The Dark Side of Food Network: Are We Really Learning About Real Food?

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What gets me excited about working in wine and food, but

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particularly in wine, because I think it does have this bit of an impenetrable

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reputation, I get really excited about the fact that there's so many audiences

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to be reaching. Like, there's so many people to get into

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wine. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine

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Talks with Paul Kaye.

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Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kaye, and we are in studio today in

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beautiful but hot Southern California. About to have a conversation with

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Emily Saladino way out in New York. Introductions in just a moment. Wine

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Talks, of course, available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Pandora, wherever you hang out for

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podcasting. And do me a favor, let's

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subscribe to one of those services and let's listen to the podcast. I want to

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tell you guys, there's something very interesting that I just released. I

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was in Armenia for 3 podcasts,

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actually. They gave me a studio downtown. Had an incredible conversation

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with the first wine bar owner in Armenia. Then

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with Vahye Kushgarian, who I think is probably one of the most brilliant winemakers, of

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course, in Armenia, but probably the world actually, at

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least most versed. And then I had a conversation with James Tufankian, who is

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the distant relative of my wife, a hotelier in

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Armenia, and had a very insightful

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philosophical, philosophical, easy for you to say, conversation. So listen

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to those, subscribe, and please you have nothing nice to say,

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don't say it at all. But if you have something good, go ahead and rate

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the show for me. Anyway, Emily, welcome to the show.

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Hey, how are you? I'm doing great today. Thanks. You know, we had a,

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we had a huge party over the weekend for my 4-year-old daughter, granddaughter, who,

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4-year-old daughter, that'd be trouble. 4-year-old granddaughter who was

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just cleared of cancer after suffering through chemotherapy.

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And so we had 200 people at our home. Wow. Oh, I'm so

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happy to hear it. Thank you. And since you're in the culinary side of things

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as well, we'll talk about that. We had one of the local burger joints called

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Pie 'n Burger, very famous place in Pasadena, come and

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cater and everybody freaked because their burgers are

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the best. Oh, that sounds like a really lovely

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weekend. I'm so glad. Yes, we were very fortunate

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for that. You are the culinary editor of the Food

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Network TV show or the TV network.

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You're a writer-at-large for The Wine Enthusiast, one of the great periodicals in

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our industry. But that's, but you've been around the block a few times

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when it comes to, I don't mean that any other way except

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about writing and wine and food. So

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tell me about a little bit about some of the things you've done with the

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wine world. Sure, sure. So I came into

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wine sort of through food. I worked, I went to culinary school

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and worked in restaurants for quite a while. And then I

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was approached by this website called VinePair

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about coming on to do editorial for them. And I had written

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a lot about food and beverage, and wine was always on the periphery, but

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I really came into it through food. I feel really lucky to have worked in

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restaurants and gotten to taste some bottles that quite honestly

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weren't as affordable to me personally, but you might get to

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taste at a restaurant or in a wine shop, anything like that. So I

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came into VinePair in 2017. So I'm relatively new to

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wine. And through there, I studied it. I went into some

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of the, you know, there's WSET programs. There's all

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sorts of ways to learn about wine. As I said, I feel like I learned

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a lot also from restaurants. And so from

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VinePair, I started working with Wine Enthusiast after

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I joined them in 2019. I worked in the office for 3

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months and then we, it was March 2020. So I

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was only in the office for a short amount of time. But I

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worked there for about 2 and a half years. years as the managing editor.

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And now I work freelance for them. I contribute articles, but I

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also review wines from Georgia and Greece.

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So not Armenia, regrettably, but right near it, next door in Georgia. That's

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right. Yeah. I've not been to Armenia. Yeah. I've been

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dying to go. It's such an interesting time for their wine industry.

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Both those, both Greece and— and I had an influencer on, a Greek

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influencer. She was really interesting. to do. But I'm gonna go back just a second.

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You said something very interesting where you got a chance to taste wines of great

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repute and not have to, you know, invest in them like most do. We're going

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to talk about investing in wine and Burgundy as well on the show because I've

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read many of your articles. I think it's at emilysaladino.com.

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Emily, E-M-I-L-Y-S-A-L-A-D-I-N-O.com.

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There's some great articles there for the listeners to log on and check, take a

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look. But one of the things you said

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about Investing in wine and the value of tasting wines of that

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quality. I went to a lunch the other day. I was invited to a

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lunch and it was a long way from home and I thought,

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oh, I got to drive out there and taste wine. And the

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host of the lunch had told me, he goes, you know, I do this because

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I get for $8,000, which I'm assuming is what he put up for this lunch

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and the wines he bought, I get to taste $80,000 worth of wine.

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You know, that's a pretty good deal, right? The guy's

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got it figured out. No, I think that's fair. Because he gets to,

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they try to one-up each other. There's like 7, 9 guys in this group and

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they have lunch and then they bring wine. So we had a vertical of Penfolds

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Grange, you know, from like

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1986 to 2007 or something. It was like

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incredible, right? It was just incredible. So anyway, interesting way to learn about wine.

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to jump in on those tastings for the value of it and not having to

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do that. But let's talk about Georgia.

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You wrote an article about orange wine, and we're going to get into some

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pet peeves of mine when it comes to this industry, what's going on out there.

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But, you know, Georgia was, as part of the

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Soviet bloc, you know, told to make the still wines.

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Armenians were told to make the brandy. The Russians were making sparkling wine, and the

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Moldavians were making low-end, you know, whatever. So,

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but tell me, tell me about the reception of Georgian wines in America

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right now. And, you know, orange being one of the great things they've always made

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for a long time. What have you seen as far as consumerism?

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It's so fascinating because I think, you know, here in New York where I

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live, um, I imagine parts of LA are quite similar.

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It's almost— you expect to have an orange, at least

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one, like maybe 4. Um, and so in that way, I think

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that's skin contact wine has become really, really mainstream in certain

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corners of the US. But if you exit some of

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these cities, it's not uncommon for people to be like, is it

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made with oranges? I mean, I recently attended a family reunion and I was

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in northern New Jersey where my mother lives, and I had relatives from all over,

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and I brought some skin contact wines. And I mean, half of

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my relatives had never heard of such a thing. I should probably say upfront that

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I don't come from a wine drinking family or a family in media. You know,

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I'm a bit of an anomaly. So. But no, I think that

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it's interesting to see the diversity among the reception,

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within rather I should say, the reception of Orange and Georgia. There's

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times when I tell people I review wines from Georgia for Wine Enthusiast and they

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say, the state? No way.

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This is a bit of a Captain Obvious point, but we live in a really

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big country. There's such diversity within the market. And so

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I think there's folks who are for whom

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Georgian and orange wine are so exciting, if not

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even approaching played out, right? Like they feel like they know it already. And then

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there's folks who've never heard of such a thing. So I just, I think there's

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so much possibility. My biggest kind of what gets me

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excited about working in wine and food, but

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particularly in wine, because I think it does have this bit of an

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impenetrable reputation. I get really

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excited about the fact that there's so many audiences to be reaching. Like there's so

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many people to to get into wine. You know, we,

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we in the wine industry often wring our hands and clutch our

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pearls over losing audience and market share. But I would argue there's

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so many more people that we could be reaching. So that to me is exciting.

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Like, I like that there's places where orange wine is,

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you know, as I said, almost passé because people feel like, oh, it's been 2

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years now. I'm done. I'm ready to move on to something else. Right.

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Or, and then there's other, there's places where people have never heard of it and

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don't, you know, don't know where Georgia, the country Georgia is on a map. I

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think that's accurate for just about any segment

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of our industry. You know, it's one of the questions I wanted to talk to

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you about, but wine, orange wine is not new. It's been around for billions of

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years. The Georgians have been making it forever. They've been making it under, you know,

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in amphorae that are buried in the ground. And, and so,

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and what is it? It really is, it's for the

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listeners, it's just white grapes

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processed and fermented like red grapes. And so as the

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opposite of rosé is the opposite, is red grapes fermented like white grapes. So

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This isn't a new thing. You know, wine vintners

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for thousands of years have been playing around different things to do. And so it

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becomes a fad. And then it, for me, it's, it

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felt like it became a reason to make substandard wine. In other words,

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well, it's natural, quote unquote, we'll define natural in a second, but it's natural

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and it's skin contact. And then it tastes like, you know, like

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horse dung. And then you have to like muscle it down because you think

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you're doing something healthy. It doesn't have to be that way, does it?

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Right, right. There's so many exceptional orange wines,

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and then there's so many borderline undrinkable

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orange wines because, as you said, because, you know, smart,

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smart producers saw that there's a market for it and people are buying it. It

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reminds me of, you know, in certain ways of rosé about 10,

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15 years ago in the US where producers just saw that people were spending

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money on it. So it was like, sure, I can, I can bottle you something

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pink. And I think that happens, right? And the risk

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there is that it can turn someone off of the entire

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category, right? You can have one of those orange wines that taste

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like you're just consuming pennies, like you're just like drinking

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liquefied copper. And that's a bummer, right? Like

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that can easily turn you off. But the hope is that, and my,

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you know, the reason, one of the things that I'm particularly enthusiastic about skin

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contact is that I do think about orange. Sorry, I use those terms

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interchangeably. That's totally fine. Yeah, one of the things that does

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get me excited about orange in particular is I just think there's such

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opportunity to have conversations there, to talk about the

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diversity within it, to talk about the fact that you can have these

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really ancient ones with this long, long, long history, and then you can have

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these kind of brand new kids on the block who are trying it on for

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size, and it's going to taste different. But you can have these really rich, tannic

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wines, or you can have something really light and easy drinking, and they're both orange.

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I think that's kind of a cool— I don't know, that's a cool aspect

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of this segment. Well, it's kind of interesting because

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we— I had dinner last night, and I think— I'm sure, as, as at your,

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at your family reunion recently, um, you know, the conversation always

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seems to come back to wine. And I try not to be like the guy

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in the room who everybody's asking the questions to, but they want to know. People

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really want to understand what it is, and they have questions, and they, they're intimidated,

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blah, and all the things that go in our industry that probably aren't gonna change

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soon. But all the things you just mentioned about orange wine,

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I mean, really can be said about Burgundy. It can be said about

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Bordeaux, Cab, Napa Cabs. You can have those same conversations. And the,

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and the industry's reeling from consumerism issues right now. There's

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a radical change in, in post-COVID

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consumption, radical changes in post-COVID online

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purchasing. And so it's, we're all trying to figure out, you know, ground our

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feet as to figure out what's going on. And I, and I think what you're

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doing is, is incredible because you're trying to educate at one segment, which is

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great, the segment that has some questions that people want to understand.

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And the more questions people ask, you know, the better off we are as an

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industry to move away from Josh,

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Apothec Red, and all that stuff we see on the shelf, right?

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past the supermarket wines and get people engaged in these

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interesting things? You have a solution for that? Because if I want to write

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it down, right? I was going to say million-dollar idea right here. I

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mean, my solution, and unfortunately it's not one that I

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personally can implement, I think it's the, the problem is the, the 3-tier

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system. I think that just makes it so difficult to get your hands on things

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that aren't mass-produced and distributed. So that to me is,

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that's if you've got the ability to dismantle

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that, I think we're Really, you know what, kudos, we've done

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it. But otherwise— That would be super. Yeah, right?

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Otherwise, I think it comes down to folks like you who have expertise,

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you know, to people who are just kind of open to saying

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like, let's have a conversation. As you said, like everyone has questions. And I

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do think there's a lot of, I don't know, hunger for that knowledge, but people

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are really scared of mispronouncing names. I wanna be

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really upfront about the fact that like I mispronounce things all the time. Most people

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mispronounce my last name and I'm not upset about it. Like, it's okay. No, it's,

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I just think the more we can kind of like take the edge off of

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these conversations, the better. I have to say, you pronounced my last

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name flawlessly. I was really impressed. Most folks— I'm from

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Santa California. Thank you. No, I was delighted. But no,

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I do. I think that the more we can kind of like take the edge

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off of these conversations so that you don't feel like you have

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to know, the folks who are truly into wine

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are so happy to not know things. Like, that's what makes wine

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so exciting is that I feel like it's a lifelong process. I'll be studying it

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Forever. I think that's kind of the thing to remember,

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to remind ourselves, but also to remind folks who are maybe new to it.

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Like, what is this about wine? And I ask this question, there's no answer to

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it, that it's thousands of years old. We were

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fortunate when we were in Armenia to go visit the Adadi Cave, which is a

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6,000-year-old winery. I mean, absolutely

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breathtaking in just the scope of what this thing

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represents. But

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you don't get that feeling with bourbon, scotch, beer, you know,

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Maui Blanc pineapple wine. There's something about

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grape in the soil that draws you to

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learn and understand more, and it goes on and on. And I think people would

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get that bug. And this is my solution. And just for the listeners, the

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3-tier system means, as they say, a supplier, which could be an

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importer or a manufacturer of wine, there's a distributor that is required

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to be able to sell the wine to the retailer or the restaurant, and then

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they sell it to you as a consumer. And that's a required methodology of

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post-Prohibition life. You know, I always

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contend Prohibition was not repealed, it was just broken up into 50 different, you

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know, versions of it. And so she's— so Emily's

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right on in that, uh, and having had that conversation with the

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RNDC Vice President of Wine last week, you know,

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they get more, they're getting more powerful because it's

250
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getting more difficult to do business. So the little guys are kind of

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fading away and it becomes a numbers game at this point. And so

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we don't get to share things like Georgian wines. I mean,

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I don't even know if the Georgian wine distributor in LA is still around. His

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name was Stetson Robbins. Do you know him? Oh, I don't

255
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know him. I, yeah, I will say Georgia in particular has done, has

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really made a lot of efforts and invested, quite honestly, in the

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last year or 2 to try to, you know, they're targeting the US.

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And so that is great news for me

259
00:15:49,987 --> 00:15:53,822
personally, someone who loves Georgian culture and wine. But it's

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also great news, you know, for drinkers. That's the thing though, is it does

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require investment and it requires capital to get these

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wines not just over to the US, but throughout the

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US. And that's, I think

264
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that's That's the thing, right? You're reliant on there being like a guy,

265
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right? That's a tough situation for any business.

266
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So, right. And so I think, I don't know, that's the part that

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kind of, again, if we could just quickly figure out how to

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dismantle that 3-tier system, that would be super. You and I

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are good together. We'll figure this out. Right, right. We'll

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circle back after this podcast. We'll sort it out. Yeah, no worries.

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You know, there's something interesting about Georgian wines. You know, also you

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review Greek wines for The Wine Enthusiast, and we've had a lot of those

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lately come through here. And again, the focus has been

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natural, biodynamic, organic, and some orange. And I'm thinking to myself,

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why does a country— Armenia's trying to break into the worldwide market now— why does

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a country have to have some kind of niche like that when their wines are

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very good? They're all, you know, there's some really good wines that have

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lots of history and we know that it takes, it could take

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100 years for a vineyard to, for somebody to

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understand a vineyard's capability and the grapes coming out of it.

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But we're focusing on all these anomaly wines

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like organic and biodynamic and orange. And I'm wondering why

283
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that has to happen. Why does it, why do we have to play that game

284
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with the consumer to get them to try these things? Do you have any thoughts

285
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on that? It's a great question. I wonder if some of

286
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it has to do with just how vast wine is.

287
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I think about that sometimes. The word wine encompasses a lot of

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products. And so I wonder if sometimes that helps consumers feel like,

289
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okay, that's one for me. I know that I'm someone who, you know, I

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like to buy my tomatoes from the farmer's market, not from the grocery store.

291
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So I'm going to buy a natural wine or a biodynamic

292
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wine. I mean, you kind of alluded to this earlier. The tricky thing

293
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there is that there is no internationally agreed upon definition

294
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for natural wine. And so It's kind of like,

295
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you know, when I go to like a kind of a certain type of

296
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grocery store that'll just be like farm fresh eggs and like, what

297
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does that mean? Like, there's no designation for farm fresh eggs,

298
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right? And it's the same thing with natural wine is you're, you're, it, it

299
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can be a really like powerful ethos by which

300
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you farm and vinify. It also can be a marketing tool. Both,

301
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we can hold both in our hands, you know, both things can be true. And

302
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so that's what's tricky is I think that That helps regions,

303
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particularly ones that are, that, you know, someplace like Greece and

304
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Armenia, these are ancient wine-producing regions, but they are

305
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relatively new in the modern US market. I

306
00:18:46,105 --> 00:18:49,713
say that there's caveats to everything in wine. There obviously have been Greek and Armenian

307
00:18:49,729 --> 00:18:53,386
wines in the US, but much, much, much fewer than a lot of

308
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producers are trying to distribute in the US now. And

309
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so I think that might be it. just a way to kind of

310
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differentiate yourself in such a crowded market. Like, it's a way to reach

311
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consumers, particularly if you're targeting Gen Z,

312
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millennial, younger consumers who tend to buy, I believe, I mean,

313
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my gosh, I should fact check this, but I believe that's the larger market for

314
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organics and food in the US. So it's a way to kind of reach,

315
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to reach a target market, whether or not it works, whether or not it always

316
00:19:23,712 --> 00:19:27,285
makes sense. You know, I am, I'm the first person to say like, I'm happy

317
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to buy locally grown beets if my local farmer once

318
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sprayed pesticide, I still am happy to support them, but that

319
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means that they might not qualify as organic, right? I think that there

320
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should be flexibility within all of these things. But wine, as I said,

321
00:19:42,968 --> 00:19:46,211
it's just so big. It's such a vast category, and

322
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people are so eager to find ways to

323
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divide it, to kind of categorize and understand it, and sometimes to our own

324
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peril. I think there's a— it always

325
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stimulates a thought for me, and I say this and I get crazy answers, and

326
00:20:01,288 --> 00:20:04,580
I'm not going to ask you the answer, but it would be like if

327
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profitability was not part of the equation. You know, ready-to-drink

328
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cocktails are hot, so they're flooding tons of investment in the ready-to-drink

329
00:20:12,094 --> 00:20:15,770
cocktails, canned wines as well. And so if we weren't

330
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driven by profitability and we're trying to do the best we could with what we

331
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are given by the earth, then, you know, maybe maybe the industry would be different.

332
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But do you— I have this philosophy, and maybe because of the age of the

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industry, that eventually, regardless of your generation, whether

334
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you're a millennial, Gen X, baby boomer like me, whatever, that eventually

335
00:20:33,769 --> 00:20:37,527
you come around through— you wade through the fads. I mean, we had

336
00:20:37,944 --> 00:20:41,172
wine coolers at my dad's wine shop, you know. Right. And you come to the

337
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point where you realize that a properly made, or what I call an honest glass

338
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of wine, has all you need for the expression

339
00:20:49,198 --> 00:20:52,727
and the feeling you want to get when you have a glass of wine. Why

340
00:20:52,791 --> 00:20:56,064
you drink wine in the first place isn't— you can drink vodka if you want

341
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to catch a buzz, but you drink wine for a different reason. And I

342
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think every generation lands there eventually. That's why it's been here for

343
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6,000 years or 10 or whatever the number is. But you said

344
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something important. You said something about tomatoes. And so we're going

345
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to move into the food side of things because I think it's really important.

346
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You know, the argument is you are what you eat eats, right?

347
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And there's clearly flavor benefits to

348
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properly grown vegetables and, and fruits that are farmed fresh.

349
00:21:26,989 --> 00:21:30,602
Why do we have the other stuff? Why

350
00:21:30,602 --> 00:21:34,086
isn't it all organic? Why isn't it all biodynamic? Why, why

351
00:21:35,564 --> 00:21:38,277
did we stray away from, that's what we always did.

352
00:21:39,578 --> 00:21:43,241
Oh, what a great question. I wish, kind of like how I

353
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wish we could just real quick dismantle the

354
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3-tiered food system. We're dismantling a lot today, I guess. I

355
00:21:50,294 --> 00:21:53,620
love it. I know, revolution. I love it. I think

356
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industrial agriculture had its reasons for

357
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its origin story, right? In the last century,

358
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it was a way to get food to all corners of this very big,

359
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country for not that much money. And so

360
00:22:09,467 --> 00:22:13,104
farms became increasingly corporatized. I'm going to get

361
00:22:13,104 --> 00:22:16,549
someone from Big Tomato in my inbox, and I

362
00:22:16,677 --> 00:22:20,283
welcome the conversation, ma'am or sir. But no, I do.

363
00:22:20,587 --> 00:22:24,000
I think that there's a reason why

364
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agriculture became industrialized in the

365
00:22:28,294 --> 00:22:31,323
last century. I think we're past it now though. I think that it would be

366
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really great if we kind of, as you know, vast

367
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community of consumers could wrap our minds around,

368
00:22:38,621 --> 00:22:42,296
you know, maybe I don't get strawberries in New York in January.

369
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Maybe I have to wait for them for the springtime. But unfortunately, we've now

370
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created a consumer expectation that you can have strawberries all year round. And

371
00:22:50,192 --> 00:22:53,513
yeah, sometimes they might be flown in from far, far, far away and

372
00:22:53,706 --> 00:22:57,493
taste sort of like the packaging they come in. And sometimes they might be

373
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fresh from the farm and taste so sweet and rich. But there's an

374
00:23:00,927 --> 00:23:04,169
expectation that you can always get them. And so that I think is I think

375
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that's, that's where, that's the trouble, right? Like that's the sticky part is

376
00:23:08,628 --> 00:23:12,109
we, we've created the expectation that you can always have every

377
00:23:12,109 --> 00:23:15,767
food and that, that does lower the quality. It

378
00:23:15,767 --> 00:23:19,456
just, you know, it's, do you want quality or quantity? I think if,

379
00:23:19,489 --> 00:23:23,050
if every listener could go to Armenia or

380
00:23:23,146 --> 00:23:26,868
Georgia, I'm sure, and taste an apricot

381
00:23:26,868 --> 00:23:30,317
and then find out what an apricot really is supposed to taste like, like my

382
00:23:30,317 --> 00:23:33,961
mother's on her big giant tree we had growing up because the stuff you

383
00:23:33,993 --> 00:23:37,718
buy in the market has just been, you know, pre-picked

384
00:23:37,750 --> 00:23:41,314
or doctored up to last the trip. Don't you ever wonder why the tomato at

385
00:23:41,362 --> 00:23:44,429
the bottom of the truck driving down to the 5 freeway here or wherever, Highway

386
00:23:44,429 --> 00:23:47,881
95, and it's not smushed? How come that is that? How can that

387
00:23:47,881 --> 00:23:51,718
possibly be? There's like all this weight on top of it. But, you know, Dan

388
00:23:51,814 --> 00:23:55,491
Barber said in his book, The Third Plate, that organic

389
00:23:55,491 --> 00:23:59,286
foods and biodynamic foods you know, the yields are so

390
00:23:59,382 --> 00:24:02,935
low that you probably can't feed the world that way.

391
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:06,773
But I've had counterarguments to that comment. So

392
00:24:07,016 --> 00:24:10,389
do you think that if everything went organic and/or

393
00:24:10,437 --> 00:24:14,264
biodynamic, that there'd be enough wheat and food

394
00:24:14,329 --> 00:24:17,349
to do that? I think that for me

395
00:24:17,721 --> 00:24:21,532
personally, I would prefer we focus on local over

396
00:24:22,081 --> 00:24:25,557
certified organic or biodynamic. Biodynamic, I actually put in a

397
00:24:25,557 --> 00:24:28,956
slightly different category because it is a bit more holistic. in my opinion.

398
00:24:29,565 --> 00:24:33,172
It is. And so I think that if we just focus, so if we

399
00:24:33,172 --> 00:24:36,442
cut out, like you're saying, that huge truck

400
00:24:36,923 --> 00:24:39,519
that's taking tomatoes from

401
00:24:40,209 --> 00:24:43,655
California over to me in New York, right? Like if we cut,

402
00:24:43,896 --> 00:24:46,461
maybe they could, I mean, they could go a couple of miles. I have not

403
00:24:46,461 --> 00:24:50,292
yet drawn the radius, so we could sort that out as well. But

404
00:24:50,308 --> 00:24:53,161
no, I think that for me, local is possible.

405
00:24:54,251 --> 00:24:57,521
And like there's all sorts of ways to do it. You can look at hydroponics.

406
00:24:57,569 --> 00:25:00,553
Like there's all sorts of ways that we could revolutionize our food

407
00:25:00,585 --> 00:25:04,215
system. For me, it's not

408
00:25:04,215 --> 00:25:07,748
organic so much as it's just local and sustainable, which

409
00:25:07,877 --> 00:25:11,668
are 2 words that, as I said, I've not drawn a map

410
00:25:11,748 --> 00:25:14,928
to say the radius of what local is. Sustainable is kind of one of those

411
00:25:15,025 --> 00:25:18,735
itchy words that people throw around a lot, kind of like natural wine,

412
00:25:19,056 --> 00:25:22,558
but something that can be farmed over and over again

413
00:25:22,654 --> 00:25:26,330
without the need for really putting

414
00:25:26,330 --> 00:25:29,510
a lot of chemicals into your soil to make it work. That's how I would

415
00:25:29,510 --> 00:25:33,210
define sustainable. A farming system that allows for cover crops as

416
00:25:33,210 --> 00:25:36,410
well as the cash crop. That's a

417
00:25:36,410 --> 00:25:40,210
different— that's a big undertaking. That's a lot harder than just

418
00:25:40,210 --> 00:25:43,690
we need to certify organic, right? And certifying organic's hard, but

419
00:25:43,690 --> 00:25:47,450
I'm talking about something that would be such a structural overhaul.

420
00:25:47,450 --> 00:25:51,190
I think that's hard. Systemic change is hard. It

421
00:25:51,190 --> 00:25:54,530
is hard. It's what to me would fix it, but I don't have a

422
00:25:54,530 --> 00:25:58,248
timeline. I don't have a project manager or Assigned to this

423
00:25:58,248 --> 00:26:01,813
task. It's hard, but

424
00:26:01,813 --> 00:26:05,586
it's also the desire of a lot, at least farmers in the wine

425
00:26:05,650 --> 00:26:09,456
business. Because as one winery owner put it

426
00:26:09,584 --> 00:26:13,036
to me out of Tuscany, hey, my kids are playing in that vineyard. So

427
00:26:13,438 --> 00:26:17,066
I think in general, what bothers me or what kind of confuses me that we

428
00:26:17,066 --> 00:26:20,792
spent all the, we were always organic. We always were even

429
00:26:20,824 --> 00:26:24,386
biodynamic in some senses of it. Then we create all this

430
00:26:24,499 --> 00:26:28,167
stuff that doctored everything up, and now we're going back to it and, and

431
00:26:28,167 --> 00:26:30,332
saying how great we are 'cause we're going back to the way it was in

432
00:26:30,332 --> 00:26:33,586
the first place. And we'll, when we talk about Burgundy, we'll talk about that in

433
00:26:33,586 --> 00:26:36,694
a second. We'll talk about the same, same concept.

434
00:26:38,662 --> 00:26:42,153
But at your alma mater, when Dan

435
00:26:42,185 --> 00:26:45,964
Berger spoke, not Dan Berger, the author of The Third Plate

436
00:26:45,996 --> 00:26:49,607
spoke, he said that a land economist had

437
00:26:49,607 --> 00:26:52,450
come to the Blue Hill Farm, And

438
00:26:53,220 --> 00:26:56,908
had sat just for lunch, spread some

439
00:26:56,908 --> 00:27:00,597
butter on some bread and tasted the butter and asked him

440
00:27:00,677 --> 00:27:03,868
if the butter was hand-churned.

441
00:27:04,766 --> 00:27:08,503
He said, yes, chef, of course. And then he tasted again

442
00:27:08,711 --> 00:27:12,319
and he said, the milk, the cows that made the

443
00:27:12,319 --> 00:27:16,168
milk that made this butter, did they graze, you know, in

444
00:27:16,168 --> 00:27:19,186
the fertile part of the farm? He said, absolutely.

445
00:27:20,246 --> 00:27:23,860
And Alain left. And the next day, chef was in the

446
00:27:23,860 --> 00:27:27,602
kitchen and looks over and there's an intern using a Cuisinart to make butter.

447
00:27:28,935 --> 00:27:31,633
And he goes over, he says, hey, what are you doing? And he goes, oh,

448
00:27:31,730 --> 00:27:34,878
I found a faster way to make the butter. He says, how long you been

449
00:27:34,878 --> 00:27:38,556
doing that? He goes, a couple of weeks. So Alain Ducasse was

450
00:27:38,556 --> 00:27:42,234
able to taste that the butter hadn't been hand churned. He said, a couple days

451
00:27:42,266 --> 00:27:45,205
later, I was in at the farm, And I see the cows were missing.

452
00:27:46,265 --> 00:27:49,075
And he asked the farmhand where the cows were. He says, I sent 'em to

453
00:27:49,075 --> 00:27:52,302
the south because we needed to fertilize the land. And he goes, how long you

454
00:27:52,302 --> 00:27:55,979
been doing that? He says, a couple of months. So Alain de

455
00:27:55,979 --> 00:27:59,784
Kast was able to taste that the milk from the cows were not from

456
00:27:59,784 --> 00:28:02,674
fertile, you know, the food that the cows were eating was, weren't as fertile as

457
00:28:03,060 --> 00:28:06,271
it could have been. And I thought, you know, that is so fascinating, right?

458
00:28:07,074 --> 00:28:10,654
I mean, you can detect And anybody who has one of those

459
00:28:10,686 --> 00:28:14,040
tomatoes off one of those trucks will tell you that it tastes like

460
00:28:14,217 --> 00:28:17,732
nothing, right? So why don't we want— don't we want

461
00:28:19,048 --> 00:28:22,820
our food to taste better? No, we want it to be— Right, right.

462
00:28:22,868 --> 00:28:26,190
No, I mean, gosh, my kingdom for Aladdin

463
00:28:26,238 --> 00:28:29,592
Ducasse's palate. That's so impressive. Yeah, right. I know. It's pretty

464
00:28:29,785 --> 00:28:32,915
amazing. But no, I think you're right. I think that

465
00:28:33,396 --> 00:28:36,957
whether or not I can taste the difference, between hand-churned or

466
00:28:37,165 --> 00:28:40,981
Cuisinart-churned butter. You know, that aside,

467
00:28:41,029 --> 00:28:44,347
I do think that there's— you're making a really powerful point, which is

468
00:28:44,860 --> 00:28:48,499
you do taste the difference. You know, I think you can taste the

469
00:28:48,547 --> 00:28:51,496
difference in wine. I think you can taste the difference in food. I loved what

470
00:28:51,496 --> 00:28:55,279
you said about Armenian apricots. I thought that when

471
00:28:55,279 --> 00:28:58,854
I was last in Georgia, I had like boiled salted

472
00:28:59,030 --> 00:29:02,156
potatoes with some dill. And I was like, this is the best thing I've ever

473
00:29:02,156 --> 00:29:05,747
tasted in my life. No, totally. Because the potatoes had been dug that morning,

474
00:29:05,923 --> 00:29:09,759
right? So like, they were so flavorful. And so, I think that there is

475
00:29:10,032 --> 00:29:13,533
something to be said. You do taste the difference between things that are farmed in

476
00:29:14,272 --> 00:29:17,933
a slightly more immediate way, for lack of better terms, right? Like, if I

477
00:29:17,965 --> 00:29:21,627
like to say sustainable and local, like, just things that have a more immediate connection

478
00:29:21,739 --> 00:29:25,031
from the earth to your plate, I do think you can taste it.

479
00:29:25,834 --> 00:29:29,431
Is that the buzz around the Food Network? I mean, what— Food Network would probably

480
00:29:29,463 --> 00:29:32,016
be a place to, you know, we want more viewers and we're going to put

481
00:29:32,016 --> 00:29:35,469
shows on that people are interested in watching. But Like sort of the

482
00:29:35,485 --> 00:29:39,227
bowels of the people that work there? Is this an objective to

483
00:29:39,757 --> 00:29:43,162
not only create food that tastes great, but as, as natural and as

484
00:29:43,516 --> 00:29:47,033
expressive as possible? I mean, I don't want to speak for the

485
00:29:47,033 --> 00:29:50,824
organization. I will say most of my colleagues, we are lucky enough

486
00:29:50,824 --> 00:29:54,245
to be about 2 blocks from one of the biggest farmers markets in New York.

487
00:29:54,293 --> 00:29:57,698
And I will say most of my colleagues, myself included, like go on our lunch

488
00:29:57,890 --> 00:30:01,344
break to do our grocery shopping. Like it is. Yeah. And I mean, that is,

489
00:30:01,504 --> 00:30:04,862
that's a privilege, right? Like that's such an asset. to being in certain

490
00:30:05,071 --> 00:30:08,606
destinations and certain geographic areas. But that's kind of what I—

491
00:30:08,975 --> 00:30:12,735
that's sort of the revolution that I would love to see realized in our

492
00:30:12,735 --> 00:30:16,463
lifetimes is for that to be doable for everyone. And if

493
00:30:16,528 --> 00:30:20,207
that means we don't eat strawberries in January, that means we don't eat strawberries in

494
00:30:20,207 --> 00:30:23,984
January. I think, Felicia, what Emily's saying is that, you know,

495
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:27,663
the seasonality is— there's a reason why nature does

496
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:31,065
that. There's a reason why we only typically have strawberries at a certain part of

497
00:30:31,065 --> 00:30:34,558
the year and tomatoes at a certain part of the year. And that's when they

498
00:30:34,670 --> 00:30:38,452
taste best, even though they're being tricked into thinking that

499
00:30:38,516 --> 00:30:42,282
the season's on right now. Right? Right. But you wrote

500
00:30:42,282 --> 00:30:46,031
this article about butter and I thought that was fascinating, but you brought

501
00:30:46,031 --> 00:30:49,845
up the AOP designations in France,

502
00:30:50,294 --> 00:30:53,387
Appellation d'Origine Protégée, which

503
00:30:53,499 --> 00:30:57,315
protects food,

504
00:30:57,315 --> 00:31:00,911
wine, cheese, butter, what, lentils,

505
00:31:01,669 --> 00:31:03,846
all kinds of foodstuffs in France.

506
00:31:05,543 --> 00:31:09,337
And as the New World, we look to the Old

507
00:31:09,337 --> 00:31:13,099
World, what I do anyway, and I'm jealous of this, you know, that they've protected

508
00:31:13,132 --> 00:31:16,266
their, the regional characters of their food and their wine.

509
00:31:17,259 --> 00:31:19,637
But the French will come to America and say, this is the New World, and

510
00:31:19,637 --> 00:31:22,347
guess what? We get to do whatever we want. So if we want to grow

511
00:31:22,347 --> 00:31:25,224
Cabernet somewhere, we can just grow it. And if we want to grow Pinot somewhere,

512
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,776
we can just grow it. But are you nostalgic for this AOP

513
00:31:28,776 --> 00:31:32,614
system and that it has protections of the character of

514
00:31:32,614 --> 00:31:36,046
our regions? I think for me,

515
00:31:36,755 --> 00:31:40,203
I don't know if I'm nostalgic for that in particular.

516
00:31:40,982 --> 00:31:44,811
I am, I envy sometimes folks anywhere in any

517
00:31:44,843 --> 00:31:48,351
corner of the globe who put an emphasis

518
00:31:49,368 --> 00:31:53,119
on growing things where they're meant to be grown, on producing things

519
00:31:53,296 --> 00:31:57,095
in a very natural kind of— the hyphenate

520
00:31:57,159 --> 00:32:00,638
farm-to-table, I think, has been used to the point where it doesn't mean anything anymore.

521
00:32:00,750 --> 00:32:04,004
And a colleague of mine once said, he's like, I mean, it's always a farm.

522
00:32:04,132 --> 00:32:06,633
It just might not be a farm you like. And I was like, I think

523
00:32:06,697 --> 00:32:10,400
that's a very strong edit. That's a good one. But no, so, you

524
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:14,119
know, I think that— so I'm envious of any

525
00:32:14,472 --> 00:32:17,711
place, any community, any, you know, anyone who

526
00:32:18,464 --> 00:32:21,751
puts a strong, who puts a lot of

527
00:32:22,729 --> 00:32:25,887
emphasis on where things are grown and why and how.

528
00:32:26,978 --> 00:32:30,665
So I think for me, that's what's so interesting about a system like

529
00:32:30,826 --> 00:32:34,545
what they have in France and Spain. And, you know, they have it in

530
00:32:34,593 --> 00:32:37,527
Martinique for rum. Like there's all sorts of ways to kind of

531
00:32:38,585 --> 00:32:42,417
make sure you're making things in a traditional way. The tricky thing

532
00:32:42,529 --> 00:32:45,976
there is like who, who's the governing body, who decides what's

533
00:32:45,976 --> 00:32:49,502
important and what's not. Like, and I think that's where I'm like, I don't quite

534
00:32:49,887 --> 00:32:53,461
envy the system. I like the mindset, right? Like, I

535
00:32:53,493 --> 00:32:56,843
worry the system can be exclusionary,

536
00:32:57,917 --> 00:33:00,802
whereas the mindset I think is available to all of us.

537
00:33:02,164 --> 00:33:06,011
There's a book, The 10 Restaurants That Changed America.

538
00:33:06,876 --> 00:33:10,274
Oh yeah. Dr. Friedman. And he talked, and it's

539
00:33:10,338 --> 00:33:14,171
fascinating stories. None of the restaurants you'd expect, like

540
00:33:14,171 --> 00:33:17,668
McDonald's isn't mentioned. Restaurants like Le Pavillon, which

541
00:33:17,717 --> 00:33:21,037
started in New York after the

542
00:33:21,246 --> 00:33:24,583
1939 or '36 World's Fair and,

543
00:33:25,241 --> 00:33:28,593
you know, became probably the institution that

544
00:33:29,107 --> 00:33:32,845
started the food cuisine of America, the change of

545
00:33:32,941 --> 00:33:36,775
cuisine in America. But he also cites Howard Johnson's.

546
00:33:37,112 --> 00:33:40,856
You're so young, that you may not even know. Howard Johnson's

547
00:33:40,905 --> 00:33:44,256
was, you know, a coast-to-coast hotel chain, motor

548
00:33:44,499 --> 00:33:48,129
lodge, but it also had restaurants. So you were guaranteed the

549
00:33:48,129 --> 00:33:51,709
same character hamburger in Los Angeles as you were in

550
00:33:51,870 --> 00:33:55,491
Illinois or New York. And it's also the

551
00:33:55,491 --> 00:33:58,914
reason why maybe American food

552
00:34:00,503 --> 00:34:04,330
designations sort of got blurred. Right. And maybe

553
00:34:04,330 --> 00:34:07,744
because we built highways and we could go And we could be

554
00:34:07,744 --> 00:34:10,632
comfortable. Well, here's another way to put it. I went to

555
00:34:10,953 --> 00:34:14,595
Pennsylvania once with a software engineer back in an earlier career,

556
00:34:15,284 --> 00:34:19,119
and he wanted to go to Denny's. I'm like, we're in like Amish country.

557
00:34:19,199 --> 00:34:22,681
Why do you want to go to Denny's? You want to have a

558
00:34:22,809 --> 00:34:25,408
patty melt? We could have had some cool local cuisine, you know?

559
00:34:26,595 --> 00:34:30,061
But do you see that coming back? Do you see in

560
00:34:30,510 --> 00:34:34,169
your travels with the Food Network, do you see regional

561
00:34:34,217 --> 00:34:37,736
cuisine is sort of making its way back into the American

562
00:34:38,559 --> 00:34:42,364
households? First of all, I love that you were traveling with someone who's like,

563
00:34:42,445 --> 00:34:45,435
I just need a Grand Slam breakfast. It's the only thing that will sate me.

564
00:34:45,484 --> 00:34:47,271
I just absolutely love that.

565
00:34:49,177 --> 00:34:52,637
But no, you know, I do think that

566
00:34:53,138 --> 00:34:56,339
there is— I'm very enthusiastic about the generation

567
00:34:57,406 --> 00:35:00,784
that's coming up right now, the Gen Z consumers. I think they're just very

568
00:35:00,816 --> 00:35:04,285
savvy. I think there's a real movement toward

569
00:35:04,285 --> 00:35:07,701
exactly what you're saying to being like, okay, if I'm in Amish country, where should

570
00:35:07,797 --> 00:35:11,583
I go that's only in Amish country? And I think that for me,

571
00:35:11,647 --> 00:35:15,432
that gets me really excited. You know, the children are our future. No,

572
00:35:15,576 --> 00:35:18,624
that gets me really excited to see— Oh, we're in trouble.

573
00:35:19,281 --> 00:35:22,713
Yeah, I know. That gets me very excited to see, you know, to see

574
00:35:22,713 --> 00:35:26,547
consumers becoming so savvy, to see people being so

575
00:35:26,659 --> 00:35:30,268
open. As I said, I do think, you know, what you're touching on

576
00:35:30,268 --> 00:35:33,975
with Howard Johnson's And what we were saying, or what I was

577
00:35:33,975 --> 00:35:36,254
saying earlier about industrialized

578
00:35:37,313 --> 00:35:40,861
agriculture, they came from— I don't think it's a

579
00:35:40,861 --> 00:35:44,537
mystery that it was really hard to get safe-to-consume meat.

580
00:35:44,633 --> 00:35:47,956
I get why we standardized things in the last century. I just am like, well,

581
00:35:48,085 --> 00:35:51,343
we're past that now, right? We can move into a new era. And if

582
00:35:51,713 --> 00:35:55,292
it's one where Gen Z is leading me to dine in the most

583
00:35:55,292 --> 00:35:58,776
local establishment possible, sign me up. I'm there. I think that's a

584
00:35:58,824 --> 00:36:02,660
really I think that's an exciting aspect of the direction

585
00:36:02,870 --> 00:36:06,659
that food is going. You think? Because, you know, I think I

586
00:36:06,659 --> 00:36:10,328
was talking to Jonathan Waxman. He was, I forgot the number he quoted,

587
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:14,141
like 90% of people drink, you know, eat fast food when they go out. And

588
00:36:14,141 --> 00:36:17,624
so that obviously is very non-regional

589
00:36:18,275 --> 00:36:22,102
and nor exquisite. But coupled with this idea

590
00:36:22,102 --> 00:36:25,727
we were talking about, you have an article about Burgundy on your on

591
00:36:25,775 --> 00:36:28,700
your website and Jason Palmeyer,

592
00:36:29,471 --> 00:36:32,460
who tried to buy a property in Burgundy, got

593
00:36:32,910 --> 00:36:36,252
nixed because it's very difficult to do. But he

594
00:36:36,252 --> 00:36:39,748
says that all oenophiles end up in Burgundy. My

595
00:36:40,509 --> 00:36:44,292
philosophy is, is because the complexity is

596
00:36:44,954 --> 00:36:48,198
easier to feel than in a Cabernet or at Bordeaux.

597
00:36:48,908 --> 00:36:52,039
It's crazy good in the sense of

598
00:36:52,878 --> 00:36:56,347
You know, massaging the wines and the palate feel of a

599
00:36:56,347 --> 00:36:59,751
properly made Burgundy. But I'm wondering if that—

600
00:37:01,228 --> 00:37:04,712
Jason's comment about every oenophile ends up in Burgundy trying to

601
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:08,550
figure out what's going on there, that if food doesn't have that same sort

602
00:37:08,550 --> 00:37:12,114
of path where when we start educating palates on

603
00:37:12,387 --> 00:37:16,160
more complex food or even simple food like potatoes from Georgia that are

604
00:37:16,177 --> 00:37:19,866
properly grown, that we start educating the palate

605
00:37:19,866 --> 00:37:23,633
about what, what could be. Oh, I love that. I

606
00:37:23,633 --> 00:37:27,400
think that's super interesting. You know, I, when I went to, I went to

607
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:30,750
culinary school in New York and it was a French culinary, it's the French Culinary

608
00:37:30,750 --> 00:37:34,229
Institute, which since has merged with ICE,

609
00:37:34,293 --> 00:37:37,980
I-C-E, and which is the Institute of

610
00:37:37,980 --> 00:37:41,763
Culinary Education. And when I was there, a lot of my classmates were

611
00:37:41,971 --> 00:37:45,722
international students and it was super fascinating to learn the ways

612
00:37:45,835 --> 00:37:49,169
that they had been kind of folks from other corners of the world had

613
00:37:49,842 --> 00:37:53,497
had been brought up to approach kind of what you're talking about, ingredients,

614
00:37:53,545 --> 00:37:56,960
not even food, not even preparation, but the individual ingredients. And so I do think

615
00:37:56,960 --> 00:38:00,406
there is something to that, right? If we focus on what things taste like when

616
00:38:00,406 --> 00:38:03,869
they're grown in a certain way, and then how you can prepare them so that

617
00:38:03,869 --> 00:38:07,700
they taste very differently, I think there's— that's really exciting too. That's

618
00:38:07,700 --> 00:38:10,569
a really, really great, smart,

619
00:38:11,018 --> 00:38:14,721
sustainable direction to take our attentions. And that's something that

620
00:38:14,769 --> 00:38:18,216
also I think we— I do see it happening. I do see people

621
00:38:18,216 --> 00:38:21,967
becoming more interested in ingredients. Sometimes in an almost

622
00:38:21,967 --> 00:38:25,500
ridiculous way. Like, you know, people zeroing in on something that I'm like,

623
00:38:25,901 --> 00:38:29,610
okay, I mean, if that's the size flake salt you need, then that's the size

624
00:38:29,610 --> 00:38:32,660
flake salt you need. But, but no, I do. I think that there is a,

625
00:38:33,222 --> 00:38:36,674
that sort of, that sort of faddishness. I'll take that

626
00:38:36,674 --> 00:38:40,190
overcorrection, right? Like, I think that might be a pendulum swing. And then maybe we'll

627
00:38:40,206 --> 00:38:43,947
come to the center where we are just kind of treating ingredients as

628
00:38:44,060 --> 00:38:47,881
the, like, interesting multifaceted things that they are. And then going

629
00:38:47,913 --> 00:38:51,250
from there, as opposed to being like, I need everything to taste the exactly like

630
00:38:51,250 --> 00:38:54,690
this one dish my mom made, go, right? Like, I think

631
00:38:54,690 --> 00:38:58,190
it's a more, I don't know, it's a more sustainable, it's also just more

632
00:38:58,190 --> 00:39:01,750
interesting way to nourish ourselves, to sustain

633
00:39:01,750 --> 00:39:05,210
ourselves. We all gotta eat. So I just think that's a really cool way to

634
00:39:05,210 --> 00:39:08,750
approach it. You know, something so fascinating just triggered a

635
00:39:08,750 --> 00:39:12,570
thought. Have you seen the show Drops

636
00:39:12,570 --> 00:39:16,410
of God? It's on Apple. I haven't yet seen it. I've heard

637
00:39:16,410 --> 00:39:20,110
such great things that I never read the book. I'm dying to, I'm dying

638
00:39:20,848 --> 00:39:23,734
My wife and I binged on it like 2 days. We watched 8 episodes in

639
00:39:23,734 --> 00:39:27,142
2 days. And they're like an hour, you know, so we

640
00:39:27,142 --> 00:39:30,624
were— You prioritized it, you know, you made it a

641
00:39:30,689 --> 00:39:34,106
priority. But they sort of reinforced

642
00:39:34,507 --> 00:39:38,236
something that we've always known, particularly with food and with wine, that the sense

643
00:39:38,348 --> 00:39:41,939
of smell is such a memorable sense as well as taste, but

644
00:39:42,298 --> 00:39:45,575
smell evokes amazing historical sense.

645
00:39:45,624 --> 00:39:49,268
And Having done this for 35 years, you know, I can smell something

646
00:39:49,317 --> 00:39:52,873
that's 15 years ago that I tasted it and I'll remember.

647
00:39:53,418 --> 00:39:56,204
And we were in Paris the trip before last and we went to a,

648
00:39:57,267 --> 00:40:00,923
you know, a tourist bistro and I ordered the quiche. Yes, real men

649
00:40:01,213 --> 00:40:04,846
eat quiche. So, and they put it on the

650
00:40:04,846 --> 00:40:08,350
front of me and I freaked out because I went back about 50 years when

651
00:40:08,382 --> 00:40:11,902
my mom made the same one. Wow. And I just sat there and my wife's

652
00:40:11,982 --> 00:40:15,523
like, what's wrong with you? I said, I cannot believe this historical sort of

653
00:40:15,620 --> 00:40:18,961
ancient nose that I'm picking up and the memory it

654
00:40:18,961 --> 00:40:21,361
evokes. And wine is like that

655
00:40:23,139 --> 00:40:26,923
if it's complex enough. And so last night we were at a

656
00:40:26,923 --> 00:40:30,737
dinner party and the guy was pouring nice wines, you know, Joseph Phelps Cabernet, Stag's

657
00:40:30,737 --> 00:40:34,518
Leap Cabernet. And I, you know, I drank them and

658
00:40:34,518 --> 00:40:37,475
I enjoyed them, but they weren't thought-provoking.

659
00:40:37,686 --> 00:40:41,487
Mm-hmm. Is the popularity of

660
00:40:41,487 --> 00:40:45,302
the Food Network and the shows that it puts on and the, you

661
00:40:45,302 --> 00:40:49,084
know, the hands-on thing, is that, you think it's because there's this

662
00:40:49,084 --> 00:40:52,901
awareness now of good food on the horizon?

663
00:40:54,142 --> 00:40:57,862
Oh, that's so interesting. That's such an interesting question. I do. I mean, I see

664
00:40:57,862 --> 00:41:01,413
just within, you know, the last 20 years, the way that

665
00:41:01,557 --> 00:41:05,284
food culture in the US has evolved is night and day.

666
00:41:05,493 --> 00:41:08,080
It is wild, you know? And so I do think that, you know, kind of

667
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:11,769
what we were saying about younger generations, Right. Like, I do think there's

668
00:41:11,769 --> 00:41:15,010
just a, there's a higher degree of

669
00:41:15,010 --> 00:41:18,796
awareness of food and cooking. And, you know, there was a

670
00:41:18,844 --> 00:41:22,213
time I know that like, within the very recent history, you know,

671
00:41:22,518 --> 00:41:26,000
before the new millennium, there was a time when working in restaurants and being a

672
00:41:26,128 --> 00:41:29,225
cook was not nearly as highly regarded as it is now.

673
00:41:29,818 --> 00:41:33,476
And to anyone who's listening who wants to work in restaurants, please know that

674
00:41:33,669 --> 00:41:37,327
I love restaurants. I think the world, working in restaurants changed my

675
00:41:37,359 --> 00:41:40,730
life. It's really hard work. It's extremely

676
00:41:40,730 --> 00:41:44,530
difficult. Very hard. You're standing, it's hot, the hours are long, it is punishing.

677
00:41:45,510 --> 00:41:48,270
And so like, that's to me, you know, of course we should give these folks

678
00:41:48,270 --> 00:41:51,830
a lot of respect. But, you know, just seeing the ways that

679
00:41:51,830 --> 00:41:55,250
cooking has kind of evolved, and you don't— it doesn't even need to be professional,

680
00:41:55,430 --> 00:41:59,050
seeing the direction that attention has gone toward home

681
00:41:59,050 --> 00:42:02,630
cooks, I think is really important. That's exciting to me. I

682
00:42:02,630 --> 00:42:06,310
see that like within my lifetime, I just see this revolution in terms of the

683
00:42:06,310 --> 00:42:09,935
ways that people think about and approach food. It used to be that if I

684
00:42:09,967 --> 00:42:13,750
wanted to talk about food or ingredients or a restaurant or a recipe,

685
00:42:14,292 --> 00:42:17,388
I had like a set group of friends I could talk about that with. And

686
00:42:17,388 --> 00:42:20,534
now I think almost anyone, like almost anyone will talk to me. You know, there's,

687
00:42:20,777 --> 00:42:24,195
there's just a little bit more of a, of an understanding of food as culture

688
00:42:24,906 --> 00:42:27,218
than I think there used to be. I read,

689
00:42:28,705 --> 00:42:32,439
what is it called? Salt, Heat. Oh, Salt, Fat, Acid,

690
00:42:32,488 --> 00:42:36,301
Heat. I love that book. Yeah. Yeah. It changed so much

691
00:42:36,301 --> 00:42:39,760
of how I look because we cook a lot at the house. And

692
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:43,440
I love, my mom was a great cook and so I just sort of

693
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,900
just sat, I used to sit on the counter, watch my mom cook and discuss

694
00:42:46,900 --> 00:42:50,120
whatever we were discussing. And so it just sort of rubbed off. But boy, you

695
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:53,760
know, those simple techniques, one I'll tell the listeners,

696
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:57,420
hyper-salting water as you're boiling vegetables, it protects the color and

697
00:42:57,420 --> 00:43:01,000
gives it a nice, you know, bright character, but not salty. You know, you don't

698
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:04,160
taste the salt, it just happens to punch things up. But what a great book

699
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:07,962
to help people understand the nuances of

700
00:43:08,811 --> 00:43:12,514
simple changes that make the food just better. Right. I think it's

701
00:43:12,514 --> 00:43:16,361
important. Absolutely. And, you know, breaking food down into elements like

702
00:43:16,361 --> 00:43:20,193
that is— it's funny that I remember in— I can't remember if it's in

703
00:43:20,193 --> 00:43:23,543
the intro to her book or in the Netflix special that she had

704
00:43:24,216 --> 00:43:27,567
where it's like there's one episode for each, for salt, for fat, for acid, for

705
00:43:27,567 --> 00:43:31,125
heat. And I can't remember where she said it, but she— Sami

706
00:43:31,125 --> 00:43:34,620
Nosrat, the woman who wrote the book, talks about how she almost couldn't believe that

707
00:43:34,636 --> 00:43:37,778
no one had done this before. And I think that's very funny, right? But like

708
00:43:37,826 --> 00:43:41,537
breaking food down into those elements, into thinking about it in those 4 elements,

709
00:43:42,259 --> 00:43:45,359
it's such a smart way to approach food. It's such a helpful way for home

710
00:43:45,456 --> 00:43:48,652
cooks. If you're starting out cooking and you're like, what about this feels—

711
00:43:49,230 --> 00:43:52,620
why don't I love what this tastes like? I mean, the answer is often a

712
00:43:52,620 --> 00:43:56,025
squeeze of lemon, a little bit of olive oil or butter or

713
00:43:56,250 --> 00:43:59,992
some salt, right? Salt. Like it's often as easy as that. And

714
00:44:00,089 --> 00:44:03,670
to kind of empower people in that way is to me really

715
00:44:03,927 --> 00:44:07,445
like, I don't know, that's one of the things that I thought For me, made

716
00:44:07,478 --> 00:44:11,317
that book and that special so, so cool. It

717
00:44:11,317 --> 00:44:15,012
is chemistry. I mean, my mom used to say it's chemistry. Right,

718
00:44:15,093 --> 00:44:18,804
exactly. It's chemistry. So, you know, you're right. You know,

719
00:44:18,884 --> 00:44:22,579
it's funny when we cook and we have guests or

720
00:44:22,579 --> 00:44:26,371
friends, that's part of the discussion besides the wine, which is always part of the

721
00:44:26,371 --> 00:44:29,616
discussion. It's always like, oh, what did you do here? What did you do? And

722
00:44:29,616 --> 00:44:32,910
there's this, there's an Asian man on

723
00:44:33,422 --> 00:44:36,308
Instagram or TikTok, I can't remember, who's a

724
00:44:36,628 --> 00:44:40,427
fascinating, quick recipes. He

725
00:44:40,459 --> 00:44:44,258
puts what the ingredients are, he shows you what to do with them. And I

726
00:44:44,258 --> 00:44:48,025
made this chicken dish for my wife's friends. They were doing a charity event

727
00:44:48,025 --> 00:44:50,894
at the house and they needed dinner. So I made this thing, it was so

728
00:44:50,975 --> 00:44:54,469
good. And they thought I was a genius. And all I did is literally,

729
00:44:54,741 --> 00:44:58,572
all I did was follow my phone. I hid my phone so

730
00:44:58,572 --> 00:45:02,132
they couldn't see it, you know? Totally. It's in there. No,

731
00:45:02,500 --> 00:45:06,028
I think that's, you know, that's something else that I think, you know, I know

732
00:45:06,044 --> 00:45:09,508
it's really annoying to be so positive all the time, but I do think that's

733
00:45:09,508 --> 00:45:13,228
something else that gets me really excited about this current era is

734
00:45:13,565 --> 00:45:17,205
there are all of these techniques and perspectives and points of view

735
00:45:17,333 --> 00:45:20,845
that are available to us just in the magic antisocial

736
00:45:20,877 --> 00:45:24,645
box of our phone. Like, that is a really, really, like, interesting thing. And there's

737
00:45:25,030 --> 00:45:27,579
a lot of pros and cons, but it does open

738
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,645
Yeah. If you be disciplined, I can only watch TikTok for

739
00:45:33,678 --> 00:45:37,493
half an hour at a time. No, I'm kidding. You

740
00:45:37,654 --> 00:45:41,400
used the word enophile in an article, and it's an interesting

741
00:45:41,513 --> 00:45:44,821
word because it's sort of intimidating. In fact, I tried out for

742
00:45:47,945 --> 00:45:51,487
You Bet Your Life, which was an old Groucho Marx show,

743
00:45:52,067 --> 00:45:54,573
and you're supposed to introduce yourself and say who you are. And I said, I'm

744
00:45:54,623 --> 00:45:58,175
an enophile, thinking that would stimulate interest. I didn't get on the show. So,

745
00:45:58,963 --> 00:46:02,562
but oenophile being somebody who studies wine, of course. And

746
00:46:02,642 --> 00:46:06,225
then I started thinking, you don't have to be an oenophile

747
00:46:06,353 --> 00:46:10,193
to enjoy a good glass of wine, right? For

748
00:46:10,193 --> 00:46:13,873
sure. And I also find that when somebody does

749
00:46:13,969 --> 00:46:17,472
have a good glass of wine, what you and I, you know, as wine people

750
00:46:17,745 --> 00:46:21,537
sort of get a chance to taste, they always say, wow,

751
00:46:21,922 --> 00:46:25,559
this is really good. It's getting away from the store

752
00:46:25,688 --> 00:46:28,913
market. And I think to myself, okay, they don't, they don't,

753
00:46:29,334 --> 00:46:32,958
can't describe the complexity. They don't need to be able to describe the complexity. They

754
00:46:32,958 --> 00:46:35,784
don't need to describe the weight of the balance or any of those things that

755
00:46:35,784 --> 00:46:39,308
go on. They can just realize that there's

756
00:46:39,357 --> 00:46:40,737
something special about this wine.

757
00:46:42,661 --> 00:46:44,802
Absolutely. And I think food's the same way.

758
00:46:46,570 --> 00:46:49,947
Absolutely. No, I do think that there is, you know, You kind of can't miss

759
00:46:50,140 --> 00:46:53,974
quality, you know? You can, you can like some things more than others, but

760
00:46:54,070 --> 00:46:57,808
when something is really well made, whether it's a wine or a dish or well

761
00:46:57,936 --> 00:47:01,610
produced, whether it's a, you know, a grape or another ingredient, you

762
00:47:01,610 --> 00:47:05,156
taste it. Yeah, right. You know, I don't— I might not yet have the vocabulary

763
00:47:05,236 --> 00:47:08,877
for certain things. There's all sorts of, you know, I'm not an expert in

764
00:47:09,792 --> 00:47:12,824
shellfish. And so like, there's all sorts of shellfish that I'm always like, okay, so

765
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:14,845
I gotta taste the difference between these clams. Like, I'm gonna have a hard time.

766
00:47:14,942 --> 00:47:18,554
Yeah, that's right. They can tell you. Yeah. Yeah,

767
00:47:18,634 --> 00:47:22,166
yeah. And you're like, okay, so this one grows exactly where? It likes what kind

768
00:47:22,230 --> 00:47:25,666
of sand? You know, I think that, you know, I think that there's all sorts

769
00:47:25,698 --> 00:47:29,150
of ways to, like, you can kind of get into food and

770
00:47:29,150 --> 00:47:32,971
beverage in a lot of ways and you don't have to know all of

771
00:47:33,003 --> 00:47:36,374
the answers. You know, I taste certain wines from certain

772
00:47:36,374 --> 00:47:40,211
regions and I might know that people are going to say

773
00:47:40,211 --> 00:47:43,904
leather, cocoa, or whatever as like tasting notes, but that doesn't

774
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:47,350
mean I'm not tasting the same wine as you, you know what I mean? Like,

775
00:47:47,350 --> 00:47:50,430
that doesn't mean that— and also doesn't mean that I might not be flummoxed by

776
00:47:50,430 --> 00:47:53,950
the wine and be like, I don't taste cocoa or leather, because sometimes you

777
00:47:53,950 --> 00:47:56,990
don't. And so you can get it your own way. I think that there's, you

778
00:47:56,990 --> 00:48:00,790
know, there's absolutely the best ways to get into wine

779
00:48:00,790 --> 00:48:04,550
is to just drink it and like, problem solved. No, the best

780
00:48:04,550 --> 00:48:07,870
way to get into wine is to get, you know, to get exposed to as

781
00:48:07,870 --> 00:48:11,030
much as possible. Just do it. Yeah. Yeah. So like, there's no, you know, there's,

782
00:48:11,030 --> 00:48:14,370
there's no, there's no shame in whichever way you do it, whether you go and

783
00:48:14,370 --> 00:48:17,760
you buy like like a $10 bottle, you go to a restaurant and you taste

784
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,780
a glass. Like, there's just so many ways that you can. And like, that to

785
00:48:20,780 --> 00:48:24,440
me is the best way to get ourselves to that Alain Ducasse palate where

786
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:28,140
we're like, was it harvested in

787
00:48:28,140 --> 00:48:31,720
late October or was it harvested in mid-October? You know what I mean?

788
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:35,620
I want to get there. But I think that to me, that's

789
00:48:35,620 --> 00:48:39,040
the best way. It's just tasting. You know, I didn't finish the hearts. I don't

790
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:42,880
know. I asked the question. I never followed up. The Cups of gold, God

791
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,960
thing. What it comes down to, and I won't tell the end of it, I

792
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:48,840
won't tell you the whole story because it's very fun and very dramatic and the

793
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:52,600
whole thing. But the reason what you just said,

794
00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:56,080
which is not everybody can describe this, nobody can describe that, nobody's going to taste

795
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,740
100,000 wines like I've been privileged to do. So you, that

796
00:48:59,740 --> 00:49:02,980
experience, you know, goes a long way to do those descriptions, but

797
00:49:02,980 --> 00:49:06,720
it's not really the point. The point is understanding what is a good

798
00:49:06,720 --> 00:49:09,000
glass of wine. And it comes down, a lot of it comes down to the

799
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:11,460
story. You know, a lot of it comes down to how it got in this

800
00:49:11,460 --> 00:49:15,309
glass. And Michel Rolland, who's,

801
00:49:15,341 --> 00:49:19,147
you know, one of the great enologists of the world, you know, his comment generally

802
00:49:19,243 --> 00:49:23,033
is it takes 100 years for somebody to understand a

803
00:49:23,033 --> 00:49:26,502
vineyard because all the variables that go into

804
00:49:26,646 --> 00:49:30,002
making, forget the making part of the wine, just the growing of the grapes,

805
00:49:30,484 --> 00:49:34,194
you know, the temperature changes and the types of weather and the climate and the

806
00:49:34,194 --> 00:49:37,919
terroir and all those things that go into a grape, you know, all

807
00:49:37,984 --> 00:49:40,730
the macerations, even 100 years, 'cause you only get one time, you only get one

808
00:49:40,778 --> 00:49:44,393
chance a year. That's the part That's so funny. That's just

809
00:49:44,393 --> 00:49:47,896
interesting to me. But the Hearts, the Drops of God

810
00:49:48,008 --> 00:49:51,754
story ends up being about the story

811
00:49:52,012 --> 00:49:55,249
and it's kind of fascinating that way. And this is what I'm about.

812
00:49:55,974 --> 00:49:59,614
The show's about is the stories behind people like you.

813
00:50:00,081 --> 00:50:03,636
The stories behind winemakers that are trying to make a difference is

814
00:50:03,669 --> 00:50:07,512
what people should understand. At this lunch I

815
00:50:07,512 --> 00:50:10,377
went to the other day, he poured 2, and I'm not saying this because I

816
00:50:10,470 --> 00:50:14,192
I think, because I've never really do this blind tasting. And I

817
00:50:14,225 --> 00:50:17,378
see you were a judge for the Wine Spirits Competition.

818
00:50:18,970 --> 00:50:22,523
But I suppose after literally 100,000 wines in 35

819
00:50:22,556 --> 00:50:26,353
years, every Tuesday of tasting wine, something,

820
00:50:27,145 --> 00:50:30,718
something stuck. I feel confident

821
00:50:30,718 --> 00:50:34,452
something stuck. So it's a bunch of

822
00:50:34,452 --> 00:50:37,464
guys and they're all, like I said, they're trying to outdo each other every month.

823
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:40,900
with who's going to spend the most money and to do the vertical. And this

824
00:50:40,900 --> 00:50:44,520
guy brought 2 whites and they're all talking about their thing. It's from

825
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:48,120
California, it's a Chardonnay. There's obviously the one was older than the other, the color

826
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:51,420
and all that. And I was a little, I didn't want to be arrogant. I

827
00:50:51,420 --> 00:50:53,560
didn't want to be obnoxious and I didn't want to be the guy at the

828
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:56,000
table because I've done all this. So I just sat there and I don't know

829
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,640
who they are, but I said one thing. I said, this is Marsanne

830
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:02,710
and Roussanne blend and it's from La Rome. That's all I said.

831
00:51:03,380 --> 00:51:06,444
And they continued to talk and nobody agreed with me. And then And the host

832
00:51:06,444 --> 00:51:09,382
says, it's Marsanne Roussanne from the Rhône.

833
00:51:10,217 --> 00:51:13,926
Now, I'm not saying that because I've never really done blind tasting like

834
00:51:13,974 --> 00:51:17,602
that formally, but what happened was, and I

835
00:51:17,602 --> 00:51:21,246
think this is for the listener, was I just started turning in my

836
00:51:21,278 --> 00:51:24,906
head what it wasn't. It clearly wasn't California

837
00:51:24,906 --> 00:51:28,326
Chardonnay. It clearly wasn't over-oaked. It clearly wasn't South American. It clearly

838
00:51:28,358 --> 00:51:32,115
wasn't Spain. How do I know that? Because I've tasted so many of them

839
00:51:32,115 --> 00:51:35,786
that I the character there. I just landed in the Rome because

840
00:51:35,898 --> 00:51:38,752
that's what sent me there with deduction.

841
00:51:39,489 --> 00:51:43,000
Right. And it came from just experiencing

842
00:51:43,913 --> 00:51:47,744
and trying things. Right. Like you said, how are

843
00:51:47,744 --> 00:51:51,223
you going to have— how do you know that a clam, you know, from whether

844
00:51:51,223 --> 00:51:53,692
it's from the East Coast or the West Coast until you've tasted them and you

845
00:51:53,692 --> 00:51:57,427
say, oh yeah, I get it now. Right. Anyway. Right. Right. Also,

846
00:51:57,459 --> 00:52:00,040
I got to get in on your friend group. This group of

847
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:03,069
people. Yeah. Well, no,

848
00:52:03,614 --> 00:52:07,420
I'm probably not reinvited. Yeah. This guy ruined our blind

849
00:52:07,420 --> 00:52:11,000
tasting. I don't know if I want to spring for like $5,000,

850
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:14,140
$6,000 worth of wine that

851
00:52:14,140 --> 00:52:17,560
night, but it's, it was super fun. I've got a really good $21

852
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:21,200
bottle right here. Yeah. Yes. Hey, I

853
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,940
earned a living for 35 years selling wines for $15 that were, you know,

854
00:52:24,940 --> 00:52:28,560
there's a lot of good ones out there. There's so much value. There

855
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:32,340
is. There is. There's probably many wines. You know, we're almost on an hour, Emily.

856
00:52:32,340 --> 00:52:35,300
It's been really fascinating. We have so much more to talk about. And I hope

857
00:52:35,300 --> 00:52:39,060
we can do it again. When, if you're out here, for

858
00:52:39,060 --> 00:52:42,100
sure, if you come to Los Angeles, I have a beautiful studio. You're seeing part

859
00:52:42,100 --> 00:52:45,340
of it. This is, by the way, this is my father in

860
00:52:45,340 --> 00:52:49,040
1975. And that's me in

861
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:52,360
1975 in front of my dad's wine shop. Get

862
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:55,520
out. Oh my gosh. What a lovely mural. That's super

863
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:59,140
cool. This lady— Or it's not a mural, I guess. Is it a photograph that

864
00:52:59,140 --> 00:53:02,810
you— No, it's a painting. It's a painting a woman did. With a

865
00:53:02,810 --> 00:53:06,410
local artist who's really talented, obviously. And she just took a

866
00:53:06,410 --> 00:53:10,010
picture and she just like, you know, was doing this and made it work. How

867
00:53:10,010 --> 00:53:13,570
cool. But fascinating conversation and I wish you luck and I

868
00:53:13,570 --> 00:53:17,150
hope if we're out in New York, my daughter is no longer in Manhattan. She's

869
00:53:17,150 --> 00:53:20,830
in Potsdam. Oh, nice. Not too far. As north

870
00:53:20,830 --> 00:53:24,610
New York as you can get. Not too far. Yeah.

871
00:53:24,610 --> 00:53:27,970
The last question, that's what I didn't actually want to ask this. What is it?

872
00:53:28,140 --> 00:53:31,520
What's your daily routine then with it? Are you at the office every day with

873
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:35,260
the Food Network, or are we writing things every day? What are we doing? I

874
00:53:35,260 --> 00:53:38,780
go into the office 3 days a week. The other 2, I work from

875
00:53:38,780 --> 00:53:42,580
home. I think that perhaps much in the way that I remember

876
00:53:42,580 --> 00:53:46,320
I heard you say on a previous episode that, like, it sounds really glamorous that

877
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:49,740
you work in wine, but, like, it's 1 day a week that you're tasting. It's

878
00:53:49,740 --> 00:53:53,210
not every day you're surrounded by bottles and glasses. Hey, you were listening.

879
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:56,960
Right. Much in the same way, I think that it sounds really glamorous, but

880
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:00,685
a lot of times it's just me hunched over a laptop. Or

881
00:54:00,733 --> 00:54:03,955
in my kitchen, like, you know, do I'm working on recipes, like, you know, sweating.

882
00:54:04,035 --> 00:54:07,449
So I, it's, it's a little bit of both. I do some work in, um,

883
00:54:07,530 --> 00:54:11,297
in kitchens doing recipe development and I do some work on, on laptops

884
00:54:11,297 --> 00:54:14,999
writing. And then about once a month I go into Wine Enthusiast to taste there.

885
00:54:16,121 --> 00:54:19,904
I'm going to call you separately and ask, consult with you because

886
00:54:19,904 --> 00:54:23,591
I've been dying to build a demonstration kitchen in this building here. Oh,

887
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:26,925
how cool. And, uh, have access to all kinds of cool stuff.

888
00:54:27,664 --> 00:54:31,243
And so when that occurs, we'll get your input. I

889
00:54:31,339 --> 00:54:34,694
would be honored. Thank you. Thank you for today. This was a lot of fun

890
00:54:34,806 --> 00:54:38,337
and we'll do it again. And best of luck the rest of the week.

891
00:54:39,204 --> 00:54:42,398
Absolutely. And if you do, look us up when you're out in town in Los

892
00:54:42,510 --> 00:54:46,137
Angeles the next time out. Will do. Thank you so much for having me.

893
00:54:47,389 --> 00:54:47,614
Cheers.