Ep. 1906 Wine Enthusiast: Blind Tasting Wines for Decades | wine2wine Business Forum 2023

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at Italian One podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pods. Official media partner, the Italian One podcast is delighted to present a series of interviews and highlights from the twenty twenty three one to one business form, featuring Italian wine producers and bringing together some of the most influential voices in the sector to discuss the hottest topics facing the industry today. Don't forget to tune in every Thursday at three PM or visit the Italian wine podcast dot com for more information. Hello. Hello. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for, joining us. The as you can see, I think this is something, very useful. And we kicked it off with you have competition over there, Stephanie. She kicked it off yesterday with wine and spirits people. She wouldn't score though. She copped out on me. Okay. So you guys better score today. Okay. No pressure. Okay. What I would like to do is ask you To please speak slowly close to the microphone because this is not translated, especially for the tie ins. Okay. Slow, Jeff Porter. Please slow and clear and close to the mic. Now this room was also possible to our sponsor, welcome, and I'm going to ask Francesco Minetti to say something just a couple of words. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I hope the first day of tastings went well. Today, we are starting with this new day of tasting sessions. And we will start with, the Nier Callegari and Jeff Porter one enthusiast, and they will reveal us pretty much everything, you know, about our scoring method or processes, what they are looking for, in wines when they taste. So we're gonna have a blind tasting of three wines. There will be completely secret, and, hope you enjoy, and thanks for, for being here. How do y'all? Thank you all very, very much for having us. I would like to, on behalf of Danielle and I thank Stevie, the whole wine to wine team, welcome for having us be a part of this. This is it's really exciting, as two new reviewers for wine enthusiasts, Danielle and I were, asked to join the wine enthusiast team in late summer of twenty twenty two. And I think our first reviews dropped in September twenty twenty two. Probably. I don't remember. It's been a whirlwind, but today, you know, I I'm not sure what everybody's expecting, but, you know, with with if you don't know Danielle and I, it's just gonna be a lot of fun. I hope you like roller roller coasters. There you know, this is this is criticism. Right? We're we're we we rate and judge wines. It's not, you know, wizard of Oz. There's we don't wanna hide anything. It is this is inherently a subjective, role. Right? But we try to create a situation where we're being the most thoughtful honest and forthright that that we can be as individuals. So there's a system that's been set up, prior to us and has evolved. Nothing is static. Right? The the I think the the death of anything is the lack of innovation. So Criticism has evolved. The idea of criticism, you know, for the longest time wine enthusiasts, Italy was was just one one reviewer. And now now we're two. It's a you guys make a lot of wine. But we we wanted to open the doors and breadth of what we're tasting. And hopefully, we're gonna give you some idea about how we approach tasting, because though we're we're like minded, in many ways, we're still individual people that have different backgrounds and aspects coming to it. One last thing, just, you know, for those that don't know wine enthusiasts, it's a company that was founded in the seventies as, originally as a place where people could buy and purchase different, you know, wine accessories. And then in nineteen ninety eight, the Strom family decided to start wine enthusiast media, which was more about storytelling, which was more about the journalistic aspect of it. And that's where we we come into play and, tell the stories of of you in in in this place than the things that we love so much. But I wanna introduce Danielle, didn't and I'd never met before we joined the one enthusiasts team, even though we've crossed every part of Italy behind each other in front of each other. We know the same people, and it's been an honor and joy to work alongside her this past year. And I know there's a lot more that we're working for in the future. And I just wanted to pass the mic to you and introduce yourself, and we'll get kicked off of this tasting. Thank you, Jeff, and thank you everyone for being here. This is so exciting. What an amazing roomful of so many people. I am, a privileged and honored to be here with my colleague, Jeff Porter, and speaking of us just meeting for the first time when we started working at wine enthusiasts together, that's partly because I come into this work in, a sort of non traditional way. I am trained as an academic. I did a PhD in medieval Italian literature, and I teach Dante mostly. My my passion for wine was born from having studied the, food and beverage culture of the late medieval tuscan communes. I wrote a book about Dante and the social values of food and wine in the late Duicento and Tricento. And while I was doing that, I, began to take my passion for wine more seriously in the contemporary vein as well. So, Jeff and I now have had the pleasure of bringing two different backgrounds, but the same excitement and enthusiasm for Italian wine to the same platform. And, today, we will talk to you a little bit about how we taste, why we taste that way, and then be in conversation with you as we walk through these three wines that we have tasted just before you got here and, have pretty positive feedback for you, I think. Great. Absolutely. So while we have a PhD, I barely graduated college. So that's that's how, you know, you get the ins of the spectrum, when it comes to that. What we wanna start out with is explaining the the wine enthusiast way. I mean, it's, again, this is not rocket science, right? This is we we taste wine. We but before we started, we and what we're gonna do here today is kind of calibrate all of us into the into the wine enthusiast way. So Danielle, do you wanna talk about how we, were introduced to this system and what we're gonna do today with this first wine and and kind of we we judge on the hundred point scale and then how we come to that kind of first bracket of understanding of the way we review. Yeah. So the first thing that we did was calibrate. So taste wine together and see if we were hitting the same marks. Jeff and I, I think, are just lucky in that we're, we're pretty close naturally. We have we we share a lot of the same understanding of the way we respond to wines, and we appreciate the same kinds of characteristics. So we're pretty close on our calibrations most of the time, right, from the beginning. And then, because now we've had time together, that makes a difference. Right? So, we have both matured as reviewers over the same timeline and have talked to each other, not just about the way that we want to score something, but about the way we wanna position the context. The the point scale is not ideal. We know all of it's many flaws. I'm sure everybody has lots of opinions about it. We do too, but it is a way of communicating particularly in, for example, a room where not everybody's speaking the same language. So there is utility to it, if not perfection. When we talk about the scale, we do have ranges, as you can imagine. So, the policy of if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all means if it would come beneath an eighty, then you, politely decline to reflect upon it further. If it's between eighty and eighty five, that is a correct and fine in the original sense of the word in English wine. If it is between an, the eighty five to ninety range, it is a very good wine. If it is between ninety to ninety four, it is an excellent wine. And if it is ninety five or above, it is an exceptional wine. Obviously ranges then become a little bit more subjective. We are talking about taste after all at the end of the day. And so when we meet as a team, as we will next week before our This Friday. Sorry. What it I have no idea what day it is or what time it is. I'm also very congested, so that'll be perfect. For tasting. As we meet on Friday, we will meet with our whole team who for every region's coverage for the magazine and get feedback from each other seeing where we lie. And if people are starting to verge in different directions. We'll talk about why and how to bring that back together. So we wanna start right away with So everybody here, we're gonna calibrate. So we the the the other big important thing that we talk about, we taste blind. So what does that mean in our senses? We we don't taste like totally blind. We taste we don't know the producer. But with the calibration tasting when we first do it, we're just looking at a qualitative you know, kind of in in your own, we it's interesting because we come from different backgrounds with regards to wine tasting. I have a very didactic, Master Sommelier trained kind of way of of tasting wine, and and Danielle comes at it from her more academic background. And that's where we kind of kind of align the point structure before we start tasting. So every what we're gonna do here is we're gonna take everybody take two minutes, taste this wine, and then we're gonna do a a polling. So again, to go through. So eighty to eighty five, is like it's a fine wine. Like that's how would you say it? I I always like to say if I'm at a wedding and they're pouring this wine, I would drink it because there's plenty of weddings I go to where I just revert to beer or cocktails or nothing. Which has happened before. They're like, why aren't you drinking, Jeff? I was like, oh, well. Night nightmare is too expensive. And then then, you know, eighty five to eighty nine is really good wine. Ninety to ninety four is exceptional wine, and then ninety five and above is like rock your socks off. In in its different forms. So let's let's try this wine together. We're not gonna tell you what this is. So this is this is just our calibration as a whole room coming together. And again, the other thing is while you're tasting it, the the one thing that we're trying to do is not just, you know, we're not winemakers. We're not we're not approaching it from the winemaking side. We know the technical know how of winemaking but we're approaching it from a consumer standpoint. That's a really important focus. This is not not just my own vision of what wine is, but we we have, you know, our total impressions across all forms of the media for wine enthusiasts is about five point four million people. So we have a lot of data coming back, and we want to we want to ensure that we have a broad reach that we're talking to our consumers. Yeah. As Jeff is saying, we are thinking about how to make people who don't feel like experts in wine understand the wine that we have in front of us better. So we're thinking about what we like about it, what we think is done well, what we think might be some areas of weakness, but then we're also thinking about what the average person in America, which is a big, old wide category to start with, might think about this wine, how they would receive it, and how we can try to bridge the gap between what we're feeling or noticing, and what the way that people can, be be, elect the con that works for a very broad audience to express that. Absolutely. And then the other the other thing, you know, like, I I gave you two minutes. You're like, Jeff, how can you assess the wine just in two minutes? It takes a lot of practice. I've been tasting mine for a very long, long time and you pick out structural elements and and all all the things that go, but you come back to it. It it is when I first started reviewing it, it takes a lot longer than I I had I'd imagine it would. You know, it's it's interesting because coming from the sommelier background, we taste really, really fast in a meeting. But now it's it's it's fun to kind of take the time and come back to wine and see how it evolves because we also wanna put those in our notes as well. Yes. Absolutely. I think, the first couple of months, I was taking twice as long to taste through the same amount of wine as I do now. So it is also a great reminder that like anything, it's about training, about getting yourself into shape. So we're we taste in a specific way, and we've gotten better at that particular style of tasting. And our and our ability to move what is happening into our minds into, again, that language that speaks to a wide audience. Do you wanna walk through the line on on on your side? And then we'll we'll ask the room So we're we're gonna see how Danielle tastes now. I mean, so you have the technical taste. I I, you know, I did wine certifications too. So I know the way that Jeff is talking about tasting, but It's also you have to be a little more efficient than that, frankly. So, the way that I do it is sort of in three stages for myself. First step is gut reactions, quickly jot down everything that just comes into my mind. And a range of points that I feel like this is just after enough practice, you feel confident about that. Then I move to, indicating some more specific notes, what, aromas am I getting, centuri? What are the, kind of contours of this wine? Is it in the category of a, something full bodied or something lighter and more ethereal? Is it, you know, textually how am I, noticing the way that it, creates a mouthfeel? Again, just cutting through as much kind of raw data as I possibly can. And then the third stage is where do I is there, first of all, anything very specific or unique about this wine, something that's standing out to me that particularly denotes its quality or its distinction. And the and partake and within that stage also, is this wine representative of its category? And what will our consumer who we're trying to speak to think of this wine? I tease, you know, the team always laughs and says it's Bruno for breakfast again. Every day I come in, I usually have a couple of racks of Bruno to go through. Burnello is a wine that has a very specific stylistic identity. So I am saying to myself, is this representing what people are looking for when they're finding, when they're out shopping for Bernello? And if it doesn't, is it doing something unique that's interesting and worthwhile, or is it going off map in a way that would be confusing and actually more of a challenge to our consumer? Okay. So do we wanna do we wanna pull first, or do you wanna walk? Let's pull first. Okay. So just by a show of hands, eighty who rated this between eighty and eighty four? K. Small cluster, between eighty five and eighty nine. Ninety to ninety five. Ninety five or above. Yeah. We were both way more generous than you guys. I don't know. We were I think the the the the the eighty so the eighty five to eighty nine. So we were we were in the eighty nine to, ninety range Yeah. On this one. So We are at the upper end upper end of the the the the really good and the lower end of the the the the super good. You wanna talk why. Yeah. So this is a a solid ninety for me. I guess the the thing that we forgot to say is we've divided Italy into two ways. I take the south. The queen of the south. And how do we define the south? Because yeah. As as we talk to most of the south, as you know. Most Italians, the south is anything below you. Yeah. Geographically. And so, like, I feel like if you're in Trintino Altawataget, all of Italy is the south. But no, we we split it we split it kind of a little more, geographic than that. Yeah. Well, they when when I came on, they asked me what part of Italy in my dreams would be my territory. And I said, I'll I'll take the south. I don't need anything else. And they called me back and they said, well, you can definitely have the South. And then they said, but you have to take Tuscany too. And I said, alright, fine. But I had I lived in Florence for many years, and I did a big part of my PhD and visa. So I do have a quite, close relationship with territory besides my, training and an official sense in why I'm, which always brings you to Tuscany, whether you like it or not. And I, as a result of that, have, a really interesting panorama because the south is a very big place as everybody here probably knows in terms of representation and style. So am I allowed to say where this is Yeah. You can see where it's from. Okay. So this is Anetna bianco. And if you didn't know, I would have known, right? When I come into the office, I I know what regions I'm tasting. How much vintage variation there is, what the panorama looks like for the day. So I can choose where I'm gonna go from, really big, tonic reds down to high ass to light and bouncy whites or, you know, depending on how I think I'm gonna be able to manage the load that I have in front of me. It's very psychological, but, you know, your teeth and gums start to hurt after a while also, and you start to get a lot of acid reflux So, you had to think about that. And, so if I had this Aetna Bianca in front of me, if I didn't know that, I probably would have right up front been pretty confident because this is showing as a should, I think. It's a very representative at Navianco. It has a lot of sicilian Agrumi, with citrus notes. It has that great salinity. Almost like, this is not a note that I would write down because people don't think this sounds nice, doctor's office, because it's sort of clean, salty, a little bit, of that, Sierra freshness. We mentioned before that, one of the things that comes to me. This is a very personal note. I, think of a salted lemon slice. And if I get that upfront, I'm like, this is where it should be. This is how it's talking. It was inter when we tasted these independently of each other, my first note was like, preserved lemon, kind of like moroccan lemons that are preserved, they're slightly salty. And I and that's that's that kind of interesting thing where that note really stood out for both of us. Yeah. I think, actually, although I'm, speaking of things that you shouldn't say in front of an audience like this. I don't think notes are very helpful. I mean, the problem is that that's the most subjective part. Right? What's jumping out to you? The the phenolic compounds that are present. There's there's a mixture of them and some things will be more present to certain tasters than others. But Jeff and I, oh, very frequently, I would say we'll have, like, the same top five notes. So that is helpful for us in understanding if we're happy with where something is or if we think it's, again, diverging from the expectation. And you wanna break down why why you scored this weight the way you did? What what what were those components coming together that that allowed you to be like, okay. I think this is like between an eighty eight and ninety. I think I'm, I'm looking for I think most people would, kind of line up with this in the sense that I'm looking for a wine that feels integrated, harmonious, has I mean, just the very fact that I can call out some clear notes right away is always a good sign. Right? This wine is is speaking. Right? So that's that's something that I think is, puts it right into that range of being towards the, you know, middle to a higher end of our our scoring apparatus. Then I'm saying to myself, does it have some of that persistence that I want? Does it have, is is the narrative in on my palate present beginning middle and end. I'm still feeling the acid, so that's a good sign. It's early. So this wine has a real advantage because it's the first thing that I had besides half of. So, it's, it's a wine that, as I said, I was able to recognize its sense of place. And, so that again leaves it right in that range for me. That I'm looking for, is it doing something that makes it really stand out to push it into the next level? And then once you you you have kind of all that that framework of notes, because we we we do it similar, but differently because I am I'm kind of in the same same manner, but, like, I always find this interesting and talking to to Danielle's, like, then how do you take that and then distill it down into the review? Well, that's where things I think change a lot according to the quality of the wine because if we're talking about something stratospheric, it's gonna be a lot more of a story about what this wine is doing experientially. As opposed to a wine that is just shooting down the middle. And in that case, I'm going to, again, right, kind of outline some straightforward notes, and then maybe give some indications for the atmosphere or environment in which I think that I would enjoy that wine or when, when and where for it. And if it's something that, isn't really speaking to me very much, then I'm going to probably try to figure out some something that is, again, useful for our end users. So what's is there something textually unusual about it, or what are the things that are pulling it outside again of that central range? And again, if you have any questions, please. Yes. I know. You know the vintage. The vintage. Yeah. It's twenty one. It's twenty twenty one. Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna do y number two. But but, you know, you can taste it as as I talk. So the the other thing that we wanna provide is kind of the context. So the day before we schedule our tasting, I email that there's a whole tasting team. This is it's it's it's not just like us sitting at our house. We go to an office if you're a producer, you you may know the the kind of the spiel, there's a form you fill out. You send the form to us. We look at the form. We're like, okay, yes. We accept this wine, then send back to you. Then it goes, It's not super efficient. We're working on that that process, but once the wines in house, it goes directly to the valhalla office. And, from there, it gets inputted in the there's this gigantic database, which is really cool to look at from from our end. And then the the team has it all lined up, has it all in its brackets is what what we call it. And then they say, okay, Jeff. Based upon the editorial schedule that's coming up for the next few issues, you need to taste through Malvasia from Freally. I'm all like, okay. And then they'll be like, you have also Dolceto, you have Barbara, you have some French in Corta. How do you wanna taste it? And so I organize my tasting for the day. I email them back. This is the kind of order I want. This is the expectation. I will be in at this time. And boom. So I usually start all my tastings at nine AM. Just because I like tasting in the morning, and I usually taste through nine to like two o'clock. And when I taste, I also write down before I start tasting, I write my emotions down. I know that may sound silly to everybody, but your emotions play into how you feel about things. Right? So this is extremely subjective. So when because we don't write the immediate review right there. We take the the notes because once the wines are revealed to us, then we we have to do research to write the notes because if there's an exceptional wine, we're like, wow. You wanna kind of add more context to it. So let's say There's a wine that's grown at a thousand meters on Aetna. You know, we may put that into the note to give the reader a little more information about. So we have to do a little more research behind the scenes to find out more information about the wine. Because when we when we have it, all we know, so why number two, I'll let you know, So if you were walking in the office, this is Malthazia. This is from Frijuli, and it is twenty twenty one. That's what I will know. So I'll have a flight of those wines. To to get usually, we have a flight of six wines, and we try to keep it within its category. So let's say if not enough Malvasia had come in, let's say only three producers sent their Malvasia, I may just have a flight of three. Or it could be, like, Malvisia, and then another aromatic white varietal, but they'll tell me what it is. In that way, because context is important, a ninety six on a Lambrusco, I'm not saying a ninety six Lambrusco is equivalent to a ninety six barolo. They're they're separate. They're different. I I'm not judging the wines against each other. I judge a Lambrusco as a Lambrusco and a barolo as a barolo. That's really important that I hope everybody understands that because that would be it's it's not about fairness. It's just like how do you judge a barolo versus a Lambrusco. I mean, of frizzante red wine made from a different grape from a different region versus Nebula. That's not that's kinda that that would be taken out of context. So we try to keep that contextual component together So I know in my brain, I have kind of benchmarks that within this set, I know based upon past reviewing history that these are kind of the the benchmark wines. I I have luckily through tasting through through a lot of years, I have a lot of notes. I've been taking notes on my phone for maybe, I don't know, five, six years now, and there's like tons of data I have that I rehash, and so I can go back and look at my notes and be like, okay, make here's kind of what I'm pulling out for this year is my benchmark wines. So on this this wine, if you if you wanna wanna taste it, so When I taste, I'm I'm sort of the same thing. First thing is always a gut reaction. How does it make me feel? Like the one thing I'm looking at about wine isn't necessarily just all the structural all not all like the the intellectual component. Wine is a feeling, wine is emotion, wine is wine should most most often be fun. Right? This isn't just as, like, a total intellectual pursuit for me. I drink wine because I like it a lot. And not in the crazy, like it a lot. Way. I just, like, I really have a lot of fun with wine. It's it it takes me to another place. And my passion for wine and my my my excitement for having this opportunity is hopefully to turn some people on. Like, I'm from, and I've said this a lot. If If you've ever watched anything I've I've ever done, I'm from a really small town in Texas. I'm not from wine culture. I'm not from a place where it's normal, but what I want people to realize is that through drinking wine, you can be in another place for a momentary part of time. You can be in freely. You can be transported somewhere. I always call, like, wine a staycation. Right? It's a little moment, a blip in time where I can just relax and enjoy something. So I try to convey that in some of my reviews and also have that thinking about the wine. Italian wine podcast brought to you by mama jumbo shrimp. Like for me, obviously, this jumps out because it's a it's an aromatic varietal. Right? And I'm looking for kind of some of the the correctness in knowing Malvasia. One of my biggest issues with Malvasia that I think it is at a at a lower qualitative standpoint is I what I call my my quote is European soap. If you've ever been to a bunch of like hotels in Europe, and this is a crevice could be in France, could be in Germany, there's like a certain smell to European soap that American soap doesn't have, and it just it's this weird, soapy quality that's it's like or I call it grandma's perfume. These aren't notes that I write in here, but that's kind of a qualitative standpoint. That'll be like, okay. If it has that kind of smell, those are some terpenes that are off. Right? That's pushing, a little of the phenolic compounds in in a way that kind of can make the the wine a little disjointed. For me, what I love about this wine is this combination of kind of ripe fleshy peach stone fruit and it's it's hard because this is the this is the really the biggest challenge. Right? That I think all of us in this room and the wine media are kind of facing is, you know, wine wine descriptors are also inherently personal. Right? So it's it's hard to to to, like, my peach could be your apricot. Right? You could be smelling apricot. I think most of us, how many people would say when they smell this wine? There's some form of stone fruit on it. If I said orchard fruit, does who want what does orchard fruit mean to anybody? Just yell it out. Apple, right? How many people smell an orchard fruit on this? So how many citrus? So it it it that gets really challenging, right? Because we're kind of all over the map. But Mul physique does have certain things characteristically throughout history that have people have written that say, you know, tends to have stone fruit, some orchard fruit, some citrus in just different levels. And then when you do a chromatograph on it, so like if you ran this through a gas chromat chromatograph, you would actually see some of those volatile compounds. Right? You'd see some of those organoleptic profiles that are similar to what you find in in citrus or apples or peaches, which I find very, very interesting. So let's let's a little raise of hands for this. Who on this is eighty to eighty four? That that's so interesting. That's the same region over there that was like that on the first line. Tough. I know. Hardcore critics. Those are the bullies. Yikes. The other thing I always like to put into people's minds about, specifically, having been a sommelier for a long time, I think of utility How can I use the wine? Yeah. Right? Because that's what it's at the this is this is all about the in consumer. How do we use the wine? Also, that people, no matter what wine, if I taste an eight dollar Delavanencia Pino Grigio, or a five hundred dollar barolo, people have worked hard. Right? There's work involved in this. That's it's I I try to have this broad idea about what what's going into the wine. But again being blind, you know, we're looking at this really, really pretty use of of of winemaking and and and how that works. Okay. So that was a that was our small group of eighty to eighty four, eighty to eighty five to eighty nine? Ninety to ninety five? Ninety five and above. Okay. So I was I was eighty eight on this. And Danielle was eighty nine ninety. So, like, again, this is what this is what's really, really cool. So raise your hand if you were eighty five to to ninety five. I that there there seems to be some consensus. And now the big difference is when you get into those minute variations of like between ninety one ninety two, it's it's in the way I look at in in rate wine. And again, this is kind of like opening opening the door, right? It's those subtle nuances. What's Jeff, what's the difference? Someone's like between ninety and ninety one. It's just that that cut, right? Everything becomes finer. Everything becomes more precise. Everything becomes a little more, just revealed, defined, elegant, pure. And it's, I guess, it's the difference between going to, and I I have to use American clothing because none of Italian clothing fits me. So, you know, like, going to Old Navy or Brooks Brothers. Right? And a a Brooks Brothers shirt fits different than an Old Navy dress shirt. And that's that's how that's those are those minute differences that really kind of change the wine between, let's say, an eighty eight and a ninety one. It's those micro nuance. And and how do you do that? It's it's hard. It takes practice, but We taste each of us. Last year, I tasted about twenty seven hundred wines. Just critically for the magazine, I taste more wine on top of that, because we we will come visit containers, but we can't use those visits to rate the wines. Those are informational. Those are to interview you. Those are to get bigger perspective, broader perspective. But the only ones that we can use are when we're in the office. So I think last year, I'm I'm around. Say it again. So the only wines that we can that that that they bless the reviews that go into the system are when we're in the office. So then then you're like, well, why do you even come to our cantina? Because we still need to have the the context. Yeah. That's how we're able to do our job. We we go to a lot of cantinas to taste. That's how we get stories because we don't just do the reviews. We also write articles. Which for me is the most fun. Right? I love putting it all together and taking the reviews and then stringing out a story. And that's that's the that's the most beautiful part. Well, I was gonna say speaking of the finer cut, That's why I think this was a good example for us of the distinction because Jeff is a little harder on his wines than I am. I'm excited to have, because I don't get to drink that much of it, and I was like, well, Harry Boach candy. Perfect for breakfast. And I don't get to taste Aetna bianca very often. We were opposite on our scores. We're both. We're both, like, a point more generous with the thing that we're tasting less often because I think it's more exciting to our palettes. And we're both more exacting with the wines that we taste a lot. We have a very clear idea of what's going on in those wines right now and how we expect them to perform. So then where we have very specific ideas. My ideas for wines coming out of the north of Italy are not as precise as my as the regions that I'm responsible for right now because I'm thinking about them with a finer lens on. And I I think the other thing a lot of people ask too is like, you know, if this is so subjective in your critic, you know, how much does your opinion, your personal opinion come to play? And it, obviously, a lot of it, but the one thing I I wanna make clear is that I'm not judging a wine based upon, like, stylist stylistic choice unless that stylistic choice is so far out of bounds within what the denomination is. For example, Barolla is a good place to start. Some people are extremely dogmatic about traditional versus modern. Right? I think we're past that. I'll be writing an article soon coming out in January or or may called post modern borola. We're I I've I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm I'm tired of those those, monikers. Right? Because it's not just what happens in the cantina, right? Think about how much no matter if you produce wine in a very traditional sense, how much technology, how much innovation has happened within the vineyard. Right? That's if you're not doing it, none of us are doing it like, you know, how they did five hundred years ago or two hundred years ago or sixty years ago. So much has evolved. Now we're taking some of those practices that were done sixty years ago and tweaking them to the modern age. And obviously, climate change is having a big effect effect on that. But if I personally disagree with a winemaking choice, but the wine is still exceptionally well made, I'm not gonna not gonna ding it. Right? I'm not gonna be like, well, I don't agree with this wine. I I have to look at it more objectively because again, there's a broader, you know, pananoply of of people wanting this wine. So, like, it's something that that that that that has taken time to get to, to be like, I have to I have to represent and make sure, you know, there's there's enough, enough wine. Now if something let's say the oak takes away too much, you know, over time, you you you feel how to pick out those nuances. But it's it's not I'm not just gonna say you have to use boaty or I'm not gonna give you a good score. Right? That would be disingenuous, I think, because there's there's great wine, and made in all all sorts of different ways and methods. And good wine is good wine. And my my final point on that is, you know, good wine should taste good, young, middle aged, or old at the end of the day. A great wine will just be delicious from the get go. Will it will age change it? Yes. But imagine you having your child, your baby, and being like, I'm not ready for you yet. That would be ridiculous. Now some parents may do that, but I my the moment my daughter was born, my life changed for the better, and watching her grow up has been amazing. That's why when I buy wine or look at wine, I love to see it in all of its stages. And we we even are are looking and through the, you know, sometimes producers will will submit library releases and it's great to revisit those and and rereview them because you get to see how the wine evolves. Well, and speaking of our audience, Jeff and I both got into this game because we like Italian wine and Italian Sorry. We have, our palettes skew towards some of the characteristics that the old world and That's why Burgundy is not as good. Here we go. Yeah. It's an easy thing to say in this room. But the, speaking of the American consumer, they're actually going to be almost certainly not aligned with us for our personal tastes. Right? The way the things that Jeff and I would choose to drink on our downtime leisurely because we are having some wine to enjoy together as friends is going to be something that we would each on our personal scales rate very highly, but that probably would be a little bit tougher of a sell to the overall average American consumer dated then. It's changed a lot. It's starting to change. And we're hoping to make that narrative present for people, but it's still it's I mean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we have one more wine. Danielle's gonna walk us through this one. So, I see everybody's make sure you've got your ratings locked. Jeff. I'm here. I'm here in there. Oh, yeah. You didn't do your third wine yet? No. But we can have questions while we're tasting it. Okay. But, it's nine forty one. Okay. So everybody, this is how we taste. I taste it. Three minutes. Okay. On wine number. Okay. I'll give you I'll give you two minutes. So this wine is dulcshedo, if you didn't figure that already. So, obviously, Piedmont, dulcshedo de alba twenty twenty two. I love Delceto, everybody. If you're growing Delceto, please keep it in the land. This is just gonna be on my thing. It's history. Please don't rip it out. I will do everything in my power to make more people drink Delceto. I think it's a great wine. Okay. Eighty to eighty five. That group? One bird. I see you. I see you. They love it. Oh my god. Okay. Eighty five to, eighty five to ninety. To ninety five. Ninety five and above. Alright. I was at eighty nine on this. I think we we both hit that right now. Yeah. We we actually both said the same score. So again, that's that that consensus there. I think we're we're we're all we're all in the same sort of world, which makes me feel kind of happy, plus or minus a little, but this Dolceto to me kind of hits all the benchmarks. It it it's the one thing is, like, for me, the one thing that kind of kept it from that threshold is the the the tan structure was a little unresolved that didn't push it into the kind of the more elegant side of of, of Dolceto. But again, Delceto is a beautiful grape. You should drink it. This is a and I think the one thing I really wanna stress before we go is an eighty seven's a really good score. I know it's not gonna change. Like, we all have to start talking about it to our consumers too because everybody seems like you gotta have ninety or above. That, you know, the average GPA of an American college student's like two point four. You know, so let's just put it in that perspective. Coming from school, it's exactly that because every student wants to have an a plus, but a plus is supposed to be reserved for the exceptional for people who go above and beyond who are putting in both the effort and have the raw talent at the same time. It's something that you don't usually see. And, the eighty seven to eighty nines of this world are the wine that we go to all the time. That's where we drink. That's where we that's where we eat lunch. So thank you all very, very much. If you have any other questions, we'll be here throughout the the the rest of the day, and you can just come up and say hi. But thank you, Stev. I know there's we because I wanna run to the next seminar too. First of all, I think they were incredibly incredibly. I think both Jeff and Danielle, they were incredibly, generous, giving all the insight information. So I hope you guys got that. Listen, I have to thank all of you as well because as you know, we're in Italy. Nobody believes it. Everybody's punctual. You know how it works after ten years. And thank you so much for that. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, MLIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. 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