Ep. 1167 Gurvinder Bhatia | Uncorked

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My name is Holly Hammond, and you are listening to uncorked, the Italian wine podcast series about all things marketing and communication. Join me each week for candid conversations with experts from within and beyond the wine world. As we explore what it takes to build a profitable business in today's constantly shifting environment. In this episode, we welcome Gravinder Badia, live from wine to wine twenty twenty two. As a former lawyer turned wine lover and publisher, Griovinder chats with us today about the business of running quench magazine. We'll talk branding, adaptation, and the path to wine writing now, as well as a little hip hop and wine, a real Genex podcast. Let's get into it. Alright. Here we go. This is exciting. It is my first time ever podcasting live from line to line, and you get to be that inaugural guest, Gryvinder. How you doing? I'm well. I've it's it's an honor. Oh, I don't know. Would this moment will live forever. That's really it. So I you and I have had a chance to talk over several additions of wine to wine, which is great for me, because I have a little bit of back story on some of what you do for the benefit of the audience. Talk to us a little bit about quench, and then we'll work into your history with Italian wine And then maybe some upcoming exciting projects. Sure. Absolutely. So, I mean, Quench magazine is actually the oldest, longest running, Food and Wine publication in North America. It turns fifty in two thousand and twenty three. So with Quench, I've actually written for the magazine for twenty two, twenty two, twenty three years. I was the contributing editor since, probably two thousand and six. Wine editor since two thousand and fourteen. And effective January first twenty twenty one, I I went crazy and and bought the magazine. What the hell were you thinking? I have no idea. Was it anything different from what you expected? Like, is this a kind of thing? Because we all get these wild hairs that were like, oh, yeah. I know exactly how this works. I'm gonna go in. You know, we're gonna we're gonna overhaul things. We're gonna change it. We're gonna fix everything that in all this history, of working with with the Organizations bug me. What did you find was just immovable? And what were your, like, I am Elon Musk, and this shit is out the door tomorrow? Well, I mean, it was interesting because, I mean, during the pandemic, it was, I think, May of twenty twenty. And I got a phone call from our editor in chief at the time, and he basically said that, we're out of print. Because the printing press in Montreal where the magazine had been printed forever was shut down for not being an essential service. And so we went from about to to and it was the I think it was the June issue that was was going to print, to being out of print. And I think it was probably our our previous owner was fantastic. I mean, he supported this magazine for so many years, through the ups and downs through through through everything. And that fall, he actually approached me and and asked if I'd be interested in buying the magazine. He said he's ready to sell. And I think we all knew if he had offered it up to some big media company, we all know how that would have gone. I mean, big media companies love the idea of a niche publication, but Right up until the moment that they own it? Exactly. And then they phase it out over two or three years when they realize it's not actually a profit center. Right. Right. And having been a part of that magazine for such a long time. And it was originally called tidings when it first when it first started, and back in, I think, two thousand and eight, our previous Saturday in chief Aldo and I were having a a dinner in Toronto. And I said to him, because we're talking about doing a little redesign and and and, and I said to him, I said, we need to change the name of the magazine. Modernize it? Well, and and he said to me, he goes, we can't. It's been called tidings since day one. I said, yeah. I said, but no one knows what the fuck tidings reach. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It was very much my grandparents, kind of, you know, glad tidings, peaceful tidings. Good Christmas time. Exactly. And, you know, I'll do a done such a good job when he took over. He he became, editor in chief in early two thousands. And he had done such a great job with evolving the look of the magazine, And he, I'd worked together to really kind of update the editorial and and, you know, I mean, it's it's always been a great magazine, but you always wanna continue evolving. And so his comment to me was he goes, Pierre is never gonna go for that. I said, you gotta talk to him. He goes, no. He's never gonna go for it. So over the next six months, periodically, I'd be speaking with Aldo. I said, did you talk to Pierre? He's like, I haven't yet. I haven't yet. So finally, he said to me, he goes, if if I talked to him, he goes, we need a new name. I said quench. I said quench is the new name. I said, it'd mean, you know, quench your thirst, quench your curiosity. I said, it it opens up so many doors. So finally, he talked to Pierre and he phones me and he goes, Pierre loves the idea. And so we actually spent a year in order to do it right, and we relaunched the magazine as quenched in two thousand and ten. Why a year? What do you mean by do it right? Well, everything. The look, the, you know, update the website. I mean, you can't just do a rebrand overnight. And so it had to be done in a thoughtful way because here's a magazine that had been around since nineteen seventy three. You can't just change the name overnight. I think that predates both of us, actually. Yeah. No. Not me. Pretend. That's that's interesting. I mean, I don't wanna derail the conversation too much, but I think that is something, you know, I've I've laughed about this even today. There's this joke, new market or new logo kind of thing that there is this desire to make a mark in the way that we do it as we go in and re radically alter things as opposed to a very sort of slow rollout approach that's not so much pattern interruption that it's so funny. We're sitting here having this conversation on the heels of literally the Twitter outrage, right, which is every bit of fuckery we can possibly imagine, on how not to alter a brand. Anyway, so I love that idea, and I think that that's something that I really like for people who are listening to latch on to that it's great to have a new idea, but that it's kind of like a tattoo. You know, you need to carry it around with you for a little bit, and you need to get used to it, and then you need to, you know, present it accordingly. Yeah. Absolutely. And so it it was the it it it's also important, you know, when when you do that kind of rebranding. Sure. The idea is that you want to also appeal to a whole new audience, but you don't wanna alienate your old audience either. Right? And so, it was done well. The the relaunch was done very well, and we had not only a great response from, our subscribers and our readers that we had had for for years, but, there was a a phenomenal response from both consumer and industry in terms of the relaunch and the new look, let's say. And so when the when the pandemic happened, we were actually talking about what's the next evolution because it had been about a decade. And so, when Pierre was ready to sell with Magazine, and as much as it's absolutely, I mean, a, I mean, you know buying a magazine is gonna be a money pit, and it it is. And it's not an easy thing to do. You'll never sleep again. Oh god. And, you know, it it was I'm at I'm I was at the stage in my life in my career where I really wasn't thinking about taking on something That big. I had done a lot of big stuff, and I was kinda, you know, I I I joked that I I was easing into semi retirement, but It it it was it was something that became I mean, it it it it consumes you. And so my first thought was when I I took the magazine over was Okay. I didn't wanna see it fade away. I mean, we'd all work so hard to get to to where it was. And we were already talking about what the next evolution was. And so my thought was, yeah, I'm gonna take this thing over. But number one, do we go back into print? And I still believe in print. And so I said, yes. We are absolutely going back into print. But I also made the decision that we're not doing eight issues a year anymore. We're now doing two issues a year, print issues a year. The website has new material every week, but, the other thing was that, okay, let's actually make this magazine a much truer representation of society. Let's expand the voices, which in turn will expand the audience for food and wine so that we are actually going beyond the traditional audience that so much of mainstream food and wine media, direct their their stories too. I mean, we all know what you're talking about there. You know, we're not glossing over anything on that one. No. Not at all. Not at all. And so I think the difference when I took it over was the fact that, being someone who's been in the industry for twenty seven years. But also, you know, I was always the only person of color at a tasting. I was always the only person of color on a press trip. But That whole having been said, the idea wasn't to make this a diversity publication. Right. Right? It was just about, I think, to maybe make it contemporary, to make it reflective of the world that we live in now. And that's exactly what it is. And Nice. I I So how did you do that? Well, I I think number one, you know, it's it's, it's actually just doing what we just said. Which is let's make this publication a reflection of society. So Hold on. I I think that it could be, but I think that we also see a lot of examples. We see this in advertising, right, where we say we wanna be more reflective. But what that means is that we you know, tokenize it. It's not just I mean, I see this in websites all the time. It's not just about putting up a picture of someone with a different skin tone than you are. It's actually about How do we reflect it in our language? And if we've got food and wine, how do we reflect it in that? And, you know, how do we reflect it in our advertising and marketing and social media and everywhere? So Well, I think the the differences is that the person who's actually making the decisions is a person of color, and person who and I say this to people often, diversity is a concept for white people. So all these diversity committees that pop up This these are organization these are are are organizations mainstream organizations that want to feel that they are doing something in a positive way. So they set up these diversity committees. They do and a lot of it is optics. Right? And in order for I don't have to answer to a whiteboard of directors. I don't have to answer to, a white editorial board who are thinking that, okay, let's have let's just add a few people of color. And That's look like a Burberry ad. Exactly. Exactly. And so I approach the magazine as I just approached my everyday life. And so, for me, it's about making sure that and, again, I I I don't think about it in terms of a diversity issue. To me, it's more about inclusivity. And let's make sure that we have a we broaden the voices, and we expand, you know, the the stories that are being told to be reflective of what's actually happening. What what are you gonna come in and be one of the podcasters for the I think that you and Cynthia could go head to head on on the voices series. So I I know that we wanna talk about what you're doing here at wine to wine, but this is such a beautiful segue. So that you have some pretty exciting things coming up, that I think, you know, are just remarkable looking at how far and and how rapidly wine is being better about adopting change. I know there's still a long way to go. I'm not trying to say that we're perfect on it, but how about you tell us where when you leave Italy, What are you heading off to? Well, I go to New York, and so Quench is the media partner for Germaine Stone's new wine and hip hop festival that he's starting up in Brooklyn. And I'm so excited about that for a lot of reasons. One is because, I mean, people think of me or know me today as, you know, as a journalist, as a wine educator, and all, but, I mean, I started off in the industry as a retailer. And so from ninety five nineteen ninety five until two thousand sixteen, I owned one of the more successful private wine stores in Canada. You're allowed to be proud of your work. Thank you. And but The thing was is that I actually, didn't come from the wine industry when I opened my shop. And I think that was actually a benefit because my whole m o when I opened the shop was, let's have this great selection of wines, focusing in on small independent producers from around the world, all different price points, great value, but let's make wine accessible to the average consumer. Let's make good wine accessible to the average consumer. And that's how I always approached it. And to me, this isn't the magazine's extension of that. I did, a CBC radio, wine column for eleven years every Thursday morning. Again, with the idea that let's make wine more accessible, And, you know, that started in ninety nine. And it was about storytelling. It was about and again, storytelling is not new. Everything storytelling is new. The storytelling is not new. But it was about Many thousands of years old. And it was about making quality wine accessible to the average person. And the the thing I love when German approached me about being involved with the festival is the same thing. It's about making wine accessible to a broader audience. Yeah. So I wanna talk about the festival. Are you allowed to tell us? I mean, I don't know how much is under wraps, how much is public. Are you allowed to tell us what is involved in a wine and hip hop festival? Like, who are the performers and what what wines are there and what are the, you know, what's the audience? Are they twenty two year olds? Are they sixty five year olds? Is it I hate generational demographics. I have to say that. But but, like, what Who comes? I don't know. This is the first time that it's happening. I mean, and and so, I mean, I'm gonna learn what's going on too. I mean, I'm gonna be moderating a panel, or master class, that's called, I'm a hustler baby. And so Awesome. And so, I don't even know everybody who's on the panel yet. I find I find that out in a couple of days, but, I think, you know, Germaine and I, You have talked a lot over the last, year or so. Just about wine in general in terms of, you know, the, you know, in terms of the culture around wine, the culture around hip hop, the culture of, the interaction of bringing those things together and in, in a specific sense, but also in a general sense because for years, I was involved with a a music festival in Canada called, interstellar rodeo. Which was, me pairing wines with the individual artists who were at or who were playing the festival. Right. And that wine would be served while that artist was playing. And so I'm I'm a big believer that, you know, people who love wine, people who love food, they also love music, and they love arts and culture, and they love so many things. And this is why when people talk about, oh, wine, love, lifestyle, publication, lifestyle, this, I'm like, wine is part of lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah. And, actually, what's super interesting about this is that we think about the fine wine relationship to music all the time. We think about the krug and the symphonics, and we think about the devulate. That's it. Devulate who works with Crew. Right? We've got we have so many examples beyond that. We've got synesthesia. But it's always in the context of these super luxury experiences as opposed to, you know, regular, ordinary everyday experiences. I I'll tell a story so I'm a I'm Genex or and I grew up with Pearl Jim, and Eddie Vet loves wine. And that all of these all of us who grew up from being young kids, listening to everything you name it, we still listen to that in our home. So I didn't become a classical, music listener because I turned forty five. Mhmm. So, yeah, and just and, again, I think that, see, making it recognized as a part of our as you say, as a part of our lifestyle, exactly where we are in the moment. Absolutely. Just put in a little plug you need to come to my presentation today because it's gonna be like a it's gonna be like a drum and bass fetish club. That's that's the whole whole thing of the presentation. So, so you're working on you're working on this event. Although you've done events, as you were saying, interstellar rodeo for years and years, let me just bring it back to wine to wine really quickly. I know you're in Italy regularly. We get to have you here to talk with us this, these this week. What are you chatting about? My topic is, understanding wine consumer buying behavior. And the subheading to that is stop listening to the pseudo experts. Oh. Oh. Am I one of the pseudo experts? Who are the pseudo experts? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. And it's a bit of a, you know, it's it's the Data is good. Statistics are good, but unless you actually have interaction with the wine consumer, with the consumer. Mhmm. It's really hard to tell people how how to deal with consumers. It's really hard to, I think be, have credibility, when you rely on data, that is all about past purchases and generally past purchases of a very narrow, product range because of where they're getting this data from. Right? So it's generally, narrows the product line. It's a very homogeneous, type of product, and it's a very it it's a very commercial line as well. So How do you predict and how do you, guide industry professionals in terms of dealing with the consumer when the data that you're relying on really isn't applicable to what the messaging of the wine industry tends to be, which is we want the consumer to do drink better. We want them to try more things. And the only way to actually do that is to understand number one that before somebody is a wine consumer, they're a consumer, understanding a little bit about human behavior, and also understanding that it's possible to actually promote and advocate for good quality wine at inexpensive price points than that, you know, the the stratification, of, of wine isn't based shouldn't just be based on on quality. But you can do that to a broader audience, and you can do it in a big way because our industry is too often, I think, says, oh, the average consumer, they don't care what they drink. So let's give them all this mass produce, will, exactly. But the good stuff is for the wine consumers. It's like, no. No. No. We want to cultivate The average consumer and I think twenty five years ago, our industry was really good with actually making wine more accessible to the average person and getting rid of that intimidation factor that it existed prior to that. Then I think our industry had a few missteps because as wine became more prevalent in mainstream society, instead of saying, hey, this is great. Let's start introducing all these consumers who are now interested in wine because it's it's almost everywhere, and let's give them this really good quality inexpensive wines from Spain and Portugal. But instead, our industry ended up saying, Hey. Look at all these people who are interested in wine. Let's produce all this Coca Cola swill. Yeah. And let's push it on them. And now our industry is trying to figure out how to fix that mistake. Because now our industry wants to talk about, oh, how do we relate to the consumer again? They wanna talk about how do we get the consumer to drink better? Yeah. Without really understanding that the industry created that mess in the first place. So, so many, many thoughts swirling in my head around that. The first one is I struggle with wine data myself, with our clients because I feel like in some sense, it we're just always, supporting our own biases. Like, we just want the data that tells us that whatever we're doing is right. And I actually find that we rarely use wine data. In developing marketing strategies. We use lots of other interesting data, but I'm not interested really in, as you say, wine data that god knows when it came out and what the thought processes were. And sometimes you look at honestly the survey questions that were asked and the respondents, and I'm like, this means nothing to me. I I remember one time looking at a set of data that was about the US I'm looking at it. And I'm like, but this doesn't mean anything to me because we've got states that we can't even ship to. So, like, help me break down what it is. You know, Robert Joseph says, he talks about this with China that we're not ever talking about one country. We're talking about lots of micro markets, and I don't think that's just Geo. I think that is, just how we live. I think those are lifestyle choices. So that's part of it. So I I wanna tell you, Felisti and I, we actually just had a podcast go out on this. Listic Carter and I just went to Washington DC for a professional journalist conference, had that was, contingent of seasoned experienced journalist, journalism professors, and then all of these journalism students from across America, and these were like award winning student journalists, and there were seven hundred and fifty people there, which is a good sized event. Anyway, people say, oh, what do you do? And we're like, we work in wine. No. Really? And they were completely fascinated to discover that as, you know, student journalists to discover that there's a career writing about studying, researching that we have trade publications, we have tourism publications, but we don't have all of this And and I think that that even is something that started us to say, we both looked at it and said, well, damn, next year, we need to be back in this room talking to the twenty, you know, the twenty year olds, the nineteen year olds the twenty two year olds who are graduating with journalism degrees right now, they were just fascinating. I mean, Felicity was talking to this one young man, and this is all in the podcast that people wanna go back and listen to about how wine is such a marker or, you know, our grapes are such a marker for what's going on in climate change. And you can actually track the full of climate change through the wine industry. And they were just a dog. They're like, whoa. So we sit here and whine all the time. We're like, oh, young people don't like wine. Well, you know why? Because we're not talking to them. We're not making it interesting. Why are they gonna like something when we're, like, come be like us as opposed to, hey, we want you know, we can meet you where you are. We can use the language, which I think going back to Jermaine Stone, who I've followed on social media for years, such a great example of we as an industry need to learn to use the language of our audiences, not, you know, indoctrinate them in this education. Sorry. I've I've had my little soap box. You can talk now. No. No. Absolutely. I mean, you're you're absolutely correct. And I think I think that's historically been one of the big issues with our industry, is is the fact that it is indoctrination in a lot of ways. As opposed to education and being inclusive, in a And just being interesting and being entertaining. We have make a joyous product. Exactly. It mean, I mean, this is this is the thing about about food and wine. I mean, for me, food and wine has always been something that's it's fun. Right? It's something that's that's enjoyable. It's something that, you know, can enhance your life. Get it. It can it can make your life more enjoyable. It shouldn't be something that when somebody starts talking about wine, you shouldn't go, you know, it it's Or what is it that we hear? Oh, I I like wine, but I don't know a lot about it. You probably know a lot more than I do. I mean, how many times have we all had a dime for every time that someone looked at us Absolutely. And sent that. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But it's also the, you know, too often, and I think this, again, this goes back to the the the last fifteen years or so, where our industry got so intent on, only talking to people about the technical side. And it's like, know your audience. And if you're talking to a bunch of psalms. Sure. Absolutely. But if you're talking to a bunch of consumers, they don't care what the pHs. Yeah. Bricks has never sold a bottle of wine ever. T. A has never sold one. Should have to tell you a story, and then I wanna come back to quench. So I have a client. I I just completely fell in love with this story. I'm a client based out of Atlanta. He is a urban romance publisher and has a whole slew of authors who work under him, and just completely fascinating and rolled out his own wine brand. Rolled out his own wine brand specifically for his authors and for his his audience because he's like, is there anything better to do than to sit down with a book and a glass of wine? And I was like, I love this so much. And and in that kind of thing, even of understanding our intent and our behavior and, you know, we don't always drink the same way. And we don't the the other thing is we don't always drink the same thing. I may love an expensive bottle of wine sometimes, but there are other nights. So I'm like, I just want something that if I open it and I don't don't drink any more than one glass, I'm not gonna feel guilt about it or, you know, or whatever it is. So just I don't know. I think being more expansive with this amazing property that we have, which is which is wine. Well, on the cover, on the cover of, the current issue of quench, it says there's over a thousand grape varieties in the world used to make wine. You don't eat the same food every day. So why would you always drink the same wine? Right. Right. Okay. So just bringing it back around to quench. In terms of content, so Is it all wine, erudition? I know the answer to that, as I say it. Is it the stories of people who make it? Is it food and wine? Is it music and one? Like, what's what's the sort of content that Quench is known for? I mean, we We I mean, we started as a wine publication. We are still a wine publication, but, But is that like reviews, awards that What what what we try to do is we try to focus in on the stories. Right? And so and and that gets, you know, I think overused a little bit, but I've always believed that food and wine get their context from people place culture and history. And when you can put food and wine in those contexts, that's how you get people to be able to relate to it. Right? You know, you can have food and wine in a vacuum is you eat it. You drink it. It tastes good. It doesn't taste good. Whatever. That's it. It sustains us. Exactly. But when you actually put it in a context that helps people to relate to it and help people to connect to it, that's how you get people engaged with it. And so on the whether it's food, whether it's, you know, or whether we're doing a, a profile on a chef, whether we're doing, a profile on a wine region, we try to put things in the context of know, for the chef. What what's the chef's background? What are the chef's inter inspiration? With the winemakers, same thing. What's the cultural context? What's the historical context of the region? Right? About the people from that region, you know, where is all of this coming from? And so it becomes a little bit more of, I mean, it it sounds, I think, you know, it's too simple to say that it's storytelling because I think that term has become a little bastardized. But again, when we talk about storytelling isn't new, Right? And so what we try to do is do it in a way that is not dumbing things down. We're doing it in a way that is not speaking over people's heads. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've gotten such a good fall in with the magazine both from industry as well as from the consumer. Right. And we've expanded a little bit into into music. Nice. Because, in some ways, I mean, the magazine is a a little bit reflective of of me in the sense that I love food, I love wine, I love music. But we're also trying to approach the music side with the same thing. And and we're not just you know, doing profiles on artists when they're releasing, an album, but we are trying to humanize the artists and give people a little bit more insight into You know, what what makes these people tick? What do they like? What what and and this also helps them to relate and, I think, get a little bit more context in terms of the art that they're actually creating. I mean, really, what we're doing is we're just making friends. You know, through through the context. It's just am I gonna like this person? Well, the more that I know about them as a person, the more possibility there is that I'm going to like them. Exactly. So, so the print publication comes out twice a year. Twice a year. But you got an active online publication. Where can we find that? Quench dot me. Okay. Is the the website, and through the website, you can subscribe to the print publication, which, of course, is distributed around the globe. And, we do an a weekly newsletter, as well that, some of our writers, Mikaela Morris, Christopher Seely, all do kinda take turns writing the the lead for the, the weekly newsletter, and know, it's it's it's something that we're just trying to do something in a way that, helps people relate more to food and more. To quench their curiosity Exactly. But I'm pumped. Exactly. Thank you so much for that. I know. And on social media, insta, Twitter. Instagram, Twitter, all that stuff, yeah, which, my digital manager deals with. We like those digital managers a lot. And then, of course, you yourself, are all over the place at events and just like this one, just like the one that's coming up. I know that you end up on podcasts all the time. So so we can't help but find you per personally as well. On Instagram at the Gervinder Vino on the go. On the go appropriately named. Gervinder, thank you so much. I appreciate your time today. Thanks so much, Paulie. And That's a wrap. Thank you for listening, and a great big thank you to your vendor for joining me today live from wine to wine. The Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world, and the only one with daily episodes. Tune in each day and discover all our different shows. Be sure to join us next Sunday for another look at the World of wine marketing. Listen to the Italian wine pot podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, email ifm, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider domain meeting through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time.