Ep. 1280 Andrew Jefford | Wine, Food & Travel With Marc Millon

By now, you've all heard of Italian wine Unplugged two point o. The latest book published by Mamma jumbo shrimp. It's more than just another wine book. Fully updated second edition was inspired by students of the Vin Italy International Academy and painstakingly reviewed and revised by an expert panel of certified Italian wine ambassadors from across the globe. The book also includes an addition by professor Atilio Shenza. Italy's leading vine geneticist. The benchmark producers feature is a particularly important aspect of this revised edition. The selection makes it easier for our readers to get their hands on a bottle of wine that truly represents a particular grape or region to pick up a copy, just head to Amazon dot com, or visit us at mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Welcome to wine, food, and travel with me Mark Minute on Italian wine podcast. I'm delighted to announce an important collaboration with Academy Duvan Lieimer, one of the world's most important wine book publishers, whose authors are amongst the most influential and entertaining in the world of wine writing today. These are writers who I've long admired, so it will 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 continue our special subseries in collaboration with Academy Duvan Library. One of the world's leading wine book publishers. My guest today, Andrew Jafford, is a multiple award winning wine writer who I've long admired and enjoyed, made me through his regular column in Decantor magazine. Imagine my delight then to discover his latest book, Drinking with the Valkyrie's writings on wine, a delightful and serendipitous collection of Andrew's mainly short essays, exploring any manner of topics relating to wine. Andrew, it's great to meet you here. Thanks so much for being my guest today. How are you today? I'm fine. Great to be with you, Mark. Andrew, you're joining us from your home in France. Where are you? And when and why did you decide to move there? Okay. Well, I'm speaking to you from, just to the north of Montelier in Longerdock. As I look out of the window, I can't quite see Pixan loo, but I can see off to the cliff opposite Pixan loo. So if any of your listeners know the the that little southern French Chapelation, Longerdock appylation of Saluk. Yeah. That's roughly where I am. I've been here since two thousand and ten. We came here, my family and I, because we'd we'd been in Australia for fifteen months. I'd had a year employment at the University of Adelaide, and it was time to come home. And, yeah, for various reasons, we weren't hugely keen to head back to the UK at that time, and everything was packed up when our house was rented out and so on. So we thought it would be a good time to to try the experiment of living in France, and it seemed to work well. And then other stuff happened like Brexit and all the rest. And so we just decided to stay and we've been here ever since. Oh, wonderful. What were you teaching in Adelaide? Well, I was, it was it was a sort of research here, but I was officially, wine writer in residence to the to the twenty thirty, wine committee was run out of Adelaide University. And for anybody who who remembers my appalling mathematics at school, not many of those will be left, happily. I was actually in the economics department of the University of Adelaide, but they were very kind and welcoming and, and didn't prosecute me too much for my lack of numerical skills. So I had a very happy year in researching there and, and and generally working on on promotion and critical questions to do with Australian wining at the time. That was a great gig. Oh, wonderful to be a wine writer in residence. Now, Andrew, I've long admired and enjoyed your style of writing. Words, their shape, and their rhythms matter to you. I'm sure you're right about Etherich subjects as well as wine. So my question is, why did you decide to dedicate your professional writing life to wine? And what is it about wine that that makes it an important subject for us all? Well, let's that's a very good question, and it's a very big question too. You know, like, most most people, most people, I think, take a while to find their way in life, and and that was true for me. I went through various career options to begin with, including, by the way, selling wine, because I was already very keen on wine. I loved wine very much. So if you love something, it's nice to work with it, but then I had a stint in in publishing, and it was really through working and publishing that that I began to make my way towards a career writing about wine. I'd always wanted to write about something or other. I enjoyed actually telling the stories which are embedded in non fiction. I don't think fiction is the only way to tell stories by any means. It's great to tell stories through the non fictional medium too, and I enjoyed that a lot. And wine gave me a chance to do that as well as as well as, of course, a chance to explore and discover more about my personal passion, my hobby at the time, which which was wine. So it was a way of combining those those two things. But I do regard it as a privilege, and, you know, I've been enormously lucky to do this throughout my life. You know, wine is a wonderful way to discover the world. That's one of the themes of the book. The difference really is the thing that matters most about wine. And that one of the w wonderful things that wine does is as it were linked us to our earthly home in a very sort of intimate way because we We discover all these differences, differences which are related to geographical physical differences, but in a very intimate way through through drinking wine and an an emotional way as well because wine is an emotional product. So so all of that has been tremendously important to me. I I would also say that the agricultural side of wine is something that I I I value and cherish enormously, and I often think is is rather overlooked. I mean, you hear this phrase, the wine industry the whole time. It's a phrase I loathe and deplore, and I always avoid using it if I possibly can and say that, you know, wine is agriculture is not industry. It is about different. It's about working with seasons. It's about working with nature. A relationship with nature. It's about stewardship, husbandry, all of those sort of things, which are all non industrial ideals. The industrial ideals are a wonderful in their own way for for certain things they deliver. Product of enormous consistency, and they help ensure that people have enough of the things they want. They keep warm. They keep well fed and so on. But but agriculture at its highest, and and wine really is agriculture at its highest. There's no agricultural land anywhere in the world, which is worth more than the most valuable pieces of agricultural land that are used for wine. So so the wine is really at the summit of agriculture and very close to the essence of agriculture. Which is linked to difference and changeability and nature and the natural world, and those kind of ideals, which really mean a lot to me. Environmentalism, let's say, in the broadest sense and in a kind of aesthetic sense as well. A long answer. I apologize for all that. No. No. Not at all. And, I think in the book itself, you expand on this considerably and also demonstrate that wine is part of culture, agriculture, as you say, culture, heritage history, and more. And indeed, wine is actually part of our own very humanity, which gives us an opportunity to begin at the beginning of your book, with your essay, homo Invivens, the work of Patrick McGovern. And I'd just like to read a little bit to give our listeners a flavor of your prose. A glass of wine poured at the end of the day, quietly surrendering its sense and stories. We know no moment quite like this. Daylight is going or gone. And with it the obligation to work, to act and to analyze. That glass guides us towards ease, imagination, and emotion, all of them proper to darkness, and a fitting prelude to sleep. The wine nuances, our lived experience, bringing both perspective, and Kiaro Scuro. At times, indeed, it can seem to furnish a kind of spiritual nourishment. Our enjoyment of that glass of wine is also the individual successor to countless acts of drinking. We no longer fashion arrowheads using them to kill our dinner. We no longer dry the skin and fur our dinner was ripped from and use it to stitch clothes and craft shoes. Our ancestors by contrast never spent the day online. Satin traffic jams or felt existentially superfluous. The consumption of an alcoholic beverage by candlelight or firelight is one of the few intimate daily acts we share with those who have gone before us. So you're linking wine to the earliest traces of humanity. Can you expand on this and expand on the on the, work of Professor Patrick McGovern. Yes. Well, I and when I urge anybody, listening, who who might like to explore this for themselves to look at the books of Patrick, they're not terribly difficult to read even though he's an academic. They're not intensely academic books. And he does explore this with with great thoroughness. His specialty has always been analyzing the chemical residues left in archaeologically recovered artifacts, pottery shards, and what have you. And amazingly enough, It's only in in the last half century or so that this has become possible. It wasn't possible to analyze those residues in times past. And shockingly, archaeologists generally cleaned them off. So, you know, to have a better cleaner result with the actual shard they'd they'd found in the past, but but in, you know, scientific advances in terms of analytical techniques in the last of century or so have enabled us to to to understand these. And you know, it it's it's wonderful what, mcgovern has been able to do, not only in terms of exploring individual wine cultures. McGovernan, his, his colleagues, I should add. He's very careful always to to credit everybody involved. But but also in going right back to finding the very earliest traces of all that we can. The very earliest traces, by the way, go right back to to China to ancient China, about nine thousand years ago. But those are traces with of of, alcoholic beverages, which are generally what we would call mixed alcoholic beverages. And by the way, that's generally true for for the most ancient residues. So these were not just pure wine, but also involved some element of of beer, of grain brewing, and sometimes some element of of honey as well made fermentation too. The earliest, pure grape residues we have, come from Georgia about eight thousand years ago, and that's why Georgia is one of the reasons why Georgia is generally thought to be to some extent the cradle or birthplace of wine. Though perhaps we still have much to discover here, Anatolia also has, a claim to that as does some other parts of what we now call the Middle East and particularly Iran. So, I think it's wonderful to to both think back to these these acts of drinking. And in particular, the the Chinese one goes back to a village called where, they also discovered, a series of flutes made from the wing bones of the of the beautiful red crane, the famous bird that does his extraordinary dances, mating dances. And so that the association of drinking beverage with music making, and perhaps singing, and firelight, you know, these are all things that that we still do today. We still sit down a beautiful glass of wine in the evening and and enjoy music with it and perhaps singing and dancing too. These things have always gone together. We we can trace the the the actual historical record back nine thousand years, but it it's almost certain that it went back even earlier than that. And indeed, if you want to to pursue the speculation, you can go right back to our primate ancestors who who sought out, fermenting fruits, in, in their own environments and seem to to crave and enjoy those and and to, you know, at a certain point during, our evolution from primates, we we acquired this ADA gel gene, which enables us to process alcohol. And from that point onwards, McGovern suggests professor McGovern suggests that Alcohol really became quite central to our to our emotional life as as beings, and he can that's why he proposes. With his tongue a little way into his cheek, perhaps the name homo in Bibens, the drinking man, as being a kind of, almost a mythical or a a guiding figure, in our, in our own human development. So something very, very significant, something that goes back an awfully long way And I think it's it's it's sort of nourishing and reassuring to to think of that kind of long deep background to our own drinking today. 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. Yes. Absolutely. And I I like the musical metaphor that you've or or the connection with music that you draw there, which which actually brings me to my next question to you. You extoll the virtues of a number of individual and particular wines in your book. And I have to mention your essay that's also the title of your book drinking with the valkyries because it must be one of the greatest and most suggestive wine book titles ever. The essay in fact is about the virtues of one of the world's most magnificent fortified wines vintage port. Let me read just another little bit from this. What I want to say is this. Ignore anyone telling you not to taste and drink vintage port in its earliest youth. You should drink it soon, act precipitately. By all means store a few bottles pending full maturity, if you wish, and appreciated in a state of subtle, great, graceful, and polite refinement sagely tutored by time. That's pleasure too. But you won't fully understand it until you have tasted it young. In its ride at the Valkyrie stage, what comes hurtling out of the glass and puts the screamers on you. Yes. It can be challenging. Yes. It's black in the glass. It smells of steam roated plums, stringned nettles, earl gray. And an accident with a pepper grinder, and it tastes like sweet, viners, magma. But it's also the product of a company or a farm's oldest wisest vines, carefully cauceted, from long proven vineyards, and usually made with a blend of largely indigenous grape varieties. Quality is quietly there, like a store of hydrogen, feeding its solar force. Don't wait until later when it becomes a red giant or a white dwarf. Open that stellar bottle now. Wine offers no other experience like this. Wine offers no other experience like this. Can you expand on this on how this urgent incessant ride of the Valkyrie is something that you can find in useful expressions of of vintage port, but also I imagine in other wines. Yes. In a in other wines too, but I suppose it's most spectacular in vintage port because of, because that is vintage port's intention. It's meant to be this sort of This kind of bond like wine that that that lasts almost forever and evolves very, very slowly and in a stately manner over thirty or forty years. So in its early, earliest youth, it really has absolutely everything packed into it. And we're talking about, a place on earth, the Doro Valley in Northern Portugal. Any of your listeners have been there that they will remember how astonishingly spectacular It is very, very steep slopes, schist slopes, all hacked into terraces hundreds of years ago, and still, you know, bearing ancient pines on them. Many different grape varieties too. And of course, It the the way it's made is is you you take the cream of the crop or or rather the cream of the cream of the crop every year. It's only a tiny percentage of each farm's production will get made into vintage port. And you then absolutely smash the living daylights out of it over a week or so, traditionally by foot treading, but now by automatic, piston treading, if you like. And so And that that's at the point at which you actually add the spirit to preserve the unferted fortified sugars, but in order to have that depth and that density and that tannic porosity and all the other things that it has, you really have to work it super hard up until that point. And, of course, that's why it throws such a, a spectacular crust, sediment in the bottle over over the years of maturation. But when you taste it young, it truly is the most exciting wine tasting experience you could ever have. I remember this very clearly because my first ever wine trip anywhere outside the UK was to Northern Portugal to visit port houses, and I still remember the sort of the mind blowing experience that tasting these young vintage ports was. And it hasn't hasn't really listened ever since. I adored it then, and I still endure it now. And I just think that as I say in the essay, you know, there is really no other wine tasting experience like that, and it's an awful shame. You know, If you follow all the instructions obediently and wait twenty years first, you'll you'll completely miss out on on that almost life changing wine tasting experience, which would be a great change. So It was it's something I definitely urge anybody to do. Yes. Yes. It's not something I have have the opportunity to do very often. Vintage port is such a rarity for many, an expensive rarity. Man, and I guess people don't have time these days either as to lay down wines for decades as really was required for vintage port lovers. So, that's a a factor too. Isn't it? People that that, you know, it's hard to find old vintages. Yes. But that that would be another spur, of course, to to actually to tasting it young. And, and I should also say that the standard of vintage port making has rocketed in recent years too. Plus, you have at the moment the wonderful two thousand and seventeen vintage to to make the most of it. It's an absolutely superb vintage in in, in the Doros. So, yeah, hurry out. Get hold of a bottle. Give it a tree may. Okay. I'll I'll try to do that. Now in your life as a right line writer, you obviously have opportunities as we're discussing to take some of the greatest, most sought after, and expensive wines in the world. Yet in your essay beyond the best. You also make it clear that these are not wines that necessarily bring the most everyday pleasure. That may have come as something of a relief for the rest of us. Who rarely have these opportunities. The pleasure and enjoyment of wine goes beyond just the taste in the glass. Can you expand on what you mean in this essay? Yes. Absolutely. Well, you know, the the the I go through various ways in which I I think that the the best is perhaps overrated or not necessarily worth making it to your your absolute priority to taste. The, you know, if if you're buying wine for yourself and most of us do have to buy wines for ourselves, wine writers, of course, get treated to tastings. So they they get to taste very expensive wines without ever paying a penny which is an artificial situation. Most of these wines are are now sort of almost oligarch only level prices. They're completely unaffordable for for most of us and certainly for me. And When you when you begin to look at questions of value, are they really worth the multiples that are asked for them? The answer almost always has to be no. You know, Roman County is not sixty thousand times better than a jolly good bottle of of, a particular village burgundy from, I don't know, where, Mauris Antonie, Andre, whatever. And yet, that that's kind of where the price suggests it should be, and it's not there. So they're not only unaffordable, but also overpriced. I would also suggest that in some ways, they're they're uninteresting. I don't mean that they're fake, or that they're qualities are overrated. I just mean that it's almost impossible to to taste them in a straightforward manner and and appreciate their qualities as you might, the qualities of any other wine. Because serving them is is such a ritual. And sort of it's almost, ecclesiastical or theocratic. You can't possibly meet the wines in a in a in a straightforward manner as you would a normal wine. And and in a way that, for me, almost Robs takes the pleasure away. You have to approach these things reverentially. You sort of crawl your way towards them with your cap. Doth. And you're sort of tongue drooling, and you're allowed, you know, your drop or two. And, you know, you you say a few holy marys and back off. And, yes, of course, you've had a wonderful exquisite experience, but is it an authentic experience? My contention is very often it under these circumstances, it it's actually not a an authentic experience too. And then the final point I would make really is that, you know, what what the decision about the best is is always somebody else's decision or in fact the decisions of thousands and thousands and thousands of drinkers that have preceded you. And, it it's a communal decision, and we all have our own tastes. So, you know, I have come across great wines, which which I would just say are not to my taste. I mean, they're not the kind of thing I particularly want to drink or they they they may be set up to appeal to pallets that aren't constituted in in the way that my pallet is constituted. So, really, the best for me is the best that in my world, my wine world, the best I can find, the best that I can go out and search for. And and it it doesn't really correlate, in any case, it's sort of a theoretical consideration because I can never afford all the the world's top wines, but it really doesn't correlate with the world's top wines. And I think it's an awful shame that so many wine enthusiasts sort of consider that the only way forward is is up. And the only way up is via points and price. And and, you know, eventually you sort of finally reach Everest and have your your glass full of Romani Konti or whatever it is. And and this to me is a a very inauthentic and artificial and misleading and finally disappointing sort of way to approach wine and and actually the discovery of your own palette, what you like the kind of wines you like, and going out and finding those for yourself, exploring for yourself, discovering the wine world, the world, the wine world, are the same thing in some ways. It's all other, you know, the discovery of the other discovery of difference. Doing all of that for yourself is much, much more rewarding than acquiring it all second hand just by tracing, you know, all of the sort of ninety seven ninety eight, ninety nine point wines from this that or the other critic. That's what I mean by getting beyond best. Really. Yes. Yes, sir. I can certainly understand that. Having been to many of these sorts of tastings myself, Trebicheri tastings in Italy, for example, where every wine that you sampled is one of the best wines. But within that context, there's some hundreds of wines available to taste. It's easy to lose the way and the context. And I think that's what you're talking about too. The simple pleasure of enjoying wine in the right context with friends, with family sharing, and simply enjoying that glass of wine, which may not necessarily be the wine with the highest points. Absolutely. And discovering for yourself, I do think is is very, very important. To. Yes. And I think through what you are saying and through the many essays in the book, one begins to get an essence of what wine is according to Andrew Jeffrey. I'd like to just read another snippet from an essay called wine is also a dream. You could argue, in fact, that what matters most about wine and all of the wine scrutinized and written about by wine writers is its Dreamforce. I define this as the ability to induce reverie, to inspire aspiration or hope, and to promise, even if it finally fails to deliver exceptional, sensual gratification. In other words, that which wine traders trade and wine connectors connect and about which wine writers write is not simply also a dream, but principally a dream. Can you perhaps expand on this a little bit? I love that. We hope you've enjoyed this special subseries in collaboration with Academy De Van Library. If you visit their website academy duvan library dot com, you're offering a discount of five pounds on the purchase of books by the authors we've interviewed, including Oz Clark, Hugh Johnson, Vona Morrison, Peter Vending Deers, and Andrew Jafford. Just use the AD VL coupon code upon checkout with the code Italian wine. That's all caps. Yeah. Well, this this came from something that, Philip Gigal once said, to me and a bunch of students when we were together, in, caught roti. And, you know, I just it I never forgot that phrase, and I kept on thinking about it, and it I came to think that he's absolutely right. And this is something we never really talk about because wine talk and and wine minds often are very, very granular. We get very wrapped up in the detail, and, all of that. And then we never step back and consider the broader, the broader picture. And and really, wine is also a dream, is the broader picture. In other words, we must remember always that, you know, that this even the word wine, you know, the way that wine falls through the air and onto our ears, It's already says something special. It's an emotional product, as I said a little bit earlier. It has huge cultural depth. People have been drinking wine, you know, it goes right back to to Homer, the first great work at the Western Electric Callon. It, it plays a function a key function in the Christian Eucharist, of course. Jeffrey Chultz's father was a wine merchant, William Shakespeare, through the character of full staff showed how clearly that he understood the appeal of wine. You know, we know about the pastor Contee and, madame de pompadour, and we know Napoleon liked to drink Shambautam, with a little water on his military campaigns and all of that. And all of that is is there whenever we drink wine. It's sort of lurking and haunting are are are wine drinking activity. You know, if you put all of those things together, If you then remember that wine has always been almost regarded with the same reverence of work as works of art have been, that certainly over the last three or four hundred years, they've been continually critically scrutinized. And then you think about this whole notion of terroir and everything it means to us, even though scientists have struggled to define it and are still struggling to define it. It's a very amorphous term, but it's it's still a term that grabs us in our in our in our innards and and has a sort of magnetic power over us. And then you think about even the way wines presented, you know, in these in these glass bottles, glass is melted sand. It's not easy to make. We have glass bottles. We have bits of oak bark, to seal up the wine, cork. We have this wonderful infusion of, of graphic creativity with labels. You know, all of these things a re a rolling the dream force of wine towards us. Imagine Mark, if every wine that you were to taste in the next year came in a little medical plastic medical bottle, a plastic medical sample bottle, the sort of thing you might hand the urine sample in, If they were all lined up, you know, your your year's drinking was all lined up in those bottles numbered one to three thousand two hundred and forty three or whatever it is, and you just had to drink them all one after the other. Without any of that other apparatus behind. I guarantee you wouldn't you wouldn't enjoy the wine as much. You you probably barely even enjoy the wine at all, and you'd be very confused about it, at the end of all of that, and it would be a completely experience to the one that you are in reality going to have. And that's and the the reason for all of that is the dream force. It's the dream force that lies behind all of our acts of wine drinking and all all all the wines themselves And, you know, the moment Philip said said that, I sort of slowly began to to realize all of that. And I just thought, you know, it'd be interesting to to write an essay, about that, and that is, is that essay. Yes. I love that essay. Actually, talking about those soulless little bottles of wine, that's something many of us had to endure during wine tastings in lockdown when samples were sent, and you're absolutely right. It was a miserable experience tasting wines, in that context as if it was simply the liquid within the tiny sample bottle that could embody everything that you suggested wine is. Yep. Yep. Completely. Now finally, chapter ten, the last chapter in drinking with the Valkyrie is called the three last wines. In this chapter, you write about two French wines, and on Italian. We haven't spoken about Italian wine and and and your relation to it and what you think Italian wines uniquely bring, but the Italian essay is called Unsettled. Two thousand fourteen Cananau, Desardena, ma'amutone, by Giuseppe, said Ilazoo. Tell us about this wine, and why you chose to include it as one of your last three wines. Yes. Well, you know, the first thing I should say is that, and and it will probably be obvious to anybody who's listened through the podcast so far, is that the wines I I've picked out, for inclusion for writing about in the book It's not hierarchical. These are not, you know, the best wines ever from their locations or any of that sort of stuff. It it's it's always because these particular wines provoked something in me, and, I I could sort of connect with a place on earth in a very vivid manner. And it so happened that I I visited Sardinia, in a few years ago, and went up to the mountain villages where they produce these wonderful Cannano wines. And I met the the City Lestrel family and tasted their wine, which was called from the village of Maemojada, and and, the labels were very striking. They they had this sort of horrific mask on. They were very disconcerting. That's why the essay is called unsettled. And I was very interested in this, and I began to to look into it a bit more. And I discovered, what Ma'amuthone are and what it relates to, and this is an extraordinary ritual that happens every January in the village, which I describe at at some length in the essay, and which I I won't go into in full detail now. But, you know, this is what I mean about the importance of culture to wine having discovered a little bit about this ritual and its origins and the significance of that in the village, and and having talked to to Giuseppe, a Sespresso about his wine. And, you know, it all came together. And I suddenly realized that, yes, this was remarkable wine. It was wonderful wine. It was absolutely t to terrific. And I write about that in in a sort of basic sensual sense in the essay, but there was also much, much more there. To discover about their family history and the history of the place and what this particular ritual meant and what these masks signified. And and, really, the essay is about those things as much as the actual taste of wine itself. And to me, that that That really is the important thing about wine. It's this bonding us to other places on earth, to other human activities, to other people, to other struggles and striving, and there was a lot of struggles and striving has gone on in this part of Sardinia down the years. And, and and having discovered all of those things, then the wine meant even more to me afterwards. And that's really what I'd like to to sort of urge on on the readers and perhaps listeners as well. That's really, really why we love wine most of all. It's not just the aroma. It's not just the flavor. It's all of those other things that go with that. It's the broad eaves, the bigger perspectives, that also have their role. And if anything comes across from the book, I I I would hope it would be, that message, I guess. Yes. I think that message comes through very clearly, because you have such a broad interest in wine. It's all all its varied colors and styles and tastes, and it's that that story behind the wine, that story behind the place, that story behind a sensation in your mouth, which makes makes us want to to experience that as well. Andrew, thank you so much for being my guest today, and, sharing with me your wonderful book, drinking with the valkyries. Published by Academy De Van Library. As I said, it's really that deep knowledge and love of wine that comes through so strongly. And I think it's a wonderful book for all who love reading about wine, but also drinking wine, learning about wine, and learning about the culture of wine. So I'm urging our listeners to seek it out. Can I also remind that Academy Duvan Library is offering the discount? For our listeners, for purchases made from their website. Andrew, thank you so much for being my guest today. And I really look forward to sharing a glass of wine with you sometime in the future. I look forward to that too, Mark. Thank you so much. Thank you. All the best. Bye. 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.