Ep. 1679 Lisa Perrotti - Brown MW | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian wine gifts around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book. My Italian Grape journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian Great Geek journal, click support us at Italian wine podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pots. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello, and welcome to voices. This is Cynthia Chaplin, and today I'm really excited to have Lisa Perati Brown with me. Lisa is a master of wine with over twenty five years experience in the wine industry. You've lived all over the world, London, Tokyo, Singapore, you're in California now. Doing all kinds of interesting things, primarily for many years with Robert Parker at the wine advocate as editor in chief, doing a lot of work there, publishing a book, tasting like a wine critic, all about quality, which is a book that I actually personally enjoyed. I judge and your book was very helpful about that. Thank you. And then, not that long ago, you started the wine independent, which is, a publication that I actually really love, but there's an interesting story behind it. And from my point of view, as a woman, the only woman in the wine industry, who's ever really had sort of an international communication body like this, was Janis Robinson. And so now you're on deck with the wine independent, and I've been wanting to talk to you about this ever since started. So thank you so much for coming. Oh, no. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, we're here at wine to wine business forum, bumped into you when you were talking to MJ Tower. So, it was just my good fortune that I got to grab you and say, please come on voices. When the wine independent started, it was kind of revolutionary. I mean, shocking slash scandal. So I just wanna pick your brain. You know, what was what was going on? What was the motivation? What made you say, right. That's it. I've had enough. I'm gonna start my own. Well, it was kind of a two part thing because, first of all, there was the opportunity. My my partner, Yohan Bergland, who had known for many years who has has been, well, started out as a photo journalist, doing conflict photography, but then he came and and started photographing wineries, particularly around Bordeaux. And I'd worked with him a little bit at the wine advocate. He'd done some projects for us. He came to me with the idea. And this kinda coincided with, point in my career where I thought, you know, I've been working for other people for so long. You know, although I had a certain amount of creative freedom, I never had total creative freedom because I was working very much so under a brand. The Robert Parker wine advocate brand. It only most becomes like a template, that that you need to do things in a certain way. And there's there's not a lot of flexibility beyond that. And so He came to me with an idea about doing something completely new. Of course, it would still involve wine criticism. But, you know, that we could develop the database and the search engine and the way that tasting notes and reviews are presented, but also we'd have a lot more storytelling, and emotive storytelling that's told as much with words as it is with visual images. And I thought, you know, this is this is what you know, modern consumers need. This is where wine criticism needs to get to. We need to address the needs of an evolving fine wine consumer and not just, you know, sort of sit on our laurels and say, Okay. This model is always gonna it always has worked and it is always going to work being, you know, quite inflexible, forcing consumers to have to get wine advice in a certain way that just really wasn't working anymore. I agree with you. I think especially when we look at the hard data, we know that young people and new people coming into wine, the numbers are dropping at pretty much an alarming rate, actually. So we have to do something. Something isn't working anymore. I utterly agree with that. I think the language we use, the rigidity of how we talk about wine has been very off footing, in the past ten twenty years. And scores. You know, the the, you know, overdependence on scores because, you know, the the words themselves don't really resonate, you know, and and maybe they're not applied with consistency. Sometimes they're not applied with expertise. You know, there's, you know, maybe less understanding amongst critics because let's face it. You know, you don't need a qualification to call yourself a wine critic. No. And everybody now on Instagram is a wine expert. Yes. And I I wanna get on that bandwagon because I've spent twenty years getting certified to do this, but it seems that you can just be a wine expert. Just just slap that tag on yourself and boom, you're you're off, you know, photograph yourself with a a few bottles of wine and and boom, instant expert. Yeah. I mean, there's that. But, you know, even even, in in a lot of the very famous wine criticism publications, you know, as a as a somebody who spent my life, you know, studying the meaning behind the words that we use, for example, body, seeing it used inaccurately so many times over and over again and misleading consumers into, okay, is this light, medium, full bodied, you know, or are they all medium bodied? You know, the this is just a small example. Of how consumers find it very difficult to understand what they're actually buying when they read a tasting note. And it's also very exclusive. If you haven't taken WSET or or something similar, you have no idea what that is. And I think I'm an educator, on lots of levels, and I think that language is so crucial to the next generation of all wine consumers, but particularly fine wine consumers. If we're not careful, there aren't gonna be any fine wine consumers in twenty years. Yeah. It's true. Because people don't want to speak that way. They don't want to be, as you said, you know, locked into this very rigid template. So this is why I fell in love with the wine independent when you started. It it is absolutely visually beautiful. So that is a huge difference as well. It's not just bottle shots and, you know, things like that. It's very visually beautiful. Takes you right into the heart of the vineyards and and into the homes of the producers often So the philosophy, you know, let's let's talk about the philosophy behind here because one of the best quotes I ever heard from you was you called yourself a hardcore wine critic, and I loved that. So how are you taking your hardcore wine critic self into the magazine? What what's the philosophy and the ethos? Well, I think that that's the core of what we do. We we offer wine buying advice, and that's, you know, the website itself what you're paying for because the articles, at the moment, we have our our free to view. You can read the stories. You can see the photography. But if you want the the buying advice, the hardcore criticism, that that's what you're paying for a tool. And so What we we developed is a, first of all, the best search engine out there. I I helped develop the one at Robert Parker wine advocates, so I was very aware of all its flaws. And, you know, let's face it. All of the other wine criticism publications are just cookie cutter images of what the wine ever get did. So, I there there were a number of flaws in the search engine that I wanted to address. To make it easier for consumers to find the styles of wines they love. People, you know, they they know what they're looking for. They know what sort of cabernet they like, you know, whether they want a big, rich full blooded blockbuster that's, you know, fifteen percent alcohol, or they want the opposite. They want something that's fine and elegant and fresh that's thirteen percent alcohol. You know, with with the web side, we added more filters. So we do have a filter for alcohol level. Now, you know, that can either be the actual alcohol level, which is what I prefer. You know, as as the wine was tested or it can be what's on the label, but at least it gives them an indication. You know, like picking up a bottle and looking at the alcohol level. It gives you a rough idea. Also, myself and the other critics that I I bring on board, we're all trained to know exactly what body means. We've got, five levels of body that we put in to the filters. Light, light to medium, medium, medium to full and full body. And, you know, I I sit down and explain, you know, very carefully, a body is essentially built up of one alcohol level. One with less alcohol, twelve and a half percent is going to be generally speaking lighter body than something that's fifteen percent alcohol because it gives a sense of weight on the palate. Likewise dry extract. Dry extract is what you get from tannins and anthocyanins. That also gives a sense of weight on on the palate. And so if you have a white wine that's of the same alcohol level as a red wine, the red wine will be slightly fuller bodied because of that dry extract. It gives a sense of weight on the palate and residual sugar is the other major factor in these things. So that we are each on the same page when we use those terms and we can use them accurately. And that already helps, you know, a a person who's looking for a specific style of a chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon, which, you know, can run the full gamut you know, to dial into their style as it were on the website by filtering down to say, okay. I only want, medium bodied, down to light bodied wines that are under fourteen percent alcohol. The other thing we do is we for every single wine that we put in the database, we have the major grape variety. So instead of, for example, other other reviewers for Bordeaux blends, we'll just put Bordeaux Blend. We actually say whether it's predominantly merlot, predominantly Cabernet sauvignon or predominantly Cabernet francor or something else. There's a few petite Verdeaux as well. That's really interesting to look. You know, you look at a big report like, over eight hundred, wines I reviewed for the twenty twenty two vintage. And you can actually sort of say, oh, I love cabernet franc based wines. I only want to sort of find those. Show me those. This is what I love about what you're doing because it is so consumer based. It's it's really for the reader's benefit. You're giving them the opportunity to to understand their own preferences and to buy smart, to not, you know, buy a bottle that says, you know, a bordeaux blend, and you get at home, and you think, well, I that's not what I like. Yep. Because actually you prefer more merlot in the blend. Or, you know, this this critic called it medium dotty. And, you know, I actually say it's full bodied, you know. Exactly. You know, that that wasn't what I was expecting at all. And I think at this point in time, you know, people don't have a lot of disposable income, you know, still recovering from COVID things, and they wanna buy smart. And of course now we're facing this whole crusade for better or worse about, health with with alcohol and wine and is, you know, drinking even one glass of wine a week going to kill you or things like that. So I think what you're doing is really talking to the consumer rather than, you know, other people in the industry as well. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel. Mama jumbo shrimp for fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond, meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now back to the show. While we're on this subject, what's your take on this new health issue? The the concern about should we be putting, you know, sort of cigarette style wine will kill you on the label. You know, where where are we going with this? Yeah. I mean, it's it's a difficult question to ask somebody like me because of course I'm biased. I work in the wine industry, and I have We all have to confront it, though. Exactly. Exactly. To be honest, though. I mean, I I don't think, you know, cigarette warnings are warranted, because I think that that's probably exaggerating what the the situation is with alcohol, but people do need to know. I think, you know, we should have more careful And it's the the problem is if you it's very hard to please, but more careful, and conscientious, mention of what the alcohol level is in the line because it's important. It will, give a consumer, you know, a rough idea about how much of that they can drink, you know, versus, something that has less alcohol or something that's more alcohol. And it's not about, you know, everybody's gonna go stampeding to the lower alcohol wines. You know, sometimes you're in the mood for something that's a bit richer, fuller bodied, you know, more powerful, but you just need to be aware that you can drink less of that. Exactly. And and, you know, because You know, I think that, you know, for the most part, responsible, wine drinkers, they don't want to get completely sizzled. They know they know. They they want to have a pleasant experience, join the wine, usually with some food. And then, you know, feel good about themselves as well. And so we need to give them all the information they need in order to have that experience. And wine's a luxury. It's it's not something that we need. It's something that we choose. And I think getting that notion to people's heads too, if you're going to take the time to, you know, investigate a wine, buy the wine, taste it, drink it, understanding that it's that it's a luxury, you know, not not just a route to, you know, a wild evening out is is something else that will help us as we're going forward. I like the fact that you're putting so much emphasis on the the level of alcohol in the wine. I think that's really crucial. And it's something that people don't really think about, particularly when they're drinking wines that they're not familiar with. A lot of, you know, southern Italian reds are very powerful. You can have primitivo is up to sixteen percent But if people aren't aware of that, then, it's kind of incumbent on us to to make that happen. Yes. And it and particularly when, you know, when with climate change, it's changing the styles of wine. I mean, we're seeing winds of those alcohol levels in a warm vintage on the right bank of Porto. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and and that's just that probably comes as a surprise to a lot of people because traditionally that that just wasn't the case. And I don't think most people, people who aren't in the wine industry, you know, most wine drinkers, wine lovers don't really associate climate change with wine. It's two separate things that aren't in the same room, but we know that they are. And, you know, we are going to have these problems with with warm vintages all over the world, wines changing. And again, we have to make people aware of that. First of all, so they're not disappointed. They buy their wine that they've always liked, and I don't like it anymore and why, you know, why has it become so fruity and so, you know, so warm and so robust. It wasn't like that before, and helping people to to buy wisely as I was saying before. So with with the wine independent, What what are the plans? I'm excited because I I really enjoy it. I've said that a few times. I'm a fan, but what are the plans going forward? You don't you've only been doing it two years? Not even. No. We're we're at about a year and a half now. Yeah. So You know, beyond the the hardcore wine criticism, which I said, I wanted to improve upon, when we did this, we were also about storytelling, very much so. And so The other the other frustration that I used to have, for example, with a wine advocate was what I called the big tasting note dumps. So basically, you'd you'd bring out, you know, once every two months, a huge report on a region. That has, you know, fifteen hundred tasting notes, and you just dump them all in. And, and, you know, there's not much story there. You're not giving consumers a sense of an experience or a story to tell. It was extremely boring to read. Well, it is. It is because it's just, you know, waiting through tasting notes. And so what I wanted to do was, break up some of those larger reports. So for example, right now, I'm, working on the twenty twenty one vintage in Napo. And although I've just produced a vintage report, so that if anyone who's interested in reading about what happened in the vintage and what they can expect from the quality of the wines, that's there. And I think that's almost more to the point than a, you know, You can only say blackberry and black cherry so many times, and I write loads of tasting notes myself, and even I get bored reading that stuff. So I think discussing the vintage that way is smart. And again, it's it informs the consumer in a way that as you said, a huge tasting note dump does not do that. Yep. And the other thing that we did with the the vintage reports is that we've made them searchable. So there's their own page. So I I will write that report, and then it will also go on to, a vintage guide page where you can click on the region and the year, and you can pull up very quickly that vintage report. And so that you don't have to go wading through the website trying to find it somewhere. It's all very easy to find. So there's that style, but also what I did was, with the the twenty twenty one, Napa Vintage was I thought, you know, I'm gonna take twenty, twenty five different wineries who are doing something unique or did something special this year. I'm just gonna pull them out. And I'm gonna do their reviews separately, and I'm gonna write a little story about them. You know, so it might be a new discovery. It might be somebody who's very famous, who's doing something new, somebody who, was under the radar, who did something extraordinary this year. So I've pulled out producers like that. We bring our photographer in for a couple of weeks, whenever we're working on a region like this. I send them off. I tell them, okay, this is what this story is gonna be about. This is the kind of emotions. I want you to capture. Can you make sure you take a picture of this person and, you know, this and this? And the photographers are so good. We we've got two Savante, they're both from Sweden and Johan. And, you know, they're they're boom. They get it straight away. They know what you they they know how they're going to frame this. And so they've got the photography going on. I've got the, you know, interviews and the words going on. And so this elevates the experience when somebody buys this wine. So say somebody reads about this wine, and they buy it, and they, you know, seller it for all these years. And they've got this story and these images in their minds. So when they sit down and they're friends with this bottle of wine, they say, let me tell you about this wine. They're connected. And it's almost like they were there. You know, they they say, I I know, there's a little story behind this wine that I wanna share with you. And I think this is this is the next level of wine experience. I remember the days in the early two thousand, you probably do do two. You go to a dinner. Somebody said, got a hundred pointer for you here. You know, this is a Robert Parker, a hundred pointer one, you know, that would just be so vulgar to do nowadays. You know? I mean, there was just no connection. Yeah. Exactly. It was just that was the story. Yeah. The the metal, the the sticker, the number, and and the price. Yeah. But but the the modern consumer has moved on. Nobody does that anymore. That would be terrible. But what they do wanna do is they want to, you know, when they share this wine, let me tell you why I bought this wine. This wine has a great story behind it, you know. And and they've got the images, you know, the the emotive images that we put on the website in their mind. It's almost like you know, they were there. And they can they can own that story, and it empowers them, you know, to really be able to recreate an experience with their guests, with their family. And it's uplifting. It's it's really uplifting to to put together what's going on in the vineyard, what's going on in the cellar, the producer, or the winemaker himself or herself, and connecting all those pieces of the puzzle. The consumer does buy in to, to that, and you suddenly become part of the story yourself. Exactly. You you've read the story. You feel like you've been there, and now you're presenting it almost as if you're the wine presenter to your friends, which is Yeah. Is exactly what I want. So empowering to you. It's great. You know, the website, I never wanted it to be about me. I want it, you know, it to be about the consumer. You know, it's it's not called Lisa Perati Brown, you know, dot com. It's it's called the wine independent because first and foremost, we are independent. We don't take any money or gifts and kind from anyone. All of the opinions are are owned and they're expertly given. But, you know, apart from that, it's about the consumer. And it's about, you know, giving you the experience so that you can share that with your friends and make the whole culture of wine a much better thing. You know, it's it's, I think it's it's where wine criticism needs to go. I completely agree. So glad we've had this conversation because I'm looking forward to it developing as it goes forward. It's being able to tell stories like that are what connects us as human beings anyway. And to bring wine into that and to sort of exalt it with this wonderful background of, as you said, the words and the photographs, is important to our future of the industry and also of our new consumers. And and where they're going to go with this. And I think keeping people connected, especially in this time of, you know, war and conflict is hugely important to everything we do. And particularly if we're going to drink something, you know, actually take it into our body, we should have a connection with where it came from who made it and and be able to share that. So I'm so grateful to you for coming on today, and I'm looking forward to the future of wine independent. I hope everybody who's listening takes a look at it because it's really worth it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening, and remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world, and the only one with a daily show. Tune in every day and discover all our different shows. You can find us at Italian wine podcast dot com, SoundCloud, Spotify, Himalaya, or wherever you get your pods.