Ep. 1598 From Serial Killer To The World's Hottest Wine Trend | wine2wine Business Forum 2022

Since two thousand and seventeen, the Italian wine podcast has exploded. Recently hitting six million listens support us by buying a copy of Italian wine unplugged two point o or making a small donation. In return, we'll give you the chance to nominate a guest and even win lunch with Steve Kim and Professor Atilio Shenza. Find out more at Italian One podcast dot com. Italian wine podcast is delighted to present a series of highlights from the twenty twenty two White wine business forum, focusing on wine communication and bringing together the most influential speakers and the sectors to discuss the hottest topics facing the wine industry today. Don't forget to tune in every Thursday at two pm, Central European time, or visit point to wine dot net for more information. I just wanna say that the last time I stood up on the stage at wine to wine. I was talking about natural wine, and nobody came, which wasn't really much of a surprise. And when Felicity said serial killers, everybody wants to hear something about serial killers. Oh, no. And here we go. Okay. So, I'm Felicity Carter. I'm a wine journalist, and it's my great pleasure today to introduce, somebody that many of you know, Alice firing. She is a wine writer of great stature. She's been called the queen of natural wine. The person who pushed natural wine into the consciousness of the wine world, whether they wanted it or not. She's written six books, the Battle for Wine and Love, which, where she took on Robert Parker, she's written a book called Nakedwine. She's written about wines of Georgia. She wrote a book called Wind dirt, she wrote natural wine for the people, and her latest is a memoir, to fall in love, drink this. So it's thirty into Yes. Hold it up. Hold on. We don't have any visuals. It's obviously better. If you're on your smartphone, make sure you're ordering it of Amazon. Right. So this is thirty interlocked essays, but it's neither a conventional narrative memoir, but it's not a wine book either. Why did you choose to write the what you did? I can never tell this the short way. I at the beginning of the pandemic at lockdown and forgive any bit. Sorry for repeating myself if somebody just listened to me before, but the sound is much better here. I, like everybody else, thought that wine shops would be closed in the United States, and I didn't wanna be stuck with that wine. So I went out and bought a shitload of wine. Credited up my five floor walk up. I thought that my boyfriend and I would be dressed well fortified. But, Peter, on a good day is a hypochondriac. So during The initial stages, it was really bad, and he decided not to stay in his own abode. Even before I got COVID, which finally happened last May, everything that I tasted just didn't taste good. And I found myself oddly enough Craving salty wine. So I was really wanted Sherry. I wanted wines with flour, and everything super, super, super savory. And wrote a story about this for New York Magazine, and my agent wrote me a note said, I wanna book a essays. And I had been wanting to segue at a writing about wine for a long time. And I thought great, but they're really hard to sell, and she just shut up and write it. Of course, she said, but you have to write about wine. So you have to. So I constructed fifteen essays. They all have some wine in it, but you can't they're really life essays. And then I extrapolated Perhaps for me, which was a key wine element and wrote a whole other companion wine essay to it. Those of us who, work in wine writing all want the secret of how to attract a a non wine audience. So this book actually straddles both wine and a completely different way of writing. Did this did this change your opinion of wine writing as you were doing it? And and how do you sell a wine as a wine writer when you want to be known as a writer out side of wine. Trying to think. So I've had two wine guides and four. This is my fourth narrative non fiction. And the first book, The Battle of Wine and Love, or How I save the World from Parkerization. I wrote in two thousand eight, and I wrote it as if it was going to be the only book that I would ever have written. And I tried to write it as novelistically as possible. And as it turns out, there were five more books. But This is the book where I was given the chance and I sold it knowing what my previous book sales had been. I realized, even though we disagree about this, that people don't want to read about wine outside of the wine community. Which is a real problem if you wanna make your living as a writer. Very difficult. So that's one reason I really wanted to stop writing about one. But I've also I think I've devoted my wine writing life when I wasn't doing like news stories on trying to stitch wine into culture and into daily life because I think one of the reasons people don't read about wine or don't want to is that it's something to drink. It has nothing to do with life. They forget that it is like art, like music, dance, that it is just what I've always thought for me. It's my politics and my poetry. So I don't know if I'm answering your questions, but that was when I was told I had to have wine in this book. It is was almost like a gift because it is the book that I've wanted to write for since I started writing about wine, where it masquerades as a wine book. When my art director read the book to design the cover, I have never had anybody in the art department ever read any of my books. They just go by the title and they do something. And she wrote me a note and she said she would write to a wine shop with my book. And that's not the first time I heard this. And I heard It previously other people using my books to go and shop for wine, but this was a non wine drinker. And I felt proud of myself. So do you think you you, therefore, discovered something about a different way to communicate about wine. Is this a technique that you would recommend other wine writers use? I would like other publications to allow writers to, like, write this way. You know, as a wine writer, you're often forced to do the ten best blah blah blah, you know, wine recommendations, wine descriptions, or given four hundred words to write about something very important. And I think this is the ways, the wine industry is always complaining about needing to get more wine consumers needing to introduce new generations to wine. And I have always believed this is the way to do it. So the answer is yes. Okay. And yet one of the things that you don't talk about in the book is you don't talk about how you became a wine writer or about your life as a wine writer and yet It's a memoir. So what that must have been a decision. And why did you leave that out? I think that is a boring story. I think how I became a wine writer is boring. I think. And that would have very much narrowed the interest in this book to the people in this room and the people in the wine world. But I tried to take fifteen stories from my life that, you know, overcoming a very difficult mother. Ethel. You'll, you know, a devastating divorce that my parents had had a profound effect on me. My completely miserable childhood and the serial killer. And the serial killer will get to. We will get to. I try to pick well, these stories are not universal for everybody, but everybody experiences heartbreak. Everybody experiences, oh my god. I fell in love, and this person doesn't share this passion. And, you know, whether it's wine, whether it's you dance, and your partner doesn't, and you're like crazy for dance, whether you're passionate about opera, and you can't share that with a person you love. So I try to get emotional truths out of my life that also helped me understand how this shy, painfully introverted child's adult grew up to be so bashed by the wine industry. Well, let's let's talk about that. So one of the first things that you did that was provocative that that caused a backlash was in two thousand, you wrote an article for the New York Times, which revealed how many Napa winemakers were making wine for Robert Parker's palette using very high technology. Was that your first experience of backlash? And what happened? That was the very first experience that I had. So in, two thousand and one, I became aware of the technology that was that basically there was an industry, hey, sign up for technologics, and we will help you get a ninety five plus score for Robert Parker and Spectator. And there are a few of those enalogics that was enologics, and That's when I discovered wine technology. Before that, I rarely used for actually, through that article, I rarely used first person, and that was just a reported article on all the technology that is available to create a certain kind of wine. I was just trying to think about why I like certain wines and not others. Purely reported, I got death threats. It was very explosive. From who? I I'm not. Actually, he he was If you look that article up, he actually was photographed for the story. So I'm not sure. You're all on your phones aren't you're looking up the article. California winemaker. So it was the first no. He's really stunned. I was just I'm just reporting, you know, it's I'm just reporting. I was just doing my job. So I was shocked. It's when I realized that, yeah, that's I won't get any further that. Yeah. Well, well, Robert Park is interesting for a couple of reasons. So you wrote an entire book where you took on Robert Parker, and this this seminal article was really about Robert Parker's influence. And in your memoir, you don't mention him. Why? I wrote a whole book about it. I don't know why. It's like one of those things that just was, why did I not write about Robert Parker in this book? I know I've been thinking about this, but I've address it in the introduction. I've just felt I didn't need to revisit it. It it was he was very upset with me after the book. There was just no reason. That's all. I mean, I'm the very short I am curious. What What I have written about it? I don't know what I would have written about. To me, it's not a story. Well, what's interesting about this of course is that when you, you know, kicked off with that article Robert Parker dominated the world, but now it's your view that dominates. You actually won the wines that Robert Parker liked, the big or that he was said to have liked, the big, you know, blockbuster high alcohol, they're out the door. It's been your choice. The natural wine world has now turned the whole wine world on its heads as much less intervention. How does it feel to be a revolutionary when you've won the revolution? Well, I guess that's where I've written six wine books. Maybe I don't have to write another one. My work is done, but of course my work isn't done because I'm a writer, and I've gotta continue writing. But, you know, how does it feel when I was I was a whistleblower in two thousand one. I was treated like a whistleblower in the way it created my reputation, but you know, it ended my ability to make a reasonable living. And I threw myself in it instead, I mean, I wasn't going to be silenced. So at a certain point, when more real wine started to surface in the market and certainly a lot more that needs to be done there. It felt really great and now, but it's now business as usual. So now there's a lot of industrial natural wines coming. And so I let somebody else take that on. So it feels like I did my work. Now let somebody else take that battle on them. Don't wanna fight the one. So let's talk about a book that had a profound impact in your life, which is Albert Kammuz, the plague. Do you want to tell the story of what happened when you went looking for a copy of that book? Yes. Okay. So this is chapter three, I believe. So when I was fourteen, do I wanna tell that story? Yes. You do. Living in New York, a fourteen year old in New York. So With flaming red hair. With flaming red hair and braces and My father needed to get a haircut to his meeting, his the woman he hadn't yet left my mother for. It's Floozy. The Floozy. And I didn't wanna hang out. So I went to the bookstore across the street. Now this was on Saint Mark's place, which might be famous internationally, but it was Saint Mark's place, was just in nineteen sixty nine was the height of counterculture. It was right around the corner from the Filmore East. So it was where every, like, fourteen year old wanted to be. There was a bookstore across the street, and I had to replace my brother's The Plate, which I had lost. And I was taking it off the shelf, and a very creepy, tall guy asked me kamu, and basically wouldn't leave me alone. I will make a short story, a long story short. So, basically, through, he he offered to photograph. He wanted to photograph you. He offered to photograph me. And now I'm really shy, and I feel really ugly. And that's, like, not the way to get me to be photographed. But then he was like, oh, the red hair, the black slicker, the gray day. You know, he appealed to Come back to my apartment. I said, no. I'm not coming back to your apartment. I'm no fool. I read Ann Lander's advice column. I know that there are people like you in the world. And he said, but what about the roof? And I thought, okay, that sounds a lot safer. So he had a very reasonable photography equipment. So I figured, you know, maybe I misjudged him, and that was bad of me. And I'm such a bad person for thinking he was a creep that could kill me. Then there was a cloudburst, a thunderstorm, and he changed instantly, I got really just a whole personality change, embarked orders for me to help bring his equipment down to his apartment, and that's how I got into his apartment, which was immediately completely creepy and, scary. And I said, okay. I gotta go now. And, shall I keep on going with the story or shall I just fast forward? Fast forward. Okay. We're gonna fast forward. So you can really hold. I'm obviously here. Right? So I'm okay. And do you know what? Like, I was okay. I really thought that I was in control of the situation, but there is a point. And not the I what what does this story have to okay. I'm gonna go back. The point is is that Forty years later, I find out he is Rodney or was. Well, we we should we should get to the main point of the story, which is that you're trying to get out of the apartment. I discovered that you were so you're being dead bolted in. I just don't want to take stories like this, you know, and just since big. Okay. I have a sensational story. I'm gonna tell you about Rodney. I don't know. I escaped him. To me, I did through a series of events, very close to death and destruction, which being fourteen, you just don't think is gonna happen. But I did get out, and I left my book. I ran back to get my book. I ran back though. The piece of this story that I wanted to tell because I felt this is the way I took on the wine world in two thousand and one. And later on with the book in two thousand and eight, I pounded on the door, and I demanded my book. And I said, please. My book, please. And, at this point, for some he had dressed, which tells you something about what, hopefully, you'll read about. And I snatched it. And I thanked him for being sincere, and I ran Elvador. And, it's an act of colossal stupidity. Some people say it was brave. I think complete in a sense, but in a way, I think it's an essential quality of how I became me. And I became a wine writer is Wine to wine business forum. Everything you need to get ahead in the world of wine, supersize your business network. Share business ideas with the biggest voices in the industry. Join us in Verona on November thirteen to fourteen twenty twenty three. Tickets available now at point wine dot net. Now you're you're one of the only people who survived an encounter with him. He he left a lot of dead people behind him. When you found out it was him, you went to visit him in prison. Well, you tried to discover something about yourself or something about why you survived. I went to visit him at Rikers, and then I went to visit him in San Quentin. I figured at the time, being a writer and not to be flip about it. But if life gives a writer a serial killer story, maybe you can't walk away from it. Now, I'm not somebody who is obsessed by syrup. I don't like reading about them. I don't like stories about them. I just don't wanna go there, but I felt like I had to. And I think just to get information, but in truth, I really wanted to find out who I was when I was fourteen. And I knew he wasn't gonna remember me and he didn't. But I it was this weird feeling. There was This man could have killed me. There's not often a person gets that chance to go back and look at that person and see who you were at fourteen, what allowed me to get into that situation in the first place. What was it? Did he let me go on, you know, was I really not in danger? Did he let me go? Did I get out? But who was I? And in a way, it was it was a silly thing because I wasn't gonna get anything from him. Well, one of the things that struck me about who you are when you you get to that passage is how details the sensory details are. You talk about all of the colors of the prison. You talk about the smell. You talk about the food that was in the vending machine. You talk about all of that. And and this I think it's the sensory detail that makes you such a good wine writer. Thank you. But there was something very strange that happened in when I was in San Quentin, and I was I was given a whole day. San Quentin, for those who don't know, is pretty much the most notorious prison in the United States, and this was death row that I was visiting. So you have to go through all sorts of shenanigans. I had to ask Rodney for permission to go visit him. I had to write to him I was getting letters love Rodney. It was really, but I wanted to go. But in the middle of it, he asked me what I did. And I said, I read about wine. They said, Oh, I love wine. Man hadn't been a free man since nineteen eighty. And at that point, I knew I had to get out of there. It was something very awful about having this chat with somebody who had killed so many people. So you've written about visiting a concentration camp. You visited writing about prison. You've written about the first sort of disastrous feature that you did. Where do you go from here now that you've written a hybrid book about wine and life? What's your next project? I love to ask people here what they they might want the next project. I'm working on some fiction, probably the twelfth draft of the novel, but maybe this time I have it. Another novel about, social media and revenge in the wine world. That should be juicy if I'm able to pull that off. And, is this is this gonna be like a, auto fiction where it's cleverly disguised about real people? Yes. Yeah. Actually, it's You should all be afraid. So I think that's what snacks. I would not be against doing another book like this because there's so many wine stories that I haven't told. But maybe that's, you know, I'm not much into sequels. So, maybe it's well enough to let this book stand on its own and move on to different territory. So I'm very aware that the interview I've just done is is brutally short covering topics that actually need weight in depths, but I'm also very conscious. It's Stevy. It's very conscious of time, and we only have a few minutes left. Does anybody have any questions they want to ask, Alice? Absolutely. Stung. Stung silence. You're a person who wrote many books But what do you think is, really the key to make people interested in wine? Like, what do you think is the key? What what where where people get interested in this? Well, as a writer, I think because at this point, this book has not really been taken off by the wine community, though it's gotten great reviews in the wine community. And it sold out its first edition. It's now on its second edition. Yeah. I forgot to say yeah. I said that it, I thought this book was a disaster. It came out August six. I was looking at Amazon ratings at the end of September. And I thought, oh my god. I wrote probably what's the best book of my life? And nobody's reading it. The next day I got a call from my editor that it was going into second printing that it had sold out. But I knew that the wine community wasn't reading it. And then I started seeing it popping up in book clubs and, you know, all these things that not in my circle, so I think writing about wine in as life is one way to get new drinkers. I also think there's a tremendous problem in wine that I spend a lot of time drinking. How I feel even though I am a big snob, there's no doubt I'm a snob. I've have, you know, I'm I'm painful to drink wine sometimes. But there is but It's I'm not about luxury, and I'm really very much about this egalitarian wine is for the people. I get very upset about wine prices. I believe that wine is everybody's right. It's a and a natural or natural enough wine is everybody's right. And I think if there's a way we can shed it from this preciousness, and even to the point of, just the the preciousness of the details and the wine service, and somehow just make it for the people. People will drink it. But it's a hard one because people it's about status. It's about cult. And that's so much a part of what wine marketers wanna do for their client. So there's a really great split within the wine world, and I don't know how to bridge that. I try to do my part. But it's a big cultural divide. Mateo. So natural wines became the world's hottest wine trend, as you stated here. Being one of the main evangelist, where do you think natural wine will go from now? Well, Natural has arrived. So it's no longer, you know, people are not necessarily, you know, doing long rounds about horrible natural wine is it's more or less, you know, if you can't beat them, join them. So it's the same thing with all group dynamics. There was this glory period of natural wine that probably went from the mid nineties until probably two thousand and fourteen, fifteen. And now what goes around comes around, and now natural wine people are starting to market, and it's gonna be the same old wine business. And I think that it has had its effect, and I'm gonna be happy with that. So in important wine regions around the world, people are rethinking. Do I really need to use that many additives in my wine? Maybe. Maybe I'll yeast. Maybe I'll bring down my sulfide addition to maybe eighty parts per million instead of two hundred and twenty. And maybe it's, you know, maybe it's just less. But even, in Burgundy, there are more there's a return to native use fermentation where as much as they said, back in two thousand five, there wasn't much. And, yes, there were concentrators in Berg and Dam, you know, you really don't see too many of those these days. So all around the world, people have taken their accelerator off of the additive stuff. I think that's really good. People are using different vessels. I think there is, great. There's more variety. There's more variety in the kinds of wines that we have now. I think in another probably thirty years, there'll be another natural wine movement. Maybe I'll be dead by then. But where it is now, it's moving into the mainstream and see what happens from from here. Yes. There's more industrial natural At a certain price point, maybe that's not so bad because as I said, people who want a six euro wine should be able to get something relatively natural. And if that's the way to do it, that's the way to do it. So it's, but marketers are going to go into natural wine. And so it's it's gonna be the same thing we'll over again. That's what do we do. But at least I think it's more back to basics, and I'm happy with that. You've inspired a lot of wine writers and writers across different genres, who are some of the people that you are reading now or enjoying, either inside wine or outside about her mother. I'm doing a lot of mother memoirs lately because maybe I've gotta do another one about mine. I it's there are two wine books that I absolutely love in the vine country that was done written in the late eighteen hundreds about two Irish ladies, Irish ladies, probably lesbians, who, who traveled to Bordeaux, and it was just charming. And for me, that's like when re wine writing was great. And bouquet, which was written by I forgot what her name was. It was written in the nineteen thirties, trying to go back. There's a lot of boring I hate to say this, but there's so much boring wine writing. Of, like, why am I reading about your it's, like, I hate writing wine descriptions. I, like, one reason I started my newsletters is people want wine recommendations hate doing it. So I was gonna if you're gonna make me do wine recommendations, it's gonna charge you for it. But I used to think the nineteen fifties and sixties was a great error for wine writing, not so much, really pretty boring. I wish I could reach Saldati in a I and Verinelli, I wish that they were translated into English and to see what Masters of Italian wine writing were. But, what am I reading now? Chemistry lessons? You don't want my book reviews, but anyway, I'm not reading a whole lot of wine. I'm very happy not to read about wine right now. But when I do, I often recommend Phyllisie Carter's wine writing because she's brilliant. Okay. So it's okay. I think nothing that has been said today can possibly top that very true statement from Alice. So I'm I'm going to I'm gonna I'm gonna close the session off. But thank you all for being a fantastic audience. And thank you and congratulations on a great book that has for a wine book completely sold out. It's run. And it's now in second print. You have no idea what a big a big deal. This isn't publishing. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, email ifm, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italianline podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication until next time.