Larry O' Brien

00:00We are so excited to introduce a new sponsor to Nashville Restaurant Radio, All Star Fire Protection. These guys are your local solution to all your fire suppression needs. All Star Fire opened in Nashville 34 years ago and they continue to grow. They're now serving Chattanooga, Knoxville and Bowling Green. They have over 130 team members and they got 40 trucks out on the roads at all time to service and you know you know what I love just when I was talking with them and I said hey man what makes you different I get your local you you do all the things but what makes you different and he said you know what makes us different is that we actually care because I actually care these people are small business owners this is their life and we're a small business as well and we understand what they're going through and we take that approach we actually care about the business we want them to be ready in the case of a fire which is why they offer trainings they will go and they will sit with your staff and say hey this is how you use a fire extinguisher how many people out there actually know how to use a fire extinguisher they want to make sure that you're getting the most out of it they're building those relationships and that is why I am proud to introduce All Star Fire Protection to you. You can get a hold of Rob Bowman you should call him today his number is 615-431-3760 that's 615-431-3760. I am so excited today to introduce all of y'all to a brand new linen option here in Nashville. Ladies and gentlemen introducing Tri-Tex Services. They opened in 1989 as an independently owned and operated textile linen service company serving Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville are their key markets that they are in. That is what is in luck for you because they service multiple industries including food and beverage, medical and industrial. They supply a wide variety of products. We got restroom supplies, all types of mats, matting, wet mops, dust mops, towels,

02:04aprons, uniforms, table linens, first aid, just to name a few. I mean their goal at Tri-Tex Services is to combine customer service with a quality product at competitive pricing and exceed our customers expectations every single day. That's not something you hear from a linen company. They're trying to exceed your expectations every day and I love that. Their company's slogan is the difference is our service because they take pride in customer service. They know what that's what they're known for. So go to tritexservices.com and get a free quote right there in the center of the page. Click to get a free quote or give them a call 888-761-3238. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. I'm going to be joined with Crystal DeLuna-Bogan here shortly but on the intro today is only me but I think this is the last time. Last time you're going to get only me on an intro because next week we will have a brand new intro. Yes, new intro, a little bit of a new format, some fun things going on. I'm so excited to have Crystal here. She's bringing so much energy into the show and it's so fun having a different perspective around and my creative juices are just flowing in different directions and I absolutely love it. So you'll get a lot more opinion and a lot more conversation towards the beginning and the end of the show and then we'll have an interview in the middle. It'll be great and today's interview is going to be with a gentleman named Larry O'Brien. Larry O'Brien is a

04:08master sommelier, a master sommelier. He is the master sommelier at Kendall Jackson Winery. Yes, the Chardonnay we all know and love and have known and loved for a really, really long time. Kendall Jackson Chardonnay has had the number one Chardonnay for like 15 years in a row or 20 years in a row. Something insane but they do a lot. They do an absolute lot and this guy is the first master sommelier we've ever had on the show and a master sommelier is there's like 300 of them in the entire world of nine billion people. So they're very rare. You don't come across a master psalm very often. There's way more James Beardward winners than master psalms and this is cool. I was like geeking out that this guy decided to come in. We hosted a wine dinner at Maribol where he was there and he was talking his Chardonnays and cabs and the pinos and I said, hey man, what are you doing tomorrow? Would you like to come talk on the podcast? And he goes, yeah, let's do it and he was staying at the hotel right next to the studio so it made a lot of sense.

05:13So yeah, so it's funny. We get in here and we do this and I'm so excited to share this episode and we're just going to jump right in because my intro is what it is. I do want to say leading up to this next week, it is CMA week and our prayers go to everybody who works downtown. All of our brethren, we are with you and send some people our way. We'd love to have them and get out there, make all the money you can and stay safe. Right now, let's jump in. Larry O'Brien. Super excited today to welcome in Larry O'Brien and Larry is the master sommelier for Kendall Jackson. Indeed. Holy cow. Yeah, for a poor old truck driver from Youngstown, not a bad opportunity. Larry, what's the official term? Should we call you like, sir, mister? Like, what do you call a master sommelier? What do you prefer? How about lair?

06:19Lair. I feel like there should be some kind of, you know. Sadly, that's one of the challenges with the court of master sommeliers and the aristocratic peripheral reference. It should be like, sir, Larry. It's very English in its origin. It was founded in 67, the organization. It in some ways grew out of the Institute of Masters of Wine, because Masters of Wine, while brilliant human beings, very academically oriented, very trade and business oriented, production oriented, they really didn't have a way to connect to the places that were beginning to have great influence on the sale of the product. Restaurants. Yeah. And the sommelier vocation has been around for, since the 19th century, begins to get more formalized as we get into the 20th century. And by the mid 20th century, it's a part of super formal fancy restaurant service in Europe. And they realized that that was the connection to the consumer, that the Institute of Masters of Wine weren't necessarily directly connected to the consumer. They were more trade oriented. And the court of master sommeliers grew to be that connection. And then eventually founded its own organization. And the court of master sommeliers was formally founded in 1967. And as it's English, there's a lot of this, you know, to the manor born, Doughton Abbey. I hate all that stuff. You can say shit. Can I say shit? I despise Doughton Abbey. I despise to the manor born. God damn it. We're here in America where anybody can become anything they want to be. And here I am as a master sommelier, but you don't need to reference me as anything other than Larry the wine guy. You've earned it. Yeah. Larry the wine guy. I kind of felt that way. So how this came about, Larry hosted, we hosted Larry last

08:25night at Maribor for a wine dinner, Kendall Jackson wine dinner. Lovely dinner. It was a wonderful time. I thought we had a great, I think the guest enjoyed it. The food was delicious. I didn't try the wine, but it was, I smelled some of it. It was, it was beautiful. And I learned that there was a master sommelier coming to our restaurant and I went, who has his email address? And our sommelier, she gave me her email address and said, Hey, do you want to come on my podcast the next day after this thing? And he goes, sure, why not? So here we are. How much trouble could I possibly get in a Nashville talking about wine? Yeah. Brandon has no agenda, so we never know where it's going to go. I've never had a master sommelier. I did my court of masters level one in 2003. So we're both guild members here. It's been a long time since I practiced or anything. That's it. It's difficult. So I want to tell people what it means to be a master sommelier. So level one for me, level one, I did mine at the Beau Rivage, like I said, 2003. And it was a two day class. We learned, I thought I was hot shit. I knew about Napa Valley and I knew about California and I knew about some wines. The California section of level one was like nine minutes.

09:43And it's like 19 hours on France and Italy and Portugal and all the old world stuff. And then you're kind of like, ah, they make wine in California too. And you're like, oh shit, well, that's what I know. I thought I knew something about wine. And I was scared to death because there's 35 people in the class and like 12 people passed. And I was the last name that was called Doug Frost. I am here largely because of how impressed I was the first time I met Doug Frost because I fancy myself a bit of a public speaker. And if I have a pinky nails worth of Doug's charisma and ability, I'm doing okay. And Doug is one of the most brilliant humans in the world. He handed me the pen. He was the one teaching the class I did. He handed me my pen and the whatever. And so that's level one. Okay. I was like, look at me. I'm a level one sommelier. I would say I wanted to go to level two. What do you have to do there? To your point, level one is two days of lectures, two days of tastings, approximately 21 wines.

10:48And it's very different now than it was then. We now, obviously, because of COVID, there is a virtual piece. You don't have to go in person. You can do the academic and lecture thing and then do the tasting separately, but you have to do them both and pass the 70 question quiz, get 42 correct to pass. It's a pass fail. We are pass fail all the way until we get to the master exam where 75%, you get an additional 15% of excellence in order to get over the bar. Level two is not a class or a course. It's an exam. You show up at approximately 730 in the morning. By 8 o'clock, you're in the room. After some instructions, you have a quiz that's worth approximately 70 points. And that quiz is no longer just multiple choice. There's short answer. There's matching. There's images that need described. It's a much more difficult exam or quiz because it's not just multiple choice. The level of difficulty of questions is significantly greater. Your understanding or your knowledge of Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Germany, that all has to get deeper as does your knowledge of all the South American, or I'm sorry, Southern Hemisphere countries and the New World, you know, Northern Hemisphere, all that has to get better. And after that quiz, you have a four wine blind tasting in written form. So when you do say a four wine blind tasting, you have to be able to accurately describe the year, the vintage. You have to describe the actual variable and the region as well as a lot of other information. So that piece that you've just described, grape country, region, Appalachian vintage, that's all at the very

12:49bottom. At the certified exam level, they are less concerned with you getting it exactly right. They are much more concerned with your, why did you come to those conclusions? It's how you get to your conclusions, particularly at the certified level, that has as much if not more weight than the actual final answer. They want to know you understand the process of deduction, the deductive method that we introduce at the introductory level, that you practice that, you printed the grid off the website and you've literally practiced using this grid. Aromas, flavors, textures are on the top of the grid. Then you assess the structure. What's the alcohol content? What's the overall level of acidity? These are all things that are listed. They're literally on the grid of paper. You're looking for color concentration throughout the sample of the wine to tell age. You're looking at viscosity. You're looking at, there's so many things, there's an actual step by step that you go through to figure out exactly. It's not just like you look at it, smell it and go, huh, there is a process. The process is important, if not more important than your conclusion. You have to show your work. You're not given a quadratic equation.

14:18There's a great science fiction reference, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and what is the meaning of life. You don't just get to say the number, you've got to show your work and the equation. The equation is very valuable. Certify level two. Then there's a level three. Well, before you get to level three, you have to apply for the advanced course. The advanced course is held a couple of times a year and there's no examination. You are simply with upwards of 80 peers. As many as 20 master sommeliers attend and lecture and lead tasting practice. It's a very comprehensive three-day preparation for the advanced exam. In order to get a seat at the advanced course, a prerequisite for the advanced exam, you have to take the sommelier knowledge assessment online. If you're in the top 10%, if I understand it correctly, that's how you get your seat.

15:26Then you can be invited to the advanced exam. Let's just say you get invited to the advanced exam. You do the three-day class and then you take the exam and you pass the exam, which the exam I imagine is written work and tasting? The advanced exam and the master exam are relatively similar with one little exception. There is a six wine blind tasting, 25 minutes using this rigorous method of deduction that we've shown you at the introductory, that you've shown some expertise at the certified. You have to identify the wine by grape, by country, by region, appellation and vintage, but you must show your work verbally. You walk into a room, there's three examiners, you sit down, you're given instructions, the clock starts and you have 25 minutes, four minutes and 10 seconds per wine to go through your process and identify the wine. That's intense.

16:28It is, but bear in mind it's not a gotcha game. They're not going to select wines. Here's a Tuscan Cabernet Sauvignon from the Bulgari coast and for all the world it's going to taste like Napa, we're going to get them. No, they're going to give you a killer Chianti Classico that has all the attributes of a classic rendition of that wine. What's classic? That's probably an evolving definition. Sure it is. You're going to get a Rioja. It's not as if it's an unlimited number of options that the judges select from. It's possibly 75 different wines. They continue to add to that. It's red wine or white wine. There isn't any sweet wine. There isn't any sparkling wine.

17:30While it is challenging, and it was my great challenge, that's the thing I failed consistently at the advanced level and at the master level. How many times did you have to take the master test? Five times. I passed on my fifth attempt. How much does it cost to do that? It's not cheap. The truth is I don't even know anymore and I don't remember. If my wife were sitting next to me, she'd probably have a lot more detail. It was expensive, but it wasn't as expensive as attending Vanderbilt. We are a vocation. We're not a profession. We're a vocation. It's like being in skilled trades. I'm not working with my hands. I guess I'm working with my brain. If I was to put a super Tuscan in front of you where I took a Cabernet grape, which is a Bordeaux original growth French grape grown in Tuscany, blended with San Giovese, would you be able to nail that? Would you be able to go, you know what? I get a French, I get Cabernet, but it's in a different alluvial soil. You will often hear people getting into that space. Here's the thing, I've never prepared to identify a Cabernet San Giovese blend. Why would you waste time on preparation for things that aren't going to be in the exam? Your focus should be solely on, I need to understand the world's great regions and the world's great grape varieties made at a high level of quality that really demonstrate the fact that the trade goes to great lengths to tell you three big things on the label, grape and place and vintage.

19:25Often, grape and place are synonymous in the old world. We just said Chianti, and if Chianti isn't a grape, San Giovese is a grape, so you know that. Those things are what define classic wine, grape and place and vintage. I've never even dedicated a minute to thinking about getting outside the bounds of that. Now over time, since I passed in 2001, certainly I enjoy the challenge of trying to noodle out those sorts of things, but as an aspiring person in the process, I wouldn't waste one iota of time. This is where I could get in trouble. I'm not a fan of natural wine because it's a trend that's sort of come and gone. That's finally that shark's been jumped, but natural wine obscures grape and place and vintage because the process doesn't allow that stuff to show through. The process creates something fascinating, archaic, possibly viscerally satisfying, not as far as I'm concerned, certainly cerebrally interesting, but not really satisfying for this guy. So it's not judgeable. That's a completely sort of subjective assessment, your like or dislike of somebody's orange wine or natural wine or archaic process or whatever it might be, where a classic Bordeaux, a Rioja, a great wine from the Mosul River or the Danube River, a great Italian wine. Why does Chilean Cabernet have a character

21:27that's different than Kunawara Cabernet that's different than Napa Valley Cabernet? Oregon Pinot Noir versus Otago Pinot Noir versus Burgundy. Those are the things. There should be something about the place that influences that grape in such a way that it's identifiable. The examination committee will pick these wines based on their ability to demonstrate their classic nature. Which side of the Gironde does it come from? They're completely different wines, right? You're talking about Grobs. There you go. Barolo versus Barbaresco. Hell versus Brunello. Like wow, man, it's so easy to tell the difference between Barolo and Brunello. Really? Let me line it up for you. You show me how it's done because I want to learn. So would you say that Assamoyé is well-traveled? Because I feel like when you understand the terroir and you know, I don't know, you're just, there's something about being well-traveled.

22:32To me, I feel like there's so much about region and soil quality and just the, what's happening with, you know, just the weather in the world that is going to affect the grape and the quality and everything. So would you say that that is kind of almost a prerequisite for wanting to be Assamoyés, to be well-traveled? I am a living example that it's not. Oh, that's interesting. It is, however, vitally important to your growth. I don't know that you have to have visited every place you are examined upon. Like if you've never been to Bordeaux, can you pass the exam? Yes. There is literature. Wine's been with us since the dawn of man civilization. Wine civilized man. Let's go back 11,000 years. Excuse me? Yeah. 11,000 years ago, man begins civilization. There are, this makes me sound like I'm smart and I know what I'm doing, but I'm just repeating what I've read. There were contemporaneous domestication events. Yes, that makes you sound smart. That sentence right there. Yes, it does. Man was civilizing and as man civilized, he domesticated plants and animals for his need. Those two domestication events occurred one in the Levant, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, what we now call Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, and the other occurred about 600 miles away to the north in the area of Georgia and the Caucus Mountains.

24:08What was one of the first plants man civilized or domesticated? The grape? The grape. Why? Because they loved the grape. It tasted good, had sugar in it, had flavor, was good for them. The oldest evidence of wine we have on this planet is approximately 8,500 years old. Where was that found? Oh, in a little town called, well, a major population center called Tbilisi. Just outside of Tbilisi in Georgia, the oldest evidence of a functioning winery was found. There's evidence of wine that was discovered in a cave in Sicily that's about 6,500 years old. And wine's been with us forever. A long time ago. Yeah. But did it take man 2,500 years? Did it really take the human 2,500 years to stumble into the fact that if that grape juice is left on its own, sitting in a bucket somewhere, something really interesting happens to it. And when I drink it, it makes me feel really good. I don't think it took 2,500 years. I think there's probably some missing link somewhere. But the grape helped domesticate man. Man quickly learned that something cool happens to the grape juice. And then there were these insane sort of travelogues for the grape as it went from Syria, Lebanon, and Levant to the East. And then actually, there were a lot of circuitous routes for the grape to get all over the world.

25:36And then it worked its way into Mesopotamia. And then from Mesopotamia into Greek culture. Well, geez, the Greeks had a god for wine, Dionysius. And wine was a part of religion. And wine was commerce. And wine was science. And wine was philosophy. And as the Greek culture declined and the Roman culture rose, the Romans took from the Greeks. They had their own wine god. His name was Bacchus. And as Roman culture proceeds to the North and to conquer Europe and goes back East, wine is taken everywhere. Wine is inextricably woven through the fabric of man. And as a result, it's a part of who we are. And I was going to say, I grew up, I went to Catholic school for 12 years. So talking about you two, he's raising his hand. My dad always tells me. We have so much in common, 12 years of Catholic education down the drain. Same, same. So that's the first thing. You're eight years old and you're given the blood of Christ, just like a watered down wine. And so talk about being woven into just religion and just family. It's celebratory. I mean, there's so much kind of embedded in us, such a young age to its importance in society. And as somebody whose first restaurant I worked at was a wine country cuisine restaurant when I was just 18 years old, one that you're familiar with, Napa Rose. And it's a wine country restaurant. Legendary.

27:17Our sommelier, Michael Jordan, was the first sommelier I ever knew. Apparently, he's a legend. I didn't even know my first sommelier I would ever meet was somebody who was so highly regarded in the sommelier community. Loved, not regarded, loved. Loved, adored. So my little 18 year old brain could not fathom. All I knew was high school shenanigans. I had no idea what I was learning. And Michael Jordan would give the cooks and the chefs, they would share that knowledge with us, which I was so lucky. Indeed. Oh my gosh, so lucky. And you know, obviously wine and food apparently go well together. Did you know that? I've heard this. So the first type of food that I mastered or I was just a part of my world was everything went together with the wine. I mean, everything was paired, everything. So it was such a practice in our tasting that our chef would be our chef, Andrew Sutton, who's also a legend out of Napa Valley. He just, the wine would be right there next to the dishes they were creating. And it just went hand in hand and it was such a beautiful. So I learned at such a young age how important it was. Being 18, it was such a weird, it was like, I can't even buy it, but I know so much about it.

28:36And I respected it so much. Well, it's because of how this nation was founded by people who didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't dance, didn't have any fun, right? Wine wasn't a part of our culture ethnically, intrinsically. It still isn't. Not like it is in Italy and France. No, no, absolutely correct. Not like it is in Italy and France. But here's what's happening in Italy and France and Europe at large. Wine is declining in cultural significance. Wine is, wine is alcohol. Wine is beverage alcohol. In Europe, via Brussels, and in the world, via the WHO, there is, we're going to get in trouble. There is a modern temperance movement afoot. There is a sober curious movement afoot. And wine is in the crosshairs of social engineers, people who want to nudge the populace. You guys remember Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and Obama right-hand guy? Well, his brother is Zeke Emanuel, and he was, I think HHS or whatever he, his brother Zeke Emanuel said, we need to nudge the people in the right direction. They're not capable of making really good decisions for themselves.

30:04We need to nudge them via legislation and taxation. We need to move them away from things that aren't good for them. Well, God damn it. I get to make those decisions. That's not your decision. It's my decision. Do we know that smoking is absolutely horrible for your health and will shorten your life and possibly kill you? Yes. Does that mean that the government should have a role in that decision? Hell no, as far as this guy's concerned. And now that they've got smoking all but done, their next, their next box to check is alcohol consumption. In Europe, they've literally said, and they want to put it on labels in Ireland, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. One serving of alcohol, be it spirit beer or wine, is detrimental to your health. Europe, where wine is as inextricably woven into culture, where Scotch whiskey, where Irish whiskey, where beer in Germany, they are trying to push the populace away from the consumption of alcohol. And we as an industry have been caught off guard, and we should have never been caught off guard. We should have seen this coming miles away. And when they get to say there's no such, there's no safe level of alcohol consumption, we don't have a response. We've got a lot of science that says wine or beverage alcohol, broadly speaking, is a part of a healthy lifestyle. Moderate consumption of alcohol in conjunction with a moderate and healthy lifestyle is beneficial. But it's as wonky as it could be. It's all deeply buried in the science, and we don't have a succinct comeback to there's no safe level of alcohol consumption. So wine is on the decline in Europe, not solely because of this movement of

32:09temperance, but because there's this thing called, I love this, makes me sound so smart, generational distanciation. And what that means is every generation pushes away from what the previous generation, what their predecessors liked. Well, I think that, so I think what you just now said, I think there's just in general connection and people together. One of the reasons why I loved, when I was 18 years old, I got a job at a merchant's restaurant in Cool Springs. And the manager said, what do you know about wine? I go, white wine goes with chicken and fish and red wine goes with steaks. Like, what do you mean? That's what I know. And he goes, you don't know shit. And I went and bought wine for dummies or whatever the book was. I learned how they made white Zinfandel. And I was like, holy shit, I had no idea. And I was hooked. That was it. Learning how white Zinfandel was made. So then I would go and I would get friends and we would get bottles of wine and we would meet at like my apartment and we would brown bag them. And then we would all sample it. And then we would drink these, these wines. We would all write down what our favorite wines were. And then we would play poker. We had to drink all the bottles of wine. So we get like five or six friends together. You're gonna play poker night. You did a wine tasting at first, then you got to drink six bottles of wine. It's fucking fantastic. I had a great time with that, but it brought us together. It brought people together, drinking wine, talking about it.

33:32And today with the internet, you just said the courses are online. Like I can do everything online. We don't need to connect and drink wine because we can do it virtually. And at Crystal's point, Google Earth is an amazing tool. And I want to finish your thought. Traveling to a place is the final linchpin. It brings everything together. Is being physically in that place completely necessary to pass the exam? No. And I would say the same as a chef too. You know, like I can make cuisine. French cuisine doesn't mean I've never been to France. And when you go there and you work with somebody who's been doing it forever in this place or you meet somebody who's growing that produce or raising that animal, yes, those things are, you learn more and you are better as a result of it. But to pass our exam, you don't have to travel. Good God, if you did, like that would change. There would be so few because of the cost of doing, of traveling.

34:43But there's, it's undeniable when you're in that place, you do gain more knowledge and experience and you have a deeper sense of that place beyond just academics that you can get via a book or via the internet. All the stuff you need is available to you without the travel, but the travel eventually does become essential. And if you don't get to travel everywhere and visit every wine region, that's okay, but you probably do need to see a few wine regions to understand, well, how are grapes grown and what is that process like in vineyard management through the course of the year and what does the wine make? All that's hugely important, but I don't know that you have to go everywhere in order to see every little minor difference. Of course. I think that's an ideal situation. I mean, being from California and being able to be close to travel to Napa Valley and, you know, just those areas, you can go on these nice little tasting tours and it could be a day trip for somebody that lives in Southern California. I think that's such a big draw about California and it's beautiful. You're right by the water. You're right by the beach. You have, I mean, there's Santa Barbara. Paso isn't all the way up there. You can go try some Los Olivos. I have family in Los Olivos. I spent a week in there just recently and it's incredible. A couple of our tasting rooms are in Los Olivos. Yes, yes. My brother-in-law actually owns a tasting room in Los Olivos and just the community. It's a coming together. There's music outside. People are walking around. It feels very Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is a different place, man. Isn't it great? I kind of like fell in love with, I mean, you've got the farms. You have fruit trees everywhere. There's pomegranates. There's everything. The food is phenomenal. A simple sandwich is not hard to make and people are just dining outside. Santa Barbara tri-tip, baby. That's the... Oh my gosh. We had a,

36:46we had this, oh my god, we had, you've been to Napa Rose. You've tasted the food. Oh god, my favorite dishes are just things that we paired with a tri-tip. That grilled kind of flavor with the really bold pairing, you know? Oh yeah, we missed that full. I've only been to Santa Barbara for us at Jackson Family is really important. It's the county where we have the second largest volume of acreage so it's a very important county. I've been a few times but I haven't explored it deeply and what I really want to see is Point Concepcion where the, where you round the corner. So there's a south coast, which is kind of weird. There's literally an east to west coast on the western edge of Santa Barbara County and where that south coast turns north as it's moving to the west and turns north, Point Concepcion is there and purportedly it's a very cool place. Hey, we're going to take a short break to hear a quick word from our sponsors.

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39:07Learn more at sharpiers.com. That's c-h-a-r-p-i-e-r-s.com or you can give Erin Mosso a call directly. Her number is 615-319-6453. That's Sharpier's Bakery. Y'all today we are talking, as always, about SuperSource. And you know, one cool thing about SuperSource is did you know that they develop most of their cleaning products and chemicals in their in-house facility? They're environmentally conscious and only use dyes that are safe for the employees and the environment. They carry a number of products for keeping your dishes, flatware, services, floors, restrooms, laundry, basically your entire facility clean, bright and smelling and feeling new. This is just one of the many reasons SuperSource is taking over this city for dish machine and chemicals. You need to call Jason Ellis. His number is 770-337-1143 and he would love it if you give him a call and let him come down and just check out your operation, meet him, say hi, see if there's any way he can help. He is here to help you succeed. That's Jason Ellis with SuperSource, 770-337-1143. There's literally an east to west coast on the western edge of Santa Barbara County and where that south coast turns north as it's moving to the west and turns north, Point Concepcion is there and purportedly it's a very cool place. Is it because it gets colder?

40:41No, it's spiritual. Point Concepcion, yes. People go? I don't know about that. Actually one of my friends wants his ashes thrown out there. But no, it's like the indigenous peoples have always held it as a very kind of religious, spiritually important place and it's supposed to have vibes. It's so California. I really want to see Point Concepcion, but we'll see. We should take a group trip there and take videos. It'll be a lot of fun. Done. Hey, how many master sommeliers are there in the world? At this point, there are approximately 300. So here's where we can get in trouble and I'm going to let it rip from this minute. I am estranged from the organization. Oh wow, we have a you're rogue. You want rogue? No. Stranged from quartermasters? I'm estranged from the quartermasters. I was going to ask about WSET and like the different governing bodies. We can cover that too, but I'm estranged from the organization because of politics and ideology. We went through several major controversies, a cheating scandal and then we fell into some metoo issues and as a result, we lost a board of directors completely resigned and were in some ways forced to and as a result of the resignation of a whole board, a new board was elected and this particular board I have vehement disagreements with. They instituted some changes. We had a code of conduct prior. They changed the code of conduct and as a result of the changes they made and because of some closely held beliefs, I will not sign that code of conduct. I will not give up my right

42:45to speak freely and that in my mind and many of my peers will disagree with me. Many of my peers have signed that document. Good friends of mine. I can be ideologically opposed to your views and still enjoy your friendship. I can be opposed to your politics and still enjoy your friendship. As a nation, we've become incredibly divided because we no longer cross those bridges. There was a point when we did. All that said, I won't sign the code of conduct and I will not take DEI training because I'm opposed to it for closely held beliefs. What does DEI stand for? Diversity, equity and inclusion training. Again, I think that's jumped the shark. A lot of corporations have stopped doing it. It doesn't achieve the goal it sets out to achieve irrespective of my opinion. Those two things prevent me based on their rules from participating in court of master sommelier programming.

43:55Prior to this, I was very active. I was a board of directors member for two terms. I taught countless programs. I was involved as many as 45 days a year, 60 days a year, and now I am completely estranged from the organization. I say this for one reason, to tell you my understanding of specifics and exacts, I don't know as much as I once did. To answer your question, there are approximately 300 master sommeliers in the world. There are approximately 200 here in the U.S. and there are approximately 100 in other places around the world. The court is more important in the United States than it is in Europe because you got to remember it's an English organization. We're making wine in England. Actually, Jackson Family Wines bought a little land in Essex County to make wine in England to make some bubbles. Do you think the Italian sommeliers and the French sommeliers and the Greek sommeliers do you think they're going to take a lot of direction from those English guys? No, they don't like that. So there's literally this thing called Association Sommelier Internationale, AASI. Think of AASI as FIFA. FIFA is the world governing body for football and so they have AASI. The court is a completely different organization than AASI.

45:26So in Europe, while there are some master Psalms in many European countries, it's more of an English thing. In the United States, we didn't really have AASI's influence. The court became the organization of record for the subject of wine and sommelier vocation. And then like now we're in Asia. They're in Korea. They're in Japan. We have outreach and programs in Mexico and South America. So it's an expanding thing for sure. To your point, there are other amazing organizations. They're different. There's Society of Wine Educators. There's the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. Wine and Spirits Education Trust is sort of from which the court sprung many, many years ago. Well, in the 60s. And I'm a big fan of all of it. I'm a huge, given my estrangement, I am no less supportive of the court's process than I've ever been. I am as supportive of the examination process as I've ever been. The education committee, the director of exams, all those people do amazing work and the exam continues to be great stuff. And at one point, I hope this too shall pass and maybe I can be involved. But I've always supported all of it.

46:58It's hard to do all of it though. You gotta make a choice. Because I don't know that you can really execute your preparations for WSCT 3 and the advanced. Man, that would be, my brain would not make it. Let's pivot a little bit. That's a lot of stuff. I don't necessarily, I would get into some of the things you just now said, just as far as what I believe and challenge you on some of that stuff. Like you said, everybody's divided. That's not what we're here to do today. Correct. Let's talk about Kendall Jackson. Because this is what you do. You work for Kendall Jackson. I was really interested in the mothership conversation last night. Well, Kendall Jackson has a Ventner's reserve. That is their classic Chardonnay, California Chardonnay is the AVA is California and they make 2.5 million cases a year. I don't know that we're allowed to say that, but yes, something like that. Oh, okay. Well, there's a lot. They make a lot of juice, right? You have to have that in order to do a bunch of other stuff. There's like, there's a concept there that I want to talk about, but for what model, one of the things that's really funny for me when people come like wine reps or every time we get a new bar, because we sell Kendall Jackson at Mary bowl, right? Thank you. Right in the middle. Is there a number one selling that in Sonoma? Contrary people just love it and very different styles, which is really cool.

48:22Very different styles. Those are the big two. And every time I get a bar manager and not Mags, cause she's amazing, but I know where you're going. People come in and they go, dude, why the fuck do you still have Kendall Jackson on your list? Like that was old in 2005. And I go, dude, I pay like $11 a bottle and I sell it for $14 a glass. And I sell like 10 cases a week. Like if I took that off, there would be pitchforks and there would be a riot. And why the hell do I have to change my number one selling wine because it's an old, like there's this stigma around it. It's almost like this weird thing. And it's like, I am as guilty of, I am as guilty of what you've just described as anybody, but it's maturity. Like as a young person, you want to change everything. I know more than everybody. You don't know what I know. You don't know about these emerging trends. But what you don't know as a young person, you don't understand business. You don't understand cash flow. You don't understand guest happiness. Guest happiness is the paramount, but guest happiness drives the revenue and the profitability. Yes, of course. The mothership. And the mothership is what drives Jackson family wines. It is one of the most fascinating. This is a process I wish I could expose young sommeliers or all sommeliers or people who once loved Kendall Jackson, but now sheepishly look back at it as something they did when they were younger and now they can afford better. It's not about better. It's just about what you like. And that the process of making this wine in some ways is very much the same as it was when Jess started. Jess Jackson started the process with some brilliant people, a guy named Jed Steel, a guy named Rick Foreman, a guy named Chuck Ortman.

50:21And it is today very similar to what they did, but my God, the details within the process have evolved in countless ways. We started trying to sail by the stars and now we are traveling in space in the stars. It's such a different process. It's always been a blend, to your point. It's always been about blending the flavor domains of the California coast because each place, Monterey's character of aroma flavor texture is different than that in Santa Barbara, is different than that of Mendocino and Sonoma. And this wine has always been this blend of the four coastal counties. It's always been fermented in oak and that oak fermentation, that is why I think we've been America's favorite Chardonnay since 1994. I think it really does boil down to the fact that we ferment the wine in barrel and when we ferment the wine in barrel, there is a tactile, textural component, there is a mid-palate richness and feel that cannot be faked or imitated.

51:35You can put a little, you know, diacetyl acid and fake butter, you can fake oak, I don't mean fake oak, you can use oak adjuncts to create oak impressions, staves, chips in a bag, all kinds of different ways of doing it, pellets. But you cannot fake fermenting in a barrel and doing malolactic in a barrel and stirring the lees by hand in a 225-liter barrel where you've got the right portion of wine to dead yeast in the barrel, which is kind of a weird concept, because that dead yeast is decaying and as it's decaying, it's adding character to the wine and if we stir it up, we increase that intensity. So this process is what makes us singularly different than other wildly successful Chardonnays is this barrel fermentation and well, there's like 100,000 barrels, each of them fermenting individually. Well, the complexity of that process every year is insane. Can imagine. And yet it's essential to our success.

52:51But so oak barrels, I mean, if you're for the price point that you have, I'm teeing something for you right now. Yeah, I think I know where you're going. Oak barrels are really expensive and to get new French oak for a Chardonnay, I mean, to get it done, how in the world does Kendall Jackson keep the price where it is? Well, I'm glad you've asked that question. I feel like you know the answer. We'll let you in on that. We talked about this last night. I learned this last night. So an oak barrel is a French oak barrel from a center of France forest and the Vosges is the most notable of those. It's about a thousand dollar investment and that oak barrel isn't, it doesn't have a limited lifespan. It has a limited ability to impact the wine because you use the barrel the first time, somewhere around 40 or so percent of the the intensity of that barrel is diminished. You use it a second time, there's less than 50 percent of the intensity and the chemistry of that barrel left to give the next use of that barrel.

53:58So first pass, huge impact on the wine. Second pass, pretty big impact on the wine. Third use of that barrel, relatively minor impact on the wine. Fourth use, it's more or less a spent vessel. So do you just throw it away after the fourth use? No, we love those spent vessels. That means we're not going to get this massive input and the idea is to have a relatively limited number for Kendall Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay in particular. Specifically, we have a relatively low percentage of new barrels in the program every year. We don't want oak to be a more dominant feature. We want it to be a subtle feature, a background feature. So the vast majority of oak in the Kendall Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay program is spent older barrels. Okay, so every year we invest to buy maybe 10%, 12%, maybe 15%, which would be a lot. It's more like 10% new barrels every year and they get brought into the program and then there's some old, old, old barrels on the other side that will fall out the other side. Maybe they end up in Scotland and maybe they end up in Japan for sake or knows where they go or a planter or something.

55:15A planter or a planter. So to your point, back in 1992, just 10 years after Jess and Barbara Bankey and Don Hartford and Jess's daughters, just 10 years after they launched this thing, one of the biggest challenges they're facing is they can't get the quantity, the quality at the price they need from France. Now there are oak barrels made all over the world, but it's this French oak that really is the difference maker for quality wine anywhere in the world. It's the species of oak. It's how the center of France forests are managed. It's a national treasure for the country. It's managed by the government. You might own the land, might be your trees, but you have to sort of follow protocol. They tell you when you can fell your trees and the better you manage it, the more money you're going to get. And by the way, the wine industry is sort of third or fourth in the line. Many other people get access to this timber before we do because you need it for other things. Yes, you got it. And so the wine industry is sort of farther down the line, but you don't want to be in the wine industry way down the line. You want to be up front. So when Jess went to France to sort of understand this process, how do I get more oak? How do I get the quality and consistency that I want?

56:47And how do I pay less? And he discovered that he couldn't get any of that because the cooperage industry in France is this little industry and the Coopers really weren't interested in making more oak because, well, if they increase their production, they're necessarily driving down the price of their product. Yeah. So Jess, he turned over every rock, tore his pants on a couple of fences as he was sneaking around and trying to understand what the hell's going on. And eventually he ends up in front of the French government. And the French government says, Monsieur, we have ze oak. There's plenty of wood, but the Coopers, they do not want to make. And what am I going to do here? I'm like at an impasse. And I think if you buy this facility at the southern edge of the Vosges Mountains that's about to go out of business, there's a furniture mill and this furniture mill employs 15 families and they're going to lose their income. If you buy this furniture mill, you can access felled French timber. You can buy the timber and then you can process that timber into staves and, you know, the barrels that's up to you to make. But you have access to timber. And Jess went, well, huh, I'm in. I'm going to buy a furniture. He bought a furniture factory and he partnered with, this is where it gets a little complicated, but we are a partner in that stave mill with America's largest Cooper called Boswell family in Lebanon, Missouri. So the Boswell family makes a lot of bourbon barrels. As far as I know, they're the largest producer of bourbon barrels in the U.S., but because they're in the barrel business, they're also in the wine barrel business and they're in the wine barrel business throughout Europe and Jess partnered with the Boswell. So we are owners of this thing together. We, Boswell and Jackson family, buy felled French timber.

58:48We process it into barrel staves in the most classic method. We age those staves outside as the weather and the four seasons, they bleach and leach out all the stuff we don't want in that wood over time, 18 to 24 months. And if you think about it, shipping an empty barrel full of air in an unwieldy fashion in a ship, that's not particularly cost effective. So we don't ship barrels full of air. We put those beautifully aged staves from beautiful French timber into a shipping container and it covers that container from corner to corner. It's fully completely filled with staves and those staves go to Lebanon, Missouri where Boswell family, our partner in the stave mill, turns those staves into wine barrels for us. I don't get the whole back of house stuff. It's too complicated for me. Whiskey barrels for everybody else. I've been to Lebanon to watch the process. The whiskey barrels are more of a manufacturing line process where the wine barrels are much more of a handcrafted thing. Now there's hand crafting in the bourbon barrels too, the American oak barrels for bourbon, but it is a very different process. There's much more hands-on artistry in the production of a wine barrel than there is a bourbon barrel.

01:00:12Well I was going to say because bourbon has to be American oak, charred American oak to be a bourbon, it doesn't, that's not a French oak, a new French oak. Correct, but I know, it's my understanding of the laws of bourbon, like the bourbon has to touch that charred oak barrel, doesn't necessarily have to only be in that charred American oak barrel. They're beginning to play around with finishes the way that the Scotch producers have been playing around with finishes forever. I'm in the process of watching this really cool Scotch whiskey documentary and it talks about, it's so fascinating, in 1983 Scotch all but like disappeared. Nobody cared about Scotch in Europe anymore and it really wasn't a big thing in the United States because why generational distanciation? It was an old fuddy-duddy drink. It was what your grandma and grandpa drank and nobody cared about Scotch and it nearly disappeared. They mothballed a bunch of distilleries. It really had reached a low ebb and as the wine industry is facing challenges we haven't seen in 25-30 years, as I'm watching the Scotch documentary, I'm like oh my god that's exactly where we're at in the wine trade right now. This is happening. We are having such a difficult time communicating to younger legal drinking age consumers who are distracted by legal gummies and high noon tequila seltzers and craft beer and bourbon coming from THC soda. All of it. Shout out to the sponsor.

01:01:48Yeah, well again. All of this is awesome. It is capitalism, right? It's everybody finding their consumer and marketing. Marketing big time. And so wine's got to figure this out. Like every year there's this brilliant dude, he's the guru of our industry from an analytical perspective. His name's Rob McMillan and as soon as I say Silicon Valley Bank, if you've been following lately, that's kind of an interesting thing to say. Well Silicon Valley Bank was one of the largest lenders to our industry in California. Oh really? Yeah. And they came through that whole debacle almost unscathed on the wine side. The wine side wasn't the problem. It was some poor decisions on the other side. But Rob McMillan writes this report and he's been doing it for 30 years. It's the State of the Wine Industry Report by Rob McMillan and Silicon Valley Bank. And this year's report, you don't have to go through the 60 slides, it's uber wonky. But the first six slides talk about the challenges that we've not met in communicating to this younger generation. We can't expect to do things the way we've always done and get the results that we've always gotten. Things are changing. And I don't have answers. I mean if I did, I'd be doing something else. I'd be on my G4 going to another wine region for fun. So let's talk about that.

01:03:23Let's talk about that because I think you know Brandon doesn't drink alcohol anymore and I actually stopped drinking alcohol when I was 20 years old ironically. So I never really became the wine connoisseur that I always wanted to be. I kind of leaned more into cheese. I don't know if you know. I own a grilled cheese restaurant here in Nashville. Which is why I fell in love with cheese. Because similar to wine, depending on where the milk is coming in the cow. I mean everything about it spoke to me as I learned from Michael Jordan about how important and just the craft. So I leaned into cheese. It's just everything that I love. What's your favorite cheese at the moment? Okay, my favorite cheese. I'm going to give you something local. So Ashe County in North Carolina has incredible cheeses coming out right now for meltability. So we're talking about that creaminess but it still has a flavor and a sharpness that you get when it's melted. Because a cheese at a room temperature cold eats differently than a melted cheese. So in my world, melted cheese, you lose something. So I'm constantly trying to chase really flavorful bold cheeses that translate into a melted sandwich. And often the bolds don't, right? Yeah and the meltability. Those flavor crystals that you love. Those enzymes.

01:05:03They don't translate as much into a melted sandwich. And often we're talking about just an American cheese and we are staunchly against that kind of non-cheese cheese. Velveeta. I mean you know, Velveeta has its place. That's oil. Oil. Number one cheese in America. It's the mothership. I think they like legally might have to even say like this is not a cheese. Processed cheese food. Yeah, processed cheese food. And so you know we even with a creamery in Kentucky, we made our own American cheese. Like back to the original, like it was originally a Colby style cheese and we went and we I was you know pressing cheese curds and I mean this was like this is my going to a wine you know a wine vintner and like you know really exploring. So with that said, what would you recommend is the best wine with the grilled cheese? That's a wow. That is a curveball. That's a that's a what they call a snapdragon curveball. I didn't see I didn't see that as the question through all of that. That was pretty good.

01:06:11I like it. Well I mean are we just talking about cotton? Describe the grilled cheese. Thank you. Okay I'm giving you a country sourdough. So something that has a little bit of you know got a little bit of nice acidic punch to it. Like a country sourdough, a nice butter. So I'm getting caramelization from those milk solids and then I'm giving you maybe let's go with let's go with a Gruyere. A Gruyere cheese maybe mixed with a little bit of Swiss. So like a younger Swiss so you get that nice melty. And then let's throw in some nice caramelized onions. So a caramelized onion Swiss grilled cheese on sourdough. I mean it's hard not to think about white wine. It's hard not to think about richer white wine. For me food and wine pairing is trying to mirror in the glass the weights, the textures. Not necessarily the flavors as much but the weights and textures. And because you've caramelized onion you've thrown sugar into the mix. And there's going to be kind of sugar hiding in there. And man does that sound good. Now I'm hungry. I'm just trying to get you to go to my restaurant after this. He's staying right next door. I know he is. We're headed out to some country club. We got about an hour drive but I'm really maybe I'll see you later this afternoon. I'm leaning to white. I'm leaning to rich. I'm leaning to dry but not necessarily chewy puckery. I don't want to I don't want to oak on this wine. I want fruit. We've always sort of defaulted to Alsace and I've been looking at Alsace recently and it might default to a nice a glass of Pinot Gris from Alsace. I don't necessarily want skinny white wine. I don't want sharp. I don't want acidic. I want richer, rounder, softer.

01:08:14I might look at something from Campagna even like a Fiano di Avalino or a Greco di Tufo. That's what I was thinking. Really? You had that on the tip of your tongue? But you know this happened last night and the whole concept of wine and food pairing people please it isn't an exact science. It can't be. It shouldn't be and the truth is the more fun you have with it the more you enjoy the process. Would you even go as far to say like if we're using a gruyere cheese would you want to use a wine from the similar region in which the cheese was produced? If it grows together it goes together. I love it too but that's not always possible. It's not always possible and it doesn't always work. One of my favorite food wine places in the country is Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas and there's an old version and there's the newer version that's been in play now for probably eight years but that it's awesome authentic Thai cuisine and the list is replete with Riesling. Oh wow I'm wondering Thai flavors are so bold. There's so many sugars and spices and acids. Sugar spice and acid German Riesling.

01:09:40Wow I would never you kind of hear about like Thai beers and like you know kind of and of course they work that that is and I'm thinking about you know what I'm now that you see you trip my trigger a Belgian golden strong ale. Okay see I was thinking with your grilled cheese you just described caramelized onions you got those like almost like you almost want to throw in like a mustard into that like a grainy mustard into the sandwich to kind of like play off of that and texturally that nice like pop on your tongue yeah like I love I would I would I would think Belgian strong ale or my my favorite beer in the country's uh can we can we drop everybody's we're dropping names I'm doing it. Oh yeah. Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewery. Go for it. Spotted Cow is not profound and complex beer it's just delicious and Michael Jordan is the ambassador of flavor. Oh yeah. He preaches a sermon of deliciousness let's not get caught up in all this do you like it or you're not like deliciousness is a thing umami is a thing man and so I think beer would be fun and I'd also do a bright fruity red that wasn't so acidic and soft a bright fresh fruity red uh could be a Beaujolais could be a Beaujolais but it could be how about Vespalina from uh from northern Elba because when you melt cheese that kind of like invokes the fats and everything oh yeah does that help or hinder in a wine pairing like there's no doubt that fat is going to coat the palate and as as it coats all that soft tissue the chemistry of the wine can't get through that fat so it's going to change the nature of the wine a wine that might be powerfully chewy puckery dusty grab and dry out the inside of the cheek dry out the gum line and the surface of the tongue that fat content from the cheese the butter the all of that it's going to create a buffer over all that soft tissue and because that buffer is there the wine's chemistry can't do its thing on

01:11:45that soft tissue and it changes the the way the wine feels of course it does that's so interesting I feel like like a cheesemonger and a sommelier always are naturally meant to work very closely we have our director of culinary in California's Tracy Chinami she is a certified artisan cheese maker and she is also lovingly known as the curd nerd oh curd nerd I love I okay you I've been on a podcast called curd nerds really in New York yeah she is if you ever want to do a podcast on cheese with Tracy I'm sure I can make that out yeah I'm I'm learning under Brandon's tutelage you could do your very own curd nerd conversation I think you should too I mean because I think because I was exposed to this the whole wine the world of wine and where you know everything about it uh but I was 18 so I couldn't even partake I fell more into the cheese yeah and we had a beautiful cheese program at Napa Rose and so that was what I was learning because I could go and buy it you know like that was in so I honestly fell into that because of my age and I've been in love ever since I absolutely love the intersection of wine and cheese yeah so we are associated loosely with a woman named chef Shauna she owns this thing I think it's called Epicurean and she's working with the people at Blackberry on that cheese called mycophelia which is this it's a mushroom washed rind and it's phenomenal stuff man wow there's just so much you can do with cheese and man just the new the everything there's it's endless it's endless and it's so interesting to me and god there's so many awesome things you can do and then for me we're constantly playing around for national grilled cheese days April 12th which I feel like is my national personal national holiday the day that we met that's the day we met um we uh

01:13:49did a grilled cheese plate and I did four different cheeses um from the southern regions and then we paired little kind of accoutrements with it and we served it you would love Tracy you guys are you are sisters from another missus I just love talking I mean there's just so much and like you know it's ever we all have different palates there's there's different way I love making accoutrements for cheese that's what she does it's that is just my you guys you guys I have to make that happen yeah we will make that happen do you know how long we've been talking for probably an hour and 20 minutes an hour and eight minutes now we're an hour eight minutes but like that's how fast an hour goes and when you're having a good time okay I want to be respectful of your time I have one important question how much time do you have what do you have like 10 minutes 15 minutes yes I have yes I do okay good I don't if you're like dude I have we're not leaving we're not leaving till 11 so okay perfect okay I just I want to be respectful of that what is your question then I'm gonna ask you like some stuff about what restaurant managers and servers and bartenders can like what information can you share that too like right now but let's go ahead go for okay um give me your recommendation for who's doing good de-alcohol de-alcohol all the alcoholized wine right now hey we're gonna take a short break to hear a quick word from our sponsors bro imagine the raddest blend of berries and ginger hitting you in your taste buds like a wave of flavor from the future this gentlest fizz smacks you right in the mouth field generalizing your tongue while delivering that light refreshing euphoria in every sip the floral aroma unique flavors and thc infusion of our berry ginger fizz makes you feel like someone should have thought of this before right right right like nobody's thought of this before I can't hardly believe it but we did that's insane for real okay sorry sorry I don't interrupt I just that's awesome go get a cali sober berry ginger fizz right now you can find cali sober at the

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01:19:54this is what this is the gentleman this this is randy ullam the uh american wine legend winner from wine enthusiast magazine this is a man who's been making wine for nearly i actually think it is 40 years randy is the wine master at kendall jackson we do make a low calorie chardonnay well calories and wine are all as a result of alcohol so in other words our low calorie chardonnay is really a lower alcohol chardonnay we've removed some alcohol in order to reduce the caloric content of our wine well how do you remove alcohol from wine that that's a pretty important question well it's distillation but not necessarily in a pot or a column it's distillation in in the sense that you're removing alcohol that's distillation by definition and there are a couple that you can do it via a membrane um an osmosis you can do it as a result of something called centrifuge or spinning cone because the alcohol is lighter and it's going to spin off faster so you do the math we've got this total volume of wine if we take from the total volume of wine a percentage and we de-alcoholize that percentage via the spinning cone and we return the de-alcoholized wine to the hole the alcohol content of the hole is going to get lower randy ullam has drawn this line in the sand i will not i've tried i've crumpled up the paper and thrown it in the bucket we tried a bunch of uh iterations of our low cal chardonnay and randy says below nine percent it just falls apart wow okay so in my mind i'm gonna i'm gonna work with randy and say like i i don't think you can take the alcohol out of wine and make something that is that's reminiscent of wine the way non-alcoholic beer is reminiscent of beer or the way a cocktail without alcohol and it is reminiscent

01:21:57of a cocktail now now sparkling wine i do like a sparkling rose and there i think those are delicious for this without alcohol without alcohol okay sparkling rose i think i think the bubbles do you talked about that westly well i was telling him a story last night i said do you what do you think about the non-alcohol he's like i'm not a big fan and i said i'm not either however four and a half years ago when i went to kroger and i bought my first steak after i quit drinking i looked around there's all this wine i had to mourn the fact that i'm never going to drink wine again and i that night i went home and i almost cried because it was a very high and i could understand that it's a very sad moment so three and a half years later my sister opens this place killjoy down the street and she has all this de-alcoholized wine well i got a bottle of the cab and i took it home and while it doesn't compare to anything with alcohol it doesn't for me drinking that it was very it was like triggering almost because well because it there there was a ritual around cooking for me yes cooking with a bottle of wine i would drink a bottle of wine while i cooked and then you had a bottle of wine to go with dinner i was cooking this night with this cab and i was like holy shit like this makes me really want to drink a real cab like i really wanted to go back that's what you mean by it was triggering it was triggering like not in a good way and i wonder and i would wonder about that like i took a sip of it and i was like this oh it's like it's like drinking a kind of a bad wine you're like i want to drink something really good like i know what it should taste so you drink this and you're like wow it kind of tastes like a wine man i i forgot because there's a twinge of real it tastes that great flavor and you're like wow i really i really love this i really and i was like i probably shouldn't drink these this is a little too close to the close to me going i could just have a glass of wine and like my alcoholic brain does that it just kind of goes you could have one you could and it's the one that does it for everybody and i know i can't do that and i'm telling you you have to

01:24:01read doctor sleep it actually might be triggering but he does such a this is stephen king's follow up to the shining and it's centered on danny as an adult who because of his trauma it has drug and alcohol problems and it follows danny through his sobriety and that process to me was like wow it was very eye-opening steven king is sober yes yeah been sober for decades yeah that's a whole it's a whole thing okay we're winding down and i want to i want to warn you no pun intended winding down that was no pun intended but i will take it we're gonna ask you at the very end you get to take us out we do something at the very end called the gordon food service final thought where you get to say whatever you want you're just talking to our audience you can say anything you want you could say vote for this person you could say whatever you want we're gonna give you that at the very end okay but for now if i'm a restaurant owner if i'm a restaurant manager if i'm a bartender i'm a bar manager i'm a whatever what are the what is the biggest misconception about wine and what are like the five things if i'm in the service industry and i'm selling one what are the five things that make it easier to sell one or things i just that are non-negotiable i have to know these five things about wine in order to be successful in what i do well i'll begin by saying when i'm doing an introduction to wine for a new restaurant team and i know my team is of diverse background some are super experienced some are brand new i've got 18 year olds in the room i've got 55 year olds in the room that have heard it all before i distill wine into what i call language that matters communicative language appetizing and accurate descriptions of aroma flavor texture

01:26:06if you can teach your team to accurately describe aroma flavor texture by doing a series of meetings i never want to talk to you about grape variety i don't have to i don't have to talk to you about the producer where they're from or the vintage none of that matters what matters to the guest is can you describe the aroma flavor and texture to that guest in an appetizing and accurate way because what they're concerned with is am i going to like the way this smells tastes and feels and the only way that service team can communicate that is to taste the wines that they serve by the glass and as often as possible taste wines they're on the list you can't expect somebody to communicate something they've not experienced themselves so i'm huge on that wine is a massive part of your revenue generation however i think you have to there isn't any one way to mark up your wine so you you can teach your team to describe wine by just keeping it simple and not over complicating it aroma flavor texture teach that process what is that and then wine is a part of your operation there's an artistry in how you mark up based on factors that are unique to your situation i don't think there's any one way to do it i think the wine wine sort of suffers from being egregiously marked up at times and i think there's a better way to do it and i'm not saying don't make money of course you have to make that's what we do but find that artistry and not everything it's not just a simple application of a uniform equation i like playing around with pricing a lot leadership like it's to me it's it's always about leadership it's if you expect

01:28:08your service team to go out there and so on you got to have somebody leading that charge they're not going to do it by themselves not typically we do at mirabelle we do all of our wine half price all of our bottles are half price seven days a week and people go brilliant are you kidding me every day half price and now people say half price days what so is that a gimmick and i go no no no we actually charge like most of our bottles of wine are like the 27 to 40 dollar range because our goal we look i don't have to prep it i don't have to i don't have to there's none there's no waste it comes in a box i put it in a thing and i just open it and serve it the fact that we charge that much for wine is gouging our guests because they're in a place to eat they want wine with their food and where the hell else am i going to get it oh i sell it it's like being at the airport and wanting a two egg scramble so why is this 13 dollars where the fuck else are you going to get two eggs scrambled you're in a restaurant where the fuck else are you going to get wine right i have wine i'm now going to charge you a pretty penny we believe that we're a community restaurant we want you to come back and if you spend 300 for a bottle of wine you're going to go i'm not going to go back there because that place is super expensive but if i spend 27 dollars bring your family of four out and i can have a bottle of wine with dinner and not bring the bank maybe i go well come back there tomorrow so our goal is i want you to continue coming back into our restaurant as a community member we're just going to take it we're not going to gouge you on wine that's just not something that we do we do make a profit you should way less than we could it and i i often get confused by the fact that you you have to have these rigid cost of goods equations and as a result you sell much less of the expensive wine if you sold your most expensive bottle your most expensive you paid 250 for a bottle of wine and you marked it up 40 cost of goods so you went two and a half times well what if you just doubled it and as a result of losing that that 10 you sold 10 times more wine like i think that's the better way to go

01:30:13well i'm supposed to hit a 32 bar cost and if i do that's a 50 bar cost i'm never going to do that i want my bonus that therein lies the tail therein lies yes that's the fight yes so but let the guest experience suffer because your bar manager is a bonus right and and why not why not pay that somewhere why not pay that bar manager a percentage of sales i think that's motivational isn't it and then they would well i mean it's it's the steak versus the salad i mean you know it's it's gp versus a percentage it's like do you i could contribution margin so i gotta sell if i buy a bottle of kendall jackson and the the mothership vintners reserve and i got it and i pay 11 i sell it for 32 oh shit that's great that's a 30 cost but i i only make what 22 every time i sell one what that's that's a preferred thing well if i sell a bottle that paid 250 for 500 i'm making two i have to sell man 20 bottles of kj to make up that one bottle but it's a 50 cost well why am i going to do that and it's like make the gross the the gp dollars that your your profit dollars that's the thing dollars and the the sales that it is i love talking to a director is really totally different dollars to the bank percentages correct yeah correct right well and at the end of the day this is what makes a restaurant like a memorable money you know somebody who understands that and knows that this is a community restaurant and you don't want to get pigeonholed into that like special rest event restaurant like we were talking about destination once a year versus once a month you know i mean that's huge wow do you have anything else i thought that was really good stuff the aroma the flavor the texture do that every day and i think you as you're saying this i'm thinking in my brain i'm like damn i need to be doing tastings every day like in my in line up lineups get stale lineups are all right everybody here we go we got

01:32:15a busy day today we got 42 on the books or 142 on the books and this is what we got going on sarah you're going to be in the expo tonight you get the dinner lineup stuff but why don't you then pull out and go hey we're going to try two different chardonnays that are completely different styles and we don't have to do that every day if that was they'd look forward to it once a week it yeah but you again you're in a routine for a reason restaurants run on routine and you have to have to be if you're going to do this man you got to be prepared like the stem where has to be there the wine has to be pre-poured the the service should probably be seated rather than standing as they normally might the wine has to be pre-poured you have to be ready to go and you got to stay on time like i could probably get two two wines done within six to seven minutes and go over aroma flavor texture with the team it's it's possible and to your point you're exactly right it should be done all the time but normal operations just kind of get in the way and what's our biggest single challenge these days human resources we're always short staffed we're just trying to get through the shift i mean there's that meme on the internet you know the restaurant business has always been hard but since covid boy everybody knows how hard it really is we just don't have we're just trying to get through shifts now rather than trying to elevate the experience for the guest via staff training if i think when we get to a point where we're more well staffed i think we can we can begin to we can begin to to do these these more in-depth trainings yeah i think that benefits that benefits the customer but you know and then yeah we go back to the i don't drink alcohol or whatever you know you have oh good lord yeah servers that are not partaking or they're sober curious and they're just not partaking you know whatever you might have a server that's pregnant or something you know so you get into this kind

01:34:18of mishmash of like i mean i know when at nappa rose when they were doing lineup i mean they were seated it was a whole process you know i i just thought that's how it was because i had no idea that's how it was then it's a different day i mean but also it takes a sommelier that's valuing that process and that is just it's a wine country restaurant you know like it's it's hard when it's not maybe the this is why people came to this restaurant so i mean i saw it that i thought my every restaurant's like this i had no idea can i can i say something about this too this is something that's really interesting that i learned when i stopped drinking and i had to call a couple people because i recognized what an asshole i was previous because i'm passionate about wine i loved since 18 like i that's what i wanted i wanted to do wine i i was fascinated by learning so when i would do wine tastings before the shift i would say everybody needs to try this i was so intent that as a server you understood what these things were that if you were in recovery i would say you need to at least smell it i would say you need to learn you need to get in there smell it and as somebody who's in recovery that is incredibly insensitive like yes if you have somebody who is in recovery around it yeah they get a freaking hall pass from smelling touching man it can be an absolute trigger and you've got to be sensitive to that like if you care about your people listen you learn wine on your own i'm not gonna make you taste if you need to leave the room because you don't need to hear because like me i love wine if i was having a hard time staying sober and somebody said you need to smell this so easy to access in a restaurant or if it's bourbon or whatever it is like if there's anybody on your team in recovery dude like they get a hall pass from any of this shit like having to taste wine before a shifter you can ask them to learn hey

01:36:19we learned some tasting notes you can at least yes you can ask them to study on their own and but but be very very sensitive about it because i used to be like you can at least smell it like get in there put your and it's like dude that that's really not cool and i recognized that once it was really freaking hard for me i was like man i couldn't imagine if a manager made me i can smell wine now and i can do all the stuff it's not it's fine for me now you should try to get tim and i on a pod it would be tim and i's a master of wine and uh i believe he's been sober for for many many years um and he he it'd be fascinating for you to talk to him because he he stopped drinking in the middle of his career wow and he had somebody taste for him oh wow he had kind of he had like a proxy palette okay i want to get his information from you before i don't i don't i've i've maybe how to spell his name h a n i h a n and i yeah okay he's the guy who created the progressive wine list the idea that you build a wine list very simply uh within every category if you've categorized it you go from lightest to fullest from driest to sweetest and that that way if the server didn't know anything yeah you have some points of reference anyway he was he's a brilliant dude well thank you larry my pleasure is like the most amazing thing having you in here i have enjoyed every part of this and um i just thank you for your time today my pleasure the final thing we do i've warned you about this this is the gordon food service final thought you guys i always i used to say like jerry's final thought you get to surmise everything and be like what the hell is that and do you know what that means jerry's fun jerry springer had a television i was gonna say i know you're not talking about i never watched the end that was i just watched the chairs getting thrown around at the very end he has a final thought where he surmised the whole situation it around and is like my final thought is if you're

01:38:22in a relationship and he did his little final thought this is you get to do the jerry's final thought whatever you want to say about whatever you want to say if it is your mic as long as you want to say it go go my final thought would be look people we don't all have to agree but why can't we all just get along i miss discourse and passionate debate and the ability to disagree and have a glass of wine or have a cup of coffee with somebody after the fact i can't understand why we're at a point where we are so bloody divided we're about to enter an election cycle and i just hope that we get to a point where we're beyond camps and tribes and everybody's ideology and i'm in this business because wine is such a social convivial thing and we're so divided wine can't even bring us together in a social and convivial way so let's get beyond the tribalism and the isms and let's recognize that we're all different and that we might not disagree but that doesn't mean i hate you and that doesn't mean we can't get along amen all right i love it thank you larry for joining us and have a safe trip home and enjoy the rest of your stay here in nashville my pleasure thanks all right thanks again to master sommelier larry o'brien for joining us on the show stay tuned next week as we are going to discuss this more on our intro and outro next week hope you guys are being safe out there love you guys bye