Ep. 267 Joe Fattorini (The Wine Show) on Wine on TV and the UK Wine Market

This episode of the Italian wine podcast is brought to you by the new book, San Jose, Lambruschco, and other vine stories. Researchers Atilio Shenza and Cerrenne Macio, explore the origin and ancestry of European great varieties in a tale of migration, conquest, exploration, and cross cultural exchange. Hardback available on Amazon in Europe, Kindle version available worldwide. Find out more at Italian winebook dot com. Italian wine podcast. With Italian wine people. Okay. So here we go. So this actually just to let everybody know, this is the Italian wine podcast hosted by me Monte Gordon, and my guest today is Joe Fatarini born fifth of September nineteen sixty nine. He's a British radio and television presenter and wine expert, and it's no exaggerating situation to say you have a worldwide following. Yeah. I I do. It was that you did. No. No. I did. It's all gone now with this interview. It's totally finished. A hundred it's about a hundred and ten countries, I think, that the show goes to now. Right. And the show is. The wine show. So it's called the wine show, which is the That's lucky. Least imaginative title. I thought you got the gardening show or the table tennis show or so. You think we do have a sister program called the classic car show. Oh, great. And another one called the Arts Show. You can see where we were going when it came to naming TV shows. Yeah. I think somebody said the other day our global audience is about eighty million now. Not bad. So it's reasonable. Not bad. I do get stopped sometimes in odd places, but the weird thing is that In the soup market, but do you know which which which are the blue roles are in? I have been stopped in the supermarket and asked that. The offer you find that's all I've I'll get stopped in a country, not by somebody from that country. So I was stopped in Croatia by South Koreans. And in France, by a Norwegian and in Bahrain by a texan. It's very strange. And they're, yeah, and they stop you and say, oh, you're that guy from the TV show. And he said, yes. And he said, oh, I'm a big fan, and you say, what here? And they go, no, no, no, and it's I'm from What did you say to them? Are they ever asking you, or they just wanna just shake your hand and get an autograph? Or I've been once asked for an autograph. My son's friend asked for an autograph, and he asked for it. He's a a large gentleman. He was in a lazy boy recliner, and he'd he'd he'd never looked at me. He just pulled out a little post it pad and slid it across in his very york. And he went, oh, to go off, please. And then when I signed it, put it back, he that was all he'd said to me. Did he charge you? Pretty much. And then he said, I'll keep that for later. I'll be selling that in a few years. And he just watched cash in the attic which was on the telly the whole time. Normally itself is who had lots of selfies. Really? Yeah. But that's, I'm sure that's quite I mean, if you, you know, must love all that and, but I'm sure inside you're quite a show a shy a shy lad. I'm totally hugely shy and retiring, and, no. So I haven't even introduced you yet. Why don't you inter go? You introduce yourself. Hello. Ladies and gentlemen, you got as long as you lie. As long as you lie. I am a yorkshireman. How do you tell a yorkshireman? He'll tell you. My name is Joe Fatarini. I am the presenter of the wine show which is broadcast on various formats at Hulu in the United States, which is our big one. And we just started broadcasting on Amazon as a prime video, which we're very pleased with. I'm also working wine merchants, which is important. You do have a proper job. I do have a real job. And I sell wine to hotel and restaurants in London. Some very smart wine, actually. There's some very But you're not actually out, you know, on your feet with a bottle of wine in your jacket. I am out on my feet. Really? The bottle of wine. Yeah. And I'm, like, in a suite somewhere. That was from fifty teeth floor with a champagne bar. I weirdly, sometimes you say, well, I'll come around and I'll do it. And people say, what? You come and visit customers? I see you on the telly. It's all. I was trying a desperation as well, probably, isn't it? It is. Yeah. Oh, no. You're not gonna pay the bills. Brexit looming. So I trolled around a bottle of wine. I have a special bag like a roll along to take my bottles. I I'm very fortunate I run a small team. So there's a lot of bags. Even bags. My team have better bags than me. Beers got an amazing bag. Beers. Is my Spanish specialist. She's brilliant. So, yeah, we wheel around with with bags. None of genuine, why much, and that was always part of the idea of the show because we have in in the format of the show, people not seen it, and there is a chance you haven't. We have a two actors, a slightly rolling roster of two says they are the normal people because they're not real wine experts. There's the foils, aren't they? They're the foils. But the idea was was that if you presented somebody's wine expert, well, how many of us go and talk to, you know, wine writers? We don't see them very much. But we all know our wine merchant, and I'm a real life wine merchant. Okay. So, I mean, you, you know, you are a funny lad, I mean, that in both senses, but, looking at your CV, I mean, you have had a really varied background, haven't you? I mean, apart from the fact that you're a a tennis star and a and a speaker, and you've got a great sense of humor, most of the time, and that, you know, your journalism as a wine correspondent, you have done had some sort of slightly oddball jobs. I've very oddball jobs. I started as an academic in university, and he was to teach classes. Remember teaching a class, it was about why laboratory cleanliness was the most important thing for hoteliers. And then subsequently, it turned up that hotelier said, yes, laboratory cleanliness is the most important in hotels because it's the one bit where people sit and think how clean is this room. But I taught for five years at the University in Glasgow, I lived in Scotland for a very long time, eighteen years. But you're not Scottish though, ain't you? Not Scottish at all. No Yorkman. I mean, we got that one in early doors actually. I'm quite pleased. And I went from from that and then into broadcasting and writing. And I'd had little bits as well. I mean, like lots of people, I sort of worked in wine shops when I was a young man, and then, but joined the wine trade in a way quite late, I'd already been an academic and a journalist before So I wrote for a newspaper in Scotland, the herald on wine. Wine, and then he used to do sort of odd bits. Had a radio program about personal finance. Yeah. I mean, where did that? I mean, that's probably quite a useful skill to have, especially in wine because you can read about a balance sheet. Yeah. So where did that come from? Somebody just sits. I think I was doing a PhD at the time, which was vaguely on mine. You think you were doing a PhD. It's a kind of thing that sort of slips by you. I may have bought a loaf of bread yesterday, but I forgot the cocoa powder. I mean The the somebody said the other day, this was a very proud organized of people who failed a PhD. I'm delighted to say I failed two, which is an even smaller failed two failed two PhDs. Yeah. One was on share price behavior, so it was sort of on money. And the other was on the role and influence of restaurant reviews. That's quite important for wine though, isn't it? It's very important for wine. Interestingly with restaurant reviews, and for wine, like restaurants, there's a limited capacity, and it turned out in my research that re good, really good restaurant reviews are as bad for restaurants as really bad restaurant reviews. Because people think everyone's gonna be crowded and Yeah. Because people think Limes is no way I'll get in because it had an amazing review, so nobody books. And so they're flat out apparently for about three months. And then restaurants with amazing reviews often die three months after towards because then everything's well, I'll never get in because I couldn't for the last three months and they stop trying to go somewhere else. Didn't know that. And I think with wine, if you have too good a review, nobody can get hold of it. There is a temptation that whilst wine producers whack up the money so you get some sort of equilibrium, the danger is then that normal people who would drink your wine next vintage don't because you're idiomatically expensive, and people stop trying. And so there's a challenge we're getting amazing early doors reviews. I mean, in terms of, I mean, on the subject reviews, obviously being on the telly, you know, you've probably got some really good reviews where the show has and probably some probably not so quite good reviews, I guess, I don't know, because critics always wanna have something new to say. Even if they loved it, they'll have to write a shitty review. Do you take notice of that? Does it affect you or the team or I haven't quite been reduced to tears, but I take each one of them horrendously seriously until my wife effectively blocks me from looking at social media sites Really? Before you're sort of tough lad, you know. Oh, but there's sort of terribly personal. I do take a certain And what what would they yeah. But what would, you know, they may say that you're maybe not a great presenter or whatever, whatever, they they can't be in the conference? No. There's only ever there's only ever one critique ever, which is only one thing that anybody oh, no. There's two. The main one is that if we're pretentious. You're seeing your pretentious. And then I take particular joy because people say you're your pretentious and you're passionate in this that and other. And then I have this sort of hobby, but you're not so not. Well, I try to turn people around. And apparently, normally, when people get very critical on social media, they sort say, oh, you're all pretentious and passionate. Everybody goes, gets very crossing and blocks to them. I'll then sort of chat and there's a guy from Glasgow, and we're going out for a drink, and he couldn't believe it that I'd lived in an estate called Rakezi. Rakezi is really rough, or it certainly was when I lived there. It's a part town. This is a rough part of town. And this guy couldn't believe that I'd lived in Racazio, which apparently was a part of town he wouldn't dare to go to. And he said, well, you can't be that pretentious if you actually lived there for eighteen months. And we ended up going on really well, and he's like, oh, you know, you're alright for a pretentious bugger or something. Twat. Yeah. Twat. I think possibly was. Don't look that up if you're not an English speaker. It's a rude word. Yeah. It's a rude word in a in a in a in a wrong context. There are sometimes bits. So you know what? Something that you just take on the chin. The only other bits we sometimes get told of being a bit pretentious, which I don't think we are but ain't anything to do with wine. It's an easy critique. So people are, oh, wine. It's a lazy critique. It's a really this is a lazy critique. The other one which actually is harder is sometimes you know what? It is three middle aged men larking about. So we get told of sometimes. Well, this is just three middle aged dudes sort of larking about. You know, I do tell you that quite seriously. I mean, fundamentally, if anybody's gonna get knocked off the show, it's probably me, and I'll be the one who gets replaced by, you know, a woman, a person of color Well, you've got Amelia who's brilliant singer, who's the My partner in wine. Just to to so you're the wine expert. Amelia is She's also a very good wine expert. Right. The wine of and then two, actors. We got two actors. Absolutely. And then we we had Janice in series two. She joined us for a series, which was great and rulings are quite like. How was Janssen? Would she very straight or was she she got really good sense of humor? She does, but she hides it under a bushel, but there are moments of she, I mean, she's impossibly clever. And every so often you'll just see and she'll say a remark and it's quite subtle, but you're like, that's sharp, you know, she is funny. She's really nice. And we had a great time. At the end of filming all the crew who were a sort of muscular toned men and all these actors. We're all playing and me. Steddy. We're all We're all I know where you're going. Water polo. So they're all sort of knocking around. And Jances was sitting in this amazingly elegant issey Miyaki gown on a and she was reading the feet And then I just looked and all I could see was Janice is just peering over the top of the Financial Times. There's Melvin who looks like his carved from, you know, dark marble. He's leaping about, and she's rather enjoying it. I told Nick Landa Osman, he'd rather write that story. Yeah. It was a it. Okay. So, in terms of wine in general, and, and, you talked talked about being seen as pretentious, no matter how down to earth you are, how do we get past that in the industry, do you think? You don't have a real problem with people who say I'm going to demystify wine because I think a lot of these terms are. Stucky on my foot. The sikh stuffy pretentious snobby. They all slightly get overlapped. One of the extraordinary things about wine is its mystery, and it's one of the things that people have loved for about eight thousand years is that it's sort of mysterious. And a lot what we buy into is that it's a little bit mysterious. We're very bad though about saying, you know what, it it is a bit mysterious, and that's kind of half the reason we quite like it. So let's embrace that and sort of celebrate it. And I think I sometimes see people say, right, I'm gonna demist I'm here to go and totally strip away all the mystery and all that kind of stuff. And all you end up is, you know, nobody wants to demystify James Bond. I mean, the point of James Bond is he drinks really expensive wine in a slightly mystical, mysterious way and he knows exactly what temperature champagne should be loved out or whatever it is. I mean, is it Volney, which he insisted was about half a degree cooler than the rest of the coat of man? Actually, we quite like that. If James Bondland was drinking Chile Merlo, there's some nice chilly Merlers out there, people go, mhmm. New man with James Bond once started drinking Heineken everybody said, well, that's a appalling corporate plug because it was because that's not what he is. I think there's a magic about wine. One of my big things is, you know, what you should of the smallest if you've got a lot, a lot of people, serve the smallest number of bottles possible, just make the bottles as large as possible. Not just because it's kind of flashes serving big bottles. My genuinely, I'm talking in Italy, has a bit of Italian sensibility. There is a communion. You don't have to be religious to get. There's a kind of communion about all of you sharing from a single vessel. And my brother in law's stag night two years ago. Study. They were nine of us And we drank an eighteen liter bottle of wine. We all got home. We all sort of said, no. We only had one bottle of wine between us last night. It was like, well, why are you massively hung over there? This is because we'd have two liters ahead. But, you know, it was fabulous and we're all there this huge bottle and decanting it and then somebody takes the thing away. That's I don't think serving wine in big bottles is pretentious. I don't think it's particularly snobby. I think it is a way of signifying, this is my academic background. A communion between lots and lots of people who are sharing, you know, one of them, the great gift to us from whoever you call it, Gaia, God, whoever. Yeah. That is the the social aspect. I think that also the the fact, for the for the wine show, it wasn't just one talking head. It was a group of people that were, you know, the actors who were not wine experts with who you are and Amelia. I think it isn't a bit minor, but there's a so it was a nice mix of no normal ish people. You know, we all bring different bits. I remember when we had Matthew Reese and Matthew Goody first series, Matthew Rees and Goody represented, I guess two of the most common groups people who aren't wine experts, Reese thought he didn't rely on very much, but there were one or two he tried, but he was quite hard for him to go and find it. He's like, I know what I like, but I don't know what it is. Could he knew a little bit more, but he kinda wanted validation that actually Santa Million was quite an s wine, and he would always say to me, I mean, I drink such and such. That's quite good, isn't it? I don't know why you're asking me if you like it? Of course, it's good, but a lot of people want a little bit of the expertise just to sort of reassure them, no, no, you've chosen a really good little there. Whereas Matthew Reese didn't really care, he would just sort of say, oh, no, I don't like any of that. That's all rubbish, but I've no idea what this thing was that somebody once gave me six months ago. Well, we do that with and if I go and buy a new car, I'm gonna call up you and say, listen, I've just got to come and take you spin. That's the form of validations, isn't it? If you say, well, Monty, it's a quite a nice choice, you know, ask a few questions, even if you may be bored shitless, you know, how what's the acceleration pay? Oh, I don't know. Yeah. There's, was his name Herbert Simon, but a madly going off now into a slightly sort of guy Hobbert Simon who came up with terms, satisficing. Look it up a really useful term. Most of the time in most of the things we buy, and this is true for most people buying wine, they're not looking for the best. What they really want reassurance is that it's not gonna be it. And so if I go and buy a car and I don't know a lot about cars, but what I'll tend to go and do, I drive a skoda, is I was guaranteed it wasn't shit anymore. They're now sort of cheap, but reassuringly, you know, surely not shit. As wine experts, we actually don't shop that week because we know so much about wine that we'll sort of say, oh, no, I want the very, very best. There is some an economist guy called, Rory Southern and marketing guy. And he said, you know, if you're an expert, you aim for trouble twenty because you kind of know that you're likely to get up there and you know you're more the top score. Yeah. Top score. But most people don't because the thing is if you don't get twelve twenty, you'll get a one. Most people when it comes to choosing wine, go for the bottom left hand quadrant of the board, where there's no particularly high scores and no rubbish ones. That's why I really choose the second cheapest wine on the list. You're not risking that much if it's a bit rubbish, but the chances are it's not gonna be terrible, but it's not gonna be amazing either. And satisfying when we talk to people on the show, a lot of the time, you kind of all we do is reassure people that amber wine from Georgia. You know, here's two or three Amber wines from Georgia. And you know what? They're weird, but they're not terrible. You'll still be able to drink them and and and and and and wake up again the next morning. Yeah. Here's the thing. It's twenty five pounds. It's quite a lot of money, but it won't be wasted because you'll really love it. And people, I think they that's what most people are looking for. It's the reassurance. Apart from Kelly and, I mean, you've spent quite a lot of time on cruise ships, haven't you? That's totally No. No. I know. I know. I did say ships at the No. I spent quite a lot of time cruising on ships. On boats. On boats. And then, yeah, I've worked with, celebrity cruises, which is so on. Come on. Oh, it's an absolute hoot. And you go and do these, like, do shore excursions. So you're piling to a miniboss, and then you tank it off on winery and you go around and everybody drinks too much. And the trip back's amazing because all of the crew's guests are all absolutely zonked in the back of the miniboss. Everybody's flat out. I've had a glass of wine in the heat, a legal handler. Yeah. You know, completely on icons. I'm sort of all over the place. But, yeah, oh, you brilliant time. And then you do dinners in the evenings. Are you are you speaking all the time there? You sort of Yeah. It's exhausting. Yeah. And you're getting lots of taps on the shoulders about completely un un irrelevant stuff. You gotta know your stuff. Yeah. Because as soon as you snap out of your state room, they're not cabins, state rooms. You come out of your state room. There'll be somebody in the corridor. I'll go, oh, now then I've got a question for you. I'm like, oh, did you get to breakfast? You gotta do with nine different questions? Yeah. Yeah. Which I, I like it because I like talking and I'm a massive narcissist. Yes, sir. It's I went to a boarding school. Yeah. So I'm constantly looking for validation. Is that what we do? It is. It's because Why is that? In the back of our mind, there's a car, aged nine, driving into the distance, and you're going, mommy, why have you left me here? As it winds down Oh, please. The pretzel drawers left me and a boy. I had so much fun. I knew when I got into it after about ten minutes. I went to a boy, but boys and girls with no uniform. That would have been dangerous territory. I was all boys all the way through was all boys initially for one school, three years, and then five years with boys and girls in a uniform. And it was like ten miles from nearest town as well. So you you can even escape. Really? Isn't actually the schools in the film, three men and a little lady? It's the demonic boarding school they send their daughter It's his Bascaville Hall in the heart of the Baskills. Arthur Conan was an old boy. And so when he had to model the worst possible place he could imagine, they simply wrote about school. Right. And he was bullied by a guy called moriarty at school. Really? That's why I used the name in, in his book. We'll get right back to the Italian wine podcast after a quick reminder that this episode is made possible by the book San Jose, Lambrusco, and other vine stories available on Amazon in Europe and Kindle worldwide. Okay. So in terms of, the UK wine market, what are the trends there or even globally? What are you seeing? And and also anything to do with Italian wine? How does it fit and how how can it up its game? Or what does it need to do? In the UK wine market, Italian wine particularly, and I see this a lot, is that there are these extraordinarily strong and just vibiso networks of distribution that come into the UK, but they tend to be Italian wine producers selling to Italian wine importers who then go and sell into Italian restaurants. That then presents a challenge when you want to some to somebody who's not an Italian restaurant. So we see this extraordinary sale of wine to Italian places. But then when you go to non Italian restaurants, sometimes Italy still does very well at the very bottom end, and it's often of not very Italian wines. So what I mean is Pinaigrisio and prossecco, which are understandably huge. They're not really representative of what Italy makes. Where do we go and see really interesting Trebiano's great value wines from Emilia Romagna really outside of the Italian domestic wine market? You know, Italian style restaurants. So I think that finding new channels, new routes to market in the UK, and you know what? It's gonna happen because importers aren't making very much money so they're having, you know, you're going to consolidate into a smaller number of more efficient importers who are bringing wine through, or sometimes really small little specialists who specialize not so much in a region, but in, I don't know, a feeling. So you see in in London, particularly, there are importers now doing really well who are are just a bit more edgy, and some of them may may be more natural wines or it might be that they specialize in an area of sustainability. But mostly, they're just a little bit more plugged into a more exciting part, particularly of the entrees or to a really interesting list of private clients. But you know what, communicating directly when people's when you circumvent that funnel and you're talking directly to the consumer, and there are ways that people can go and do that now. So I think we're always beginning see is you're almost obliging people to bring your wine in because there's a ready market for it sitting there saying, you know, we quite like this guy, there is all these interesting bits. You know, one bit I see a lot of, and Italy's so well placed for this. And I think the the wine show as a VIN vehicle. It will be interesting to see what we could go and do to support this for producers, particularly for sort of regions of producers. A wine tourism almost now is getting to the point where in some cases it uses wine production as a sort of cost neutral marketing vehicle for the very high margin businesses selling holidays to people to come and stay in wineries because you have a really strong brand and you can sell the dream of come and stay here when you live it. It's what drew you to Italy. It's really hard to make a lot of money to making wine. It's actually much easier to make money out of selling holidays and experiences, which we know are becoming ever more important as well. You know, I've just sat in a session today. It was about younger consumers asking roughly spending forty percent more than they used to on experiences at about forty percent more less on things. So people are actually buying less wine and more wine holidays. So where you can use that as a way of taking that holiday back home with you, or as a marketing tool to bring people to your location to enjoy it. I mean, you know, I see sometimes almost wineries bringing, you know, creating communities, you know, direct sales customers of people who've visited them once it becomes the kind of wine get really into. Yeah. And they also become indirect ambassadors, don't they? Completely. And this is where we stayed. These are the wine they invite their mates around for dinner to show off almost like that. Cool. We met the winemaker. And for every one person who stayed with you, it's not as though you're only any one holiday to one group of people. Every one person who sells to you, they then effectively become exactly like that. This sort of ambassador, my family, when they left Italy and they settled in the UK, they moved into mail order, and the real success of mail order in the sort of early part of the twentieth century particularly was this issue of agent You had one person who'd have a catalog and would sell to all the people in their community. If you are able to create a bit where there's one person in fulham who's been on holiday and absolutely loves your wine and is pouring it for all their charms, and then says, well, get on this list. They'll send you a couple of cases. You circumvent having to go and buy it in shops, this, that and the other. And then maybe they come and get married at your location and so on. And, you know, I see a lot more of of that. And Italy so well placed. I can tell you there is no great secret. By far, the, you know, or not by far, the highest audiences we've had for the wine show have been for series one, which was set in Italy. Now people enjoy watching the show in France it's had less time. We haven't come out with our third season, which actually I think is really exciting stories, but there's a natural fascination with Italy and, you know, Romanesque architecture and the food and the climate. And the the example I give is is people and ask me where are you off to next month? You know, so I'm, I know, but where am I going in Germany? Okay. For us. Alright. Go, I'm going to where I'm going to see it. Well, can I come with you? Yeah. Honestly, that's it's just so it's predictable. Really? And it's, even though it can be slightly chaotic taken all the ride. It took me ages to get used to italy, and it is, but that's part of the fun. Yeah. People quite like that on it. I mean, my cousin who's just near here, actually, Verona. And he said it's wonderful to visit. It's quite challenging living. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Remember he once said it was going him six months to get a landline. Because it's six months to queue up in the post office. I mean, it explains why, you know, mobile telecommunications took off so well in Italy because you couldn't get a landline, but it's a there is also a part which is a little bit like why Japanese people read the Bible. Is because it gives them a window into a shared cultural heritage of the west. I mean, it's something that one percent of Japanese people are Christians, ninety eight percent of Japanese households have a Bible because it's this amazing root in in the same way. You understand lots about Western European culture just by going to Italy because so much of it has grown up. And indeed, there'll be Greek listeners getting furious, but much of the explosion of wine culture in Europe, the number of places where you go to England. Now in modern English producers say, oh, yeah, we a Roman vineyard up the road. And actually, Roman Italian Peninsula wine culture spread it really through much of Europe into Germany, France and so on, Portugal, and indeed England. And so when you go back, you'll even if it's relatively so you're going back to something that's a shared, you know, uniting feature. Yeah. So, you know, it's it's it was very, very attractive for people to to go back and revisit. So I I think we will definitely come back and make another series and be based in Italy for it, which will be exciting. Okay. What else to get you on? It's steady. It's steady. Now, just very personal. You you say that on I know it was on Twitter, a dachshund wrangler. I'm a dachshundler. You have to wrangle dachshunds. Right. That's a is a dachshund? Basil. It's a it's a little dachshund. So we've got a miniature, a dog. Minnage your dog. Yes. And half a dog high, a dog and a half long called Dino. What do you mean he's a dog and a half long? Because he's not a dachshund? It's half a dog Oh, okay. You've got such little legs. It's called Dino. It's called Dino. Dino. Dino. Dino. It's it's a sort of complicated root round. The name has various layers of meaning to it. But it's not unconnected with Bernard Dino, who was a French cyclist who was known as the badger, and Dachshunds literally means badgerund. Oh. So he's I thought he was with a roof, dac, maybe no one were on there. No dacs is a badger. Oh, okay. And and he'll go for them as well. They like to under stuff. He's, they're very yippy. So he's a is he a digger then? Yeah. Oh, digs light. There's no tomorrow. It's just a nightmare. And he digs the sofa, the duvet, then he get him out and, you know, what he really likes is wood chippings And he's just, and he's got these big, the, like, shovel, like, moles from paws are very muscular shoulders, and they sort of flick away, dirt and everything. It gets all under there. It's very good there because the, otherwise, their nails grow too long. I've got a note here, and I I really did my research on you. This is worrying. No. It's not. No. No. No. It was after the dachshund question, which will get edited out. But Joe seems to like check shirts. Now, that was my research, but it's a couple of months researching that, and you do have a check shirt. I've got a check shirt on. You're gonna have a look, I guess. You know, it was a stylist who got me into check shirts. Well, I saw the war check shirts. For those of you listening at home, if you want to spot a wine merchant in London, every imagines you look for red trousers and those sort of a tweet Jack it. There are one or two. It's a great friend of mine. Scarphy always dresses like that. But most modern wine merchants areland in London, where there was R m Williams, Australian boot foods, a pair of normally sort of beige or blue, you know, or courts, and a check shirt. And it's a sort of uniform. So when we had to do the styling of the show, I went off this stylist Phil. He looks after Amelia and me. Amelia loves it. I'm like, oh, ness is really glom. And so Phil has these two very different days of emilia. It's like, oh, and there's clothes flying all over the place. You can't choose all the time. You're actually dressed. Pretty much here we are dressed. Yeah. Did you address the left or the right? If only I have the choice. I'm not, Sales Patterson, you know. It's an important question. I went on a firm underpants. Made of lead. Made of lead. Keep it all in. Until your funny story about it. Oh, good. It is really true. It's a family show. It's no. No. No. It's genuine truth story. We we've filmed with these amazing guys. The most amazing thing you might making TV shows is the crew. So I'm very lucky. I don't really do his self indulgent, but we sit with the crew, and we had this brilliant crew member. It was an amazing guy called Dave Ora, and Dave was very Lancashire and he taught it like that. And he was quite old. And I I said, what are you doing? He said, oh, I'm semi retired. And he said, We just added in civil knowledge. Don't have very much work, so I'll just go down to a more in my partner. Anyway, we were talking about going and filming, wine in Ukraine because there are people now making wine in Ukraine. They said, oh, I've been to that Ukraine before. I said, oh, man, were you filming wine thing? Now, no, no, no, no, no. He says, now we were in pripyat, that place near Chernobyl. And, so what was it like? Oh, no. We were in Kiev with these blads like a house and with tiny little place. And so it was quite hard to film. He said, I'm sitting on this sofa in the corner. Anyway, the the the lads that I said, have you ever been back to Pripyatch and Noble since they've opened the explosion, and they gas said, oh, noices. We'd go back all time. He said, no, we went back. He said, well, we all got told to to leave, so we all went back for all our things. And and he said, the presenter, he said, well, like, what things, and he said, well, that's awful for a start. She's gonna carry her. I have sitting on that bloody thing. Really do it. Shouldn't have been wearing an apparently they got a giga counter out. I think it was buzzing like there's no tomorrow. I don't know if it gives fullest offers that people are Nick back from Pripyat. So it's my Lancashire accent then. We do a lot of accents on the show. Yeah. Uh-uh. Yeah. Lancashire. That's me. I was at school in Lancashire in the old talk while that. Today did they they'd be you you, how come you've lived in all these places? You don't have any kind of accent at all? A weirdly should say that. I do have an extraordinarily specific accent, but it's limited to one school in the north of England. John. My first wife is at Stonyhurst College, when I was at school. Apparently, we all kind of sound the same. And my first wife, I remember when we met, she said, I can tell where you went to school. I said, really. She said, did you went to stoninghurst? And I said, how on earth do you know? She said, do you know my friends? She said, no, it's the accent. Give me a bit accent. Well, it's just sort of like this really. It's it's quite broadcast friendly. Yeah. It's quite neutral. It's a little bit northern. A little bit. Yeah. Sound like this will be lost on most of this, but there's a a great broadcaster called, a great great broadcaster Richard Whitley, and he's sort of sounded cozy yorkshire, really. Cozy yosher. Yorkhire accents do, they carry well on television, you know, Alan Bennett. Although, because Olin Olin Bennett talks a little bit crazy. Play right. Play right. And he talks a little bit there there. But, you know, good yorkshire voice. I've got yorkshire blah, but I don't have any. I was born up. I'm born in the south, so softy southern. I'm afraid. I think it carries that. Yeah. Just sort of you think I've got a bit of york, shouldn't I? No. No. No. We should go look there and, you know, sort of enhance it. You know, ends up sounding like Rod's voice and rose's voice isn't the most appalling MP. Sorry, now it's in very strange references. Your voice are very good. We have only three or four vineyards. There is one, though, that's been there for ages eleven. It's the most northerly vineyard in the UK. Yeah. He's now been superseded as someone in Grange over centers. Yeah. But Ele thought, you know, he's a chemistry teacher wasn't he? Funed a little microclimate. So anyway, you're looking forward to your next project, and it won't be you won't be back in Italy with the telecameras then? We will be back in Italy with the telecams. Do you know where you're gonna be? We would like to start coming back in twenty twenty. Okay. And what we really like if there are particularly one of the things that we we have to fund the show ourselves. So what we're often looking for are, you know, it's difficult sometimes to winery partners, but where there are wine bodies, promotional bodies, we work very closely with the Portuguese, various sort of bodies like Alentesia and Vineved. And petite tourism bodies, because we are kind of a travel tourism show. So if you'd like to talk to eighty million high spending traveling people with a very strong mix particularly of, I guess, slightly more more women than men, better educated, you know, graduates, mostly, closely United States, UK, United countries, whatever, a hundred countries around the world, where we can go and develop partnerships with people, you know, we love to sort of work it out. We always have to make the show independently. We, you know, we have to tell our own stories. Otherwise, it seems too advertorial. But you know what? The Portuguese model has worked very well, and they love the shows we've made. And I think it presents a side of Portugal that people haven't seen very well in interesting kind of And in a comfy sort of setting. Yeah. So you know, drop me an email and we'll I'll put you in touch with the guys. I just sort of hand people over to the producers, and they deal with the sordid topic of coin. Yeah. No. It's it is a sword at all, but it's very important. But I think, the synergy, I mean, Telli's, very expensive to make, and it's laborious, and people think it's glamorous. It's not. It's incredibly hard work. Well, you know. Yeah. It is. I mean, it looks so easy, but in financing it is, is a, it's a battle as well, and every second kind of counts because you've got every number of crew and there's travel and all insurance and so many things that couldn't can also if the weather's bad that particular day, you've set up a shoot and it's cost you a couple of grand to set the shoot up and then you can't film. So, so, I think the way forward is, for sort of high quality, productions like yours is, and your company, and, the people that you work with, yeah, why not? I mean, if the Italians may maybe wake up a little bit. And Well, you know, you know, just that's through a presentation just before about using video content, and there were some I don't know whether they're fantastic, but these extraordinary numbers about the impact that video has Online, you mean. Online. If you're so if you're a winery digital video, even a basic one of your vineyards, pretty vineyards, pretty, pretty buildings. And it draws people in. One of the things that we've found is that when we've got filmed with even just regions, we then often recut that, and then people have been able to use it in other ways. Yeah. That was a limitorial or something. Yeah. And so what we're able to do is sometimes go, we'll make this sort of show, and it's quite nice because then we've got a whole on what we filmed a race about twenty two to one or something. So for every hour, you see there's masses of other stuff in twenty two hours that don't doesn't end up on the turn. And that can end up in in all sorts of other material. And, and we've used it with some of partners like, celebrity cruises, and number of people we work with, but it'd be really interesting to, you know, get to talk to consortium to, you know, candy classical without is one, but, you know, Emilia Romagna. Some of the places that people see less of some of the sort of Southern Upulio be really. Yeah. Yeah. Pullie, we we didn't really cover the absolute top and tail. We'd really love to go to Pemonte, but we'd also really love to go to Cylia, Cylia, and Piamonte. Piamonte for Gastroenomes, Poulier for open spaces and light, amazing light, and seafood, and all the rest of it, very unspoiled stuff. My parents just came back from Pullia. They loved it. To my father in this form, yeah. Isn't it? Yeah. Amazing place. And they're truly aren't they? There's a little funny, truly houses. Yeah. They don't they'd have it on. They never sort of a truly with an en suite bathroom when came when I only only the best. I require an on swift flush. I follow me on Twitter where I have my loo with a view. Really? One of my big things is a loo with a view. Yeah. I really like it when we're traveling the summer, there's another white guy Joe Watsack and we we share loo's with a view or sometimes poo with a view if we're being of it, you know, off color. But it's amazing how many beautiful lavatories there are in wineries. This is where I could fill a book coming on. Oh, and yes. I tell you, Kintered a nova, the lavatory round by the, which is a picture. Portuguese, producing the douro. Port producer. Yeah. Port producer. Yeah. And they have the most amazing liver the view, and it looks out over their national vineyard, which is a a national monument. I can see the good burgers of Bruno, they're reorienting their privies just for oil on the chance that you you may not only visit, but have a need to sit down and contemplate. I'm I'm fifty. I have a regular need. Let me get to fifty. Yeah. I'll never turn down the chance for a laboratory. Joe Fatry, and you thank you very much for coming on the intent and wanting podcast. Thank you very much. It's been a real hoot, and, you're a consummate broadcaster, which is lucky because at least there's one of them in the room. Oh, okay. You asked the question. Thank you very much. Flattery would get everywhere. And, we did manage to not talk too much about our private school education, which is, so it'll all get edited out. So, so I say thanks to my guests, Joe Fatarini, for coming on the show today. There we go. The Italian one costs. That's what it's called. I forgot. I'm kind of overlord for your stock quality. I I have turned into a gibbering wreck. Be underlord by my lack of stock quality. All that training I had. Short Bull Yorkman arrives, taught nonsense dumb. That's what you did. You'd be didn't fulfill the brief. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Pleasure. Anytime. 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