know, rarely accessible. Yeah. It's just amazing. This is so awesome. It sounds like too much fun. Like, I I wanna It is. It is. It's amazing. This is great. So to that end, like, talk to me about some memories from your meetings, like, funniest moments or travel memories or something like that. You can think about it for a second too. In writing the trail memory is the first field that we organized because, as Christian already mentioned, our founder actually comes from a white maker family himself So our first future trip, we were only twelve people. The club was like thirty maybe and twelve people joined for the future. We went to their home in the line hessen. I mean, they gave us their best wine, showed us everything in detail, how everything's done and it was such an immersive experience really went into the details and really authentic. We lived there. And, of course, some great memories partying too, on the German village, in Hasson, the wine parties are quite intense. They've got the saying hand bread, hand bread. So they they drink a mix of sparkling water with wine. And it's saying hand bread, hand bread means first the size of your hands vertically and then horizontally. And vertically is the wine horizontally is the water. So It's getting quite intense over there. I love that. I'm bringing that to Chicago. So for me, they didn't join the future yet because first of all, I only joined I joined a year ago. Yeah. I understand he didn't make it to verona. But Emmanuel told you about a memorable moment. I'm gonna tell you about a funny moment on many funny moments because obviously it's always fun. We have great members, but what I thought of right now is, when our marketing department comes up to us, and they have new ideas for TikToks or Instagram. They always want everybody to join and do the dances in front of everyone and it's just just hilarious not just last time we did the I'm looking for a men in finance video. It's crazy. It has over five million views now. Many views. Oh my gosh. Everyone who's listening, you can find them on Instagram and TikTok, and he's, like, a delight and absolutely hilarious. You feel like you're in the room with everyone. It's really cool. And that's awesome, Chris, thanks for sharing that. Do you have any other, like, memories or anecdotes that you were thinking of? One very fresh news, that we can now announce is that we're, an official club in Germany, which is quite a lengthy process. You have to go to the notary blah blah blah, and we finally manage it. Maybe it's not relatable for Americans because everything's much quicker over there. But in Germany, it took ages, and we finally managed it. And I think Congrats. That's you. To have the official backing now. That's great. So what is that a lot? Does that give you access to funding, or it just makes you more official? Like, what's the appeal of doing that? Yes. So first of all, now we have an official structure. So so far, we didn't really have elections for the board positions. Now we do. So we have official process. Also, we have another okay. It's getting quite theoretical, but, we do have another text code. So Oh, this is a lot to manage. Another few regulations. So we are, yeah, we are not allowed to spend money on alcohol. We need a loophole. Yeah. But there are ways. Obviously, That's pretty much the biggest thing, but we had to do it because of the universities because if you do wanna be accredited by the universities, you do have to be a club in funding or an official registered club with the notaries office So, yeah, we had a timeline. We had to get officially found it in, in a time span of two years. And, yeah, that's that's the point now. This is awesome. But, yeah, we are really proud of that. It's an amazing milestone for our club as well. Totally. Do you think that you both when you graduate, you know, leave wine behind, and it was just a pipe dream in college, or is this significantly perhaps impacting your career decisions? What do you think? Even founding an alumni map for the people that graduated university media and we will finally get togethers, and we, of course, also meet in private without the official tastings. And I think, once you start earning, we, of course, only have student budgets. Once you start earning, there's much nicer wines to be had. So I think the future is looking bright for us. This is awesome. I'm so excited for you. So you'll go into business, but you you might maintain the wine club post, and you'll be able to do both. Could you do ever first see yourself like entering the wine industry. I mean, for me, the first contact point now was the involvement for partnerships in our club. Maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna say it a bit broader. The partnerships part is definitely interesting for me, and why there's an interesting topic. So I'll end up in the wine industry. That's definitely the partnership side and talking to people over a glass of wine. That's that's definitely gonna happen. I love it. Okay. We've identified the part that's attractive. That's awesome. Guys. Thank you so much for sharing all the details about this really impressive kind of organization, your dedication to it, the connections you made with other people along the way. I think it's a really great example. And a successful one for many people who are seeking to engage the next generation, but lucky us, we're the ones who get to enjoy. So are there anything any other details that you would want like listeners to know about what you're up to in a wine scene? Depending on how the crowd is developing, we have had the very visionary goal of maybe expanding to other universities, other cities, and making it kind of a brand because it's working so well right now. We we don't wanna get ahead of ourselves, but if it continues like that, we might actually start founding new hubs of our club, which other student initiatives from Munich did, like in NovaVC, for example, so maybe that's a brand outlook for us. That's awesome. Well, tears to that. This is amazing. Thank you guys so much for your time, and we can't wait to listen to this again and again as we get to know, like, the clubs we're gonna start popping up all over the world. It's gonna be like, it started somewhere. Thank you so much for having us and spreading the word. Thank you. About one percent. Cheers to you. Thanks so much for being here with me today. Remember to catch our episodes weekly on the Italian wine podcast. Available everywhere you get your pods. Saluday.