Ep. 1228 Sarah Heller MW | Wine, Food & Travel With Marc Millon

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 Binon, on Italian wine podcast. Listen in as we journey to some of Italy's most beautiful places in the company of those who know them best. The families who grow grapes and make fabulous wines. Through their stories, we will learn not just about their wines. But also about their ways of life. The local and regional foods and specialities that pair naturally with their wines and the most beautiful places to visit. We have a wonderful journey of discovery ahead of us, and I hope you will join me. Welcome to wine food and travel with me, Mark Millen, on Italian wine podcast. Today, it's my great pleasure to introduce someone who is well known, loved and very important to the Vinitally International Academy community, faculty member, Sarah Heller. Sarah is quite amazing, and we all feel very lucky to have her as such an integral part of our Via world. She is a master of wine, visual artist, television host, writer and communicator, fluent in numerous languages. Sarah, welcome, and thank you so much for being my guest this morning. I know you travel all over the world. I met you when you were last in London. And I know you've been in in in Hong Kong delivering yet another, the Italian wine Ambassador course. Where are you now? Well, so I'm still in Hong Kong. We had the, as as you mentioned, we had the pinning ceremony. For Hong Kong, this past month. So that was one of the first highlights I wanted to hit on my trip, but there's just we've been sort of nonstop Italian wine activity. Last night was the Vino Conervizo, which has become an increasingly important Italian event here in Hong Kong. So it's been it's been really encouraging to see how much Italian wine has taken off here. It's so different from when I started out ten years ago. Oh, that's amazing. That's great to hear. Sarah, before we start discussing via in more detail and the Italian wine Ambassador course, tell us a little bit about yourself, about your background, about how you came into wine. Right. Well, so I I certainly didn't grow up. In a wine family or even thinking that wine was a viable career option. If I'm completely honest, I, my background was more oriented towards visual art. One point, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was always drawing, constantly drawing sort of fashion figures and and and all sorts of, yeah, different different different visual ideas would sort of, captivate me. And so when I went to university, I wanted to continue with this. So it was a it was a fine art major. But I think it was it was kind of that experience of being on my own, effectively, for the first time. I I hadn't really learned how to cook growing up. And when I was at university Where was that? Where were you at university? I went I went to Yale. So I was in Connecticut, within striking distance of New York City. So I spent a lot of time there. But I finally finally was having to cook a little bit for myself. And just absolutely loved it. I think this was the era of top chef, so I became very seduced with the idea of becoming a chef. And as a result, decided to take half a year off from university. My parents were a little bit skeptical, but their their idea was that if they put me sent me off somewhere to work in a kitchen, that would, you know, would either come out stronger and tougher and more determined, or I would change my mind. And, They they know me very well. So by the end of that, I had decided based on, I where I went, I went to Pemonte, I'm Torino, in fact, and my chef there was a wine lover. And so he would spend the weekends instead of sort of being a slave driver and making me work harder in the kitchen. He was he was always forever driving me around to different wineries, to go and taste wine. So it was it was pretty clear to me that that was a a slightly more Certainly, an e an easier in some ways career path than than being in the kitchen and and doing those long hours in the evening. So by the time I came back to school, I was completely on the wine track. So I would spend half the week at Yale, studying painting and making making sculptures and all sorts of things. And then the other half of the week in New York City interning with a a wine important distributor there, who we're focused on Italian wine. Well, what a fascinating story. And why did you go to Tarin? As your first stage of being being a chef? Yeah. Surprisingly shallow reasons, to be honest. I mean, my dad my dad works for a company that does large scale events, and they had done some work on the Tur and Winter Olympics. And I had read an article in the New York Times about what an amazing food city Turin was. And so when he was he was there, on some business, I asked you, you know, do you know, do you know anybody who who could put me in touch with a restaurant that might want a completely inexperienced assistant Cook. And, and like everywhere in Italy, of course, the lawyers he's working with there knew somebody who knew somebody and that, the chefs Oh, I'd actually found some other potential options in Italy as well, but they were all sort of more of the mindset that if I was coming, I was coming to work really hard. And they from the start said, you know, if she comes, we'll travel around to Tuscany, around Pemonte, we'll visit winery. So I took the I took the the root that sounded the most pleasant, and it it worked up. Wow. What a what a wonderful, wonderful way into the world of wine. Indeed. It was I mean, Torino Piamonte is still sort of my spiritual home base for wine. I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but we all we all have particular places that resonate with us. And so, Sarah, you went on from graduating from Yale. From having had this stage thinking about possibly being a chef to then enrolling in the most difficult and rigorous of all wine qualifications, the road the long and hard road to becoming a master of wine. How did you make that decision? Well, it was it was a number of things. I mean, I I hadn't actually done any formal wine education the whole time that I was was working in the kitchen and then interning with, with a company in New York. It wasn't the environment was not so fixated on formal education. I feel like in at that point in the market, people were very much about learning on the job. But when I got to Hong Kong, I was filled with my enthusiasm for wine. And actually, I joined a a dinner with the Hong Kong wine Society, which is this very old, collector's association. It's been around since the early eighties. And I met a guy who, after speaking to me and being a very pleasant all evening, said, You know, it's been great talking to you. You should really consider getting some formal wine education instead of all this BS, all of this marketing BS. So there was that, and I he he actually ended up being one of my instructors. So I'm I'm eternally grateful to him to to run, but also then, one of my first jobs in Hong Kong was working with Deborah Myberg, who, in case, is a really beloved figure in the wine world and one of the first master's point in Asia. And so her example, I think, really encouraged me to believe that it was possible and see the potential that somebody can have with that intense educational background. Just the influence she was able to have in the market and sort of shaping the direction it was going, I really really admired that and and wanted to follow in similar footsteps. Okay. So you really went out at full speed. You must have been one of the youngest master of wines when you qualified. Well, so when I passed, I was the youngest in the world. It was sadly a short lived crown, I think the year after a guy in London who's a year younger than me got it. So that was that was the end of that. But I think I held on to it in Asia for a number of years. I don't know. I don't know if that's still the case. Anyway, long behind me now. Now I was going to ask. And, of course, a master of wine has to have great knowledge, in-depth knowledge, in-depth tasting experience with wines from around the world, the great classic regions, as well as throughout the new world. And I was going to ask how you came to have this special knowledge and interest and love for Italian wines, but I think you've already answered that of where that came from and how you've developed. And I guess that's how you came to be involved with Vineetini International Academy. Absolutely. So it, I mean, as you say, the master of wine is very broad based and deliberately doesn't have a particular region that that people are supposed to specialize in. So I I I don't wanna say I put Italy aside, but it wasn't I didn't have the same level of focus on Italy as I do now, for instance, while I was studying, and it was it was while I was still studying that sort of sort of towards the end that I first heard about in Italy international academy, and it was a brand new program at that point. And I thought I absolutely need to be. To be part of this program. So I reached out to Stevy, and she very kindly invited me to join the first edition. But part of the reason why when Stevy later asked me, to become involved and join the faculty, why I felt that my experience could be useful was, particularly at that point, when when Vio was really focused on, the Chinese market. I felt like my experience was quite different to a lot of people in the Asian market, and that a lot of people in this part of the world came to wine either through Australian or Californian wine if that was where they happened to study or more classically through Bordeaux. All the people who are coming up in the market at the same time that I was had started out with Bordeaux. And they shifted to Burgundy. So the the the mindset was very much in a sort of francophone place. Right? And and also, the English sort of value system for wine judging very much in place because of Hong Kong's history. And so my my experience starting out with Italian wine was virtually not, not present, not represented in this market. And so I thought I would be able to see the wine world through the Italian lens, but also with the understanding of how people in Asia think about wine, the persons that been that they've been through with it. Well, that is absolutely fascinating. That to to to see that point of view from, from from Asia as well. Now let's discuss the Via Italian wine Ambassador course, which I know personally is very challenging. And which results in a highly respected wine qualification, one that I'm certainly very proud to have. You and Henry, along with chief scientist, Professor Tillo Chienza, are the faculty members. What does the VA Italian wine Ambassador course involve and what are the candidates expected to know? So it's, the the idea with the program, it's very different from a lot of standardized wine education in the sense that we're very deliberately constantly evolving the program, and that it's partly to do with, keeping up to date, which, of course, is critical for any sort of wine education program. But it's also because we like to look at different facets of wine and its place in Italian culture. Now I know this is something that's very dear to you because of the book that you've you've been working on. But I I just I think studying Italian wine in a vacuum. Just you miss out on so much of what makes it. A critical element of the culture, what makes it important and emotive and meaningful. And I think too much wine honestly is taught in a vacuum. We don't learn enough about the history of the places, or the co the the culinary history, or which all of which goes into. What what the wine styles ultimately become. And without that context, it can be very dry. And so what we've done, we when Henry and I started, there was, of course, already the foundations of the course that had been built, around the book native wine grapes of Italy. Which focuses on the DNA heritage of the different native grape varieties of Italy, which is a really important part of its USP. There's no doubt. But we wanted to fill in the other sort of two seventy degrees, if you will, of Italian culture, Italian cultural history, Italian culinary history, and particularly my pet project was the tasting. So bringing our standardized tasting up to a sort of international level. Now it's it's, it's a funny one because in my professional life outside of education, I'm very much about a more personalized approach to tasting and integrating story and focusing on the individual experience that people have in their tasting and relating to the story of the one, right, its heritage. But I felt that objective blind tasting is important when we as professionals are speaking to each other, and the Vineidley International Academy is a professional course, first and foremost, so that we can strip away some of the romance that may be hiding faults underneath. Right? There there's something, that in the wine industry, people call cellar palette, where winemakers get too familiar with their own wines, and they don't see some of the flaws. And especially if they're only tasting their own wine, or even just other wines from the region that are made similarly, they may not be able to understand their wine in a larger global context and may miss some of the things that are actually flaws, not not just unique characteristics So it's finding a balance, right, between respecting the specialness holding on to the unique identity and the cultural context that it comes out of and also being able to take a step back and look objectively at these wines without all of the beautiful romantic context 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. Well, I think it's a it's a wonderful and rich balance that has been achieved. You and Henry have, developed lectures on each of the twenty regions that delve into all those aspects you talk about. My in my new detail, soils, great varieties, but also as you say, gastronomy history, culture. Which is a really, really rich and important wealth of knowledge. And it's something I'm, as you say, I am been particularly interested and involved in most of my working life. But where I I think I had a weakness was in an objective rigorous professional methodology for tasting. So I found that this part of the course was really particularly valuable for me, and I learned such a great deal through the via tasting grid that you and Henry developed. Can we talk about this in a little bit of detail? Because I think it's of great interest to our listeners who are tasting wines wherever they are located, whether just for pleasure, or professionally. How a wine can be broken down looking at these different elements? Yes. Absolutely. Thank you, Mark. And it's it's really gratifying to hear that you found it that you found it really helpful and understood it for what it's supposed to be. It's not that I want people to be going out into the world and speaking to their consumers and their their customers with with the sort of dry analytical language. But I think between ourselves as professionals, we want to we want to be able to apply that objective lens. So the The tasting the evaluation system is broken down kind of by sense, but, really, we start out with the the more, descriptive elements are things like the appearance, the aromas and flavors, the structure. Right? That's before we're saying anything about quality. We're not saying, is this good, is this bad? This is just how it is. And then we move on to stuff where we have to apply more judgments, so quality, is this a wine with lots of complexity, lots of different types of aromas, or is it something fairly simple? Is this something that's for drinking now? Is it for something that has the structure? And the concentration of flavor to really be aged for a considerable period of time because we have everything, in the program. We're not just focused on fine wine. We're not just focused on everyday wines, really, spends. Expands the gamut. So and then things like winemaking, I wanted people to be aware of the winemaking techniques, particularly when we're talking about something that's so intrinsic to the region, like, and also the places where you know, whole bunches are being used or more oak is being used. I just wanted our students to be more aware of how individual flavors and textures, were being achieved. One, one of the things to point out with structure This is something that is is used, obviously, in standardized wine tasting systems all over the world. But we really wanted people to be calibrated for Italian wines, which generally speaking have higher levels of acidity. And higher levels of tannin, and interesting unique textures that are worth describing with adjectives rather than just commenting on the level. Whether that be white wine or red wine with tannins. So structure is somewhere I think our tasting system diverges quite a bit from from the WSTT for instance where there's really not as much of a focus on small differences in texture. I think that was one of the most fascinating things for me. Sarah. I know here in the UK, wine writers are often really, really spending a great deal of time trying to pinpoint aromas and flavors with quite flowery language sometimes. But breaking it down to this more objective, as you say, way of looking at at a wine is very, very helpful. And that divide between structure and quality, you know, really just thinking about the sweetness or the acidity or the body or the alcohol, you were giving us hints on how to begin to feel what an alcohol level is just by holding that wine in the mouth and feeling its warmth and getting an understanding of, you know, just through feeling a wine, and texture was actually, as you say, one of the most fascinating, challenging, interesting, elements of learning to taste with you, particularly with white wines, with with orange wines as well, with wines with whites with skin contact. Such, interesting mouth fields. It could be described as textures. Absolutely. That it's without that particular lens, I think this is where you end up with with these stereotypes about Italian, particularly Italian white wines. Oh, they all taste the same. And I know that the differences are subtle, and winemaking can play a big role, but I do think there's textures. There's different sensations on the palette that are nothing to do with with aroma, are are what really help us make some of these distinctions. At our Vino Condiviso event last night, we had a flight with, I think, a fiano, Eventino, a, a pre blanc, and one of these super fruity blends, it was vintage to Nina. And that was that was the key, actually, was was this was the texture on the palette because the wines were otherwise start there were there were ways in which they they began to feel quite similar, um, atically. So that was, that was a very instructive exercise. Well, that's fascinating. And as you say, it's also about calibrating one's palette. You know, that I I've I've written about French wines, Spanish wines, Italian wines, mainly about Italian wines, but I know that, you know, when I'm in Spain, my palette is different. When I'm in France, my palette is different. And the Via, of course, naturally really helps us to focus on things like, as you say, red wines that have high acidity, Barbeda, for example, which is such a wonderful food wine because of that acidity. So you the via, tasting grid, the via exam on tasting, I think really does help us to to taste and appreciate Italian wine in a deeper and more profound way that, yes, does have, an objectivity to it. We're we're really trying to identify those elements But you've also, I know said that your approach to wine is more holistic as well. And I just like to talk about something that's very personal to you. That's not part of the Via course, but which I have greatly enjoyed and also learned from. And that's, you you mentioned that your first, love when you were growing up when you were studying was the visual arts. And you've managed to bring the visual arts into wide in a quite unique way with your visual tasting notes. Tell us a little bit about this. Thanks, Mark. So in fact, I I I really appreciate that you mentioned that it's not a part of the Via Course, and it it really exists outside of this idea of formal wine education because it was something I I developed effectively in reaction to the objectivity that I'd had to apply through the master of wine program. And I wanted to give myself an outlet to create things that were much more fluid in the sense that I was not even pretending to be objective. I was saying to myself, this is my subjective experience of a wine in one particular instance. And what what is it giving me, and and not having to tie the descriptors, the visual descriptors I was using to something verbal. So I think when we when we use words and force it to be that concrete, we, we sort of pin down winds in ways that can be flattening. I think this is the objection that's, that many of the students have actually to the standardized tasting system. Is that it it it deflates all of the, all of the sort of evocativeness and, yeah, sort of transient beauty of wine into something that seems very concrete. And so I I deliberately say, to the students because many of them have seen the visual tastiness. I think it's a wonderful way to think about wine. And this is something you can take out into the world when you talk to your consumers. And re inject all the romance, all the context, all the beauty back into your wine discussion. But this is not something you bring into our objective via tasting. So I as as you and I have discussed, I try not to make them just visual versions of verbal notes. Try not to have too many things that are recognizably a raspberry and a rose. I mean, you see those elements appear. But it's more about the placement of shapes, of colors, of textures Of layers. The contour. Exactly. Yeah. And the the way that those shapes interact with each other, I try to have things peering out from behind other layers. So it's been it's been a really enriching experience for me making these. To look at just as as paintings as visual images, but I do also think that What's crucial to your approach as you just described it and when one looks at your work is that it encapsulates a feeling. And I think as you say, wine can be limiting if you're reducing it to to descriptors that may be accurate for one at a certain moment because we all taste differently. But to give a feeling of warmth of harmoniousness or something light and ethereal, which we find in wine is really interesting and beautiful. So I love this approach. Thank you. And and just to just to pick up on that last thought, the the new sort of project that I've had this year has been creating visuals that help explain some of those more abstract wine terms, things like harmonious, things like ethereal. I think, again, I've found the visual media more helpful in giving people a sense of how that feels than the words alone. So that's it's been another, like Yeah. Actually, I, you know, I remember when we were when I was doing the course with you, one word that that I know you like to use, which I didn't understand at all at the time. But what you helped me both in the course and through your visuals is something like share, a wine being share. And, that feeling of a wine that has this shimmering quality to it that perhaps might passing through it. The difference between a dense or opaque wine. And I think that, you know, one can even think of that term really in a purely visual way as well as how it feels in your mouth. Absolutely. I think that's one of the one of my favorite visual analogies is is to think about what what would sheerness feel like if it were something you could taste and and smell and feel tactilely. So that that and I think that quality is something about Italian wine that's very unique, and it it, is what continues to entrench me. Italian. Yes. Well, Sarah, I could go on talking to you about this for hours and hours, and I hope we'll have a chance to do so again sometime soon. But thank you so much for being my guest today. It's Always such a pleasure to talk to you. I feel like I learned so much with every conversation, so I hope we'll be able to meet again soon. In the meantime, bye bye for now, Chow, and and good luck with all your travels and your work. That's needed to 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 Italianwine podcast dot com. Until next time.