Behind the Bottle: Wine, Humility, and Inspiring Stories from Rome to Texas

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The unifying thread of all the people at

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this level of wine production was

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the humanity of it, the humility of it,

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the, the fact that you don't control it, the fact that it, you

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are given from God, from the

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soil, what you put in the bottle. And I left

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this tasting with this really warm sensation in my heart

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that I was in the right place at the right time and the right trade

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and the right expression of

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humanity to share with the world. And this is why I do this podcast, this

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is why Wine Talks exist, is to share this humanity. Hey,

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welcome to Wine Talks. This is Paul K.

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Yes, I am the guy. I am the guy, you know what I'm

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saying? Tasted a hundred thousand wines in my

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career. And I'm going to show you guys one of these days in one of

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these episodes how I created a website

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and now an app on my phone to keep track

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of wines I've tasted on and off site. There's

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about 60,000 wines in the database that I use

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since 1993. And then there's about 40,000

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wines that I tasted off site at trade tasting is

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the one I'm going to talk about here in a little bit. And then now

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when I go to dinner or go to Europe, I was just back in Rome.

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We then I have an app on my phone that I created an

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AI that allows me to keep track of the things I've tasted on the

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road. And it's quite voluminous already, which is pretty interesting.

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But on the way home from Rome, yeah, we went to Rome and we were

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invited to meet the Pope.

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At least the agenda said private audience with

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the Pope. Well, let me decode that for you. We did

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get VIP passes to the canonization of an

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Armenian archbishop from the 1900s, early 1900s,

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who was martyred during the Armenian genocide. And

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when the Turks took over,

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they insisted that the Armenians change their religion to

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Christianity, I mean, to Muslim Islam.

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And this bishop archbishop

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refused and so they martyred him. And so the Pope

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decided to, at this stage, canonize him, which

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makes him a saint. And so we had the opportunity to sit very close to

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the Pope as he came out of the Vatican. This incredible amount of

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pomp and circumstances and the entourage

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of cardinals and archbishops and bishops,

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it's quite fascinating and quite honorable to watch.

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And so then the next day, our agenda said

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private audience with the Pope. Now that sounds like to me, we know we're doing

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selfies and high fiving. However, I

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decoded this and what it means is when

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on Wednesdays, every Wednesday, you can have Quote, unquote, an audience

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with the Pope. You can Google that term audience with the Pope, and it'll tell

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you that that means on Wednesday he comes out,

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I think it's the whole balcony scene that he does and greets

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what would be 100,000 people or more. Now,

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when we were there for the canonization on Sunday,

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we were in this VIP section which were probably a few hundred people,

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but below us in the square

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were a hundred thousand plus people. And let me

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tell you, it takes a long time to disperse that many

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people by foot because there's no Uber coming in to

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get these people out. And so that in itself was a great and

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interesting experience. However, the private audience

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with the Pope means. And this was for the people that attended

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the canonization of these five

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or seven martyrs. There were different

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countries. There were two Venezuelan martyrs, there was one from Spain, I think there were

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a couple others. And so everybody that was invited to that VIP

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type reception was told

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this is a private audience with the Pope. Audience, meaning he'll

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greet you, but as he does Wednesdays private meeting,

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6,294 other guests that

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he was having a private audience with. So that part was kind

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of interesting. There's this beautiful hall called the Paul vi,

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I think, and that's adjacent to the Vatican. And we

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all muscled in there and then he came out and gave a, gave some prayers

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and things for about an hour and then he left. Oh,

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but all in all, an incredible experience

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to, to witness Rome is really cool.

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You know, of course, all the ancient Roman ruins as well

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as the, the shopping and the food is excellent.

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Then we went off to Puglia, Italy. And this is part of the

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conversation here last minute. You know,

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in Europe, typically when you want to schedule a meeting with a winery

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or a. Do a podcast like I was willing to do,

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you know, they like a little bit of notice, you know, three to six weeks,

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particularly of the big houses. You got to coordinate with the local

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representative that handles the

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wines here in Los Angeles. So it takes a little bit of time. But in

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this case I didn't have the time because our, our invitation to see the Pope

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was last minute and we able to organize a trip out there.

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And so what I did was I looked at my database, the one I was

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talking about, of all the Puglian wines I had tasted, which were hundreds.

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And Puglia being the part of Italy that's above the

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boot, you know, the heel of the boot. And it used to be

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sort of a jug wine area, not unlike, I

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don't know if Lodi would be the white analogy. Early

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days of Lodi, you know, a lot of good juice coming out of there, but

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none of it was sort of earmarked for the Pulian

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appellation. But that's changed and now there's some very, very fine wines

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coming from the area. The grapes are Primitivo, which is Zinfandel

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style, if not DNA wise, Zinfandel

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Negro Amano, which is a great grape that makes a

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wonderful fruit. Forward wine, but dry. This Fiano is a

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white grape. Wonderful wines. So I looked at the database and I found some wines

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from a winery called a mono a space M A N O

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meaning by hand in Italian. And I

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didn't know, I didn't know the winemaker at that point. I just saw them in

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the database and I liked the wines and I remember, I remember tasting them,

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but I emailed people that a gentleman, you may remember,

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his name is Vahe Kashkarian. He is a winemaker in

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Armenia. He makes sparkling wine there, called a few other

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brands. But his first job before he ended up in

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Armenia was at Puglia.

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Tim. Hey, Vahi. Do you have anybody invite Mark Shannon

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on a wines? All of them

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moved to Italy 30 or 40 years ago, fell in love with a

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Sicilian woman and. And they moved to Puglia, a little town called Noche,

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and they started Amano wines. And so there's a lot of

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pieces to this that make it really interesting. But the podcast is out now.

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It's really interesting. He's a brilliant guy.

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It's pure passion and that's what this conversation is about.

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So I, on the way home, really happy with the,

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with the podcast. He brought in lunch for my group with six people with us

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all, all together, and we had a nice conversation on the podcast. And

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a poolian, typical poolian lunch. And

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on the way home from Rome, I watched Maverick, you know, the,

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the Top Gun, Maverick with Tom Cruise. And I was

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crying. Now, maybe because of my old age, I'm more

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emotional about stuff like this, but it wasn't about that. It was.

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I was sort of watching the acting and I was, you know, and

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Val Kilmer, who was really sick at the time, and they got him

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to get some screen time to move the story along.

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But I realized that everybody wants

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a departure from their life. Like, we want an

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escape route. We want an off ramp sometimes.

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And for us, my wife and I, traveling is part of that off ramp. Because

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the minute you get back, as you all know, you are like

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overwhelmed with things you didn't get done. When you were gone. And things

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that you got and pick up where you left off as well as catch up

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where you left from, what you didn't do. And so this off

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ramp sometimes is in the form of a movie or

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music, but it's passion. We all want to feel some

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passion. You know, the, the part of one of the

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sub stories of Maverick is his reconnecting with an old

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girlfriend and she now runs the bar and she's very hardcore in the beginning and

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of course they fall back in love and, and he realizes at the end that

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his life needed to be around a woman. And

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this part of the passion of the show is really intriguing

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to me and made me think about this concept of

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it doesn't matter what economic stratus we are.

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Doesn't matter, you know, if we barely get along and we're living

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paycheck to paycheck, we still want that off ramp. We still want passion in our

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lives. We still want to feel human in our lives. And if we have lots

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of money and we can spend on anything we want to, that doesn't

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substitute for the need for passion. It won't. It can't.

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And I don't mean passion romantically necessarily. I'm just talking about

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something that is diverting from our regular daily

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lives. And, and I take that concept and I apply it

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to this tasting. I went to on,

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on, On Saturday or Thursday? On Thursday it was

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called the, it was called the Du Rive, which is the

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Two Rivers. And so it was all Bordeaux, but it wasn't just Bordeaux,

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man. I'm talking about Mouton Rasheed, we're talking about Chateau Bailly, we're talking about the

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Pichon Longueville, I mean, the great houses

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of, of Bordeaux, both right and

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Left bank. And at this crazy place called Mr.

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Brainwash Museum on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. I

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don't know what the, I really don't understand what it is because there's these giant

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basketball that's taller than me. There's a Mac

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computer that's taller than me. There's a

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matchbox car that's a full size car, you know, in the

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matchbox box. And I'm not sure what it is, but it's a

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really fun venue for wine tasting. And when you sit and you talk to

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people this level, and one of them was Christian Moex. I'm gonna put a

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picture up on LinkedIn pretty soon, or social. And I,

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I, I mustered up my best French and I was

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actually really proud. And I was hoping my dad, you know, I wish My dad

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could have heard, or I could tell him the story about being able

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to speak French to what would be considered one of the top

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five wine people in the world. I mean, this guy owns Chateau Petrus and

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all these other vineyards and he's just well respected. But that's not the

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point. The humility

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that this gentleman had in Veronique Sanders Van Beek of

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Chateau Bailly and, and the woman at Mouton

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Rocha, the director, Mouton Rothschild. I determined that

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at that level of wine,

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it's purely about the humanity of it. Yes,

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we have to sell wine and Bordeaux in a different difficult position.

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The wine industry is that way. And I'm not a doom and gloomer, so I'm

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not going to get to that point. But, but clearly

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the unifying thread of all the people

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at this level of wine production

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was the humanity of it, the humility of it,

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the, the fact that you don't control it, the fact that it,

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you are given from God, from the

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soil, what you put in the bottle. And I, and I

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left this tasting with this really warm sensation in my

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heart that I was in the right place at the right

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time and the right trade and the right

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expression of humanity to share with the world. And this is why I

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do this podcast, this is why wine talks exist, is to share this

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humanity. Now I also try on the podcast to show you

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different perspectives and I'm going to go through a list of people have been on

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the show recently to understand, like, it's not just about

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that, right? There are, there is the business side of wine, which is a very

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important side of business, very important part of the business. Wine is consumer

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driven. We, we, we want to produce what

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people want. And that's the interesting part. Like,

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you can go to, like you, when light beer first came out 100 years

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ago, you know, basically they took that old marketing

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cross and they put like heavy, light, you know, low alcohol,

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high alcohol, whatever the parameters were, and they just, oh, Bud Light fits.

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I mean, Budweiser fits here and Corona fits here and Guinness fits

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over here. And they go, oh, yeah, we should make a light beer. That's basically

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how it came about. And that was consumer driven. So you

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made what the consumer was looking for. You don't, you can do that

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with wine. And that's what you see at the market. Which leads

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me to another story. But wine really is the

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opposite of that. Wine is you. If you're expressing

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wine properly, then you are delivering to the bottle of what was

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given to you by the land. You don't get to play with it. You shouldn't

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play with it, at least at that level. And so the

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consumer then has to learn and understand what that vintage was about, what that

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soil was about, what that weather was about, what that those grapes were about

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when they were. When they were harvested.

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I'm going to touch on that story really quickly before I get into this list

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of guests. Right after Rome, we

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landed, waited three days, and we went off to Paris, Texas. Now, have you probably

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heard of Paris, Texas? It has an Eiffel Tower, actually, with a little

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cowboy hat on it. To me,

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it was the expression of rural Texas lifestyle.

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First of all, coffee's like a dollar 85 and gas is two bucks. Okay. Just

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so you understand, I almost filled up the rental car just for

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the fun of filling it up, because I wanted to see the number go

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be so low. But I had paid the gas. I had paid Hertz for the

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gas already anyway, so I didn't do it. Paris, Texas,

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got a cute town. It's been through some major devastations. Had

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a big fire in 1916. They've been. Is it part of Tornado Alley? And

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my daughter lives there now with her husband. He's running a church, an

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Anglican church there. I had this. It's a dry

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county. We haven't figured it out yet. I got to figure this out. But it's

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dry and there's no liquor stores, but you can go to a bar

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and have a drink. And so we stopped at Whole Foods on the way in

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outside of Dallas to pick up some wines. Okay. And

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Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, doesn't matter. Supermarket doesn't matter.

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And so I'm an educated buyer. Right? Seriously,

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I did taste a hundred thousand wines and have continued to taste

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all the things you see on the shelf. So I understand if I look at

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a label, what it's telling me. And I did the best I could

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to satisfy the palate of my wife, who loves Bordeaux and California

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cabs. And I wanted a couple Pinot Noirs.

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And I have my districts in Sonoma and Napa that I like

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in Pinot Noir. Russian river being one of them. Petaluma Gap, which they didn't have.

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And they all sucked. I had to muscle

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them down. And that is not the way you should drink wine. But. And I

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don't mean they sucked and that they were bad. I mean they sucked in, that

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they were manipulated. There was one

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Bordeaux at the end that was still. That was dry and had some character and

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complexity. It was not high in residual sugar. What they Call

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rs. And so I, and, and I'm looking at my son in law who

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loves tannat and Beaujolais and, and interesting

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varietals from around the world, prayer at Spain, you know,

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things like, things wines like that. And he looked at me like,

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like, what is wrong with you? Like we sent you to the market to buy

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some wine. And he came back with this. And I was so

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distraught over that, this idea that I couldn't find a wine

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I liked. And so that sort of leads to

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the expression of wine as it should be from the

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vineyard vs expression of wine that the consumer is

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expecting. And so what I bought was what the consumer's expecting, which is

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a perfectly legitimate fine part of the wine business. And what I didn't

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get was what the deli, the vineyard would deliver otherwise

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to a fine wine that is made to what

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is given, not to what the consumer is expecting.

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But so what I'm trying to tell you is that in the Wine Talks I

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like to show you all points of it. So I'm not going to just show

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you the people that are passionate about wine and bring the humanity to wine

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in the soil. I'm going to also bring you the periphery people, the people that

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are doing things in the wine business to sell more bottles and to

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attract a consumer. Just saw a post today on LinkedIn where,

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you know, imitation is the best form of flattery. Somebody

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posted that they had created this 1.5 liter bag in the box

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wine and then one of the big suppliers in California

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just copied it. Almost looked identical. It was the same

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idea. And so this was a complaint, I guess, by the

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person who posted. But you know, it's, it is what it is. This is what

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consumerism is. That's what marketing is. One thing about social networking,

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it's instant, right? So if, if I'm a marketeer and I'm trying to

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sell wine or I'm trying to sell widgets and I see my competitor selling

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a widget and he does something, he or she does something on the Internet, on

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social, and it works. I can do the same thing the next

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day. Used to take, you know, weeks, if not months to copy

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advertising and make it work. Now you can do it literally at

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a moment's notice. So the idea behind Wine Talks is not only

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to express wine as a passion and a

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sense of humanity, it's to also show the business sides.

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I mentioned Mark Shannon, an expat from, from

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America, had gone to UC Davis, fell in love with a Sicilian

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woman and creates Amano wines. Now what's interesting about him

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besides the fact he did not go to Milan, I mean not Milan,

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but to Tuscany or to Piemont to make

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Barolo or to make Tuscan wines like Chianti. He

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went to Puglia and this was an unknown district, particularly 30 years ago when he

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started Amano. And I thought the wines were gorgeous

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and structured and expressive of where they at. And he was

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very passionate about what he's doing. But he pulled all his

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Wines from the U.S. how about that deal? So I can't even get

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them. And last time I tasted them was 2020

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and so that was five years ago. They're gone now. And what? Why?

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Why? Well, it's hard to

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do business in the US and it costs money and it's congested and

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our distribution network's a mess and we have three tiers. You got to go from

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supplier to distributor to retailer to consumer. It's a. It's a freaking nightmare.

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And so he decided to live without it because he wanted

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people to buy his wines that like his wines and not worry about the

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business side as much. And it's harder because sales are

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off in general for wine wineries. But you know, he just

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backed out thanks to our gooberment.

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Gooberment. I just had Barbara Gorder on the show.

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Now you want business side of wine. This woman was brilliant,

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educated and brought to the wine trade

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marketing skills from Leo Burnett, which was a very well

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known firm in the marketing world. And she

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had brought non wine

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programs and experience to the wine trade.

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And she and I saw most things the same way,

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but not everything. And I like that. Let them

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challenge me. I've seen a lot, sold a lot,

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drank a lot, you know, the whole thing. So I think

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you find her interesting. Barbara Gorditch it will be

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released Tuesday. I had Diana Kandylian on the show. She's an

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Armenian who is a PhD in geophysics. Now here's an

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idea that I thought was interesting and I brought on the show because I saw

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something she wrote about volcanic soil. And now, you know, one of

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the great aspects of wine that's being

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touted is not only volcanic soil which creates this amazing

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complexity in wine, but altitude.

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You know, Napa is like at 6 or 700ft above sea level,

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right? Not very much. I grew up on a cliff in Palos verdes. We

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were 300ft above sea level. I mean the like I can hit golf balls into

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the ocean. So that's really low. And there's some of

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the hills and mountain of. In the mountainsides of Napa are Different. But you

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know, Armenia has, you know, you start at like 1200 meters or like 3000ft or

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a thousand feet. I mean it's very high, 2000 to

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3000ft. And so that creates a different character of grape.

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So Diana Kandelian, who is by trade a

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geophysicist, has fallen in love with the

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asp with wine and because of its of her

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industry's influence on wine. So

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really interesting take on that part of the wine business.

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I also had Abby Boy Bogle on. She was

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fascinating because she has come up with a methodology and here's the business of

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wine where a 750 milliliter

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bottle, which is the standard size for a wine bottle is

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being not say replaced

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re examined as a size.

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And so she created a company called Small Lot Bottles

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which gives wineries the ability to not only put it in half

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bottles or some other vessel, but like a test tube

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test, 100ml test tube. So what's 100ml?

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You know, we have to deal with the ounces versus versus metric all the

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time. But if you think a 750 milliliter

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bottle is about 25 ounces, then 100 milliliters is going to

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be, you know, what's that?

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I can't calculate my head, but it's going to be less than a glass worth

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of wine. If the average glass is 5 ounces, the Hamilton is probably going to

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be 2/3 of that. But it's

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working. And you know, there's all kinds of labeling requirements when you do this and

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all kinds of headaches. But she's figured out a way to do short runs

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for wineries that want to expand their packaging

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offers to their clients. Which means,

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you know, there's a company out there that sells, you know, test tubes of

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wine so you can taste it. If you want to buy more of it, then

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you can buy it. You can buy it. So it's really interesting stuff. That's Abby

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Boyle Bogle. I had Tony Biaggi on the phone on, on

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a podcast live in his tasting room in Napa

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Valley downtown. Beautiful structure. If you go to Napa proper,

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the, the town of Napa, there's a wonderful building that's a Robert Mondavi

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tasting room and that he makes wine for

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00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:35,840
Tokalon to Cologne. I didn't even, I didn't even realize till I

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spoke with him how important a vineyard Tokelon

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is and his refreshing outlook on wine.

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And the, I'm gonna say

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pressure, but the honor it is

384
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to create wines from this vineyard that's such an iconic

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vineyard in California and of course the Napa Valley.

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That's Tony Biaggi in studio here. Right here on this thing, I

387
00:24:01,870 --> 00:24:04,310
had Kelly E. Carter. Wow.

388
00:24:05,350 --> 00:24:09,000
Wow, what a fascinating story. And she is

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the president of Noir Napa Noir and

390
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:16,600
she does touring, high end touring in the Napa Valley

391
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:20,120
for, for anybody. And she,

392
00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:24,840
but she was the lady in the locker room for the Lakers

393
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:28,840
and an award winning journalist who wrote a book with Venus Williams

394
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:33,060
called Come to Win. I just got my

395
00:24:33,060 --> 00:24:36,580
copy. I'm going to start reading it soon. But what a fascinating

396
00:24:36,580 --> 00:24:40,340
story and how she came to wine. So she had nothing to do

397
00:24:40,340 --> 00:24:44,060
with wine. She was a journalist. She was, you know, you know, particularly in basketball,

398
00:24:44,060 --> 00:24:47,780
the NBA is big on wine. There are great stories about

399
00:24:47,860 --> 00:24:51,460
many basketball players that are actually like, Dwyane Wade has his own brand.

400
00:24:51,620 --> 00:24:55,460
You know, these guys, they're, they're in, they're in the

401
00:24:55,460 --> 00:24:59,060
mix of making wine. And it's a very important part of the subculture of the

402
00:24:59,060 --> 00:25:02,540
NBA actually at this point. And so she, she came in to talk about that.

403
00:25:02,540 --> 00:25:04,980
It was really great. Kelly E. Carter.

404
00:25:06,340 --> 00:25:09,980
I had Zara Muradian on the

405
00:25:09,980 --> 00:25:13,540
show and you might sense this Armenian link, right?

406
00:25:14,340 --> 00:25:17,380
Handelian, Muradian, Kushkarian,

407
00:25:17,380 --> 00:25:21,180
Kalamkarian. Zara's a

408
00:25:21,180 --> 00:25:25,020
pioneer in wine trade. I had her husband on the show then I had her

409
00:25:25,020 --> 00:25:28,000
on the show and she's up now on the, on, on the podcast.

410
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:30,720
But why, why, why?

411
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:36,520
She was able to induce Concour

412
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:39,760
Mundial de Boxe, very famous

413
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:43,920
wine tasting from France,

414
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,920
Brux, Brussels, Belgium actually, but all French. I

415
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,360
don't know if you know this, but the Belgium, Belgium native language is France is

416
00:25:51,360 --> 00:25:54,620
French. And so in May next year

417
00:25:55,260 --> 00:25:58,900
there's going to be a convergence of like three or four hundred judges,

418
00:25:58,900 --> 00:26:02,580
including Moi, to taste

419
00:26:02,580 --> 00:26:06,340
through five to seven thousand wines all over

420
00:26:06,340 --> 00:26:09,820
the world. Wines, not just the Armenian wines. But she was the instrumental

421
00:26:10,540 --> 00:26:13,820
being with the vine and Wine foundation of Armenia, which is the government

422
00:26:14,220 --> 00:26:16,940
arm of wine trade, to

423
00:26:17,740 --> 00:26:21,460
organize the, the tasting to be in downtown Yerevan, Armenia.

424
00:26:21,940 --> 00:26:25,660
That's huge. I mean that is huge because the Armenian wine industry is trying

425
00:26:25,660 --> 00:26:29,420
to get itself a foothold in the world. Wine trade

426
00:26:29,420 --> 00:26:32,980
is very hard to do. You've got unusual districts, you've got unusual grapes

427
00:26:33,700 --> 00:26:37,140
in a place that no one knows about. And so she

428
00:26:38,100 --> 00:26:41,740
was instrumental in making the world know about the

429
00:26:41,740 --> 00:26:45,380
Armenian wine trade. So that happens in May. I'm going to be there,

430
00:26:45,730 --> 00:26:49,410
going to be judging. I'm hoping to put together many, many podcasts and

431
00:26:49,410 --> 00:26:52,850
or a TV show or two on

432
00:26:53,010 --> 00:26:56,690
various characters that make this happen in the wine

433
00:26:56,690 --> 00:27:00,130
business out there. So a lot going on

434
00:27:01,410 --> 00:27:05,050
now, the least of which is my grandson's 8 year old birthday party tomorrow

435
00:27:05,050 --> 00:27:08,450
night at my home and we have about 100 people coming

436
00:27:09,010 --> 00:27:12,290
and I've got to figure out what cocktails I'm going to make.

437
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:16,520
I've got a really cool bar there that I built. Looks like the Jetsons would

438
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:20,160
live there and we're going to be pouring some pretty interesting cocktails and wines.

439
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:25,240
So that's, that's today's conversation and needless to

440
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:28,560
say, this is all about the humanity of it all. That's why I'm here.

441
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,960
I would love to produce, you know, a fancy wine or a fancy

442
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,480
brand or a fancy character that the gen Zers would love and everybody would, you

443
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:40,290
know, fluff fawn over my marketing prowess and all those

444
00:27:40,290 --> 00:27:43,770
things but it's not why I do this. I do it for the humanity.

445
00:27:44,170 --> 00:27:47,450
I do it for the storytelling because it is about the story.

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00:27:48,410 --> 00:27:48,970
Cheers.