Ep. 1204 Oz Clarke | Wine, Food & Travel With Marc Millon (ADVL)

Some of you have asked how you can help us while most of us would say we want wine. Italian wine podcast is a publicly funded sponsor driven enterprise that needs the Moola. You can donate through Patreon or go fund me by heading to Italian wine podcast dot com. We would appreciate it Oh, yeah. Welcome to wine, food, and travel with me, Mark Menner. On Italian wine podcast. I'm delighted to announce an important collaboration with Academy Duvan Linerer, one of the world's most important wine book publishers whose authors are amongst the most influential dental painting in the world of wine writing today. These are writers who I've long admired, so it'll be fascinating to chat with them and hear their stories. I hope you will join. Welcome to wine food and travel with me, Mark Millen, on Italian wine podcast. Today, I'm delighted to introduce a new series in collaboration with Academy Duvan Library, one of the world's leading wine book publishers. My guest today is one of my favorite line communicators, writer, multi award winning author, actor, broadcaster, television personality, sometimes opera singer, It can only be the inimitable Oz Clark. Oz, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be my guest today. Hi, Mark. It's lovely to talk to you again. We've known each other for a while. Yes. It goes back a long time, Oz. How are you today? You're managing to keep warm in this freezing cold snap? Honestly, barely. Our government at the moment tells us to turn all the gas off. Oh, we turned half the gas off in our house. We turned half the radio meters off. And about two days ago, I just thought, I am freezing. I've got four layers on. I'm freezing. And I'm sorry, government. I've turned my radiators on again. Yeah. Us too. It it's it's really cold. I guess one way of keeping warm is snuggling up with a favorite wine or two. Nice. Stop tempting me. It's not quite the right time of day yet. No. Not quite. As I'm holding in my hand, a beautiful edition of your book, Oz Clark Online, your global wine companion, published by Academy Duvann Library in twenty twenty one. This book takes a reader on a journey all around the world of wine. In fact, it's around your world of wine. It's very much a personal memoir as well as a deeply informative wine book that encapsulates your encyclopedic knowledge. Tell us about it. Well, I think you picked up the point there that it's not the world of wine. It's my world of wine. And there's there are bits missing. And and I said early on in the book, I said, hey, look, If I if I find it boring, or if I don't understand it, what's the point of me writing about it? So there are there are parts of of the world that just don't get much coverage because I don't personally know about them. All the wines have not meant anything to me. And it's not really a memoir. I'm I'm not sure what it is. It's actually certainly not a memoir because, hey, if it was a memoir or a biography, I'd have to I'd have to spill the dirt on all my friends. And otherwise, it wouldn't be worth reading. And I don't know. I've I've I've often thought several times before, hey, you gotta write a biography. You gotta write a biography. And I just thought I can't do that because the only way to make it good is to tell all the stories that that your friends knew that you would be confidential about and wouldn't wouldn't spill. But I have put I mean, I start. I I start when I was three that the book starts, but I think the first line is something like I started drinking when I was three. And so it is it takes you on a journey, but it's it's I just I bring bits of my life in because it's more interesting. I think if you're telling a story, if I've gotta talk about Bordeaux or burgundy or or Quianti or or Rioca, well, give me a bit of a story, and I can draw the readers in. If I've just gotta tell them there's five different grape varieties that and that's nothing's gotta be Asian and outgrow for a year, and it's gotta be thirteen and a half percent alcohol. They people have left. They they've gone to they've gone back to something more interesting before I've even finished the first page. So right the way through, I try to actually I try to actually make it as amusing and as interesting. And when I think it's important as informative as possible, and sometimes I get all poetic, and sometimes I get a bit scabrous and ribbled, I'd certainly, like to, you know, take the more humorous side whenever I can. And I'm not, you know, there's there's not nearly enough humor in in in wine. We That's true. It's wonderful liquid that makes us all happy at laugh and joke and we feel as witty as we've ever felt and all that kind of stuff. Why is it that so much of what we've end up writing about this is so boring. And I've really I've said to myself, At the end of every page, the reader has to want to turn that page because there's a story being told, and the story is, wine as it was. I I go back as as long as wine is. And it's wine as it was, it's wine as it is now. And I also continually try to bring in wine as it's going to be. Because, the wine that people are gonna be drinking in twenty years time is really unlikely to be anything like what we're drinking now. And I want people to to know about why. I want people to know that global warming has been we've been banging on about global warming for thirty years. And now at last, people are saying, oh, my god. The world's getting warmer, and we've said, Hey, we were talking about that in the nineteen nineties. People like Miguel Torres, people like Angelo Guy, people like Piero Antinori. They knew all about global warming, how evening. They were aware of it. They were ready, but most of the world hasn't been in that suddenly, the world is actually tearing away like magic. Oh my god. Women's do something about this, and one wants to say fellas, Mickoltares has been doing something about this for thirty years. Why won't you this thing? Yeah. I I think you're right. I think if you're a wine lover, you can't help but know that climate change is happening and happening fast because of the way wines that we've all been drinking for for twenty, thirty years have evolved. Know, they're not gonna be the same. People say, oh, you know, what what do you think about, let's say, modern Bordeaux? And I say, some of it's excellent, some of it's overwrought. But it's certainly nothing like Bordeaux that I was brought up on. And I don't think that you occasionally find a year, like, twent twenty seventeen or twenty thirteen or possibly twenty twenty one. You say, hey, is this actually gonna be a bit more like the old fashioned border that that I used? That leaner style. Yeah. But it isn't really because because that that's a modern version of a really difficult year as against an old version of a really good year, and they may end up with similar amounts of heat being generated, but the poor old vine had a much tougher time in nineteen in in twenty twenty one or twenty seventeen or twenty thirteen than it did in, say, nineteen eighty five or nineteen eighty eight. And it's not gonna be the same. Sometimes it's better. I mean, I think that Italy has benefited enormously from the change in in temperature and and atmosphere, but also the change in people's minds and and Bordeaux and Burgundy, a struggling. I I think that somewhere like Kianti Classicco, that is probably handling global warming better than than something somewhere like San Emilio. But I remember talking only a few weeks ago to fontoroochally, and we were looking at their candy Glasgow, which I thought were very good. But there are fourteen and a half in Hong Kong, and the one maker said, look, I I used to be able to make this at twelve, twelve and a half, but I simply cannot make this Kean glass skirt twelve and a half anymore. The the world the atmosphere, the climate change just won't let you. So we have to find a different way of of making, our favorite, our traditional areas. They have to find a different way of of of of expressing them themselves. All kinds of new areas in Italy is full of luckily. Italy's got a damn gate mountain range running from the Alps down to down to Sicily, which is exactly what you're gonna need in the next twin year, thirty years, but also I think that those of us who've been around a while. And I try to keep my I gotta keep my feet one one one foot in the old world, or the the old timers world, one foot absolutely and reaching out towards the future. But I talk to it. I go out drinking with a bunch of people in the late twenties, early thirties every month or two just to to keep myself, alert as to what's going on. They don't particularly want those old flavors. And if you if you show a month, year old bottle of of, Bordeaux or a thirty year old bottle of Barolo, they're not terribly impressed. They like the stuff that's five years old. And they like this this fourteen percent of our goal. And and it's interesting. I find quite a lot of them when I say, well, you're gonna age one? You're gonna put it down. They said, no. We don't need to. Just buy it when we want it. Even said, even a even a cat classical or a barolo or a or a a pojak, they said, yeah, things change. Yeah, you know, what's really interesting also is, yes, wines have changed as you've just been describing, but also wine drinkers have changed. That's right. You write in the you write in the book that in the nineteen sixties, I think, you say that five percent of people drank wine in Britain. That's right. And wine has now become so popular you know, in in part through many, many reasons, that's interesting to explore, but also through wine communication. I I I remember the when wine came on to TV for the first time, I what year was it that you began the food and drink program on BBC? When I started down, I was doing general peron in Evita. Right. And it was I was I was sort of moonlighting to try and get in. Luckily, they initially used to record it on Sundays. So I could do it. That would have been, I don't know, mid eighties. Yeah. Yeah. Mid eighties, like, you think. It it was such a breath of fresh air, though, so I think, you know, wine in the seventies, into the eighties still had an elite Cache about it. And this is bringing wine in a way that people sitting in their living rooms could understand it. And even if they couldn't pick up all those flavors themselves or aromas, you know, it it made them want to try. I don't think they were supposed to pick them up. I was talking to Julie Gordon only yesterday in fact, and we were talking about another plan to to sort of, kidnap the British audience and and take, bring a bit of fun back onto the television screens. But we always do it by trying to give, good advice by by saying to myself what do we think people would like to drink? One of the things I've always done is not say, I'm right. You must follow me this way. It's I always try to open my ears and and heart and mind and say, I wonder what people really want, and I'll find the best way to lead them towards what they want. And I think That's that's maybe why the television shows worked so well because we actually thought, for instance, in the 1980s, we had been starved of ripeness in in Britain for a thousand years and so much of the scrapings of the rotten barrels of Southern Europe turned up on our tables, and which a fancy name was pretending to be something worth drinking, and they weren't. So that was when we discovered that that Australia and New Zealand and places like that actually had an entirely different view on on on wine, which was it was supposed to be a decent drink. You could see all these sort of traditional French people in their in their sort of old shadows and though an old manor houses sort of saying, a decent drink. Why is it supposed to be a decent drink? We you just drink what we give you. And we would say, no, we don't. We don't have to drink what you give us. If you wanna develop a wine drinking culture, you've gotta look at the consumer and say, what would they like? And I think we can make it for them. Now you can make a border attractive or you make it unattractive. You can make a a chianti attractive or or unattractive. The the the challenge was then to say, okay, we may have to to to to throw over quite a lot of the things that we did often out of laziness or ignorance or lack of investment or or just just in in competence. But throw them over, and learn how to do it properly. And I think that even though I still get criticizing, oh, god. You and your new world, people now, I'm sitting, well, you're not listening to because I talk far more about Europe now than I talk about the new world. But I think the the effect that the new world has had on Europe has been massive, but then of course the effect that Europe has now had on the new world has been really important as well. It's this global village thing. At last at last, everyone's talking to each other. And when I started, they weren't, they just didn't wanna listen to what other people had to say. Now they do. Well, I I guess you know, this evolution that you're talking about, this creation of a wine culture, is so interesting here in Britain, but in other countries, the US, for example, which didn't have a wine drinking culture, you know, and it's evolved in great measure because of the new world, you know, be right that Australian wines are a rarity once here in Britain. California wines were difficult to get. Lines from New Zealand hardly existed. And we've seen this great growth throughout the world. And here in Britain, for example, our wine culture is based on the availability of wines from around the world. You don't get that in France or in Italy. You don't. But but you go into a supermarket now in in France or Italy. And there's a a range of wines which are gonna be enjoyable and quite a lot of those, are are gonna be fairly cheap and juicy or crunchy or refreshing, just the kind of thing that you take away the bottle. You you you switch off the screw cap if you're allowed to use a screw cap in your particular appylation or or doc, and and just pour a mug out of a nice refreshing tasty modern liquid. So so it's it's it's quite easy to do, in in certainly in France, Germany, Austria, probably most parts of Italy. Although one of the lovely things about it, of course, is that whereas France has lost quite a lot of its rural cult and it's been slightly McDonaldized and and and and the the the the loss of of bars and restaurants and cafes in rural France is really quite distressing. In Italy, I always find that each place I go to, I've every time I go and sit somewhere, I think there's a chance today in Italy that I will actually be offered some kind of food that I haven't had before or some kind of wine that I might not know existed. I was I was in inumbria a few years ago. I was actually down looking at Sacramento to try and understand Sacramento without having to book the dentist as soon as soon as I got back home. Now, and what was it? It was a it was a treble. I saw I sat in this cafe. And I saw somebody having a little jug of of a wine that was as thick and golden as olive oil, and he was pouring it out into his glass. And I just said to the waiter, I said, what's that? And he said, oh, no. That's just Don't worry. That's the local white. And I said, but that's what I want. He was probably trying to sell me some Vermentino or something. I said, no. No. I want that. And also discovered it was a Trebiano de As Valentino. I just and I tasted it. And I just thought this is exactly the wine. That I want to be drinking at this minute. It was the cheapest wine in the restaurant. It was the open wine in the restaurant, but I sat there with an enormous grin on my face. And I just thought this is what can happen all over Italy still. The sheer joy of of localness. And in England now, we have a massive revival of interest in localness. And it's really important because the the the mess of Brexit, the the chaos and crisis of COVID, they political sort of, I don't know what you call it, stagnation or or or powerful. Let's put let's use the word chaos twice. The chaos, political chaos. I think it's put a lot of English people in, in, into the mood when they say, we've actually got to look after ourselves and look after our own. And so people are beginning more and more to say, I will support my local brewery. I will support my local butcher or greengrocer or baked and indeed obviously nowadays in Britain, I will support my own vineyard, but local has become really very important in in Britain. And of course, local has never not been important in in Italy. Italian wine podcast. If you think you love wine as much as we do, then give us a like and a follow anywhere you get your pods. And that's absolutely true. You can be in one village from another and the wines, and foods are not completely different, but personal and unique to that area. I think you can agree. It's in terms of, you know, how to make the local pasta sauce. Well, you can be in one household. Yeah. And and it'll be different to the next household. It'll be different to the next household. You think, hang on. This is just a fairly simple local pasta sauce, all different because. Yeah. Both delicious, but different. Making, though, it gets as local as that in Italy, which is He's one of the absolute delights of Italy. Yes. Absolutely. Now as Clark on wine divides into sections, and one of the most important is wine grapes, wine styles. And we're discussing Italian grapes now. But Do you think approaching wine by grape variety is easier and more helpful for the wine drinker than say linking to place sort of varietal versus terroir driven approach This places can be difficult. I think that it's, places, quite often where you you progress to. I think that the simplest way of explaining why the people who are new to wine and in and but keen to learn is explaining the different grape varieties. I mean, it is just like taking a bunch of apples, taking a cox and a granny smith and the brownlee and the golden delicious if you can better put one of those in your mouth and saying, okay, bite into each of these four. And anybody who can tell the difference between a banana and a haddock can tell you the difference between those apples. And then you say, well, this is the same with grape varieties. Look at the look at the granny smith. There's your there's your that sharp crisp green acid attack. That's what you should be getting from sovignol. Sovignol's a green grape. Look for that greenness, and Then you might take, I don't know, the the golden delicious and talk about chardonnay softer rounder gentler, and a little bit more golden in its style. And with with red grapes, you you take something simple like merlot and cabinet. Well, They're next to each other and you might think oh, that'll be complicated. Well, it isn't because the merlot should be the one which is mellow if it's not over ripened to to within an inch of his life, and full of extractive talons, but merlot should be soft and slightly juicy, slightly lashing your mouth and cabinets should definitely have a little attack on your mouth. You should feel it on your tongue. You should feel that tan in on the side of your cheeks. And you you can then say, okay. Now let's have four glasses of wine from these and and talk our way through them. And merlot cabinet, chardonnay, sauvignon, for instance. Everybody will get it. If you wanna make it even easier, put pinot noir in instead of merlot. Everyone will get it. And I think that then you can start talking to people about what they like best. And if they like the pinot noir best, you say, okay. So you'd like that lighter starter extra. Now pinot noir comes from France, but it also comes from Italy. It also comes from Argentina, comes from Argentina, comes from New Zealand, comes from South Africa. So one you one thing you can say to them is why don't you just over the next month or so? Get pinot noirs from each of those different countries, stay with the same grade, and get from different countries see the differences. And if they're one particular country, like, I don't know, New Zealand, really excites you more than the others, it might be time to start moving on to a place. And then why don't you go to New Zealand and say, right? If if I like New Zealand, Pinanoa, I'll try New Zealand Merlo or Sarah. And then maybe I'll try New Zealand serving your own chardonnay. Suddenly you think, okay, I've got quite a feeling about New Zealand now. I started with trying to get a feeling about the grapes. I I often say that you only need about twelve words to know more about wine than our parents ever knew. And that's like six grapes, let's say, serving your chardonnay, riesling if you want, Chiras, syrup, carbonate, well, put in pinot noir because they said. I mean, I'm using the French grapes here, ma'am, because of course, those are the ones that are spread around the world, much more than any others. You got six grapes there, and then you what about six countries? You book France, New Zealand, and Chile, and Australia, and I don't know, South Africa or Argentina, or if you wanna put Spain in there, you could, but it's not that you're not gonna be helped very much with French grapes there. You could put Italy there, but again, you're not gonna be held with very much French grapes, but if you have six countries and six grapes, you've got a whole lifetime of of this is if you know a complete wine freak who wanders around thinking about wine all day long, but an ordinary voice of other things to do but likes wine. Six wine grapes in six countries. You've actually got enough to interest you for the next twenty or thirty years. Absolutely. And and I think you're right. That variety on approach does make wine accessible. On the other hand, Do you think there's a danger of of there's so many hundreds and even thousands of native grape varieties with names people have never heard of? And by reducing wine to a smaller palette, we're missing out on a host of pleasures, and that, of course, is where Italy, our love of Italian wine comes back because there's so many discoveries still to be made. That's absolutely right. Now some people who, is hallowed files, won't have a problem with that. They will leap into Italy and and enthusiastically gorge themselves on everything that Italy has to offer. But most people will probably just stay with half a dozen grape varieties. They know, and italy might well be caught up by saying, this is the world of Pina Greacher or this is the world of prossecco. People, those two wines make people perfectly happy. And the the majority of the people who drink those two wines may never bother to move on. But I think that, when when we start getting a into place, and Italy is is is increasingly a place of villages and vineyards, and it never used to be. It used to be a a place of broad broad swathes, but, b, it's a place of course, with absolutely hundreds of great varieties, that people never knew existed. The locals may have known existed, but probably they just all went into into a blend in the coop, and probably they're still in the ground because people can't afford to rip them up and and and plant Sanjay, but I was just thinking only this morning. I was thinking about for for some reason, I came up. I was thinking about which no one did heard of a few years ago. I was I was thinking about Norella Masca lazy, which of course everyone now knows, but it wasn't well known in in not long ago. I I was thinking about Notronella. That that that grape, the planetta of, Yes. From Messina. Yeah. And then I was thinking, about Calicante, you know, and and Frapato. Who who knew about those five or ten years ago? I mean, it's halifax, I'm sure, may have done. But now you can find a Karicante in something like a Tesco, probably. You can find something like a, a Frapato at somewhere like, you know, Lathwaite's, direct wine. These they're coming onto, onto our, our market. And as attractive, affordable, modern wines, but with a proper sense of plates, I mean, the Feroparto, which, I've just tried that Froparto, which, which, comes from, from Sicily. And you you just think this genuinely and it's crunchiness and that's highly rocky taste that it has. You think this genuinely isn't a Tuscan wine. This genuinely isn't a a Piedmont wine. And though, just to say, it's not Tuscan or Piedmont. Usually, it's a italo filed or something ridiculous, of course, it's not. But most of the world are not italo files. Most of the world, still find Italian mines a little bit confusing if they're not pinot grigio and prossecco, but Italy has got a most fabulous opportunity now. Because it has so many grape varieties which have been coming out of the woodwork in the last ten years or so. I mean, looking at someone like Campania, for instance, the the way that people now, after ten years of of hard work, they're beginning to get the message about Fiano or the beginning to understand Falangina. These are these are the kind of great varieties. The ten years ago, no one would have ever heard of. I mean, things like Timorasso and Noccello and things They're gonna they're still a little bit down the track, and there aren't even very many of them. That's funny enough. This I was talking to Angela Grier quite a a fuse, if I can name drop from him, and we were talking about the future of Italy, and and he one of the things he said, he said in least in the short to medium term, he said, The future of Italy is white wine, not red wine. And I thought that's absolutely fascinating because white grapes, are some of the ones that seem to be showing to to everyone's surprise that they're almost better suited to coping with global warming than red grapes. Are we find this in Greece? We find this in Croatia. We find this in quite a lot in Spain. And we definitely find a lot in in in Italy that the white grapes are Southern France as well. The whole range of southern French wines around the around the around the Mediterranean. But the the the white grapes, and I it may be that these are these are grapes which are just literally thrown into the vats because I do remember when I used to go to Italy in the old days, and talk to winemakers, very few winemakers, he wanted to admit they made white wine. You know, they basically seem to think that some kind of white liquid to go with the Frito mister before they moved on to something proper. In fact, some of those white wines were made like red wines, very nacho di san Jimignano used to be a skin contact white made in wooden barrels, I remember. And now we're coming back to that. That's interesting too, Olls, because we're talking about great varieties that, in many cases go back thousands of years, but what you're being rediscovered, and also winemaking techniques, you know, we're returning to the past, even to antiquity, to fermentation, and terracotta amphora, for example. Which, of course, it actually has been, in the forefront, up in free, although the the slovenians and the Croatia might say, Hey, we were there. We were there at the same time. But in in terms of bringing those ancient mesopotamian ideas, about wine back to the sort of the the the the core of European wine making. Well, Italy, Italy, some of like friuli is being done doing that as long as I can remember. I I think they are I think they're interesting. I think some of them are delicious. I think some of them are are are simply academic in their interest, but I do think that for the fact that those grapes have been growing for a couple of thousand years means that they've seen it all before, and I think that they will find it easier to, react to the amazing challenges, of of climate change, which obviously have opportunities as well as being challenges. I think they'll find it easier to react than things like the maritime grapes, like cabinet, sovignon, and things like, Merlo, which have not really seen it all before. They've been In a way, they've been they've been cosseted out on the on the Atlantic coast. And I think that they are gonna struggle more than dozens and dozens of grape varieties that we're only just about to learn about from somewhere like Italy. And it's one of the most exciting things that we're gonna have in the next ten to twenty years is what's gonna come out of places like Greece, places like Italy, places like Spain, which have got so many grape varieties that had been largely forgotten, but you only need only a couple of vines, and you can propagate all kinds of stuff as they're finding in places like Rio at the moment. Coming up with all kinds of stuff that was stuck up in the hills, nobody knew what it was. They're finding out what it is, and they're saying, hey, another brilliant example to try and help some temporary coke with climate change. Sure. Yeah. And they're doing that in Bordeaux. Aren't they bringing in new great varieties? Out of necessity. Yeah. It's very interesting Bernard Margaret, who's a a strange fellow, at Latul Khan. He's just got this, which is a class growth, fourth growth, class growth in New York Medog. He's got a part of his vineyard, which is actually putting all kinds of warmer variety, grape varieties in, and he's using sort of electrical currents and things to try and actually find what will work in Bordeaux in two thousand and fifty. It's a it's a fascinating idea. And and certainly, Bordeaux has now admitted half a dozen grape varieties. And I'm sure they'll admit half a dozen more because some of these won't work that when you see things like Taureka, NASA now being formally Yes. Admitted into the Bordeaux world. You you have to say things are changing. Champaign, I was just in Champagne last week, and they have now a, a, a formally allowed one of the one of the hybrid y pee wee wines, one of those sort of created grape varieties. They've formally allowed it to be planted in champagne. Incredible. It's it's happening. Yeah. It's happening. We have to embrace it, Mark. And are you embracing it? Are you hopeful for the future? I am very hopeful for future because I actually I I think that, I think that our ability to keep global warming to one point five degrees is is Probably impossible. Which may mean that we at last start taking, how to deal with more heat a bit more seriously. At the same time, I'm sure we all have to try and make that attempt to reduce emissions all around the world. But We can, at the same time, for things like our wine world, we have to start, also working out how to deal with the extra heat. And I think that that in the next ten years or so, we're gonna find some remarkable efforts be made around the world, and they're gonna produce remarkable wines. Well, that's certainly something to look forward to. A good thing that can come out of this, tragedy we're seeing happening all around us, which sometimes we feel quite helpless about. English barking wines bond. Mean, where would they be without global warming? It's a that's a silver lining. Absolutely. Look how that's changed in in just twenty years. It's been an absolute pleasure meeting you here today. Thank you so much. For being my guest today. Next time we meet, I'd really like to do that over a glass of wine or two. That is ridiculous. We're not. We haven't got a bottle open market. It's this is not the kind of people we are. It's not right. Is it? Well, you're down in top trim. I get down to Dem mountain. Yes. You were here for the launch of the, chipped in Barton, the Sharpham estate. The the sharpest state moved to Sanders Gardens. So that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And things like, I quite often try and get down to the West of England. Food and drink. Just stuff like that. I love the West. Well, I'll see you next time you're down, but, I hope you have a good Christmas and look forward to meeting soon. And to you, Mark. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of wine, food, and travel. With me, Mark Millen, on Italian wine podcast. Please remember to like, share, and subscribe right here, or wherever you get your pods. Likewise, you can visit us at Italian wine podcast dot com. Until next time.